SpaceX To Test Recovered First Stage, Then Put It On Display (floridatoday.com)

schwit1 writes: Rather than re-fly it, Elon Musk suggested that, after some testing, SpaceX will likely put its first recovered Falcon 9 first stage on display instead. '"[We will] do a static fire at the launch pad there, to confirm that all systems are good and that we are able to do a full thrust hold-down firing of the rocket," Musk said after the stage landed. The static fire will also test the modifications SpaceX has made to Pad 39A to support its rockets.

After that though, the stage will become a display piece. "I think we will keep this one on the ground for tests that prove it could fly again and then put it somewhere — just because it is quite unique," Musk said.' Since they already have a satellite company, SES, willing to buy that first stage, this only underlines how this last Falcon 9 launch changes everything. I don't think the change has sunk in with most people, yet. The last launch was not a one-time event. SpaceX intends to recover as many of its first stages as it can in all future launches. Their Falcon 9 first stage is no longer expendable. Thus, they can afford to put this first recovered stage on display because they expect all future first stages to fly again.

Comments

That's Ridiculous

[localman]

You can't just take an amazing piece of expensive kit like that and essentially throw it away! Oh wait - that's what we've been doing with the first stage of every launch forever until just now. Carry on then.

More seriously, congratulations, SpaceX, for taking such a big step forward for humankind.

Re:That's Ridiculous

[Rei]

There's a couple side effects of this capability that I haven't seen discussed in regards to abort as well.

1) First stage partial failure abort to ground: If there's a non-catastrophic problem on the first stage that will prevent the payload from being injected into the proper orbit (for example, multiple engine failure), there's the potential to abort to ground. Now, this isn't exactly the same - they've still got a rather lot of weight on them (and correspondingly a lot of fuel inside); it'd help if the second stage were able to jettison its propellant (otherwise the nitrogen gas jets and grid fins have to work harder). But it might be possible to re-land the whole rocket, payload and all, so that they can fix it and then re-launch.

2) Second stage hard abort to ground/sea: If there's a catastrophic problem on the first stage but successful separation of the second stage intact, they could try to "land" the second stage and provide partial potential for recovery of the payload. This is more difficult - the second stage has no grid fins, no nitrogen gas thrusters, no landing legs and only one engine. But burned out of propellant it's quite light, it probably has enough thrust, even with the payload attached - and if it just separated from the first stage, it certainly has enough propellant to get back to the pad and line itself up for a gentle, fully vertical descent. The lack of nitrogen gas thrusters would make stability much more difficult, they'd have to land just from gimbaling... but it's probably doable if crosswinds aren't too strong. And they have no landing legs, so they're going to damage the nozzle, and the thing may well fall over. But it's only 1/3rd the length of the first stage, so maybe not, it depends. At sea it'd fall over into water. In short, you could actually get your payload back not at a speed of "500 meters per second smack into the ground", but either "less than 1 meter per second" or "less than 1 meter per second, then a secondary lateral thud at several meters per second followed by the explosion of whatever residual propellant remains" Depending on the payload and how it's stowed, it could potentially be partially or completely reusable.