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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.
If it's not their win, how come others are not competitive? Even countries with cheaper labour like Russia can't push the price down, not to mention ESA's Ariane that is directly threatened.
Doing anything hard... like reliably landing, refurbishing and relaunching a first stage?
Everybody is in a position to “ride the last 50 years of R&D” as you put it, yet only SpaceX went the way of saving costs by reusing rockets. And it’s not like the likes of Boeing and Energya are still bleeding and suffering for doing that R&D in the first place, those are sunk costs by now, there’s no “decades of liabilities” as you argue in your other post. What the hell does that even mean?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Someone actually made a video about why this happens. Found it while looking around after another 'aaaaiugh video cut out!' moment with tonight's landing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I was reading an interview earlier this year with one of the top execs at Ariane about why - despite SpaceX showing that it's not only doable, but looks to be a big cost saver - that they're not doing so. And he responded something along the lines of, "if I do that, we'll only make a few rockets per year, and what am I supposed to do with all of my workforce then?"
Obvious reaction to that statement...
Of course, it's a fundamental problem for heavily-government-backed (some would say "propped up") rocketry companies: their backing is contingent on them being effective jobs programmes in the regions that their backers represent. They need to be burdened with high labour costs in order to be supported.
Assuming ethanol comes from murdered children and the hydrogen from magic, hydrogen saves 132% more lives than ethanol.
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.