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That "live" Elon interview seemed really pre-recorded... Did anyone else get that feeling?
No, he was just doing an elevator pitch on reusability. Has probably done that thousands of times now so it will sound a bit scripted.
It looked like one of the grid fins got toasted. Will they still be able to stick the landing? fingers crossed edit: and they did it! I was pessimistic for a minute there!
The grid fins are painted with ablative paint that's supposed to burn away while protecting what's underneath. Same with the legs. But they do suffer damage during re-entry as could be seen on photos of them from previous landed boosters. I'm fairly sure that's all expected and accounted for.
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SpaceX would still have to deal with scheduling: making enough upper stages and having limited launch/landing pads they share with NASA/ULA/ATK. So those with less cost-sensitive payloads (governments) would probably still pay a premium to launch their payloads sooner rather than cheaper.
That doesn't add up: SpaceX will be able to use a chunk of their savings to outbid their competitors for launch capacity. So any premium paid by a competitor would have to be passed on to their customers to stay afloat whereas SpaceX would merely give a slightly lower discount. SpaceX really caused some sleepless nights today with the executives of other rocket companies they are several years away from being able to…
But what I mean is say I have a payload I want to launch. I go to spaceX and they say they can put my payload on their manifest for 2019 for $60 million. I go to another provider and they say they can get me up into orbit in 2018 for $120 million. If I'm a government and don't care so much about the cost, but do care about getting my payload into space, I'll go with the 2018 date.
So, there will still be other non-reusable providers out there. For example, European governments want to keep Ariane around regardless of the cost to keep the launch capability around (for national security issues).
That "live" Elon interview seemed really pre-recorded... Did anyone else get that feeling?
The link is to a livestream and I didn't get here in time to watch the landing live, has a recording of the landing been uploaded anywhere yet?
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One could argue whether they're truly private sector, but they still haven't quite displaced ULA. In 2016 there were 12 ULA launches, 8 SpaceX launches, and 2 by Orbital ATK. Looking at other countries, there were 20 Chinese launches, 18 Russian launches, 9 European launches, and 7 Indian launches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_in_spaceflight#Orbital_la...
That's why this is so big, dropping the costs significantly could easily pull a significant fraction of those other launches to SpaceX. Pretty soon the ability to re-launch the same booster will be considered a must-have feature if you want to be in the rocket business, unless you fly missions so close the maximum payload or trajectory that recovery is impossible.
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That doesn't add up: SpaceX will be able to use a chunk of their savings to outbid their competitors for launch capacity. So any premium paid by a competitor would have to be passed on to their customers to stay afloat whereas SpaceX would merely give a slightly lower discount. SpaceX really caused some sleepless nights today with the executives of other rocket companies they are several years away from being able to…
I agree with you: everyone else will be playing catch-up, probably for a decade. But what I mean is say I have a payload I want to launch. I go to spaceX and they say they can put my payload on their manifest for 2019 for $60 million. I go to another provider and they say they can get me up into orbit in 2018 for $120 million. If I'm a government and don't care so much about the cost, but do care about getting my pay…
Fantastic!!! Being able to watch a reusable rocket land perfecty, from my mobile phone while casting to a TV, over a computer network, while located in southern Brazil makes me SO PROUD to be human!
It just depresses me seeing how many people don't have the slightest clue why this is something incredibly remarkable - the complexity behind each and every component, process, research and engineering making this possible - and then start bitching about the new Emoji set on their smartphone
There are so many fields and so many complex processes. I can assure you that any one of: the world of power transmission, or offshore oil drilling rigs, or commercial shipping, or chemical process design and optimization, or tons of other stuff, is enough to warrant an entire "HN".
So don't expect people to appreciate it all. But what we can appreciate is the fact that you and I don't need to understand archeology to contribute to society ;)
Does SpaceX have any real competitors in the private sector? Would be a bummer if people decided they were a monopoly of some sort and demanded a break up.
One could argue whether they're truly private sector, but they still haven't quite displaced ULA. In 2016 there were 12 ULA launches, 8 SpaceX launches, and 2 by Orbital ATK. Looking at other countries, there were 20 Chinese launches, 18 Russian launches, 9 European launches, and 7 Indian launches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_in_spaceflight#Orbital_la...
ULA competes mostly on the Air Force launches. They still have capabilities that SpaceX does not have (large fairings) and some that SpaceX will not have for a long time (vertical integration). For these cases, ULA will still have a market, plus the Air Force always needs to have two providers.
SpaceX will however take quite a chunk out of ULA as we have already seen with the bidding for the GPS flights.
Orbital ATK will have hard time in the commercial market but they might be happy with just flying the COTS contracts.
The main issue SpaceX has to solve is flight rate, that is most of the reason others can still be on the commercial market at all. SpaceX is now so far away from everybody else on price, everybody else is still in the "developing a new vehicle and we have some ideas about reversibility, maybe" stage.
SpaceX can now launch a reusable core for around 50 million, and still make a nice profit. The target price for both ULA Vulcan and Arian 6 are 100 million. For Arian that does not even include the massive amount of development cost. Arianspace will survive because of the political imperative.
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Wonder if they will be able to launch it a third time, though, since it seemed it did get a bit more damage on entry this time around. Either way, impressive. Btw, does anyone know how reusable these things are expected to be in the near term? As in, would a perfected Stage 1 be expected to be able to fly 10 missions? 100? 1000?
On the prelaunch video, they suggeste a try for at least 10x.