SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket
1–10 of 82 posts
Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket
#2I wonder if they'll really save money right away doing this. I imagine they'll spend a lot on inspections and getting things 100% right.
Either way, it's an amazing achievement.
Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket
#3Just wanted to say that the phrase "flight-proven" is genius marketing.
Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket
#4I wonder if they'll really save money right away doing this. I imagine they'll spend a lot on inspections and getting things 100% right. Either way, it's an amazing achievement.
I also wonder this!
CRS-8 was launched on the 8th of April this year, so given that the launch of SES-10 is slated for Q4 2016, that means there's like, 6/7/8 months for the turnaround.
But I'm hopeful that we'll see an assembly line of rockets landing, being inspected, and being launched, sometime in the future :)
Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket
#5Just wanted to say that the phrase "flight-proven" is genius marketing.
Better than "Certified Pre-Owned Rocket" :-) I agree with the folks who have tweeted they should start adding launch "check marks" to the paint but that assumes that they will launch it w/recovery and then do it again.
Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket
#6I wonder if they'll really save money right away doing this. I imagine they'll spend a lot on inspections and getting things 100% right. Either way, it's an amazing achievement.
That is the essential question, of course assuming this flight goes off without a hitch they will have new data about what it took to this this booster back to flight ready status, and then they can see what they did that they could do better, what tools they should make to improve efficiency and what tweaks to the design will lower the time to cycle it through.
There are interesting precedents in the tooling jigs that Thiokol built to refurbish SRBs and the Rockwell folks used to do tile repair for the Shuttle.
Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket
#7I wonder if they'll really save money right away doing this. I imagine they'll spend a lot on inspections and getting things 100% right. Either way, it's an amazing achievement.
Probably like pancakes, the first is always a wash that you feed to your cousin.
Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket
#8Just wanted to say that the phrase "flight-proven" is genius marketing.
"Flight-proven" as opposed to those inferior non-flight-proven rockets we're so used to.
In a few years, perhaps flying your cargo on an un-flight-proven rocket will be the risky option. I applaud SES for being the early adopters, and SpaceX for always pushing the boundaries.
Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket
#9I wonder if they'll really save money right away doing this. I imagine they'll spend a lot on inspections and getting things 100% right. Either way, it's an amazing achievement.
I also wonder this! CRS-8 was launched on the 8th of April this year, so given that the launch of SES-10 is slated for Q4 2016, that means there's like, 6/7/8 months for the turnaround. But I'm hopeful that we'll see an assembly line of rockets landing, being inspected, and being launched, sometime in the future :)
The delay between landing and relaunch has less to do with refurb on this particular booster, than with the series of tests that they're doing on other returned boosters to convince both the customers and their insurance companies that they generally come back in re-flyable condition, which have been happening on and off for months. Among other things, a different booster has been put through at least three full-length test-fires at their proving ground in Texas.
It isn't clear how much refurb will be required generally, beyond replacing some of the surface thermal protection that came back visibly dinged up. (Well, at this point, SpaceX knows what it took to refurbish one, but I'm not aware of any public statements about it yet.) But they're certainly acting like the propulsion systems don't need much -- the very first returned booster (the one now on permanent display outside the SpaceX factory) was re-fired on the launch pad within weeks of return, without having ever left the Cape, just to prove that they could.
Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket
#10I wonder if they'll really save money right away doing this. I imagine they'll spend a lot on inspections and getting things 100% right. Either way, it's an amazing achievement.
Even if they saved money on this one particular booster the costs of the technology and all the landing attempts/ successful landings will probably mean it takes some time to come out ahead overall.