totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[KSK]

51 minutes ago, tater said:

This is pretty interesting...That's the fairing recovery ship.

Big net, perhaps?

What that thing needs is about a kilometre of fairy lights and a metric boat-load of tinsel. If you're going to build a giant fairing catching net, you might as well build a sparkly one.

Edited December 19, 2017 by KSK

[tater]

 

[Nightfury]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

 

WHAAAT ?

I can't think of an explanation why they are now not landing the booster... the satellites should be the same as the others, or is there a huge weight difference ?

[tater]

Maybe they just don't have room for more boosters yet, lol.

[Jaff]

Seems backwards to waste millions because they can’t store a booster. 

 

Renting a a warehouse would be cheaper surely? 

 

SpaceX - literal translation = keeping you guessing all the fricken time 

Edited December 19, 2017 by Jaff
Missed a bit

[CatastrophicFailure]

Wait, I thought this was gonna be a barge landing still?

[tater]

It's core 1036.2, so it's reused, and might be simply thought to be end of lifespan.

[Nightfury]

Just now, tater said:

It's core 1036.2, so it's reused, and might be simply thought to be end of lifespan.

would be kinda sad, if they want to reuse them up to 3 times or more on upcomming block 5

[tater]

No 2 boosters are exactly the same at this point, SpaceX is constantly tweaking them until block 5. This isn't even a block 4 booster. Eventually they want to operationally standardize, I imagine, and oddball booster might get in the way of that.

[sevenperforce]

Unless I miss my guess, this is the first time a reused booster will be expended.

Wonder if this has anything to do with testing for FH.

[IncongruousGoat]

Boca Chica question- launching from BC, it looks like the only available launch corridor is directly east, over the Gulf of Mexico. Which begs the question-what the heck is SpaceX expecting to launch from that site? They can't reach the ISS, they can't reach polar or sun-synchronous orbit. They can reach GTO, but that's only a part of the launch market and not worth the investment of building a whole private launch complex.

[sevenperforce]

3 minutes ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Boca Chica question- launching from BC, it looks like the only available launch corridor is directly east, over the Gulf of Mexico. Which begs the question-what the heck is SpaceX expecting to launch from that site? They can't reach the ISS, they can't reach polar or sun-synchronous orbit. They can reach GTO, but that's only a part of the launch market and not worth the investment of building a whole private launch complex.

Surely they can still dog-leg to the ISS, with enough margin. And GTO is a big part of the launch market.

38 minutes ago, tater said:

It's core 1036.2, so it's reused, and might be simply thought to be end of lifespan.

The original planned position for JRTI was REALLY far south, presumably because of the trajectory requirements on the planned launch date, so it may be that the booster simply doesn't have enough margin to target JRTI in boostback. 

[IncongruousGoat]

4 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Surely they can still dog-leg to the ISS, with enough margin. And GTO is a big part of the launch market.

They might be able to dogleg, but it would be one heck of a high delta-V maneuver, and it could easily mess with their ability to RTLS, or even do a droneship landing. And, while GTO may be a big part, it just doesn't seem like enough of a big part. I just wish we knew more about the whole thing.

[CatastrophicFailure]

31 minutes ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Boca Chica question- launching from BC, it looks like the only available launch corridor is directly east, over the Gulf of Mexico. Which begs the question-what the heck is SpaceX expecting to launch from that site? They can't reach the ISS, they can't reach polar or sun-synchronous orbit. They can reach GTO, but that's only a part of the launch market and not worth the investment of building a whole private launch complex.

From what I’ve heard, most/all of their GTO flights will relocate to Boca (it is just a touch farther south, after all), leaving the Cape free for ISS/LEO/General stuff. 

Boca would also make a slightly better launch site for Mars, especially if they’re doing a lot of launches, which is the plan. 

[sevenperforce]

Speculation over on NSF....

• They are moving the fairing recovery ship, with its new fancy fairing-catchin', net-holdin' arms, to the West Coast.
• ZUMA was postponed due to unspecified fairing issues with the next fairing-equipped flight...which would be Iridium-4.
• The Iridium exec said, in a very cagey way, that the Iridium-4 booster wouldn't be recovered but he couldn't say why.
• The original placement of JRTI was MUCH farther downrange than would have been expected.

So the most likely explanation is that the Iridium-4 launch will test new, final hardware for Block 5 fairing recovery, hardware which was under review during the Zuma launch window and resulted in Zuma being postponed. The new hardware likely adds non-negligible dry mass, so the Block 3 booster would have difficulty lofting it while flying recoverable, leading them to strip off the landing legs and other first-stage recovery hardware and burn to completion instead of reserving propellant for boostback and landing. This will also improve the final orbit for the Iridium sats, essentially thanking Iridium for trusting them to use a flight-proven (and, in this case, multiple-flight-proven) booster.

Test as you fly. That's what SpaceX has always done.

Edited December 19, 2017 by sevenperforce

[tater]

How could they get the ship from FL to the West coast in 3 days? Nevermind, it's at LA harbor, not Canaveral.

 

Edited December 19, 2017 by tater

[sevenperforce]

20 minutes ago, tater said:

How could they get the ship from FL to the West coast in 3 days? Nevermind, it's at LA harbor, not Canaveral.

 

If you have to get a ship from FL to Vandy at short notice, just strap F9S1s to those four arms and to the prow, and rocket it over!

[tater]

Sounds like something to do in KSP tonight, lol.

[sevenperforce]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

Sounds like something to do in KSP tonight, lol.

I wonder what delta-v is required for what is, in essence, an ICBM launch from the east coast to the west coast. The lowest-energy transfer probably has a really high apoapse, which makes entry...challenging.

Could be the start of a nice challenge, over on the challenges subforum. "Using fully-recoverable rocket stages, take a boat from KSC to the water on the west coat of the KSC continent."

[PB666]

6 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

If you have to get a ship from FL to Vandy at short notice, just strap F9S1s to those four arms and to the prow, and rocket it over!

You could just ask scotty to beam it over.

[CatastrophicFailure]

17 minutes ago, PB666 said:

You could just ask scotty to beam it over.

Inappropriate SpaceBalls reference 

“Ah just kinna do it, Captain! Ah dun’t have the power!”

seriously, anyone know the displacement on Mr. Steven there? We’ve established Scotty topped out around 400 tons. Or was it tonnes?

[Ultimate Steve]

If I could successfully pull off one act of graffiti without being caught, I'd rename this boat to "Mr. Ultimate Steven."

Or "FairingMcFairingFace."

[sh1pman]

The pricing is interesting. Since SpaceX asks $62M for an F9 launch and $90M for FH launch, and the only major difference between the two are 2 S1 boosters on FH, is it correct to assume that a S1 booster costs, at most, $14M to produce? I don’t assume that they account for S1 reusability in their pricing yet.

[tater]

12 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

If I could successfully pull off one act of graffiti without being caught, I'd rename this boat to "Mr. Ultimate Steven."

Or "FairingMcFairingFace."

“Funny, it worked last time” (a GCU)

[sevenperforce]

59 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

The pricing is interesting. Since SpaceX asks $62M for an F9 launch and $90M for FH launch, and the only major difference between the two are 2 S1 boosters on FH, is it correct to assume that a S1 booster costs, at most, $14M to produce? I don’t assume that they account for S1 reusability in their pricing yet.

I don't think it's nearly so simple as that.

Note that the pricing for F9 is for "up to 5.5 mT to GTO" and the pricing for FH is "up to 8.0 mT to GTO", even though the theoretical maximum GTO performance of the two rockets is 8.3 mT and 26.7 mT to GTO, respectively. So the current pricing is for new boosters, but assumes that they will reserve enough performance for recovery.

This performance reservation allows SpaceX to stockpile boosters which it can offer at a reduced price, thus making money hand over fist while vastly undercutting all competing launch providers.

So the $14M/booster upcharge for FH should not be taken as an indicator of manufacture cost, but of manufacture cost amortized over the expected lifespan of reused boosters at the not-listed-above reused booster price.