Welcome back Henry!
Its nice to have you back.
I hope you visit to your home planet went well. ;-)
Paul
On Thu, Dec 24, 2015 at 5:46 PM, Henry Vanderbilt <
hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 12/24/2015 4:44 PM, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Thu, 24 Dec 2015, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
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.
Concur. Just getting the thing down intact and *dry* should make a huge
difference. The first few naturally are going to be gone over with a
fine-tooth comb, looking for any hint of future trouble, so it'll take
some time to see what the numbers are like for operational reuse. I'd
say that much will depend on how much attention reuse got during
development of things like the structures. (As HV noted, it's
reasonable to assume some design adjustments based on early reuse
experience. But serious structural redesign would be costly.)
I saw somewhere that Elon Musk has said this first recovered stage will
have a full-duration static fire as a visible proof of the possibility of
reuse, then be retired for historic value rather than ever reflown.
I'd guess this won't stop it being gone over with a fine-tooth comb both
before and after the static fire, mind, with the data fed back into ongoing
future booster revs.
(The Other) Henry