Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[Albert VDS]

29 minutes ago, Rune said:

... but every data point counts, right? ...

Exactly, it could still give valuable information on how it handle the landing.

[RuBisCO]

Oh I found this part of the post landing conference call with Elon transcript very intresting

Quote

The Falcon Heavy essentially consists of the Falcon 9 with two modified boost stages attached as strap on boosters. That would be quite an exciting aerial ballet with the two side boosters dropping off and doing a symmetric pirouette back to the launch site. We’d need to have another landing spot for the two boosters and then a third one for the center core. I think most of the Falcon Heavy missions will see the center core land on a ship most likely. Its really going ridiculously fast. The transfer energy of Falcon Heavy will more than double that of Falcon 9. The maximum transfer energy is approaching a terajoule."

So if we are lucky next year we may see a Falcon Heavy land back the core and 2 boosters in one shot! The core (makes sense consider how fast it is going) would land on the barge in the ocean, the boosters would fly back to land. The second stage, I wonder if they could do orbital re-entry and recovery testing for it as well? A fully reusable rocket consisting of 4 parts does sound ungainly but perhaps they can make it work.  Imagine that a Falcon 9 Heavy is made fully reusable, lets say 10 resuses and 20 million refurbishment cost, so ~$30 million a launch, and it can lift say 25-30 tons in fully reusable mode, that is 450-550 $/lbs to orbit!  

 

[saabstory88]

2 hours ago, FishInferno said:

I always hoped that one of the early recovered stages would go to a museum, and if they were going to do that, it would probably be this one, because they have no further use for it.

Disassembling the First F9 v1.1 makes the most sense. They will never again fly one, which means that they will never again get to analyse the difference between a returned core which uses supercooled prop, and on that doesn't. It is way more valuable as data, than as a museum piece. Tracking the differences between the v1.1, and v1.1-FT post flight is absolutely critical. Seeing how two different vehicles perform under RTLS conditions is a gold mine. 

[SAI Peregrinus]

19 minutes ago, saabstory88 said:

Disassembling the First F9 v1.1 makes the most sense. They will never again fly one, which means that they will never again get to analyse the difference between a returned core which uses supercooled prop, and on that doesn't. It is way more valuable as data, than as a museum piece. Tracking the differences between the v1.1, and v1.1-FT post flight is absolutely critical. Seeing how two different vehicles perform under RTLS conditions is a gold mine. 

That and the v1.1 and the v1.1-FT share most of their parts, so differences/similarities between the wear on those shared parts will provide important data. They can always re-assemble the outer structure to make a museum piece.

Edited December 24, 2015 by SAI Peregrinus

[CatastrophicFailure]

Disassembly and museum display are not mutually exclusive, y'know  They can always put it back together.

 

I would think MOST things you see in a museum have already been "disassembled" and studied for all the SCIENCE they can get out of them.

[Rakaydos]

Check my logic here:

Lower-bound refurbishment costs
Once landed, it's going to have to be taken back to the VAB, which should be part of pad overhead costs- nothing new.
Then it has to be disassembled, and inspected.
Lets assume disassembily is exactly as expensive as assembily, and that the reuse checks are exactly as rigorus as preflight checks. Assuming nothing is wrong, and there is a relatively fixed amount of prevenative maintanance. (clean off the RP1 soot, ect)

it then has to be reassembled, mated to a new upperstage, taken back out to the pad and refueled.

Assembily costs x2, Inspection costs x2, Pad overhead as normal, plus Reuse Regular Maintance, plus Damage Replacement (which should approach 0, once they know what tends to break)

Does this sound like a reasonable interpretation of refurbishment costs?

[Shpaget]

24 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

Assembily costs x2, Inspection costs x2, Pad overhead as normal, plus Reuse Regular Maintance, plus Damage Replacement (which should approach 0, once they know what tends to break)

Does this sound like a reasonable interpretation of refurbishment costs?

Yes, as long as the manufacturing costs dwarf everything else combined.

Also, once more knowledge is gathered on what breaks and what lasts, there will likely be no need for complete disassembly after each flight.

[Elthy]

They wont disassemble it completly once they know how much stress the parts expierience. Afaik the Falcon 9 has higher structural margins than most rockets (no idea if thats still true for the full thrust version), also the Merlin allready demonstrated it can be reused several times. They wont need to do all check like before its first flight, those parts have proven that they do work correctly.

[Rakaydos]

15 minutes ago, Elthy said:

They wont disassemble it completly once they know how much stress the parts expierience. Afaik the Falcon 9 has higher structural margins than most rockets (no idea if thats still true for the full thrust version), also the Merlin allready demonstrated it can be reused several times. They wont need to do all check like before its first flight, those parts have proven that they do work correctly.

Keep in mind that something than can handle 9 firings without maintanace may start to develope problems after, say, 45 burns, as stuff like carbon buildup start to affect the functioning of the engine. Running some Rocket-Safe Draino through the engine (or equivilant) to clean it out after each launch is a basic precaution.

[codepoet]

Surely after a while the data that is gathered from post flight inspection will allow the development of a maintenance and service plan that means total inspection is not required.

So consider your car. The manufacturers provide a service plan that say how often the oil should be changed, how frequently to check the brakes, when the cam-belt needs to reset / replaced etc etc. You do not strip down the car and rebuild it every time you drive, however you also know that if you do not take you car in for regular serving it will eventually fail. When you do take it in for servicing the engineers only do the checks and replace the parts that need doing - based the data that has been gathered from previous inspections.

Now you might well be thinking "but this is a rocket - if my car fails I just have to wait for a tow, if this fails someone could die." However this stuff is all done to maintain aeroplanes at the moment, and it works. With enough experience and data I am sure it could be similarly done with rockets in order to manage the risks to the same sort of levels that the aviation industry does. 

I have said it before, but I think that SpaceX and only will really hit the big time when they start manufacturing rocket cores that they sell to others who operate them. If service and maintenance has become routine as I described above by then, then that work can be quantified and carried out by an agent too. Other parties might well get into the business of owning and operating the launch and landing pads. Such a scenario would really loosen up the market, and free SpaceX and their competitors to really develop the technology rather than worry about mission control. 

Edited December 25, 2015 by codepoet
typos etc

[Rune]

7 hours ago, codepoet said:

Surely after a while the data that is gathered from post flight inspection will allow the development of a maintenance and service plan that means total inspection is not required.

So consider your car. The manufacturers provide a service plan that say how often the oil should be changed, how frequently to check the brakes, when the cam-belt needs to reset / replaced etc etc. You do not strip down the car and rebuild it every time you drive, however you also know that if you do not take you car in for regular serving it will eventually fail. When you do take it in for servicing the engineers only do the checks and replace the parts that need doing - sometimes based the data that has been gathered from previous inspections.

Now you might well be thinking "but this is a rocket - if my car fails I just have to wait for a tow, if this fails someone could die." However this stuff is all done to maintain aeroplanes at the moment, and it works. With enough experience and data I am sure it could be similarly done with rockets in order to manage the risks to the same sort of levels that the aviation industry does. 

I have said it before, but I think that SpaceX and other will really hit the big time when they start manufacturing rocket cores that they sell to other who operate them. If service and maintenance has become routine as I described above by then, the that work can be quantified and carried out by an agent too. Other parties might well get into the business of owning and operating the launch and landing pads. Such a scenario would really loosen up the market, and free SpaceX and their competitors to really develop the technology rather than worry about mission control. 

Yeah, I would write something else, but you kind of said all that needed saying. With the possible exception of this: fundamentally, there is no difference between a rocket and a car/plane... both are thermodynamic machines extracting useful work from a chemical reaction.

 

Rune. The day we have so much experience with rockets as we have with cars will be the day space becomes commonplace.

[Mitchz95]

Does it strike anyone else as odd that the SpaceX website hasn't been updated at all since Monday? It still lists the Orbcomm mission as the next one on the roster, and you'd think they would mention the landing on the Falcon 9 page.

[CatastrophicFailure]

I imagine a lot of the staff is off for the holiday. They may also still be sleeping off the hangovers from the post-landing celebrations. 

[Exoscientist]

This image seems to show there was significant tilt just before landing that had to be cancelled:

 From:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/22/10649560/spacex-falcon-9-landing-launch-photos

 Anyone know how much of an angle there was just before touchdown?

Note that hovering makes it easier to cancel out such angles of tilt.

  Bob Clark

[SargeRho]

the tilt comes from the fact that it's moving sideways at that point, since it had to change its flightpath from going into the water to the landing pad.

[AngelLestat]

I have some things to add to what codepoet said.

Most of the cost of the falcon 9 first stage comes from materials, assembly, testing and the chance of failure.

When you buy something new, you are not 100% confident that it would work. It may have a manufacture problem or it may be damaged in your way home or you could do something wrong in the installation.  That is why the first time we test something new there are high uncertainties. Then the chance of failure is an extra that the company needs include in overall cost.

But if you already test it some times, you will be almost 100% sure that next time will work too. Even with those products that had a lot of wear in each use (if you realize few inspections before).

At the beginning, taking into account in the uncertainty that a client might have in use a recovered stage to launch their sat, spacex can offer these launches at half the price.  This has also an effect in the overall cost of the sat.  Because the client may reduce the quality and testing cost of the sat because in case it fails, they can launch another at a similar cost that if it was launched by normal means.

That is when a revolution on the cost reduction starts by a feedback cycle in each section evolved in the overall Sat cost.
 

 

 

[Rune]

48 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

I have some things to add to what codepoet said.

Most of the cost of the falcon 9 first stage comes from materials, assembly, testing and the chance of failure.

When you buy something new, you are not 100% confident that it would work. It may have a manufacture problem or it may be damaged in your way home or you could do something wrong in the installation.  That is why the first time we test something new there are high uncertainties. Then the chance of failure is an extra that the company needs include in overall cost.

But if you already test it some times, you will be almost 100% sure that next time will work too. Even with those products that had a lot of wear in each use (if you realize few inspections before).

At the beginning, taking into account in the uncertainty that a client might have in use a recovered stage to launch their sat, spacex can offer these launches at half the price.  This has also an effect in the overall cost of the sat.  Because the client may reduce the quality and testing cost of the sat because in case it fails, they can launch another at a similar cost that if it was launched by normal means.

That is when a revolution on the cost reduction starts by a feedback cycle in each section evolved in the overall Sat cost.
 

 

 

Yup, there is somewhat of a virtuous circle here. Lower launch costs are already having an effect on satellite cost, though nowadays the biggest contributor is the reduced weight of satellites that can do the same job as older birds (ion propulsion, better electronics). New huge constellations are being planned, and low-mass microsats and nanosats are already falling in cost dramatically by being produced in large numbers. When we really start seeing the results of SpaceX's cost reductions (and I will be the first to admit, that is some time away), we may expect to see the same increase in total launches with the corresponding decrease in unit cost.

The big question, right now, is how fast will the market increase the launch cadence, which is pretty critical for the whole thing. These cost reductions can only bring real results when we dramatically increase the amount of mass we launch annually. And we have some time to go before we get back to even the old glorious launch campaigns at the height of the cold war...

 

Rune. Thankfully, most steps today seem to go in the right direction.

[shynung]

In the aerospace industry, tests are done every time an airframe receives maintenance. This is to ensure that the fixes and repairs done to the craft won't suddenly undo themselves in flight. For old airframes, this goes double, since older airframes typically has higher chances of failure, due to wear and tear.

So, no, I don't think launch prices will go down due to the lessened need for testing. It would only go down if refurbishing a recovered rocket stage is cheaper than making a new one. Both types will be tested anyway, so no savings there.

Also, SpaceX probably wouldn't sell low-success-probability launches using old stages, even with half prices. Satellite owners typically object to have their expensive craft launched on even a moderately-unreliable vehicle. At least, it would drive up insurance costs, possibly negating the price reduction of the launch vehicle, rendering it moot.

Edited December 26, 2015 by shynung

[codepoet]

46 minutes ago, Rune said:

...

The big question, right now, is how fast will the market increase the launch cadence, which is pretty critical for the whole thing. These cost reductions can only bring real results when we dramatically increase the amount of mass we launch annually.

...

 

I wonder if anyone is aware of a dataset that would allow us to plot the total annual mass uplifted to LEO globally each year. I would be interested to see how that has changed over time.

Edited December 26, 2015 by codepoet
typo

[saabstory88]

9 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

This image seems to show there was significant tilt just before landing that had to be cancelled:

 

 From:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/22/10649560/spacex-falcon-9-landing-launch-photos

 Anyone know how much of an angle there was just before touchdown?

Note that hovering makes it easier to cancel out such angles of tilt.

  Bob Clark

The F9 landing profile is intended to be at an angle until the moment of touchdown. The booster is initially on a trajectory to splashdown off-shore when the main engine relights. Then the booster steered cross-range, until the moment of touchdown. This is not a mistake, but a safety measure.

[AngelLestat]

2 hours ago, shynung said:

In the aerospace industry, tests are done every time an airframe receives maintenance. This is to ensure that the fixes and repairs done to the craft won't suddenly undo themselves in flight. For old airframes, this goes double, since older airframes typically has higher chances of failure, due to wear and tear.

This example is taken from?
When you said "in the aerospace industry", you are talking of how things was done in the Shuttle age?
But this is a new change of perspective and tech, so you can not keep talking from the old aerospace industry.

Quote

So, no, I don't think launch prices will go down due to the lessened need for testing. It would only go down if refurbishing a recovered rocket stage is cheaper than making a new one. Both types will be tested anyway, so no savings there.

We still need to hear the spacex review from the recovered stage, but my prediction is that the need for refurbish and testing will be less than a 3% of the total cost of the stage once they made extra testing (2 years from now), in fact a new stage will need more testing than a recovered stage..  (remember what happen with the falcon9 explosion). 

Quote

Also, SpaceX probably wouldn't sell low-success-probability launches using old stages, even with half prices. Satellite owners typically object to have their expensive craft launched on even a moderately-unreliable vehicle. At least, it would drive up insurance costs, possibly negating the price reduction of the launch vehicle, rendering it moot.

Some might choose a new one, some others will see willingly the half price plus know that the stage work before.
This also means that spacex will be able to launch more rockets by year.

[Rakaydos]

6 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

This example is taken from?
When you said "in the aerospace industry", you are talking of how things was done in the Shuttle age?
But this is a new change of perspective and tech, so you can not keep talking from the old aerospace industry.

Presumably he's talking about modern AIRCRAFT. Because Aerospace includes Aero.

[AngelLestat]

But a 747 only receive maintenance after 200 or 300 trips. And the cost may be lower than the testing cost from when is new.

So I don't think that is the industry he is talking about.

[shynung]

Actually, yes, that's what I meant.

Also, aircraft post-maintenance testing costs are similar to post-production/quality assurance, because they're usually looking for defects rather than testing capability limits, like bending wings or running engines at full power until it breaks. Those kinds of tests are reserved for new prototypes, whose exact limits and capabilites aren't clearly known.

[Meecrob]

3 hours ago, shynung said:

In the aerospace industry, tests are done every time an airframe receives maintenance. This is to ensure that the fixes and repairs done to the craft won't suddenly undo themselves in flight. For old airframes, this goes double, since older airframes typically has higher chances of failure, due to wear and tear.

I have to make a slight adjustment to what you said here. I know what you mean, but the difference I am going to say is applicable to the thread.

 

They do not treat old airframes differently, they look at each individual frame and assess the maintenance required. In theory and practice, an old airframe has had the proper maintenance performed on it and thus does not require extra care. Wear and tear has literally been removed and replaced. There are aircraft 5 years old and 25 years old going through C checks. The crew does not go "oh crap, this is an old plane! We're in for overtime!" With properly scheduled maintenance, a 25 year old plane is the same as a 5 year old plane. As to SpaceX, their job now is to determine what the "properly scheduled maintenance" is. In a sense age does not matter. Specific parts may need replacement, but that is all part of the maintenance plan. The only time age matters is when the OEM stops producing those parts and an engineer is required to certify the aging parts, or a suitable replacement for flight. It is a measure of whether it is cost-wise to do so. SpaceX is going to have their hands full with developing a maintenance schedule and i wish them all the best!