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SpaceX Successfully Landed the 12th Falcon 9 Rocket of 2017 (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the third-time's-a-charm dept.

Shortly after launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket successfully landed on one of the company's drone ships in the ocean. "It marks the 12th time SpaceX has successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket this year, the 18th overall, and the second this week," reports The Verge. "It was also the third time that the company has successfully launched and landed a rocket that had already flown." From the report: The vehicle for this mission has flown before: once back in February, when it lofted cargo to the International Space Station and then landed at SpaceX's ground-based Landing Zone 1. Going up on this flight is a hybrid satellite that will be used by two companies, SES and EchoStar. Called EchoStar 105/SES-11, the satellite will sit in a high orbit 22,000 miles above Earth, providing high-definition broadcasts to the U.S. and other parts of North America. While this is the first time EchoStar is flying a payload on a used Falcon 9, this is familiar territory for SES. The company's SES-10 satellite went up on the first "re-flight" in March. And SES has made it very clear that it is eager to fly its satellites on previously flown boosters.

5 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Age of Miracles... by FrankSchwab · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I lived through the later Apollo missions. Watched the Space Shuttle program prove that, if you have infinite money, you can make a brick fly. Watched that excessively complicated ship come apart - twice.
    Watched ISS become operational, then watched us lose the ability to fly people to it.
    And I watched SpaceX go from blowing up rockets, to making orbit less than ten years ago, to becoming a (semi) reliable truck to the ISS, to LANDING A FREAKING ROCKET ON A BARGE, to reflying reused rockets almost casually.
    Age of Miracles.

    --
    And the worms ate into his brain.
    1. Re:Age of Miracles... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The ability to recover satellites, a.k.a. the thing that was used twice but was paid for one hundred thirty times? Very efficient use of money!

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:Age of Miracles... by bigpat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's how engineering is supposed to work. Incremental changes leading to improvements in reliability and capability, and hopefully reduction in cost.

      It takes a disciplined approach and good systems engineering to make that happen. And I would say it is also quite a bit more than just engineering, it is about putting together the right resources, the right timing, the right amount of money, the right amount of competition or incentive to make something better and ultimately a product that people are willing to invest their money into.

      And sometimes a really great idea is delayed for years and years or decades even while the enabling technology that could make it happen is developed.

      I think that is where Elon Musk is really great at putting together all the great ideas, some of which have previously failed time and time again (electric cars, solar panels, reusable rockets, trains in tubes have been ideas decades in the making) and rethinking them to see how they might actually be made more viable using today's tools, resources and technology.

      Other investors and CEOs would look at the failures of the past and see those failures as lessons learned to stay away from those dead end products and technologies... Elon Musk sees some of those failures from the past as opportunities to build on and get them right.

  2. Re: Pipedreams by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And yet, he gets equal or less subsidies than his competitors.

  3. Re:Pipedreams by geekmux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, both only deliver thanks to millions in tax rebates, adding millions more in direct payments for milestones during development, and direct payments for cargo with more limitations than not due to the weak rocket power.

    Speaking of rebates, let's remember the government had to deliver a fucking bailout for the competition not long ago.

    And when viable rocket alternatives deliver a powerful solution but take twice as long at 3x the cost, what ends up being "weak" here is your argument.