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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."
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 $3,000....
In how fast it could be build and lauched..... Space shuttle did what max of 6 missions a year?, how many did F9 do now?
So, how the hell is F9 less efficient than the space shuttle?........
Imagine your new car came with a full tank of fuel but there was no way of refilling the tank. When the fuel tank becomes empty, you have to buy a new car. Now substitute "car" for "rocket" and you can see that throwing away rockets is costly and can be cheaper by reusing the rocket just like reusing a car.
Those rockets are half as efficient as the space shuttle. Just think about it... the rocket is carrying the fuel it needs for the landing with it to space. Carrying the fuel it needs is the biggest problem every rocket has, and now, Elon is adding EVEN MORE fuel to it. How dumb is that ?
Not nearly as dumb as spending fuel on carrying WINGS into space. In case you weren't aware, wings are utterly useless on a spacecraft for 99.999% of the journey and are completely useless for any purpose except landing on a nicely groomed runway. What you thought that it doesn't cost anything to lift those very heavy wings into orbit? Do you think there are a lot of prepared runways on Mars or the Moon?
Seriously my friend, do you really think that all those actual rocket scientists at SpaceX and elsewhere haven't given this issue any thought?
NASA and the Air Force are the organizations that do things because "congress told us". SpaceX is doing it their own way.
No more 1500$ 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?)
" 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.
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.
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.
If it's just the one I'll be disappointed.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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