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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.

13 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Pipedreams by Kokuyo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Musk may be pushing for some very interesting deadlines and pretty outlandish sounding concepts...

    However his cars, even with all the weaknesses they have, are viable and his space company also successfully delivers.

    I'd say that should at least be impressive.

    1. Re:Pipedreams by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Funny

      Cars and rockets are fine but the Hyperloop is definitely a pipe dream.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    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.

  2. 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 TWX · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

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

      Interesting as the Space Shuttle was, it was an engineering mistake, it was basically launching a crewed space station and then landing it each time. If it had been able to turn around and fly again in a matter of days or weeks that would be one thing, but it took months to refurbish any individual craft between flights. So expensive to design and build, expensive to launch, expensive to prepare for next launch. And for some reason we used it as a cargo vehicle when it would have been much more cost effective to launch cargo with an unmanned rocket with a faring designed for that cargo. The space station probably could have had much larger individual segments and could have been assembled faster if the components didn't have the shuttlebay as their design constraint.

      SpaceX's approach, with both the reusable rocket and the inexpensive capsule intended for use in the limited time between the ground and the station, and then the station and the ground, makes a lot of sense. Hopefully they'll get man-rating soon.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    2. Re:Age of Miracles... by blindseer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Interesting as the Space Shuttle was, it was an engineering mistake, it was basically launching a crewed space station and then landing it each time.

      The Space Shuttles were basically a fleet of space stations. One thing I wondered about is if NASA couldn't just launch one or more into space with the intention to not land them. They couldn't stay there forever, of course. At end of life the orbiter could be allowed to burn up in the atmosphere. If they really wanted to save it then repair it in orbit and land it with a return crew. Since it would never fly again then that opens options to land in an unconventional manner, not on a runway, to make the landing easier/cheaper/whatever. Such as a sea landing and just let it sink once the crew were recovered.

      Then I realized that the public relations of allowing for the destruction of these iconic spacecraft would be more than NASA could bear. There were only three craft left that had gone to space. At the time they were retired the craft were considered suitable for flight only after considerable expense on craft that had already been flown well beyond their intended lifespan. Getting them to fly on even a one way trip would likely cost a lot of money for little benefit.

      Perhaps what NASA should have done is make the retirement in orbit part of the planned uses of the craft from the start. They built six of them. As each new one was built they could have retired older ones in orbit as small space stations. Convert the payload space as a larger living space before retirement. Keep them useful as space stations before everything wore out and the technology became embarrassingly out of date.

      SpaceX's approach, with both the reusable rocket and the inexpensive capsule intended for use in the limited time between the ground and the station, and then the station and the ground, makes a lot of sense. Hopefully they'll get man-rating soon.

      In a way they've turned the Space Shuttle idea upside down. They reuse the booster stage and have one time use of the orbiter. SpaceX got to learn from NASA's mistakes. Too bad NASA couldn't learn from their own mistakes.

      NASA needs to take on a different role in space. They should not be launching spacecraft, only provide government oversight and research. They need to act more like the FAA. The FAA provides oversight on private aircraft, they don't offer flights to people. NASA should let private industry launch payloads to space, not compete with them.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    3. Re:Age of Miracles... by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Informative

      The US space program suffered from something that's part of the system it is sitting in. While there was competition with the Russians for the moon, money was no issue. But it was obvious the nanosecond Armstrong set the foot onto that rock, the game was over and the support for spending money on it was gone. We did it, we one-up'ed the Commies, now stop wasting money on it.

      Anything that happened in the US space program after 1970 was basically inertia. The time it took for the space program to REALLY fall apart is testament only to just HOW much money was blown into it before the moonshot.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. 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
    5. 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.

    6. Re:Age of Miracles... by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Space Shuttle was designed under very different assumptions than it ended up operating under. Yes the support infrastructure was ungodly expensive, but the idea was that if you could get the frequency of flights up to about 1 a week, that would amortize those costs to where on a per flight basis it was cheaper than disposable spacecraft. There were two major problems which developed.

      First, the Shuttle's design grew tremendously complicated. The tiles, which weren't supposed to pop off, did, and each one of them was unique and replacements had to be custom fabricated. Turnaround time grew from an estimated week to months.

      Second, the Shuttle's biggest customer bailed out on it. You have to remember that the Shuttle was conceived in the 1960s and designed in the 1970s. At the time, spy satellites would eject a roll of film, which would be captured in mid-air, developed, and analyzed. Once a spy satellite ran out of film, it was useless. The NRO envisioned the Shuttle as a way to refuel its spy satellites and reload them with new film. That's why the Hubble Space Telescope fit in the Shuttle's cargo bay - HST was about the sale size as a spy satellite, and the Shuttle was designed to hold a spy satellite.

      But once the CCD was developed and the spy satellites could simply radio images back down to earth, film became obsolete. Without the ability to turn around shuttles in a week, and without a customer to pay for more frequent Shuttle flights, its operations slowed down to about 5 launches per year - 1/10th the frequency the bean counters assumed when OKing it. The costs which were supposed to be amortized never were, and turned it into one of the most expensive launch systems in history.

  3. Re:Are Space-X launches now getting cheaper? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is R&D to recoup, but there has already been a cost reduction for launch customers, on top of what was already the cheapest launch system in its payload class. Since it was already highly price competitive, SpaceX's incentive to lower costs to customers even further is small - there is no competitive need. The details are private, but estimated that the cost to SpaceX is about 35% less than a fully expendable rocket, and they pass about 10-15% cost reduction on to customers.The difference they pocket to recoup R&D costs and continue with more R&D for further cost reductions. The internal cost will fall more once stages are reused more times.

    So it is already worth while, but this is not the whole picture. For one thing, the early re-launches are involving more inspection time and expense than they plan on once it gets into full swing. Second, they have made a newer rev of the F9 to minimize turnaround refurb over the past revisions. Lastly, some of their self funded R&D is going into a fully reusable launch system to drive costs even lower.

  4. Spare me by sjbe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    Nobody who has the money to buy a Model S or Model X is buying one because they need the tax rebates. It's a cool car that costs nearly six figures and people are buying it because they like the product and what it represents. If they get a tax rebate so much the better but that's not what makes it sell. Furthermore there is NOTHING wrong with some tax incentives to help develop a new clean technology. The internal combustion engine has had a good run but that run needs to come to a close. They are dirty, noisy, inefficient and limited to oil based fuels. If we need some tax incentives to get EVs up to scale then I have zero problem with that. It will benefit us all in the long run.

    As for SpaceX, yes the government is a big customer and helped them get the company going but again, so what? NASA is hardly their only customer and are you seriously going to argue that SpaceX hasn't dramatically lowered the cost to orbit just like they said they would? "Weak rocket power"? WTF does that mean? You sound like one of Trumps twitter rants.