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SpaceX's Reusable Rockets Win US Air Force General's Endorsement (bloomberg.com)
As the military looks to drive down costs, the head of U.S. Air Force Space Command said he's "completely committed" to launching future missions with recycled rockets like those championed by SpaceX's Elon Musk. "It would be 'absolutely foolish' not to begin using pre-flown rockets, which brings such significant savings that they'll soon be commonplace for the entire industry, General John W. 'Jay' Raymond said," reports Bloomberg. From the report: "The market's going to go that way. We'd be dumb not to," he said. "What we have to do is make sure we do it smartly." The Air Force won't be able to use the recycled boosters until they're certified for military use, a process that Raymond suggested may already be in the works. "The folks out at Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles that work for me would be in those dialogues," he said, declining to specify when certification could take place. "I don't know how far down the road we've gotten, but I am completely committed to launching on a reused rocket, a previously flown rocket, and making sure that we have the processes in place to be able to make sure that we can do that safely."
By coincidence, just re-reading Sky Masters.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You are mistaking the ULA Cost+ system (milk the system for everything you can making as much profit as possible and hire retiring generals/Astronauts as lobbyists to keep the gravy train running) for the Space-X system (plough profits back into developing the technologies needed in order to be able to send rockets to mars and colonise it). It's true that Space-X now has lobbyists in D.C., but no ex-generals there either to my knowledge.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Well, either Musk is dumb or you are dumb.
Give me a minute while I decide which one of the two it is...
If you take out the landing gear and use its extra fuel to fly instead of land, every airplane can fly a loot more that they do right now.
But would that be a good idea?, if not, what is different in the rocket business?
If the satellite has a low mass, the F9 will have room for extra fuel to land, why not land?
Btw "half as efficient" is just false, in any way you look at it. Space shuttle main engine ISP was 366, F9 ISP is 270 thats hardly half.... ( at sea level as we are talking about 1st stage returns ) but the Space Shuttle could not get of the ground on its own, it needed busters. And those suck at ISP. Also, using that type of fuel made the rest of the ship really heavy and expensive
At price/kg, the space shuttle was $18,000 while SpaceX is below $3,000....
In how fast it could be build and lauched..... Space shuttle did what max of 6 missions a year?, how many did F9 do now?
So, how the hell is F9 less efficient than the space shuttle?........
AC trolls are so dumb...
Carburant costs peanuts. The expensive part is the rocket.
Imagine that the air outside was poisonous. You could go outside for a minute or two but you're die doing it because the volume of air in your lungs is insufficient. Now imagine using a tank of clean air so you could go outside, work, come back in, refill the tank and repeat.
Access to space is the same thing and we have been sending rockets up to die for years because they don't have enough carburant to be reusable. By going to bigger rockets, Space-X and BO will bring enough carburant to be reusable.
Just think about it, lol.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Imagine your new car came with a full tank of fuel but there was no way of refilling the tank. When the fuel tank becomes empty, you have to buy a new car. Now substitute "car" for "rocket" and you can see that throwing away rockets is costly and can be cheaper by reusing the rocket just like reusing a car.
Those rockets are half as efficient as the space shuttle. Just think about it... the rocket is carrying the fuel it needs for the landing with it to space. Carrying the fuel it needs is the biggest problem every rocket has, and now, Elon is adding EVEN MORE fuel to it. How dumb is that ?
Not nearly as dumb as spending fuel on carrying WINGS into space. In case you weren't aware, wings are utterly useless on a spacecraft for 99.999% of the journey and are completely useless for any purpose except landing on a nicely groomed runway. What you thought that it doesn't cost anything to lift those very heavy wings into orbit? Do you think there are a lot of prepared runways on Mars or the Moon?
Seriously my friend, do you really think that all those actual rocket scientists at SpaceX and elsewhere haven't given this issue any thought?
Trow trow trow your boat...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Oh look, someone pretending to be a pro-disease loon to get angry responses. Yawn. Get a life.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
No, they are already cheaper. SpaceX is seeing 30-35% cost reduction of which they pass 10-15% on to customers. That 30-35% is expected to climb as block 5 comes online which is designed to reduce turnaround costs based on lessons learned with prior blocks.
NASA and the Air Force are the organizations that do things because "congress told us". SpaceX is doing it their own way.
No more 1500$ toilet seats and 300$ hammers?
No more paying Boeing 20 times the amount needed?
(as hidden subsidies, so that they can still exist on the world market?)
ICBMs are solid fueled, so they are ready at a moments notice. Falcons are liquid fueled, and need hours to fuel up.
The shuttle was not more efficient then single use rockets. The shuttle was very expensive to maintain because of it's reuse and proved to be liability in long term operations.
Do you think that the Air Force would let anyone from Hollywood anywhere near an ICBM? They still think they work the way they did in the 50's.
" the rocket is carrying the fuel it needs for the landing with it to space. Carrying the fuel it needs is the biggest problem every rocket has, and now, Elon is adding EVEN MORE fuel to it."
Surprisingly few rocket launches are sent into orbit with a full tank. They don't need to make the rocket bigger as they are just using some excess fuel capacity of the rocket. The extra fuel is almost a rounding error in the cost and a little extra in an otherwise underutilized tank for the landing is no big deal in most cases. It's a practical solution for a wide variety of circumstances.
In some cases having a wing can be a good trade-off too: for example for a small unmanned space shuttle, a delta wing is a very efficient solution, if you have a runway and atmosphere.
There are corner cases for everything but as a general proposition it is safe to say that wings on a spacecraft are approximately as useful as tits on a bull. There are better solutions than a lifting surfaces most of the time. There are very good reasons why we don't use them on the majority of spacecraft.
Rocket science is really too complicated to explain it in a comment.
Nobody is trying to explain all of rocket science. But a comment is more than adequate to correct a clearly wrong statement from someone who seems to claim that the space shuttle was somehow an efficient or good solution.
If you take out the landing gear and use its extra fuel to fly instead of land, every airplane can fly a loot more that they do right now.
But would that be a good idea?, if not, what is different in the rocket business?
If an aircraft is 50% fuel and 50% payload, then dedicating 1% of its mass to landing gear makes that 49% payload, which is a trivial loss. If a rocket is 98% fuel and 2% payload, then dedicating 1% of its mass to landing gear makes that 1% payload, which is a significant loss: that's half the payload gone.
Obviously this is a contrived example, but it illustrates the point: the capacity to land is a bigger sacrifice on a rocket than on an aircraft. As a realistic illustration, the expected payload of the BFR is 250 tonnes - but only 150 tonnes if it's flown in a reusable configuration.
Now, SpaceX is showing by their pricing that it's *still* worth landing a rocket, even if you need to sacrifice performance, if you get to reuse it. But it's not as much of a bonus as you'd get from flying the first reusable aircraft.
ICBMs are solid fueled, so they are ready at a moments notice. Falcons are liquid fueled, and need hours to fuel up.
Was the Space Shuttle really man rated if it had to honestly make the requirements imposed today? By 'honestly', I mean using actual reliability estimates in the subsystems rather than wildly exaggerated and untestable ones to make the whole stack meet some requirement. Was the Atlas man rated in 1963? Man rating seems to be a value of convenience rather than objective reality.
They still think they work the way they did in the 50's.
1980's actually.
Have gnu, will travel.
I hate to bust your bubble (not really).
Rockets seldom burn ALL the fuel. They burn the amount the need to get to the desired trajectory. After MECA they throw the rocket and ANY unused fuel away. You have a very thick skull, so we'll give you time to absorb the info.
Elon is simply using the FUEL that is normally discarded to soften the first stage landing enough to save building another one for the next flight. The fuel used to land is not added to the launch, it was already there.
The inspection and refurb saves MILLIONS of dollars. It saves time and energy in building new rockets.
NOW, go tell your mom, you don't have a clue. NumbScull(TM)
The claim that SpaceX is losing money on every launch is FUD. And SpaceX reinvests its profit into R&D.
the Space Shuttle could not get of the ground on its own, it needed busters.
Yes, I know it's a typo but sadly true...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'm confused; do you have a football analogy?
STS had to carry the dead weight of engines into orbit.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Space-X didn't hire generals years ago when they were trying to get into the old mens club of DOD launches and ended up suing the USG to break ULA's monopoly. They're clearly not going to do it now that they've won and ULA and USAF generals admit that ULA cannot compete.
But there is no convincing the blind idiots who can only conceive of ULA style cost-plus contracts, cannot imagine that anyone could successfully land and reuse 1st stages and forward on the unjustified FUD that Space-X is losing money on every launch.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Watch Command and Control. Pretty good summary of what happened.
Have gnu, will travel.
Musk's not going to "sit on [his] laurels" at least until he steps onto the surface of Mars.
So we've got a ways to go.
One can't expect idiotic Anonymous Cowards to be able to read and comprehend more than 3 consecutive words so It's no use to tell you to reread my post. Besides which, after making _my_ point I amplified the AC's very correct point for the /. readers who read at +2 and wouldn't have seen it otherwise.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue