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SpaceX Plans Drone Ship Landing On January 17th (nbcnews.com)
Rei writes: With the world's first successful low-speed landing of an orbital rocket's first stage complete, SpaceX looks to continue that success by attempting its second landing — this time, on their new drone ship in the Pacific. While SpaceX has announced plans to turn their successfully-landed rocket, reportedly flight-ready, into a a museum piece, the stage they recover next may be SpaceX's first chance to prove the mudslinging of their competitors wrong and show that Russia's worries are well founded. That is, if they can successfully pull it off.
Just a guess, but they probably don't consider a splashdown-landed rocket viable to be relaunched, or that the refurbishment costs of a rocket that has been immersed-in and possibly flooded-by seawater is too high to justify doing that over building a new one.
This argument was made back when the Shuttle Program SRBs were ocean-landed and recovered, if I remember right they were never reflown either.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Shuttle SRBs were never reflown as the same unit, but they were disassembled for parts to use on later boosters - which were a combination of new and refurbished parts from various flights. Several booster components (structural/aerodynamic parts, mainly) from STS-1 were still being flown on STS-135, the final mission.
I can't speak for the actual economics of the practice, but on paper it looks like it has several obvious advantages, particularly when, as a solid rocket, the largest and most complex component is consumed during flight.
How many parts were used though? Did they limit reuse to just the structural connecting assembly that attached the SRB to the liquid tank, which presumably was a very durable, very hard, very corrosion-resistant part, or did they ship the segments back to Thiokol to get refurbished into fueled segments to then ship back to Florida for use?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
With all due respect, they can waste their money in whatever fashion they want to - the primary mission is to launch something, if they accomplish that and then want to land the next 100 boosters so Elon Musk can make his own private modern version of Stone Henge out of them, thats his affair.
Or, you simply realise that landing and reusing are only loosely linked, in that you cannot reuse until you land, but you don't have to reuse just because you land.
NASAs money is there as progress payments to fulfil NASA contracts, and the ability to land a booster is not part of NASA's contracts with SpaceX. As long as SpaceX is fulfilling the contracts, NASA cannot complain.
SRBs were firecrackers. No control once you start them. The Falcon 9 first stage has engines capable of throttle and relight and a computer that can bring it back autonomously. So, there is a lot besides the rocket in the Falcon that was not in the SRBs.
Bruce Perens.
A lot of the mission profiles don't work for return-to-launch-site. Heavy payloads to geosynchronous transfer orbit will not leave enough fuel, but they can still reach the barge. The center booster of F9 heavy goes too far downrange but not high or fast enough to make an orbit. So it must use the barge. We haven't heard of them planning to use any conveniently-placed land like San Nicolas Island from Vandenberg.
Bruce Perens.