(Poll) Your current views on reusable launch vehicles

[Pipcard]

I'm wondering what is the current state of this forum in regards to how its members regard the idea of reusable launch vehicles. On one end, some people believe fully reusable heavy launchers will supplant all other launch vehicles in service today; on the polar opposite, others doubt the economic viability of reusability and prefer to "wait and see" if it's worth it.

How do you think most[*] payloads will be launched in the near future (5-10 years)?
(* "Most" being defined as the greatest share of the total mass sent by all rockets to low Earth orbit in a year.)

(Note that the fully reusable options refer to the maximum payload, which means that a launcher that can launch 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit is not limited to payloads that are above 60 tonnes.)

This is just a survey of the current opinion climate of this forum.

Edited September 10, 2017 by Pipcard

[quasarrgames]

I believe recovery of upper stages won't happen in the near future unless we find a better form of heatshielding.

I actually believe that rocketry will briefly go in the opposite direction, with more private firms producing expendable, solid-fuelled rockets to carry tiny payloads. However, if ULA figures out how to recover their lower stages, then yes, more payload will be launched with partly reusable rockets.

[NSEP]

Who knows? Maybe same space company jumps out of the ocean with a working SSTO lifter in their hands in the next 10 years, im not saying its likely, but it could happend in theory i geuss.

[magnemoe]

Want to change my vote, I voted fully reusable 1-10 ton, voted so as it has an good chance of being at least tested. 
However its unlikely to be the most common. 
partial reusable is already an thing and will become more common. 
You also have new glen in this 10 year timeline. 

10 year is a bit short to develop and put an advanced reusable rocket in full use. 

[Gaarst]

5-10 years means launchers that are pretty far in development today. Ariane 6, Vulcan and H3 are not reusable (so is whatever rocket the Russians will end up with), Falcon 9 doesn't account for "most" payloads, BO has zero market today so they are not magically gonna jump to 50% in a few years, SLS and Falcon Heavy are too large for most commercial payloads, ITS lol, the Chinese and Indians don't seem to care about reusability for now, Skylon is still a pretty drawing...

So yeah, I voted expandable.

Edited September 7, 2017 by Gaarst

[KSK]

4 hours ago, Gaarst said:

Falcon 9 doesn't account for "most" payloads.

I was going to take a punt on SpaceX squeaking out a technical majority by capturing 51% of the launch market in ten years time but then I had a look at the actual numbers of orbital launches per year. If they can keep up their current growth then I don't think they'll be far off - but that's a very big if. It also assumes that the launch market stays flat and I think SpaceX would be rather disappointed if that happened.

I voted for partially reusable, any stage but thinking about it, I reckon @Gaarst is right.

[StupidAndy]

Musk has me believing that we can get fully-reusable-oh-my-gooshnag-so-much-tons rockets in 10 years

[Steel]

24 minutes ago, StupidAndy said:

Musk has me believing that we can get fully-reusable-oh-my-gooshnag-so-much-tons rockets in 10 years

Careful with Musk, he's not so good with sticking to deadlines! Many folks around here like talking about "Elon time", where you double how long he says it will take to do something and add 30 months  

Worth baring in mind that he's been claiming that Falcon Heavy is \paraphrase{"a few years away"} since 2008.

Edited September 7, 2017 by Steel

[Pipcard]

50 minutes ago, Steel said:

Careful with Musk, he's not so good with sticking to deadlines! Many folks around here like talking about "Elon time", where you double how long he says it will take to do something and add 30 months  

Worth baring in mind that he's been claiming that Falcon Heavy is \paraphrase{"a few years away"} since 2008.

The delays with Falcon Heavy were because Falcon 9 kept going through iterative improvements (and the first recovery only happened in late 2015).

[StupidAndy]

3 minutes ago, Pipcard said:

The delays with Falcon Heavy were because Falcon 9 kept going through iterative improvements (and the first recovery only happened in late 2015).

and sound, and other stuff, just sound is the only one I know about.

the sound is 3x louder then a F9 launch, so you have the equivalent amount of sound going of at once. so that's a big problem to overcome

[regex]

The next 5~10 years? I don't see much of anything happening differently than today. Space-X might start reusing fairings but second stages? Nah.

OTOH we'll probably see some development on a ton of new ideas if the Falcon 9 continues to prove itself viable. The kernel has been planted and is starting to germinate, but we're still in the development and proofing stages. If you're talking 20 years I'd be surprised if we didn't see a competitor to Falcon 9 enter the scene, but not within 10 years.

[wumpus]

11 hours ago, Gaarst said:

5-10 years means launchers that are pretty far in development today. Ariane 6, Vulcan and H3 are not reusable (so is whatever rocket the Russians will end up with), Falcon 9 doesn't account for "most" payloads, BO has zero market today so they are not magically gonna jump to 50% in a few years, SLS and Falcon Heavy are too large for most commercial payloads, ITS lol, the Chinese and Indians don't seem to care about reusability for now, Skylon is still a pretty drawing...

So yeah, I voted expandable.

If you plot the percentage of Space X flights, according to a continued graph they would presumably be responsible for all of them by 5 years.  The real catch is that I suspect that for various political reasons, at least 50% of the existing rocket market simply won't use space-x (or blue origins should they provide reusable launch services).  Should gnet (or whatever the joint google-spacex satellite internet service calls itself) really require (and pay for) hundreds of launches, single stage reuse (or 1.5 stage, but I suspect they won't use falcon heavy) will be "most".  But to maintain their expansion rate, spacex is going to have to find new people that want to launch satellites (and have tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to do it).

Expendable and full stages are possible.  Engine only is only on the drawing board, untested, and doesn't have paying customers. I'd expect spacex to test upper stage recovery, but more as basic research and testing methods for later rockets,  not for actually recovering falcon 9/heavy upper stages.  But considering that the falcon 9 probably recovers more rocket by mass than the space shuttle, I really shouldn't count spacex out (but I will.  And I certainly don't expect many non-spacex rockets to be recovered.

Finally, don't over emphasise recovery: the space shuttle introduce recovery to the space industry and still cost $450,000,000 per launch (or more.  The whole program cost more than a billion per shuttle flight).  You could easily get the same cargo into orbit  cheaper using disposable rockets.

[YNM]

A bit of question, actually : aren't most payloads cubesats ? If so, does it favors launchers which have excess capacity above larger, "standard" payloads ?

[DDE]

9 hours ago, regex said:

OTOH we'll probably see some development on a ton of new ideas if the Falcon 9 continues to prove itself viable. The kernel has been planted and is starting to germinate

Yet you still have many a denier of economical feasibility of reusable rocketry, and in pretty high places *cough* Dmitry Rogozin *cough*

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Yet you still have many a denier of economical feasibility of reusable rocketry, and in pretty high places *cough* Dmitry Rogozin *cough*

A bit interesting as Russia is pretty perfect for powered landing downrange while having the stage fall down is more of an issue than over water. 

[DDE]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

A bit interesting as Russia is pretty perfect for powered landing downrange while having the stage fall down is more of an issue than over water. 

True, but they seem to think a combination of payload reduction and refurbishment costs are actually making Musk's op less profitable than if he'd stuck to expendables, and threaten to make the [insert next launch system here] cheaper per kilogram than a reusable Falcon 9.

Also, Russia isn't perfect for powered downrange landing. Russia's spaceports are either all-military high-inclination (Plesetsk) or have drop zones over the Pacific (Vostochny); Kazakhstan has overland drop zones, but any dependency on it would be a huge minus - Vostochny is largely just a very expensive demarche against potential Kazakhstani blackmail over Baikonur.

Finally, while SpaceX does have to deal with water landing, it then gets the added bonus of water transport. How do you propose transporting entire assembled stages over the only realistic option available - the 1524 mm gauge of the Transsiberian railway? I'm not sure they can fit the 4.1 m diameter Soyuz-5 will be built around (Vostochny's limited to 3.9), let alone the length of an entire first stage.

Edited September 8, 2017 by DDE

[regex]

9 hours ago, DDE said:

Yet you still have many a denier of economical feasibility of reusable rocketry, and in pretty high places *cough* Dmitry Rogozin *cough*

Sure, I agree that we won't see many more reusable concepts making test flights for the foreseeable future. Maybe in a few years someone will test a new concept but we're still in the early phases of this paradigm, and test flights don't mean much until you're production flying. Space-X has yet to really prove to the industry that their model is sustainable, safe, and actually reduces costs. I don't see much of a shift until Space-X actually drops launch costs due to reuse. At that point there'll be a scramble because Space-X will be the premier launch provider.

And it remains to be seen whether that will ever happen in the first place.

[DDE]

11 minutes ago, regex said:

Space-X has yet to really prove to the industry that their model is sustainable, safe, and actually reduces costs. I don't see much of a shift until Space-X actually drops launch costs due to reuse

Some claim that they already have.

[regex]

8 minutes ago, DDE said:

Some claim that they already have.

Then I would be wrong and we should be seeing a scramble fairly soon. Some providers will likely be able to skate for some time due to existing contracts but when those run out it's all pretty much dependent on Space-X's capacity and capability, and whether a competitor can take them on.

Personally I don't really see this happening within the next ten years but then, I'm not intimately aware of the industry. Seeing prototypes fly will change my views on lower-stage reuse but I'd still have a very hard time believing upper stage reuse within the next ten years.

[Human Person]

I'm still a big fan of the Big Dumb Booster. I believe an expendable sea dragon would be cheaper than Elon Musks ITS launch vehicle.

[adsii1970]

In the 1970s and 1980s, we were told the STS (space transportation system, also known as the "space shuttle") was going to be a reusable space vehicle. And for the most part, with the exception of the external fuel tank, it was all reusable. But there's a problem - it never realized the dream of being "rapidly redeploy-able" as NASA had claimed it would be. I remember watching the test-glide flights of the STS Enterprise and hearing the NASA spokesman claim that once the shuttles were placed in service, they'd be ready to relaunch in about three weeks. They even predicted the nation would witness a shuttle launch once a month... It never materialized.

I know that Space-X and others are claiming they can be reusable, but that's only half the battle. In my opinion, they have to be reusable AND that resuability - the ability to return to space - must be cost effective in an industry where time is money. If refitting and reusing a spacecraft or launch vehicle takes a company too long, they will lose out on revenue from space companies utilizing the much cheaper disposable single-use launch vehicles. There has to be a sense of value  and cost effectiveness in the return given for reusable vehicles.

[magnemoe]

10 minutes ago, regex said:

Sure, I agree that we won't see many more reusable concepts making test flights for the foreseeable future. Maybe in a few years someone will test a new concept but we're still in the early phases of this paradigm, and test flights don't mean much until you're production flying. Space-X has yet to really prove to the industry that their model is sustainable, safe, and actually reduces costs. I don't see much of a shift until Space-X actually drops launch costs due to reuse. At that point there'll be a scramble because Space-X will be the premier launch provider.

And it remains to be seen whether that will ever happen in the first place.

Not much reasons for spacex to drop prices if they are cheapest. 
Blue origin is the only other seriously into reuse and not sure how far in development new glen is. 

Its no good reason why falcon 9 or similar designed first stage reuse should not be significant cheaper than building an new stage. 
That is once you have debugged the system and you have an launch volume. Many space programs exist mostly for prestige and to be able to launch military satellites. 
 

[regex]

4 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Not much reasons for spacex to drop prices if they are cheapest. 
Blue origin is the only other seriously into reuse and not sure how far in development new glen is. 

Its no good reason why falcon 9 or similar designed first stage reuse should not be significant cheaper than building an new stage. 
That is once you have debugged the system and you have an launch volume. Many space programs exist mostly for prestige and to be able to launch military satellites. 
 

Right, which is another good reason why I don't think we'll see this paradigm shift for some time. Space-X would need to actively reduce launch costs for the industry to shift to them but at this time they may be hedging their bets and paying off past debts, or building capital for other investments, saving Tesla, whatever. Until a competitor is serious we won't see the actual effects. Like I said, seeing other prototypes flying will change my opinion, but all we have right now is basically press releases, insofar as I've seen.

Edited September 8, 2017 by regex

[magnemoe]

4 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

In the 1970s and 1980s, we were told the STS (space transportation system, also known as the "space shuttle") was going to be a reusable space vehicle. And for the most part, with the exception of the external fuel tank, it was all reusable. But there's a problem - it never realized the dream of being "rapidly redeploy-able" as NASA had claimed it would be. I remember watching the test-glide flights of the STS Enterprise and hearing the NASA spokesman claim that once the shuttles were placed in service, they'd be ready to relaunch in about three weeks. They even predicted the nation would witness a shuttle launch once a month... It never materialized.

I know that Space-X and others are claiming they can be reusable, but that's only half the battle. In my opinion, they have to be reusable AND that resuability - the ability to return to space - must be cost effective in an industry where time is money. If refitting and reusing a spacecraft or launch vehicle takes a company too long, they will lose out on revenue from space companies utilizing the much cheaper disposable single-use launch vehicles. There has to be a sense of value  and cost effectiveness in the return given for reusable vehicles.

Comparing the space shuttle and falcon 9 is wrong is far more way than its correct. 
Similar Falcon 9 and space shuttle launch stuff into space and is partial reusable. 
different: pretty much everything else. 

Space shuttle was designed by an large governmental committee with conflicting demands. 
It was manned so landing fails was not an option, SpaceX can live with 5% crashes on landing. 
It reused upper stage only, upper stage add an 5-10X mass penalty over reusing first stage. 
Design was so performance optimized it was an hangar queen, this increased launch cost a lot, this again reduced number of launches making each far more expensive as you needed the 2K staff anyway. 
Yes it was cool and had lots of nice features, so has the presidential limo or the beast, and you don't want to use the beast for your commute. 

SpaceX thought outside the box then it comes to reuse. 

[magnemoe]

34 minutes ago, Physics Student said:

I'm still a big fan of the Big Dumb Booster. I believe an expendable sea dragon would be cheaper than Elon Musks ITS launch vehicle.

Problem with BDB is that
1) you can not reduce reliability, satellites tend to be more expensive than the rocket. 
2) lack of demand of oversize payloads, yes an sturdy BDB might work out here because its simple and easy to develop. but will have serious launchpad demand and something like an falcon heavy in disposable mode might well be cheaper for the low number of launches.