Amidst this discussion, I think it's worth revisiting the piece I wrote
at Popular Mechanics for the last flight of the Shuttle. It holds up
pretty well, I think: https://t.co/1G4vaM3OoD
On 2015-12-24 14:54, William Claybaugh wrote:
On Thursday, December 24, 2015, Henry Vanderbilt
<hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
All due respect, but SRB's are simply not a useful reuse economics
model for soft-landing recovered liquid booster stages. As I
recall, between the effects of double-digit-G's water impact and
salt immersion, the only part of the SRB's NASA was actually willing
to reuse were the stripped steel casings, after they were scoured
out then checked for cracks.
Don't disagree with your first comment; they are, however, the only
reusable first stage data I have. Second comment is incorrect; all
the major forgings were reused until damaged.
So, it was essentially built-from-scratch SRB's every time, save for
steel casings that even new were a fraction of the overall cost.
Agreed, the economics of that were never likely to make sense.
It remains to be seen what level of teardown and refurb Blue's and
SpaceX's boosters will require, but the equivalent of an SRB
"refurb" is way over at the far end of the range of probabilities.
Agreed
Further, the amount of refurb needed is NOT some fixed constant. I
believe both Blue and SpaceX are treating this as an opportunity to
discover what parts of their boosters do or don't need beefing up to
reliably survive multiple flight cycles without refurb. IOW, the
results from these first recoveries are the start of an improvement
process, not some final result they'll have to build an economical
reuse operation from.
Fair but that is a development cost that--were either organization for
profit--would drive up the amortization per flight...which is usually
the highest cost (SpaceX appears to have found a way to thread that
needle, provided the costs you propose do not materialize).
Looking at these operations from a traditional industry perspective
can lead one to assume the designs are largely fixed and very
difficult to change, and thus must be factored into economic
calculations largely as-is. But SpaceX in particular has made it
very clear they're not following this traditional frozen-design
model at all, but rather one of continuous incremental improvement.
Assuming such incremental improvement won't be part of the process
of bringing reuse into the routine operation strikes me as very
likely to be a significant error.
Careful: the organizational effects of the launch failure have not
shown up in prices yet.
Henry
On 12/22/2015 6:28 AM, William Claybaugh wrote:
Marcus:
As I recall, two SRB's sank. The remainder were recovered and
reused.
There is enough remaining hardware to do the first couple of SLS
launches; I believe the pacing item is rear fulcrum's.
In our enthusiasm for SpaceX's impressive achievement we should not
overlook that reuse of the SRB's never made economic sense: flight
rates
needed to hit about 18 per year to reach break even. While the
recovery
costs were around $300k per SRB, refurbishment cost many
millions--more
than the cost of a new motor. That is the issue SpaceX--and Blue
Origin--now confront.
Bill
On Monday, December 21, 2015, Marcus D. Leech <mleech@xxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:mleech@xxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
On 12/21/2015 09:51 PM, Paul Breed wrote:
The space shuttle tossed most of the hardware and required a
billion dollars of refurb between flights, I've heard it called
a
100Ton payload fairing. ;-)
Yes, STS is a hard one to pigeonhole in terms of flight
regimes.
They ditch the LOX/H2 tankage, which is a bit like throwing an
apartment building away on every launch.
They did recover the SRBs, a useful fraction of the time. How
often
were SRBs actually reusable? Anyone have stats?
But the Shuttle itself, yeah, is payload that comes back.
I think a boost-back scheme, that SpaceX has successfully
demonstrated tonight, is in a noticeably-different category, and
one
that deserves
much celebration, even in the context of historical machines
like
STS.
On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 6:42 PM, Monroe L. King Jr.
<monroe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','monroe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx');>>
wrote:
For some reason the Space Shuttle just didn't seem as real
to
me as
this. I put it right up there with Niel landing on the moon.
I'm not
even sure why it feels that good.
That felt GOOD!
-------- Original Message --------<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','timwilson3@xxxxxxx');>>
Subject: [AR] Re: SpaceX F9 Launch/Update -- Live Link
From: "Tim Wilson" <timwilson3@xxxxxxx
Date: Mon, December 21, 2015 7:34 pm<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx');>>
To: <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
You missed the whole Space Shuttle thing, right? ;)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Henry Vanderbilt" <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx');>>
To: <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx');>>
Sent: Monday, December 21, 2015 9:26 PMpretty
Subject: [AR] Re: SpaceX F9 Launch/Update -- Live Link
Nothing wrong with being excited and showing it. I'm
pumped
myself... I'm coming up on thirty years pushing theseideas, though, so
I tend to remember to also answer the question "did what?"for anyone
who had other work to do and hadn't been paying as closeattention this
evening.Blue Origin's
Plenty of hard work yet to do there. But, dang! Between
booster recovery a few weeks ago and this, it's prettyclear it's not
just luck, or a stunt - we really are finally well downthe
road to
learning how to reuse actual useful space-launch rockets.post. UNBELIEVABLE!
Henry
On 12/21/2015 6:53 PM, Monroe L. King Jr. wrote:
> So awesome! Please forgive my excitement in my last
> They really did it! I cried and I'm not ashamed aboutone bit.
>
> GO SPACE-X! GO!
>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject: [AR] Re: SpaceX F9 Launch/Update -- Live Link
>> From: Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx');>>
>> Date: Mon, December 21, 2015 6:41 pm<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx');>
>> To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>orbit,
>>
>> It's a twofer - the second stage and payload is in
and the first
>> stage is upright back on the landing pad with engineoff.
>>this evening for
>>
>> On 12/21/2015 3:09 PM, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
>>> (twitter)
>>> ORBCOMM
>>> @ORBCOMM_Inc
>>>
>>> "UPDATE: A 5 minute launch window opens at 8:29pm ET
>>> the #OG2 Mission 2 launch..."Carlo runs show
>>>
>>> On 12/20/2015 7:37 PM, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
>>>> New launch window is 8:33 pm ET Monday.
>>>>
>>>> On 12/20/2015 3:15 PM, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
>>>>> And Elon Musk's twitter feed now shows this:
>>>>>
>>>>> "Just reviewed mission params w SpaceX team. Monte
>>>>> tmrwPunting 24 hrs."
>>>>> night has a 10% higher chance of a good landing.
>>>>>"beach hazard
>>>>> Hmm. Winds? FWIW, the Canaveral weather includes a
>>>>> bulletin" warning of rough surf and strong offshorewinds this
>>>>> evening.for DMARC) wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 12/20/2015 11:30 AM, (Redacted sender monsieurboo
>>>>>> And the SpaceX link for live video of the action isquite simply
>>>>>> their<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx');>
>>>>>> current home page:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://www.spacex.com/
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>> Mark L.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Subject: [AR] Re: F9 Launch/Update Thread
>>>>>> From: Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>>> <mailto:hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx');>>>
>>>>>> Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2015 09:51:19 -0700static
>>>>>>
>>>>>> SpaceX worked through the issues and got their
fire test done
>>>>>> late Friday. They currently hope to launch in abrief
window at 8:29
>>>>>> pmBest
>>>>>> eastern Sunday. (Next window would be Tuesday.)
wishes to their
>>>>>> operations crew for a successful flight in time forall to be home
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> Christmas.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>