**Follow-up tweets:**
> Since its first mission in November 2020, this single first stage has launched eight astronauts and more than 500 satellites, totaling 261+ metric tons to orbit in under four years
> This booster’s previous missions include GPS III Space Vehicle 04, GPS III Space Vehicle 05, Inspiration4, Ax-1, Nilesat 301, OneWeb Launch 17, ARABSAT BADR-8, and now 13 @Starlink missions
**Somewhat related tweets:**
[Musk](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1778446811411235251?s=46&t=u9hd-jMa-pv47GCVD-xH-g):
> Congrats SpaceX Team & @SpaceForceDoD on completing 3 orbital Vandenberg launches in 11 days!
[Kiko Dontchev, VP of Launch:](https://x.com/turkeybeaver/status/1778964664497398070?s=46&t=u9hd-jMa-pv47GCVD-xH-g)
> Let’s go!!! And a new pad 40 launch to launch record of 68 hours! [originally said 48 hours but corrected]
[Jon Edwards, VP of Falcon Launch Vehicles:](https://x.com/edwards345/status/1778972928853602471?s=46&t=u9hd-jMa-pv47GCVD-xH-g)
> Attaining a new milestone of 20 launches with a single booster in <4 years represents a formidable accomplishment. However, ensuring this feat was achieved safely and reliably has posed a monumental challenge. This achievement not only speaks to the remarkable capabilities of the Falcon 9 but also highlights the extraordinary competence and constant vigilance of the Falcon team. Bravo!
I remember that Thunderf00t video where he claimed that they'd need at least 10 reuses for this to be feasible and that this would be impossible (maybe I'm exaggerating his position here, it's been a long time).
We are so lucky to have SpaceX, those guys are magicians of engineering. If they meet their goals with Starship 2, 3 and beyond - they'll be able to deliver this entire booster's history of launches in a single flight. Blows my mind to think about how much the space industry is about to change.
I can't believe I used to watch his videos and agree with him. I just watched part of a video now and it's full of him making shit up, making personal attacks on Elon etc. guy is a wacko and so is the entire comment section in his videos.
I think if you don't include the engineering costs associated with designing and improving the Falcon 9 the third flight makes sense.
I could totally see an old space company like ULA including a ton of that engineering cost (at a really high hourly rate) in their analysis of the payback, and it not making sense to the bean counters because of ten flights... Shareholders and all
In a way I could see them both being right... Just in different ways.
"I think if you don't include the engineering costs associated with designing and improving the Falcon 9 the third flight makes sense"
Stop, stop, stop... to make it a fair comparison with any other NEW design, you can only include the DIFFERENTIAL in design engineering costs to make the Falcon 9 reusable over and above what it would have cost to let it be just another throw away, expendable rocket (ie the landing legs, grid fins, avionics, and so forth), not the entire cost of designing it from scratch... and to be TOTALLY fair, you need to give SpaceX an additional discount for starting from scratch and public documents without the "institutional knowledge" that oldspace had in designing the Vulcans ULA are currently throwing away or Ariane 6s that will be dumped in the drink on every launch. The economics of reuse became virtually all the operational differential by the time the FIRST reusable Falcon had launched the tenth time (assuming refurbishment doesn't cost as much or more than building a new rocket from scratch) and have been totally operating costs in retrieving and refurbishing the 250+ recovered booster launches since that point.
You are right and pointed something out that I overlooked. Whether by design or luck, falcon 9 was designed / upgradeable with a powerful second stage that enabled first stage reuse. Otherwise reuse may require a significant redesign.
I don't think ULA has a rocket that works that way. My (non rocket scientist / orbital mechanics) understanding is that ULA's second stages are more accurate and have less power than their falcon second stage competition.
I think of Old Space as a way of doing business, not necessarily in the age of the company. As with everything in life, sometimes there are exceptions.
Boeing and Lockheed business culture is pretty prevalent in ULA in how they charge for things, don't take risks, etc. that's why I said old space. To be clear it isn't always bad to act like old space, but I know my comments sometimes lean towards that.
I will say this though... At least ULA went and developed a new launch vehicle with Vulcan. That's awesome.
Yeah, I knew what you meant by Old Space. Just think it's ironic that ULA is younger than SpaceX.
I don't envy ULA's position. After essentially being given a monopoly on medium-heavy launches in the US, they were put in the position of having to try to compete with SpaceX while at the same time being required to develop a new rocket because Russia kept invading its neighbors. In walks Bruno. I think they would have given up a while ago if it wasn't for him.
You're not even mentioning how they kept proposing innovative improvements to the shareholder (Boeing & LockMart) only to be told "no". It's a freaking miracle that Vulcan is flying now.
> I think if you don't include the engineering costs associated with designing and improving the Falcon 9 the third flight makes sense.
The information I'd like to see, SpaceX won't announce, and for a very good reason -
Just how extensive are the refurbishments needed to get those 20 flights?
Are the engines torn down completely, or are they just tested and re-mounted? Are they at the point where they can just give them a cursory once-over, a quick bath, then re-fueled and re-flown?
That's the info we likely will never know. I hope SpaceX keeps flying this one until it fails outright (with SpaceX cargo onboard, not paying customer cargo, *obviously*)...
> ULA’s Tory Bruno also suggested 10 reflights as the minimum to make it economically feasible
A CEO says what's necessary to please his shareholders and keep his job. Tory sometimes lets off steam on r/SpacexMasterrace, but even then, you don't know what he's really thinking.
In 2017, after successful reuse by SpaceX, he [said](https://eu.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2017/04/05/ula-jurys-out-rocket-reusability/100046572/)
* "it’s not obvious how it will turn out, and that’s why people are trying different things. We’re going to find out who...
(among SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA...)
* ...is right, and that’s kind of the beauty of competition”.
My guess is that he knows SMART reuse generates too much recovery and refurbishment costs, but couldn't get agreement from his shareholders to invest in full reuse. He could also have played a clever long game in choosing the BE-4 engine in the hope that ULA could later be bought up by Blue Origin.
full reuse would require 3 times the engines. the job of ULA is to make profit for LM and boeing.
They arent going to pour money into it and lose money for 10 years to try to improve the future.
stock price must go up. Senators arent cheap and they intend to get a ROI on them.
> full reuse would require 3 times the engines
Sorry, that was open to misinterpretation. I meant "full reuse of a stage" as opposed to mere reuse of the engines. So not second stage reuse.
> They aren't going to pour money into it and lose money for 10 years to try to improve the future.
> They arent going to pour money into it and lose money for 10 years to try to improve the future.
That's the point I was making. For short-term share value, the current shareholders won't invest deeply in reuse. However, Tory could be working on increasing the company's value on the long term. He could also have a genuine interest in "improving the future".
It wasn't long ago that even on this sub people were questioning reuse and if droneship landings were possible.
Not saying everyone here was in that boat, but there was a vocal minority, at the same time there were people on this sub reconstructing video of the ocean 'soft landing' like absolute mad-lads.
That was so fun to watch happen in real time. I can do that reconstructive stuff with audio. But Watching Elon ask this community for their help with that video was something I found very connected to!
The time, around then, when this sub had less than 50k members was a truly great environment for someone to learn about rocketry and space flight. The amount of knowledge that was shared from highly competent minds, from all perspectives, was invaluable to my understanding of space flight/rocketry. The technical posts were so full of insightful knowledge. It was the golden age for sure.
> It wasn't long ago that even on this sub people were questioning reuse and if droneship landings were possible.
That damn sure wasn't me.
I *knew* it was possible when a 'Grasshopper' test vehicle took off, hovered, descended off-center of the landing pad, then translated to the proper landing spot and landed in one piece. That demonstrated every control metric required for a successful landing.
Musk's tweet implied that it was somewhere between 2-3 to break even.
Reusing them 20 times is astonishing, and really seemed impossibly optimistic 20 years ago.
To be fair... Launching starlink sats doesn't have immediate payouts, but probably even better residuals in total. Are there estimates on lifetime income on those things?
In terms of bandwidth, SpaceX has the equivalent of ~2000 v2 mini satellites in operational orbits. These support 2.7 million customers who pay around $100/month on average. If the satellites last 5 years then we can assign a revenue of 1350\*$100\*12\*5 = $8.1 millions to each satellite - with the caveat that this ignores the non-satellite expenses, and v2 minis haven't been in space long enough to experimentally test the 5 years.
Edit: Forgot to divide by 2.
2.7M customers / 2000 satellites is 1350, not 2000. This leads to $8.1M/satellite.
Also, as they launch more and more, if their customer base isn't increasing at a similar rate, the per-satellite value will go down slightly.
They are launching 23 per mission, which is $186M worth of deployments. So yeah, the numbers seem to totally make sense. I'm sure the military backbone network over these sats are also paying much higher rates.
Thanks, fixed. If their customer base stops growing sufficiently then they can reduce launches to replacement levels, saving some money.
On the other hand, there is still potential for growth even without additional satellites, by getting approval in more countries.
I feel like with everything and everyone sometimes you just need to accept that anyone can be wrong sometimes. You just need the integrity to admit it.
whatever his position was/is, i've watched a bunch of his videos...
1st was some 'spacex debunked' bs, where he compared first falcon9-NASA contract ($1.6B for 12 flights) to the $409M for space shuttle launch (final price tag, excluding R&D and a lot of stuff), saying that Spacex's Falcon9 "IsN'T aS cHeAp As TheY \[Elon probably\] cLaim It To Be"
after that one, i was just looking at how biased his bs videos and comment section are lol
Well there is the little detail of who's buying all these launches and... it's mostly SpaceX selling launches to SpaceX (aka Starlink). So it might well take 10-20 launches, statistically wise before enough outside money is coming in to pay for a booster. Esp if/where Starlink itself is not yet cash-flow positive.
I think that F9 booster reusability is an economic success not only from SpaceX's point of view, but more from SpaceX's customer's POV. Having an inventory of pre-flown F9 boosters eliminates the need for a customer to sign a 2- or 3-year contract with an LV manufacturer, pay millions of dollars in a down payment on the LV, and make periodic progress payments while the vehicle is being built. I think that the critics of F9 partial reusability (the second stage is not reusable) failed to realize the inherent value of reusing the most expensive part of the LV, namely the booster. (The perfect is the enemy of the good enough).
Now, the customer pays SpaceX a relatively small (and probably non-refundable) fee to reserve a slot on the F9 launch schedule. When his payload is ready for launch, he pays 50% of the launch services cost. SpaceX removes a pre-flown F9 booster from inventory, stacks his payload onto the F9, moves the stack to the launch pad, and launches it to LEO. Once his payload is in the proper orbit, the customer pays the remaining 50% of the launch services cost.
Having an inventory of pre-flown F9 boosters eliminates the need for the customer to tie up precious capital for years while his LV is being built. And SpaceX can run its F9 production line at a constant rate without having to maintain a costly surge capability. Result: Now SpaceX has a defacto monopoly in the global launch services market.
And F9 reusability has allowed SpaceX to deploy thousands of its Starlink comsats to LEO during the past 5 years with minimized launch cost. That has allowed SpaceX to establish first mover status in a new space-based Internet services business that soon will produce tens of billions of dollars of annual revenue for SpaceX. It's one of the reasons that currently SpaceX enjoys a ~$180B market valuation. That's what F9 booster reusability brings.
How long does it take SpaceX to build a Falcon 9 first stage? Do we know?
Years to build a single LV, once it's in series production and the design is finished, seems like it should be a high outlier, not the norm even in oldspace. But I don't actually have a good sense for this.
The expendable Delta II medium launch vehicle's maximum launch rate was 12 per year. But the factory could build 15 per year. Delta II and Falcon 9 are both rated as medium class launch vehicles.
So, SpaceX probably could build 12 to 15 per year at its Hawthorne, CA factory. To answer your question, we need to know the number of Falcon 9 production lines at the factory. Assume two lines and 15 vehicles built per year. That's 7.5 vehicles per line per year or 12/7.5 = 1.6 months (48 days) per vehicle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_II
I vaguely recall back in the day before they were landing and reusing them regularly that Elon said they could build about 1-2 a month.
But SpaceX have scaled back a lot of the Falcon 9 R&D/production stuff nowadays (barring upper stage and up), I imagine it takes them a fair bit longer now.
SpaceX: An individual orbital class Falcon 9 first stage booster has successfully launched and landed 20 times in 3 1/2 years.
SpaceX: The orbital class Falcon 9's have successfully launched and landed 38 times in the first 3 1/2 months of 2024.
Blue Origin: Has a total of 24 sub-orbital New Shepard launches in 11 1/2 years, with one partial success and one failure.
Two Blue Origin BE-4 engines were expended during the Vulcan Centaur Cert-1 mission launch in January. The launch was also assisted by two Northrop Grumman GEM 63XL solid rocket side boosters (SRBs), which were also expended around 2 minutes after liftoff. The two SRBs provided 900,000 pounds-force of thrust, which was almost two thirds of the thrust at liftoff.
While the launch was successful, unfortunately its payload was not. Due to a propellant leak, the Peregrine Lunar Lander Flight 01 (Peregrine Mission One) was unable to land on the Moon and later burned up in the Earth's atmosphere.
Blue Origin has yet to launch its New Glenn rocket, which will also use the BE-4 engines.
It's getting more routine, as they have far more historical data. They may swap engines out if they get data indicating an anomaly, and some parts may get swapped if a periodic inspection indicates wear, but in general, they have improved the design (with Block 5) based on what they could see from inspections of the early recovered and re-flown boosters, so they will have designed out the need for replacement parts.
As far as the history goes this is my understanding:
With the first boosters to be re-flown, and then as they hit new milestones 5, 10,15 (and I guess 20 launches) then they are inspecting and testing to re-qualify (not sure if they've destructively tested one yet).
The flight leaders have all (from recollection) been Starlink launches where a failure would not be a significant setback. This I believe has allowed SpaceX to continue pushing further to gain more data.
Naturally we're not at the stage where humans would probably prefer to fly on a 3rd flight booster than a brand new one, as it really is "flight proven".
Regarding your point about preferring flight proven boosters, it reminded me of this article from a while back
https://spaceexplored.com/2022/04/12/nasa-science-chief-states-he-prefers-flight-proven-falcon-9-boosters-over-brand-new-ones/
It's checked and refurbished a bit, but the fact they launch with all the soot from previous flights still on them says a lot about how little is actually done. That and the fact they turn them around within weeks.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[301](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzbr107 "Last usage")|Cr-Ni stainless steel (X10CrNi18-8): high tensile strength, good ductility|
|[BE-4](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzqhvez "Last usage")|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN|
|[BO](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzqdi71 "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)|
|ETOV|Earth To Orbit Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket")|
|[LEO](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzdueum "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[LV](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzh8eud "Last usage")|Launch Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket"), see ETOV|
|[SES](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/l23ux3g "Last usage")|Formerly Société Européenne des Satellites, comsat operator|
| |Second-stage Engine Start|
|[SMART](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzfapk4 "Last usage")|"Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology", ULA's engine reuse philosophy|
|[SRB](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzqhvez "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster|
|[STS](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzc1x1p "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)|
|[ULA](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzjy37g "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starlink](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzef2uj "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[iron waffle](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzixb8f "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"|
|methalox|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
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It really is an achievement though. There are only four vehicles that have passed twenty launches: Columbia (28), Atlantis (33), Discovery (39) and Endeavour (25).
I doubt any F9 will ever pass Discovery, but Endeavour might be passed. Starship is going to smash all these records.
> I doubt any F9 will ever pass Discovery [39], but Endeavour might be passed. Starship is going to smash all these records.
They are planning on pushing it up to 40, though.
But I really don't think it is fair to compare F9 first stage to Shuttles (second/third stage, depending on how you count it).
In that regard, Starship or Crew Dragon will be better comparators, and it is fairly safe to say Dragons might not achieve that number of launches.
The side boosters weren't really reused in the way F9 is. The individual segments of the boosters were mix and matched. So an individual booster could have a new segment and a life leader segment at the same time. Idk if there is public data about these.
If they paint it black, it can be “The first black launch”. If they put lipstick on it it’ll be the “First female launch”.
The lesson is, no matter how many times someone else already did it, with a little flair YOU can still be the first
You may be joking. But if you aren't. Look at the number of zeros in the mass of the earth -- at 10²⁴kg, the earth is very very large compared to anything we could ever conceive of launching -- even if we were at level 1 on this scale, it would still be impractical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
At level 2 (Dyson swarm scale civilization), that is another story. That's probably a hundred million years away
> will the earth's spin slow down?
[relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/162/)
Agreeing with u/troyunrau, addition of satellite mass would be several orders of magnitude short. We're probably having more "success" in slowing down Earth's spin, by
1. adding CO2 to the atmosphere which warms and expands outward,
2. warm the oceans that also expand outward
3. Melt polar ice, redistributing its mass toward the equator
4. Melt glaciers, removing weight on underlying ground mass that rebounds.
5. Grow some nice tall volcanoes as crust over magma pockets splits. Even more mayhem.
All of these should be increasing Earth's moment of inertia.
------
**Edit:** Regarding point (3). alone, I'm even more correct than I could have dared imagine. Its going to delay the next leap second by three years! [*Nature article*](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00932-w).
> That [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/162/) is flawed and doesn't account for conservation of angular momentum. ;)
Think of the girl on the Earth's surface as an inertia wheel on a deep space payload. She "borrows some of Earth's angular momentum (the sum of momenta is a conserved quantity), so slowing down Earth's rotation ever so slightly. When she stops spinning, then Earth recovers its initial speed of rotation, having lost some fragment of a second. This is how you point a space telescope on successive targets without using jets.
Yes - it will change the phase (a small calculable, but not measurable amount), not the total angular momentum.
There is a version of this where you can permanently change the rate of rotation, but it requires either ejecting mass or light into space in the right directions. For example, if she spun fast enough to kick atmospheric gas out of orbit...
> Yes - it will change the phase (a small calculable, but not measurable amount), not the total angular momentum
So the XKCD is not flawed in principle?
> There is a version of this where you can permanently change the rate of rotation, but it requires either ejecting mass or light into space in the right directions.
In the space probe/satellite example, this corresponds to [desaturation of inertia wheels](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/how-does-desaturation-of-the-reaction-wheels-work).
Coincidentally the [20th ever launch of Falcon9](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_flight_20) was Orbcomm - the first ever ~~reflight~~ landing.
Derp first reflight was SES 10
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**Follow-up tweets:** > Since its first mission in November 2020, this single first stage has launched eight astronauts and more than 500 satellites, totaling 261+ metric tons to orbit in under four years > This booster’s previous missions include GPS III Space Vehicle 04, GPS III Space Vehicle 05, Inspiration4, Ax-1, Nilesat 301, OneWeb Launch 17, ARABSAT BADR-8, and now 13 @Starlink missions **Somewhat related tweets:** [Musk](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1778446811411235251?s=46&t=u9hd-jMa-pv47GCVD-xH-g): > Congrats SpaceX Team & @SpaceForceDoD on completing 3 orbital Vandenberg launches in 11 days! [Kiko Dontchev, VP of Launch:](https://x.com/turkeybeaver/status/1778964664497398070?s=46&t=u9hd-jMa-pv47GCVD-xH-g) > Let’s go!!! And a new pad 40 launch to launch record of 68 hours! [originally said 48 hours but corrected] [Jon Edwards, VP of Falcon Launch Vehicles:](https://x.com/edwards345/status/1778972928853602471?s=46&t=u9hd-jMa-pv47GCVD-xH-g) > Attaining a new milestone of 20 launches with a single booster in <4 years represents a formidable accomplishment. However, ensuring this feat was achieved safely and reliably has posed a monumental challenge. This achievement not only speaks to the remarkable capabilities of the Falcon 9 but also highlights the extraordinary competence and constant vigilance of the Falcon team. Bravo!
I remember that Thunderf00t video where he claimed that they'd need at least 10 reuses for this to be feasible and that this would be impossible (maybe I'm exaggerating his position here, it's been a long time). We are so lucky to have SpaceX, those guys are magicians of engineering. If they meet their goals with Starship 2, 3 and beyond - they'll be able to deliver this entire booster's history of launches in a single flight. Blows my mind to think about how much the space industry is about to change.
Thundefoots whole thing is being contrary with any degree of plausible doubt for the purpose of views. The guy has no integrity.
Guy should’ve just stuck with the easy kickstarter scams, their expertise really doesn’t extrapolate much more than the entertainment…
I can't believe I used to watch his videos and agree with him. I just watched part of a video now and it's full of him making shit up, making personal attacks on Elon etc. guy is a wacko and so is the entire comment section in his videos.
ULA’s Tory Bruno also suggested 10 reflights as the minimum to make it economically feasible
which is of course nonsense, after the third flight they're already well into the green on a per-booster basis
I think if you don't include the engineering costs associated with designing and improving the Falcon 9 the third flight makes sense. I could totally see an old space company like ULA including a ton of that engineering cost (at a really high hourly rate) in their analysis of the payback, and it not making sense to the bean counters because of ten flights... Shareholders and all In a way I could see them both being right... Just in different ways.
"I think if you don't include the engineering costs associated with designing and improving the Falcon 9 the third flight makes sense" Stop, stop, stop... to make it a fair comparison with any other NEW design, you can only include the DIFFERENTIAL in design engineering costs to make the Falcon 9 reusable over and above what it would have cost to let it be just another throw away, expendable rocket (ie the landing legs, grid fins, avionics, and so forth), not the entire cost of designing it from scratch... and to be TOTALLY fair, you need to give SpaceX an additional discount for starting from scratch and public documents without the "institutional knowledge" that oldspace had in designing the Vulcans ULA are currently throwing away or Ariane 6s that will be dumped in the drink on every launch. The economics of reuse became virtually all the operational differential by the time the FIRST reusable Falcon had launched the tenth time (assuming refurbishment doesn't cost as much or more than building a new rocket from scratch) and have been totally operating costs in retrieving and refurbishing the 250+ recovered booster launches since that point.
You are right and pointed something out that I overlooked. Whether by design or luck, falcon 9 was designed / upgradeable with a powerful second stage that enabled first stage reuse. Otherwise reuse may require a significant redesign. I don't think ULA has a rocket that works that way. My (non rocket scientist / orbital mechanics) understanding is that ULA's second stages are more accurate and have less power than their falcon second stage competition.
> I could totally see an old space company like ULA... ULA just had its quinceanera like ~~5 months~~ 2 years ago. How old do you think it is?
ULA is 17, but it's a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin so it's probably old in spirit.
Yeah but it kind of ruins the joke though doesn't it? Also, I apparently can't do math in my head. TIL
It may not be an old spacecompany but it certainly is an oldspace company.
>joint venture I think you mean shotgun marriage, to appease the justice department.
I think of Old Space as a way of doing business, not necessarily in the age of the company. As with everything in life, sometimes there are exceptions. Boeing and Lockheed business culture is pretty prevalent in ULA in how they charge for things, don't take risks, etc. that's why I said old space. To be clear it isn't always bad to act like old space, but I know my comments sometimes lean towards that. I will say this though... At least ULA went and developed a new launch vehicle with Vulcan. That's awesome.
Yeah, I knew what you meant by Old Space. Just think it's ironic that ULA is younger than SpaceX. I don't envy ULA's position. After essentially being given a monopoly on medium-heavy launches in the US, they were put in the position of having to try to compete with SpaceX while at the same time being required to develop a new rocket because Russia kept invading its neighbors. In walks Bruno. I think they would have given up a while ago if it wasn't for him.
You're not even mentioning how they kept proposing innovative improvements to the shareholder (Boeing & LockMart) only to be told "no". It's a freaking miracle that Vulcan is flying now.
With those billions in assured access they had to at least try to make it work.
> I think if you don't include the engineering costs associated with designing and improving the Falcon 9 the third flight makes sense. The information I'd like to see, SpaceX won't announce, and for a very good reason - Just how extensive are the refurbishments needed to get those 20 flights? Are the engines torn down completely, or are they just tested and re-mounted? Are they at the point where they can just give them a cursory once-over, a quick bath, then re-fueled and re-flown? That's the info we likely will never know. I hope SpaceX keeps flying this one until it fails outright (with SpaceX cargo onboard, not paying customer cargo, *obviously*)...
> ULA’s Tory Bruno also suggested 10 reflights as the minimum to make it economically feasible A CEO says what's necessary to please his shareholders and keep his job. Tory sometimes lets off steam on r/SpacexMasterrace, but even then, you don't know what he's really thinking. In 2017, after successful reuse by SpaceX, he [said](https://eu.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2017/04/05/ula-jurys-out-rocket-reusability/100046572/) * "it’s not obvious how it will turn out, and that’s why people are trying different things. We’re going to find out who... (among SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA...) * ...is right, and that’s kind of the beauty of competition”. My guess is that he knows SMART reuse generates too much recovery and refurbishment costs, but couldn't get agreement from his shareholders to invest in full reuse. He could also have played a clever long game in choosing the BE-4 engine in the hope that ULA could later be bought up by Blue Origin.
full reuse would require 3 times the engines. the job of ULA is to make profit for LM and boeing. They arent going to pour money into it and lose money for 10 years to try to improve the future. stock price must go up. Senators arent cheap and they intend to get a ROI on them.
> full reuse would require 3 times the engines Sorry, that was open to misinterpretation. I meant "full reuse of a stage" as opposed to mere reuse of the engines. So not second stage reuse. > They aren't going to pour money into it and lose money for 10 years to try to improve the future. > They arent going to pour money into it and lose money for 10 years to try to improve the future. That's the point I was making. For short-term share value, the current shareholders won't invest deeply in reuse. However, Tory could be working on increasing the company's value on the long term. He could also have a genuine interest in "improving the future".
It wasn't long ago that even on this sub people were questioning reuse and if droneship landings were possible. Not saying everyone here was in that boat, but there was a vocal minority, at the same time there were people on this sub reconstructing video of the ocean 'soft landing' like absolute mad-lads.
That was so fun to watch happen in real time. I can do that reconstructive stuff with audio. But Watching Elon ask this community for their help with that video was something I found very connected to!
The time, around then, when this sub had less than 50k members was a truly great environment for someone to learn about rocketry and space flight. The amount of knowledge that was shared from highly competent minds, from all perspectives, was invaluable to my understanding of space flight/rocketry. The technical posts were so full of insightful knowledge. It was the golden age for sure.
> It wasn't long ago that even on this sub people were questioning reuse and if droneship landings were possible. That damn sure wasn't me. I *knew* it was possible when a 'Grasshopper' test vehicle took off, hovered, descended off-center of the landing pad, then translated to the proper landing spot and landed in one piece. That demonstrated every control metric required for a successful landing.
Musk's tweet implied that it was somewhere between 2-3 to break even. Reusing them 20 times is astonishing, and really seemed impossibly optimistic 20 years ago.
To be fair... Launching starlink sats doesn't have immediate payouts, but probably even better residuals in total. Are there estimates on lifetime income on those things?
In terms of bandwidth, SpaceX has the equivalent of ~2000 v2 mini satellites in operational orbits. These support 2.7 million customers who pay around $100/month on average. If the satellites last 5 years then we can assign a revenue of 1350\*$100\*12\*5 = $8.1 millions to each satellite - with the caveat that this ignores the non-satellite expenses, and v2 minis haven't been in space long enough to experimentally test the 5 years. Edit: Forgot to divide by 2.
2.7M customers / 2000 satellites is 1350, not 2000. This leads to $8.1M/satellite. Also, as they launch more and more, if their customer base isn't increasing at a similar rate, the per-satellite value will go down slightly. They are launching 23 per mission, which is $186M worth of deployments. So yeah, the numbers seem to totally make sense. I'm sure the military backbone network over these sats are also paying much higher rates.
Don’t forget aviation, marine, and mobile applications too. Those customers all pay more.
Thanks, fixed. If their customer base stops growing sufficiently then they can reduce launches to replacement levels, saving some money. On the other hand, there is still potential for growth even without additional satellites, by getting approval in more countries.
heck, even 10 years ago when the goal was 10 reflights.
I feel like with everything and everyone sometimes you just need to accept that anyone can be wrong sometimes. You just need the integrity to admit it.
whatever his position was/is, i've watched a bunch of his videos... 1st was some 'spacex debunked' bs, where he compared first falcon9-NASA contract ($1.6B for 12 flights) to the $409M for space shuttle launch (final price tag, excluding R&D and a lot of stuff), saying that Spacex's Falcon9 "IsN'T aS cHeAp As TheY \[Elon probably\] cLaim It To Be" after that one, i was just looking at how biased his bs videos and comment section are lol
Well there is the little detail of who's buying all these launches and... it's mostly SpaceX selling launches to SpaceX (aka Starlink). So it might well take 10-20 launches, statistically wise before enough outside money is coming in to pay for a booster. Esp if/where Starlink itself is not yet cash-flow positive.
I think that F9 booster reusability is an economic success not only from SpaceX's point of view, but more from SpaceX's customer's POV. Having an inventory of pre-flown F9 boosters eliminates the need for a customer to sign a 2- or 3-year contract with an LV manufacturer, pay millions of dollars in a down payment on the LV, and make periodic progress payments while the vehicle is being built. I think that the critics of F9 partial reusability (the second stage is not reusable) failed to realize the inherent value of reusing the most expensive part of the LV, namely the booster. (The perfect is the enemy of the good enough). Now, the customer pays SpaceX a relatively small (and probably non-refundable) fee to reserve a slot on the F9 launch schedule. When his payload is ready for launch, he pays 50% of the launch services cost. SpaceX removes a pre-flown F9 booster from inventory, stacks his payload onto the F9, moves the stack to the launch pad, and launches it to LEO. Once his payload is in the proper orbit, the customer pays the remaining 50% of the launch services cost. Having an inventory of pre-flown F9 boosters eliminates the need for the customer to tie up precious capital for years while his LV is being built. And SpaceX can run its F9 production line at a constant rate without having to maintain a costly surge capability. Result: Now SpaceX has a defacto monopoly in the global launch services market. And F9 reusability has allowed SpaceX to deploy thousands of its Starlink comsats to LEO during the past 5 years with minimized launch cost. That has allowed SpaceX to establish first mover status in a new space-based Internet services business that soon will produce tens of billions of dollars of annual revenue for SpaceX. It's one of the reasons that currently SpaceX enjoys a ~$180B market valuation. That's what F9 booster reusability brings.
How long does it take SpaceX to build a Falcon 9 first stage? Do we know? Years to build a single LV, once it's in series production and the design is finished, seems like it should be a high outlier, not the norm even in oldspace. But I don't actually have a good sense for this.
The expendable Delta II medium launch vehicle's maximum launch rate was 12 per year. But the factory could build 15 per year. Delta II and Falcon 9 are both rated as medium class launch vehicles. So, SpaceX probably could build 12 to 15 per year at its Hawthorne, CA factory. To answer your question, we need to know the number of Falcon 9 production lines at the factory. Assume two lines and 15 vehicles built per year. That's 7.5 vehicles per line per year or 12/7.5 = 1.6 months (48 days) per vehicle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_II
I vaguely recall back in the day before they were landing and reusing them regularly that Elon said they could build about 1-2 a month. But SpaceX have scaled back a lot of the Falcon 9 R&D/production stuff nowadays (barring upper stage and up), I imagine it takes them a fair bit longer now.
I remember when we were jumping in joy for 10 back to back reuses a few years ago
Reuse *at all* is still incredibly rare in terms of operational craft.
Looks like a Rocketlab booster now (black).
Does Vegas have an over/under for total re-flights of this booster?
SpaceX: An individual orbital class Falcon 9 first stage booster has successfully launched and landed 20 times in 3 1/2 years. SpaceX: The orbital class Falcon 9's have successfully launched and landed 38 times in the first 3 1/2 months of 2024. Blue Origin: Has a total of 24 sub-orbital New Shepard launches in 11 1/2 years, with one partial success and one failure.
BO: after years, finally delivered some BE-4 engines for Vulcan launch that happened earlier this year
Two Blue Origin BE-4 engines were expended during the Vulcan Centaur Cert-1 mission launch in January. The launch was also assisted by two Northrop Grumman GEM 63XL solid rocket side boosters (SRBs), which were also expended around 2 minutes after liftoff. The two SRBs provided 900,000 pounds-force of thrust, which was almost two thirds of the thrust at liftoff. While the launch was successful, unfortunately its payload was not. Due to a propellant leak, the Peregrine Lunar Lander Flight 01 (Peregrine Mission One) was unable to land on the Moon and later burned up in the Earth's atmosphere. Blue Origin has yet to launch its New Glenn rocket, which will also use the BE-4 engines.
What is the definition of reuse? Is it refurbish between flights? Curious what the process is.
It's getting more routine, as they have far more historical data. They may swap engines out if they get data indicating an anomaly, and some parts may get swapped if a periodic inspection indicates wear, but in general, they have improved the design (with Block 5) based on what they could see from inspections of the early recovered and re-flown boosters, so they will have designed out the need for replacement parts. As far as the history goes this is my understanding: With the first boosters to be re-flown, and then as they hit new milestones 5, 10,15 (and I guess 20 launches) then they are inspecting and testing to re-qualify (not sure if they've destructively tested one yet). The flight leaders have all (from recollection) been Starlink launches where a failure would not be a significant setback. This I believe has allowed SpaceX to continue pushing further to gain more data. Naturally we're not at the stage where humans would probably prefer to fly on a 3rd flight booster than a brand new one, as it really is "flight proven".
but there is precedent. B1067's 4th flight was Crew 4.
Regarding your point about preferring flight proven boosters, it reminded me of this article from a while back https://spaceexplored.com/2022/04/12/nasa-science-chief-states-he-prefers-flight-proven-falcon-9-boosters-over-brand-new-ones/
It's checked and refurbished a bit, but the fact they launch with all the soot from previous flights still on them says a lot about how little is actually done. That and the fact they turn them around within weeks.
Read this series of articles. Lots of insight: https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/space/spacex-building-airline-type-flight-ops-launch
Do we know how quickly they're able to produce upper stages? Are they being produced in parallel?
No idea sorry.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[301](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzbr107 "Last usage")|Cr-Ni stainless steel (X10CrNi18-8): high tensile strength, good ductility| |[BE-4](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzqhvez "Last usage")|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN| |[BO](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzqdi71 "Last usage")|Blue Origin (*Bezos Rocketry*)| |ETOV|Earth To Orbit Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket")| |[LEO](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzdueum "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LV](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzh8eud "Last usage")|Launch Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket"), see ETOV| |[SES](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/l23ux3g "Last usage")|Formerly Société Européenne des Satellites, comsat operator| | |Second-stage Engine Start| |[SMART](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzfapk4 "Last usage")|"Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology", ULA's engine reuse philosophy| |[SRB](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzqhvez "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster| |[STS](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzc1x1p "Last usage")|Space Transportation System (*Shuttle*)| |[ULA](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzjy37g "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starlink](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzef2uj "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[iron waffle](/r/SpaceX/comments/1c2qm6n/stub/kzixb8f "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"| |methalox|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^(12 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/SpaceX/comments/1bt7w64)^( has 107 acronyms.) ^([Thread #8343 for this sub, first seen 13th Apr 2024, 02:21]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceX) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
"First 20th launch" ok now you're just making up achievements , lol
It really is an achievement though. There are only four vehicles that have passed twenty launches: Columbia (28), Atlantis (33), Discovery (39) and Endeavour (25). I doubt any F9 will ever pass Discovery, but Endeavour might be passed. Starship is going to smash all these records.
> I doubt any F9 will ever pass Discovery [39], but Endeavour might be passed. Starship is going to smash all these records. They are planning on pushing it up to 40, though. But I really don't think it is fair to compare F9 first stage to Shuttles (second/third stage, depending on how you count it). In that regard, Starship or Crew Dragon will be better comparators, and it is fairly safe to say Dragons might not achieve that number of launches.
was a record kept on launch leaders for the sideboosters, that the public knows of? Maybe some were reused over multiple different shuttles?
The side boosters weren't really reused in the way F9 is. The individual segments of the boosters were mix and matched. So an individual booster could have a new segment and a life leader segment at the same time. Idk if there is public data about these.
It’s an awkward thing to word, but I guess this way takes up fewer characters than “the first time a single booster has completed 20 missions”.
If they paint it black, it can be “The first black launch”. If they put lipstick on it it’ll be the “First female launch”. The lesson is, no matter how many times someone else already did it, with a little flair YOU can still be the first
With all this mass going into space now, will the earth's spin slow down? Total mayhem.
You may be joking. But if you aren't. Look at the number of zeros in the mass of the earth -- at 10²⁴kg, the earth is very very large compared to anything we could ever conceive of launching -- even if we were at level 1 on this scale, it would still be impractical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale At level 2 (Dyson swarm scale civilization), that is another story. That's probably a hundred million years away
> will the earth's spin slow down? [relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/162/) Agreeing with u/troyunrau, addition of satellite mass would be several orders of magnitude short. We're probably having more "success" in slowing down Earth's spin, by 1. adding CO2 to the atmosphere which warms and expands outward, 2. warm the oceans that also expand outward 3. Melt polar ice, redistributing its mass toward the equator 4. Melt glaciers, removing weight on underlying ground mass that rebounds. 5. Grow some nice tall volcanoes as crust over magma pockets splits. Even more mayhem. All of these should be increasing Earth's moment of inertia. ------ **Edit:** Regarding point (3). alone, I'm even more correct than I could have dared imagine. Its going to delay the next leap second by three years! [*Nature article*](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00932-w).
That xkcd is flawed and doesn't account for conservation of angular momentum. ;)
> That [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/162/) is flawed and doesn't account for conservation of angular momentum. ;) Think of the girl on the Earth's surface as an inertia wheel on a deep space payload. She "borrows some of Earth's angular momentum (the sum of momenta is a conserved quantity), so slowing down Earth's rotation ever so slightly. When she stops spinning, then Earth recovers its initial speed of rotation, having lost some fragment of a second. This is how you point a space telescope on successive targets without using jets.
Yes - it will change the phase (a small calculable, but not measurable amount), not the total angular momentum. There is a version of this where you can permanently change the rate of rotation, but it requires either ejecting mass or light into space in the right directions. For example, if she spun fast enough to kick atmospheric gas out of orbit...
> Yes - it will change the phase (a small calculable, but not measurable amount), not the total angular momentum So the XKCD is not flawed in principle? > There is a version of this where you can permanently change the rate of rotation, but it requires either ejecting mass or light into space in the right directions. In the space probe/satellite example, this corresponds to [desaturation of inertia wheels](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/43867/how-does-desaturation-of-the-reaction-wheels-work).
Double it, and give it to the next booster
Coincidentally the [20th ever launch of Falcon9](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_flight_20) was Orbcomm - the first ever ~~reflight~~ landing. Derp first reflight was SES 10
*landing
Goddamn
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