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SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket Launches First Paid Mission, Lands All Three Boosters For the First Time (cnn.com)
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket has successfully launched its first-ever mission for a paying customer. It was also the first time the aerospace company managed to land all three rocket boosters after launch. CNN reports: The rocket took off Thursday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after 6 pm ET. It delivered a pricey communications satellite into orbit for Saudi Arabia-based firm Arabsat. For the first time ever, all three Falcon Heavy rocket boosters returned to Earth after launch: The two side-boosters landed simultaneously on ground pads in Florida, while the center core landed on a remote-controlled platform in the ocean a short time later. Reusable hardware is part of Falcon Heavy's appeal. The boosters are guided back to Earth so they can be refurbished and used again. SpaceX says it can drastically reduce the cost of spaceflight.
The Arabsat mission is evidence that some satellite operators will opt for a larger rocket anyway: Arabsat 6A was small enough to fit onto a Falcon 9 rocket. But using the larger rocket allows the company to put the satellite deeper into space, which means the satellite won't need to waste as much of its own precious fuel maneuvering to its intended position. Arabsat 6A will update satellite coverage for Arabsat, which is based in Riyadh and delivers hundreds of television channels and radio stations to homes across the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. Lockheed Martin built the satellite, along with a second one, for Arabsat as part of a batch of contracts worth $650 million. When Arabsat announced the contracts in 2015, it said at the time that it planned to launch the Arabsat 6A satellite aboard Falcon Heavy. In related news, SpaceX has won a contract to launch the first-ever experiment in 2022 to deflect an asteroid through a high-speed spacecraft collision. "NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, will ride on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at a cost of $69 million," reports Florida Today. "It's expected to launch in June of that year."
The Arabsat mission is evidence that some satellite operators will opt for a larger rocket anyway: Arabsat 6A was small enough to fit onto a Falcon 9 rocket. But using the larger rocket allows the company to put the satellite deeper into space, which means the satellite won't need to waste as much of its own precious fuel maneuvering to its intended position. Arabsat 6A will update satellite coverage for Arabsat, which is based in Riyadh and delivers hundreds of television channels and radio stations to homes across the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. Lockheed Martin built the satellite, along with a second one, for Arabsat as part of a batch of contracts worth $650 million. When Arabsat announced the contracts in 2015, it said at the time that it planned to launch the Arabsat 6A satellite aboard Falcon Heavy. In related news, SpaceX has won a contract to launch the first-ever experiment in 2022 to deflect an asteroid through a high-speed spacecraft collision. "NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, will ride on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at a cost of $69 million," reports Florida Today. "It's expected to launch in June of that year."
Gonna force me to go do a search for the actual 'good stuff' eh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ; Horses mouth.
Only a slight exaggeration. The end of dependence on Russia to service the international space station is now in sight. Finally. So sad that Russia fell off the rails so badly, but it happened, and now the only logical course is, just cut every tie, especially ones where lives hang in the balance. Thanks much for not holding the space station hostage these past years, but goodbye and good riddance.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
but then the main vehicle would need to have duplicates added back on to position and de-orbit, increasing the overall weight
Except it actually did. The Space Shuttle's main engines were not used for on-orbit maneuvering, and were basically deadweight once the external fuel tank was jettisoned. Instead, they had separate orbital maneuvering engines that used hypergolic propellant for all of that stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Orbital_Maneuvering_System
Even better, they will reuse the fairings on the StarLink flight. Per Musk, they landed in the water.
Fuel is a small part of the cost of a launch. The maximum payload is only reduced if you want the cost saving of reusability. And one can reserve recycled boosters near the end of their useful life for higher payload missions.
Currently fuel is about 0.4% of the cost for a Falcon 9 flight, not sure about the Falcon Heavy but definitively <1%. The extra fuel for landing is probably 0.1% or something like that, it's a rounding error. Of course the whole recovery operation (legs, fins, drone ship, inspection etc.) costs more, but if you're not payload limited and it has useful life left it's a no-brainer. If you run out of end-of-life boosters and the economics heavily favors reuse you can always go one size up, if SpaceX would rather take 27 engines for a spin than lose 9 they can simply price a reusable FH lower than an expendable F9. And when BFR comes online an expendable FH flight becomes a reusable BFR flight. Assuming it works as well as intended, they've flown the same booster three times now and the NASA abort demo will supposedly be the fourth (and final, as it will be destroyed) but it's still a way off from the 10-100 times Musk was talking about.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings