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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.
They've already brought costs down dramatically. If they can do rapid, low-labour reuse of rockets - the whole point of Block 5 - it will let them bring down prices even further. Two more aspects that are important for them in this regard are learning to capture and reuse fairings, and to recapture the upper stage (they haven't attempted the latter yet; they're looking at a balloon-based entry system).
Of course, their longer term goals are BFR, which is to be even cheaper, but it's critically important that they learn from the (lower production cost, greater-mass-production scale) Falcon 9s.
Assuming ethanol comes from murdered children and the hydrogen from magic, hydrogen saves 132% more lives than ethanol.
What "costs"? All shit that Space-X does is NASA developments, which Space-X got on the cheap, and fewer safety restrictions, which are unavailable to NASA due to legislation.
Also, Space-X's financing is from NASA.
So, this small piglet of corporate socialism is even farther from capitalism than Tesla or the former Solar city.
You're ignoring their point. The first version of Falcon 9 was developed at a cost of $300M, by a company that had to build up its workforce and experience and software and manufacturing and everything else from scratch. Why exactly couldn't literally everyone else have done the exact same thing? Why are they still so far behind?
Everyone is standing on the shoulders of giants. Why has only one been using that shoulder to climb even higher? Why have the others been content to just wander around on the shoulders for the past couple decades?
Assuming ethanol comes from murdered children and the hydrogen from magic, hydrogen saves 132% more lives than ethanol.
1. The overwhelming majority of SpaceX's revenue is from commercial launches.
2. NASA launches with SpaceX because it saves them money. That was the whole point of COTS in the first place, and it's the current whole point of Commercial Crew. The savings have been massive.
Your argument is akin to saying that because there are US government employees who fly on commercial aircraft rather than running their own private planes, because that saves them money, that commercial carriers are "piglets of corporate socialism".
Lastly:
3. NASA sets the safety standards and testing requirements for its launches with SpaceX - same as it does with its ULA launches. Which is why among other things SpaceX will literally be destroying a rocket on purpose for NASA later this year, to test the abort system. Also, with 61 launches having one failure and one partial failure, and one ground failure, the Falcon 9 is above industry average in terms of reliability. Furthermore, there has not been a ground failure in 32 flights (aka, over half of their launches have happened since their last ground failure), and not an in-flight failure in 42 flights (aka, over 2/3rds of their launches have been since then).
Assuming ethanol comes from murdered children and the hydrogen from magic, hydrogen saves 132% more lives than ethanol.
People caring about space is good. If it takes fanboyism, so be it.