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SpaceX Successfully Launches Its Used Block 5 Rocket (theverge.com)
SpaceX successfully launched one of its used Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral tonight at 1:18AM ET, deploying the Merah Putih communications satellite just over half an hour later. This marks the first time that SpaceX reused one of its new powerful Block 5 boosters -- the final upgrade of the Falcon 9 that is supposed to be able to go to space and back up to 100 times. "The Falcon 9's first stage booster also performed another successful landing on one of the company's drone ships in the Atlantic, becoming the 28th booster that SpaceX has ever recorded," The Verge adds. From the report: For this mission, SpaceX is using the very first Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket it's flown, a vehicle that sent up a large communications satellite for Bangladesh in May from Florida. The vehicle landed on one of SpaceX's drone ships after the flight, and the company has since done inspection and refurbishment on the vehicle over the last three months to get it ready for flight again. Eventually, SpaceX hopes to do as little refurbishment on these Block 5 vehicles as possible, if any at all. Limiting the amount of inspection and tweaking needed between re-flights could significantly up the cost savings that SpaceX gets from reusing its rockets. Less money is needed if fewer people and materials are needed to turn around the rockets each time. Ultimately, SpaceX hopes to fly each Block 5 vehicle a total of 10 times before any refurbishment is needed. As for the satellite, it will reportedly provide telecommunications services to parts of Indonesia and South Asia.
This just never gets old. But they've got to do something about losing that drone barge video literally seconds before the booster puts down. Such a tease.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Big advances for humanity.
https://spaceflightnow.com/201...
he Merah Putih satellite launched Tuesday will provide C-band telecommunications services over Indonesia and India. The new telecom craft was built by SSL in Palo Alto, California.
SSL completed construction of the Merah Putih satellite ahead of schedule, according to Telkom Indonesia, also known as PT Telkom. The new satellite will replace Telkom 1, which failed in a mysterious debris-shedding event in geostationary orbit last year.
Officials from Telkom Indonesia expected the Telkom 1 satellite, which launched in 1999, to remain operational until Merah Putih’s launch. But Telkom 1’s failure last year forced the operator to re-route communications traffic through other satellites.
The Merah Putih satellite is designed for a 16-year life, its owner said in a statement. The spacecraft will be positioned in geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator at 108 degrees east longitude.
If successful, it would be a major boost for both his Space-X and Hyperloop projects
If it's not their win, how come others are not competitive?
Mostly because the competition is primarily government contractors who built their businesses around cost plus pricing or government agencies like NASA. Once you design a business model around a cost structure like that it is nearly impossible to change to adapt to severe price competition from a private company focused on cost reduction. They didn't design their rockets with cost as a primary driver and more importantly they didn't design their company cultures with cost as a primary driver. It's the same problem a lot of retailers have in competing with Walmart or Amazon. Those companies designed their entire organizations around efficient infrastructure and once you fall behind in building that it is nearly impossible to catch up unless you are willing and able to lose a LOT of money in the process.
In many cases they also had to please political entities with goals that had no relationship to cost reduction (see the Space Shuttle) which isn't their fault but it makes it impossible to do low cost rockets. Also if someone comes along with a better design than yours then it is difficult for these companies to respond quickly because building a new rocket design takes many years and big capital investments which aren't easy to do even under the best of circumstances.
Even countries with cheaper labour like Russia can't push the price down, not to mention ESA's Ariane that is directly threatened.
Russian labor isn't all that cheap, particularly for the sorts of people you need to build and launch rockets. (we're not talking sweatshop labor here) To make cheap rockets you need to do at minimum two big picture things. 1) You need to design the rockets with cost reduction as a primary goal and 2) you need to build the organization structure and culture to support designing and operating less expensive rockets. Russia knows how to make good rockets but they've taken the approach of using proven designs which work well but which have all the efficiencies already worked out. Basically they are already as cheap as they can make those designs. To make cheaper products they'll have to build new designs from scratch and at that point they really have no advantage over companies built like SpaceX.
The biggest risk to SpaceX is probably Chinese companies with substantial government subsidies. China has shown they are willing to throw the government weight behind industries they think are important and don't mind taking losses to gain market share.
I'm curious to know what it costs to insure a SpaceX payload launched on a reused rocket vs. a traditional rocket.
Blue Origin isn't in just a different league, it's basically the difference between little league t-ball and the major leagues. Suborbital is something college kids and maybe even high school kids can do with the right help. https://www.bostonglobe.com/id... Putting a very heavy satellite into space is something entirely different. The Falcon 9 can put 18,300 lb into geo-stationary orbit of 55,000 lb into low earth orbit. The Falcon Heavy should be able to do 2.5x those numbers and has put a Tesla Roadster out into a heliocentric orbit past Mars. A Blue Origin rocket can't even get to orbit without a payload.
Let's play "out of context". It's a little game I like to play to see just how bad mainstream media can distort things.
Let's take the MSM sound-bite version:
"the amount of inspection and tweaking needed between re-flights could significantly up the cost"
Desired public reaction:
WHOA!! This is freaking stupid expensive! Why are they doing this! Think of the children!
vs.
Actual statement:
"Limiting the amount of inspection and tweaking needed between re-flights could significantly up the cost savings"
Undesired public reaction:
WHOA!! This is freaking awesome! Why isn't every launch company doing this! Think of the children's future!
I clipped a single word off each end and totally changed the meaning. Fun, huh?
Recovered? Who's your editor, Microsoft Word?
Rei is a Musk shill either way.
China has shown they are willing to throw the government weight behind industries they think are important and don't mind taking losses to gain market share.
Random startup has shown they are willing to throw money behind industries they think are important and don't mind taking losses to gain market share.
Why not time travel? Just think what that could mean for his Hudson Bay Company.
https://www.youtube.com/user/spacexchannel/videos
Not seeing it.