SpaceX Successfully Launches Satellite With New Upgraded 'Block 5' Falcon 9 Rocket (theverge.com)

Thelasko shares a report from The Verge: This afternoon, SpaceX landed the most powerful version yet of its Falcon 9 rocket, after launching the vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The so-named Block 5 upgrade took off from the company's launchpad at Kennedy Space Center, sending a communications satellite into orbit for Bangladesh and then touched down on one of the company's drone ships in the Atlantic. It was the 25th successful rocket landing for SpaceX, and the 14th on one of the company's drone ships.

It also marks the first launch of the Block 5, the vehicle that will carry humans to space for NASA. The Block 5 is meant to be SpaceX's most reusable rocket yet, with many upgrades put in place that negate the need for extensive refurbishment between flights. In fact, the first Block 5 rockets will eventually be able to fly up to 10 times without the need for any maintenance after landings, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said during a pre-launch press conference. Ideally, once one of these rocket lands, SpaceX will turn it horizontal, attach a new upper stage and nose cone on top, turn it vertical on the launchpad, fill it with propellant, and then launch it again. Musk noted that the vehicles would need some kind of moderate maintenance after the 10-flight mark, but it's possible that each rocket could fly up to 100 times in total.

Comments

I watched the launch!

[apoc.famine]

Launch went off mostly flawlessly, except for the non-unexpected live camera feed issues. I remain amazed that they're able to do a live feed up to space and back as it is, so I can't complain too much. Expecting perfection there is asking a bit much, I think.

If this rocket performs as expected, it really is the game-changer that SpaceX is designed it to be. They're already out-competing everyone on launch costs. If they can really do a 24 hr turnaround on the same rocket? Holy. Shit.

Musk is always late on his predictions, but goddamn does he keep eventually getting there. I'm really blown away by this, and I can't wait to see what comes next.

Re:I watched the launch!

[Anonymous Coward]

They're already out-competing everyone on launch costs.

Yes, and they are talking about hitting $6m marginal launch cost with S2 recovery. That means they can either kick the floor out from under every other provider by an order of magnitude, or more likely, undercut other providers slightly will being enormously more profitable, to fold the extra profits into the BFR.

Re:I watched the launch!

[Kjella]

If this rocket performs as expected, it really is the game-changer that SpaceX is designed it to be. They're already out-competing everyone on launch costs. If they can really do a 24 hr turnaround on the same rocket? Holy. Shit.

That part is almost insignificant, the question is how many times it'll fly or if ten is another Elon estimate of what it might possibly do sometime in the remote future, I mean he's been throwing around numbers like 10, 100 even 1000 reuses in his Mars plans but so far nothing has been re-flown more than once. Now the most aggressive schedule would be to say we're putting the pedal to the metal and sending it out there as quickly and often as possible, but I doubt it'll happen quite that way because there's customer payloads at risk every time it goes up.

Then again, if Musk has Starlink ready to go maybe he'll say this is now an in-house risk and we're making this a quasi-experimental 3rd-10th launch that won't kill our reputation as a launch provider. It certainly wouldn't get any more "eat your own dog food" than that. The satellites should be in mass production anyway so as long as the rocket clears the launch site it's probably not that big a blow if it turns into a fireworks show on the 6th launch. He could just do another space is hard, we're pushing the boundaries, failure is permitted here and I think most would buy it. And if it doesn't blow up, well all the better.

Re:I watched the launch!

[haruchai]

SpaceX fans are all closet accountants. The rest of us don't care how much it costs to put yet another communication satellite in orbit.

The accountants who work for the people who want those satellites launched for less are not in the closet.

Re:I watched the launch!

[crow]

Exactly!

The cost per launch (not price per launch) is what makes Starlink possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

They're talking about 12,000 satellites! (A few less than that, but they'll probably have to replace a few that fail.) And they're looking at a 5-7 year lifespan per satellite, which means once it's up and running, it will require putting up another 2,000 satellites per year. Even if they can do 20 satellites per launch, that's still a hundred launches per year. For reference, there were only 90 launches last year, and that's counting every launch by every country and company.

https://space.stackexchange.co...

Estimates are that the Falcon 9 could lift 24 Starlink satellites per launch. The Falcon Heavy could get up to 67. The BFR could deploy over 300 per launch. Considering the need to deploy to different orbits, the Falcon 9 is probably the way to go.

Once they get serious about Starlink, they'll probably start adding a few to every launch that has excess capacity. (And by "serious" I mean having gotten the satellites in real production.)

Re:I watched the launch!

[ElizabethGreene]

> The rest of us don't care how much it costs to put yet another communication satellite in orbit.

The rest of us must not have an imagination then. Space Tourism is /already/ a thing, and space colonies won't be far behind. Maybe you don't want to go; that's completely your prerogative. That said, I have no desire to live on this planet anymore. This guy is knocking zeroes off of the cost of getting to orbit, and that's a hugely exciting thing in moving towards that goal.

Re:I watched the launch!

[Rei]

Maybe I'm alone in this, but what I look forward most to, concerning such low launch costs?

Mass produced probes.

If NASA comes to grips with launch costs being this cheap (something that they never seem to do in their planning, always budgeting at ULA rates), it'll become obvious that the next logical step is not to produce probes in 1s or 2s, but by the hundreds. Mass production means low unit costs. And they can let their probe mass budgets rise (aka, build them cheap rather than spending a fortune trying to shave grams off on every last part). Forget RTGs with expensive 238Pu - use cheap 90Sr or 241Am, or just huge solar arrays. Switch from "failure is not an option" to "meh, as long as 90+% of them make it..." as a guiding principle.

Over the course of our lifetimes, we can transform our solar system from a huge expanse of "unknown" with tiny spots of "known", to a huge expanse of "known" where we're just filling in ever-smaller gaps.

Re:I watched the launch!

[Rei]

I do expect it to be more than just the first flight that needs to be inspected in detail. I expect them to inspect every after every single launch for the first X launches, then once every 2 launches for the next X, then 1 in 5, then finally 1 in 10, or something along those lines. I don't think customers would be happy with SpaceX if they just jumped from a single success case to "no inspections at all for 10 launches".

Re:I watched the launch!

[Goonie]

Nice troll.

For everyone else watching at home, if they can really reduce launch costs to a few million bucks a launch, it will enable a whole lot of things that currently can't be done.

For instance:

• Affordable broadband low-latency internet access from massive LEO satellite constallations.
• whole constellations of imagery satellites. Want a real-time video feed of something from space? It might just be possible for organizations other than the US government now.
• Mass-produced space probes. If it's only going to cost $6 million a pop to launch rather than $100 million, it might be worth producing a couple of dozen rather than two, and the unit cost will go down a great deal. Imagine what we could learn about Mars with dozens of rovers roaming the surface!
• Startups experimenting with new space technology. At 6 million a pop, VCs might be able to fund you if your plan involves launching a payload into space. At 100 million, forget it.

So even leaving out the more out-there humans-in-space stuff, there is a great deal to be excited by if SpaceX can really launch this cheap.

Re:I watched the launch!

[Gavagai80]

The rest of us don't care how much it costs to put yet another communication satellite in orbit.

You don't have internet? You don't have TV, phone service, etc? Or you don't want those things to become better and cheaper? You don't even want better communication in disaster recovery situations? Pretty sure you're in the minority, the rest of us are pretty excited about cheaper communications satellites.

Turn it horizontal???

[Jeremi]

What's this "turn it horizontal" nonsense about? There's no time for that!

A properly reusable rocket should just require a new upper stage to be lowered into place on top of the just-landed/still-vertical first stage, a quick 5-minute refuel, and then back to work!

If SpaceX can't get shorter turnaround times than Southwest, then what's the point? ;)

Re: Turn it horizontal???

[WindBourne]

The point is in 24 hrs they can launch it again, and at a fraction of what others do. They are on track for being able to launch several times a week next year.

Six more then manned!

[RhettLivingston]

Six more good flights for the manned-flight rating! Go SpaceX! This company exemplifies how to make America great again!

Museum pieces

[Michael Woodhams]

SpaceX have adopted a policy that any pre-block 5 booster will fly at most twice, and so have not been landing pre-loved boosters (called "flight proven" in SpaceX's spin.) All these boosters which would make wonderful museum pieces are being discarded into the ocean.

However, there are a few flown boosters which have not been lost. The first booster to successfully land is on display outside SpaceX's headquarters. The two side boosters from the Falcon Heavy launch were previously flown and have been recovered. I think the first booster to fly a second time was recovered, as this was before the don't-recover-used-boosters policy came into effect.

Am I correct on all these? Are there any other recovered twice-flown boosters? Does anyone know what SpaceX intends to do with them? Can I hope to see any of them in a museum one day?