SpaceX Enters a New Stage of Reusability (mashable.com)

SpaceX will now be attempting to land and reuse all of the rockets it launches. Over the weekend, SpaceX launched and successfully landed its second Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida. An anonymous reader writes: The landing of this vehicle, designed with reusability in mind, marks the beginning of a completely recyclable era of rockets for the company. The Block 5 can be used hundreds of times if recovered successfully. Now that the company has transitioned to this more reusable model, recovery will be an even more crucial part of the launch. In a two week period, it's planning five recoveries. Mashable: The landing marks one of the first landings and launches of the company's newest, upgraded Falcon 9 rockets, called Block 5. Before this launch, SpaceX got rid of a backlog of their Block 4 rockets by launching without landing them back on Earth. That type of launch without landing is the traditional way of getting things to orbit, but SpaceX managed to change that. The whole point in the company's rocket landings hinge on the fact that it could reduce the cost of flying to orbit. By reusing rocket stages for multiple launches, it could drive down the exorbitant cost of flying to space for companies and nations around the world. SpaceX has been killing it the past couple years. The company -- founded by Elon Musk -- launched 18 times in 2017.

Comments

Pro Russian Bots Saving Roscosmos

[Anonymous Coward]

A funny thing happened on the way to outer space... SpaceX developed a business model that is quickly obsoleting Russia's space launch supremacy. Now that it's an actual threat, expect to see frequent bot attacks on SpaceX, Elon Musk, Tesla, Hyperloops, et cetera. That's how the disinformation age works. Delegitimize anyone that is deemed a threat.

Re:Pro Russian Bots Saving Roscosmos

[HornWumpus]

No. But Soyuz is man rated. Soyuz is 81 million a seat. 243 million a flight.

Falcon 9 is 62 million/launch for commercial flight. NASA flight is more (NASA has lots of rules), and Man rated version will no doubt be even more.

Re: Pro Russian Bots Saving Roscosmos

[c6gunner]

By all accounts Soyuz is still cheaper than Falcon.

By which accounts? The Soyuz costs between $40 and $60 million per launch, while the Falcon 9 costs about $62 million. But the Falcon 9 can lift twice as much payload in reusable mode as a Soyuz can when being written off, so that $62 million get you a lot more stuff in orbit. It can lift even more in expendable mode, but that will cost you extra.

Of course the question isn't "which one is cheaper" to the customer; the question is which one is cheaper to actually operate. SpaceX doesn't need to underbid the competition by much since there really isn't that much competition, but you can bet that their profit margin per launch is significantly higher than that of their competitors.

Re:Don't let the marketeers market

[jellomizer]

Space flight is very dangerous, and I don't see it becoming much more safe in my lifetime.

Unless we can get into space without explosive force, such as a space elevator, it is going to be dangerous, and people will die in the future from space travel.

The far future is far FAR away [Re:Impressive]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Average lifetime for a mammalian species is 1 million years. A few mammalian species last as long as 10 million years.

About 300 million years from now the brightening of the sun will indeed mean "we" will have to do something, but the term "we" in that phrase means "some different future species that is related to us about as closely as we are related to the very first reptiloids that would, in the future, evolve into dinosaurs."

Re:Space elevators

[Geoffrey.landis]

The problem isn't the part that's in orbit, or the cables. It's the cargo that was being transported when some space trash cuts the wires near the top. Unless you want to argue that a space elevator would only be used to transport very light objects individually.

The statement was that it would be "infinitely more dangerous" than a rocket. No, it wouldn't. The space elevator itself is exceptionally light (or "impossibly light," in the words of anonymous coward above). The cargo would be like any other cargo dropping down from a high altitude, except unlike a rocket, not carrying a load of fuel.

Re:Launch our Garbage towards the sun

[Rei]

You can launch garbage toward the sun with a homemade water rocket. It's getting to the sun that's difficult. It takes more dV to get to the sun via a direct Hohmann transfer than it does to leave the solar system entirely.