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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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: 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!