My thinking on this goes counter to the conventional. A safety or
reliability premium on a maiden voyage does not exist in other modes of
transport. I mean, would you feel more comfortable on the first or the
fiftieth flight of a new airliner? Cars have regular infant mortalities too.
In 5 years I think the premium will be on the first handful of reflights.
Maiden & life leader flights will be the ones they need to discount to
sell. It will probably take some government customers way too long to come
around to this, which will allow a premium charge to be maintained on the
maiden flight for while, but my guess is you'll see commercial launches
willingly migrate to reflown cores as soon as the capability is
demonstrated.
On Dec 23, 2015 12:26 PM, "Ben Brockert" <wikkit@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://spacenews.com/falcon-9s-second-stage-restart-was-just-as-important-as-sticking-the-landing/
"SES on Dec. 22 said all the information it had from the launch
reinforced its plans to launch SES-9 by late January aboard the
upgraded Falcon 9. SES, which has four other launches contracted with
SpaceX after SES-9, has stated it is willing to be the first
commercial customer to launch with a used Falcon 9 first stage.
"Even before the Orbcomm launch, SES officials had informed their
insurance underwriters that they were willing to be the inaugural
customer of the Falcon 9 upgrade even if it meant doing without a
launch insurance policy."
On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 3:14 PM, Stephen Van Sickle <sjv2006@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
wrote:
On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 7:34 AM, James Bowery <jabowery@xxxxxxxxx>
stage
I think it quite possible if not probable that Blue Origin will be the
first to launch a commercial satellite to _orbit_ on a reused first
alland do so economically.
How do you figure that? Blue Origin isn't close to orbiting anything at
at this point, whereas SpaceX does so routinely. Having now recoveredon
intact a first stage from an orbital launch, SpaceX could give it a try
their very next launch, if it were a high enough priority for them to doso
out of their own pocket with a dummy payload. More likely they willtake a
conservative approach and test the hell out of several recovered stagesBut
until a paying customer comes along willing to use a recovered stage.
even that could be less than a year.