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SES-10 Mission

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Re: SES-10 Mission

#121

Post by tdy721 »

lazaroclapp wrote: post #26
birken wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they caught it again. Truly amazing.

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?

They covered it in the webcast, they said they expect 10 cycles. Not sure which block/version they are talking about though.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#122

Post by grondilu »

hayd wrote: post #106
grondilu wrote: post #82

I've noticed that during the webcast they talked much more about their planetary colonisation project than they usually do. I guess it makes sense since today is the first time they actually implement the re-usability plan they believe is the key to this colonisation. But frankly, is the cost of going to mars really that important for its colonisation? I mean, I wouldn't move to mars even if going there was free. For…

> I can't help thinking that those people who get excited > about building a city on mars are completely delusional. That's what they once said about walking on the moon.

Well, there is probably a reason why nobody thought it was worth doing it again ever since.

More seriously though, just because many projects were wrongly considered foolish in the past, does not mean one can not point at a new one and call it foolish. History tends to remember those who turned out to be brilliant, and forget all those who genuinely were foolish.

The example I like is Franz Reichelt [1]. People around him were watching as he prepared to meet his death. Nobody said "don't do that, you'll kill yourself". Why? I guess because they were not sure, and they did not want to be the person who dissed someone who might be remembered as say the Wright brothers were.

I guess I'm not comfortable being the guy who says nothing as he watches people being foolish or delusional.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBN3xfGrx_U

Re: SES-10 Mission

#124

Post by jccooper »

vtange wrote: post #4

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.

Bezos's Blue Origin is on track to have a very similar system in a few years, and perhaps even better eventually with the possibility of a reusable second stage. ULA still has plenty of contracts and could compete if its parent companies wanted to spend the money to do so. Arianespace is vaguely commercial, is currently cost-competitive, and could also choose to develop a reusable vehicle, if its parent companies/countries can stand the expense. There are also plenty of small-launcher outfits currently working that could also scale up given a contract and/or investment, just like SpaceX did from Falcon 1 to F9, were SpaceX to leave any room in the market by overpricing.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#125

Post by nradov »

The launch video is amazing! How are they able to get clear video with stable tracking of a rocket >10km away? What sort of lens and camera makes that possible?

Re: SES-10 Mission

#126

Post by jacquesm »

beamatronic wrote: post #117
Flame wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real-time streaming made me really excited for the future. Elon is truly a genius... SpaceX will save so much money. I can't wait to see what comes next. Honestly, the rate at which technology is growing is truly absurd if you think about it.

I think a lot of it comes from the fact that (almost) every literate human being can communicate (almost) instantly around the planet with (almost) every other literate human being, and the fact that with machine translation, language is less of a barrier all the time.

Illiterate people can too using Skype and such. Instant planetwide communication between any party of humans sharing a common language is now pretty much a given.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#127

Post by ceejayoz »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #120
grondilu wrote: post #82

I've noticed that during the webcast they talked much more about their planetary colonisation project than they usually do. I guess it makes sense since today is the first time they actually implement the re-usability plan they believe is the key to this colonisation. But frankly, is the cost of going to mars really that important for its colonisation? I mean, I wouldn't move to mars even if going there was free. For…

Its a reach. For comparison, lets start a city on top of Mt Everest? Better air, better weather, lots easier to get to, and help is only days away instead of months. Yet we haven't begun to do things even that ambitious yet.

Everest isn't really better weather. Parts of Mars get up to 70 F in the summer day, and the thin atmosphere means even a big storm doesn't have much impact even on someone walking around (the events that start The Martian simply can't happen as depicted).

Re: SES-10 Mission

#128

Post by mikeash »

jacquesm wrote: post #118
mikeash wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well no, you don't have to compare to the first thirty launches with those when we're talking about competition for launch services. Somebody choosing a launch provider for their satellite today doesn't care what the reliability of the Atlas was in the 1960s, they only care what it is today. If I was arguing that "SpaceX sucks and they deserve to fail because they're so unreliable" then you'd have a point, but I'm no…

I think I covered that with: "Of course the beginnings of what is now ULA were much more innovative than what SpaceX is doing because we simply had not launched any rockets of that size at all and so there were many more failures." So of course the situation is not 1:1 comparable. But given that it is a new platform some failures were to be expected, it doesn't take a lot in rocketry to have a failure. How many launc…

You're confusing my comment with some sort of value judgment. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm just saying that some customers care more about reliability than cost, and those customers will provide a steady stream of revenue for ULA and friends until SpaceX improves in this area.

I have no opinion about what is "acceptable" or not, but my opinion doesn't matter. What matters is the opinion of the customer. There are enough customers out there which find SpaceX's ~10% failure rate to be too high to keep ULA around for now even at a hefty premium.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#129

Post by ncallaway »

remarkEon wrote: post #94

Question: Will future SpaceX clients now want to put their payloads in orbit on a "flight proven" booster, instead of one that hasn't flown before?

I think it'll be sometime before we get to that point. We just need a much larger sample size before I think they can put together an accurate bathtub curve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve) for their rockets.

I think once Block 5 gets off the ground, and we see maybe 20 flights on re-used rockets, and a couple of rockets used 5+ times, you'll start to see increased demand for "flight proven" hardware.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#130

Post by ericcumbee »

Someone wrote: post #83

I understand the enthusiasm, but I don't see enough hard data to convince me this will be a commercial success. Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... , SpaceX has launched and landed about 10 of these rockets, and has so far reused one. That rocket was first used about a year ago. Factors that might prevent this from making this economically superior to 'just' ramping up productio…

>They will have been extra cautious this time, but from the above, the answers _could_ be "about 10%" and "almost one year, taking way more effort than building a new one does".

not sure if 1 year is actually correct. From what i've read SpaceX originally was not planning on reflying this core, as it was their best flight tested article and they did not want to risk loosing the value of having it for future reference, but then a later landing with another core was a bit rougher than anticipated and they did not feel comfortable with the margins of reusing that core. So part of that year they were waffling on if they wanted to fly this core or not.

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