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SpaceX Makes Aerospace History With Successful Launch, Landing of a Used Rocket (theverge.com)
Eloking quotes a report from The Verge: After more than two years of landing its rockets after launch, SpaceX finally sent one of its used Falcon 9s back into space. The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening, sending a communications satellite into orbit, and then landed on one of SpaceX's drone ships floating in the Atlantic Ocean. It was round two for this particular rocket, which already launched and landed during a mission in April of last year. But the Falcon 9's relaunch marks the first time an orbital rocket has launched to space for a second time. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appeared on the company's live stream shortly after the landing and spoke about the accomplishment. "It means you can fly and refly an orbital class booster, which is the most expensive part of the rocket. This is going to be, ultimately, a huge revolution in spaceflight," he said. "It's been 15 years to get to this point, it's taken us a long time," Musk said. "A lot of difficult steps along the way, but I'm just incredibly proud of the SpaceX for being able to achieve this incredible milestone in the history of space."
"But they skimped on the maintenance, allowing tiles to get loose. Over time they loosened and fell off, resulting in major catastrophe."
Neither crash was caused by tiles falling off the Shuttle.
The plan is for 2 ground landings and one barge for the center booster, which is going to be way downrange. But there is always a delta-V cost for returning the boosters, and there could be a super-heavy mission that recovers them downrange or expends them.
Bruce Perens.
With the heavy - will the side boosters always be able to land at the launch site, or will they need 3 drone ships?
Depends on the payload, they get more capacity with drone ships and if it's heavy enough they'll just be expendable. But given that the Falcon Heavy has a far higher max capacity than the heaviest current heavy lift vehicle (Delta IV Heavy) most launches should be able to land all three at the launch site, I imagine that's the main plan to drive costs down. Launch, land, refurb, fuel, launch again. Using the barge will have a much longer turn-around time, risk of bad weather conditions both on landing at on return to port, exposure to salty spray from the ocean etc. while going back to the landing site will give you almost the same conditions as when launching. If SpaceX manages to make them durable and have a short turn-around they could become a real workhorse doing launch after launch after launch.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The SRBs fell, uncontrolled, into the ocean and were re-filled with firecracker stuff. It was always only marginally economical to reuse them. In contrast, the Falcon 9 is a liquid fueled rocket with on-board avionics, which soft-lands in a usable state. Its engine has been tested after landing, without any refurbishment at all.
The new goal is to turn around a booster and re-fly it in 24 hours.
Bruce Perens.
As far as I know NASA never skimped on tile maintence, it was one of the many reasons every shuttle flight was so damn expensive.
I read the internet for the articles.