Falcon 9 Reuse Leaders

[scaesare]

There were a bunch of individual "reuse" threads, so creating a catchall here as undoubtedly the records will continue to climb, as SpaceX is now certifying boosters for up tp 40 reuses...

B1062 gets its 20th launch (as @Grendal mentioned in his launch announcement)

Ars article about it here with some fun/interesting quotes:

This particular rocket has not undergone any extended maintenance or long-term grounding. It has flown an average of once every two months since debuting three-and-a-half years ago.

Remarkably, this will be the sixth Falcon 9 launch in less than eight days, more flights than SpaceX's main US rival, United Launch Alliance, has launched in 17 months.

More than a third of SpaceX's Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy missions, a number that will stand at 332 after Friday night's flight, have launched in the past year.

 

[JB47394]

SpaceX is now certifying boosters for up tp 40 reuses...

As I understand things, that's an FAA certification. That is, SpaceX needs to convince the folks at the FAA that the boosters are safe for reuse. They had to go through that for the first reuse, then for 10 reuses, then 20, and now, apparently, 40. NASA does the certification for manned flights, and they allow astronauts to fly on boosters with at most 5 flights when going to the ISS. I assume that they don't have a say on private manned flights.

A tweet from Tory Bruno at ULA was quoted in the comments. It attempted to analyze the economics of reusable rockets, observing that a reusable rocket is more expensive to build than an expendable one, so unless you get at least 10 flights from your fleet on average, it's not worth the effort. He says that SpaceX came to the same conclusion when they were looking at this.

I wonder if Tory has been blinded by his understanding of expendable boosters, thinking that trying to reuse them would be a nightmare. Elon, in contrast, examined booster reuse from the ground up, ensuring that the fleet average would ultimately be well over 10 flights each.

Still, I'm shocked that SpaceX apparently doesn't even break even on boosters until they've flown 10 times (that number may be lower now that they have experience with flying them). I guess that's why they want to get away from Falcon 9; their first approach to reuse is too expensive. Drone ships, fairing recovery vessels, dock services, transport, etc. RTLS must be a huge win for them when they can do it. So Starship is designed to be fully reusable with booster RTLS and almost instant turnaround.

The third iteration of rockets from SpaceX will involve a gigantic gatling gun.

 

[scaesare]

As I understand things, that's an FAA certification. That is, SpaceX needs to convince the folks at the FAA that the boosters are safe for reuse. They had to go through that for the first reuse, then for 10 reuses, then 20, and now, apparently, 40. NASA does the certification for manned flights, and they allow astronauts to fly on boosters with at most 5 flights when going to the ISS. I assume that they don't have a say on private manned flights.

A tweet from Tory Bruno at ULA was quoted in the comments. It attempted to analyze the economics of reusable rockets, observing that a reusable rocket is more expensive to build than an expendable one, so unless you get at least 10 flights from your fleet on average, it's not worth the effort. He says that SpaceX came to the same conclusion when they were looking at this.

I wonder if Tory has been blinded by his understanding of expendable boosters, thinking that trying to reuse them would be a nightmare. Elon, in contrast, examined booster reuse from the ground up, ensuring that the fleet average would ultimately be well over 10 flights each.

Still, I'm shocked that SpaceX apparently doesn't even break even on boosters until they've flown 10 times (that number may be lower now that they have experience with flying them). I guess that's why they want to get away from Falcon 9; their first approach to reuse is too expensive. Drone ships, fairing recovery vessels, dock services, transport, etc. RTLS must be a huge win for them when they can do it. So Starship is designed to be fully reusable with booster RTLS and almost instant turnaround.

The third iteration of rockets from SpaceX will involve a gigantic gatling gun.

That 10X factor for booster cost seems odd to me. Perhaps the R&D to design the entire system initially would add that, but once in production, it's hard to imagine the incremental cost of the parts making it 1000% of an expendable booster. Elon is famous for determining the overall cost of something to be close to its materials cost. I can't see 10X as much "stuff" there...

Maybe for ULA's cost structure... but I'd bet not for SpaceX's.

 

[JB47394]

That 10X factor for booster cost seems odd to me.

Like I mentioned above, they have operational costs for reuse, primarily their navy, but also land transportation, storage, inspection, and so on. Remember: no extended maintenance. They require staff to perform various inspections to make sure that they know how the boosters are aging, inventorying, scheduling, maintenance, whatever. There's an entire ecosystem devoted to reusing boosters, and SpaceX made sure to eliminate that when they designed Starship.

I think Yoda would give us a "Do or do not. There is no 'try'" quote if we brought up rocket reuse with him. Tory Bruno is probably of a "try" mindset, which means that ULA won't ever get any benefit from reuse.

 

[Grendal]

That 10X factor for booster cost seems odd to me. Perhaps the R&D to design the entire system initially would add that, but once in production, it's hard to imagine the incremental cost of the parts making it 1000% of an expendable booster. Elon is famous for determining the overall cost of something to be close to its materials cost. I can't see 10X as much "stuff" there...

Maybe for ULA's cost structure... but I'd bet not for SpaceX's.

I couldn't agree more. Somewhere around 2014 it was said that a Merlin engine cost $1 million each. That was prior to the mass production (in rocket engine terms) that SpaceX is currently doing. Knowing SpaceX and Elon, I would guess that each Merlin is down to $500,000 each or less. SpaceX builds about 4 to 5 boosters a year and are up to 100+ second stages. So SpaceX is building 180 to 200 Merlins a year at this point. So I can easily see that the mass production advantages outweigh the original low production costs that Tory Bruno deals with. At this point, SpaceX really understands the costs involved in their business and can accordingly price for a specific amount of profit with every launch. If I were in Gwynne Shotwell's shoes, I would be balancing Falcon 9 profits from everything else: Starlink launches, Starlink manufacturing, Starlink R&D, Starship development, Raptor engines, Raptor engine manufacturing, and Boca Chica facility development. Hopefully the approximately $5 billion a year in Starlink income is offsetting those massive costs.

Back to Tory Bruno and his viewpoint. There is nothing ULA is doing that comes close to understanding what SpaceX Falcon 9 manufacturing and launching is doing. I'm sure that some ULA budget analyst came up with the "it would take ten reuses to cover the upgraded costs." That is running the numbers from their cost viewpoint. Which is a very different strategy from what SpaceX is actually doing.

 

[scaesare]

As I understand things, that's an FAA certification. That is, SpaceX needs to convince the folks at the FAA that the boosters are safe for reuse. They had to go through that for the first reuse, then for 10 reuses, then 20, and now, apparently, 40. NASA does the certification for manned flights, and they allow astronauts to fly on boosters with at most 5 flights when going to the ISS. I assume that they don't have a say on private manned flights.

A tweet from Tory Bruno at ULA was quoted in the comments. It attempted to analyze the economics of reusable rockets, observing that a reusable rocket is more expensive to build than an expendable one, so unless you get at least 10 flights from your fleet on average, it's not worth the effort. He says that SpaceX came to the same conclusion when they were looking at this.

I wonder if Tory has been blinded by his understanding of expendable boosters, thinking that trying to reuse them would be a nightmare. Elon, in contrast, examined booster reuse from the ground up, ensuring that the fleet average would ultimately be well over 10 flights each.

Still, I'm shocked that SpaceX apparently doesn't even break even on boosters until they've flown 10 times (that number may be lower now that they have experience with flying them). I guess that's why they want to get away from Falcon 9; their first approach to reuse is too expensive. Drone ships, fairing recovery vessels, dock services, transport, etc. RTLS must be a huge win for them when they can do it. So Starship is designed to be fully reusable with booster RTLS and almost instant turnaround.

The third iteration of rockets from SpaceX will involve a gigantic gatling gun.

(emphasis mine)

To launch rockets from, or armed with one?

Either way, Excitement Guaranteed.

 

[scaesare]

Like I mentioned above, they have operational costs for reuse, primarily their navy, but also land transportation, storage, inspection, and so on. Remember: no extended maintenance. They require staff to perform various inspections to make sure that they know how the boosters are aging, inventorying, scheduling, maintenance, whatever. There's an entire ecosystem devoted to reusing boosters, and SpaceX made sure to eliminate that when they designed Starship.

I think Yoda would give us a "Do or do not. There is no 'try'" quote if we brought up rocket reuse with him. Tory Bruno is probably of a "try" mindset, which means that ULA won't ever get any benefit from reuse.

I still have a hard time believing inspection, a barge trip, and a ride on trailer make it 10X though.

I suspect you are right, and Bruno is allowing his pre-conceived conclusion to drive the reasoning.

 

[scaesare]

I couldn't agree more. Somewhere around 2014 it was said that a Merlin engine cost $1 million each. That was prior to the mass production (in rocket engine terms) that SpaceX is currently doing. Knowing SpaceX and Elon, I would guess that each Merlin is down to $500,000 each or less. SpaceX builds about 4 to 5 boosters a year and are up to 100+ second stages. So SpaceX is building 180 to 200 Merlins a year at this point. So I can easily see that the mass production advantages outweigh the original low production costs that Tory Bruno deals with. At this point, SpaceX really understands the costs involved in their business and can accordingly price for a specific amount of profit with every launch. If I were in Gwynne Shotwell's shoes, I would be balancing Falcon 9 profits from everything else: Starlink launches, Starlink manufacturing, Starlink R&D, Starship development, Raptor engines, Raptor engine manufacturing, and Boca Chica facility development. Hopefully the approximately $5 billion a year in Starlink income is offsetting those massive costs.

Back to Tory Bruno and his viewpoint. There is nothing ULA is doing that comes close to understanding what SpaceX Falcon 9 manufacturing and launching is doing. I'm sure that some ULA budget analyst came up with the "it would take ten reuses to cover the upgraded costs." That is running the numbers from their cost viewpoint. Which is a very different strategy from what SpaceX is actually doing.

Your point about SpaceX's relentless drive to reduce costs undoubtedly plays in here. If it ever was a 10X factor in costs for reusability, that was probably day 1 R&D + engineering/infrastructure costs, and it's fallen drastically from there.

That's another significant difference between the players, the traditional companies have very little incentive to reduce costs... as a matter of fact I'd suggest it's been in their best interests not to. If you are getting a cost-plus contract and your chunk is $250million, that looks reasonable for a $20billion program... not so much for a $500million program...

 

[JB47394]

I still have a hard time believing inspection, a barge trip, and a ride on trailer make it 10X though.

I wasn't asserting that it costs 10X today. Elon and Tory both speculated that it would be 10X. It may be only 5X or even 2X today, but as @Grendal observes, UAL is not SpaceX. Even SpaceX didn't know if that 10X number could come down much, but they were of a mind to find out because of Elon's ambitions. Tory has no such ambitions, so he takes the 10X number at face value and probably would be content to live with it - especially, as you say, with cost-plus contracting.

 

[scaesare]

I wasn't asserting that it costs 10X today. Elon and Tory both speculated that it would be 10X. It may be only 5X or even 2X today, but as @Grendal observes, UAL is not SpaceX. Even SpaceX didn't know if that 10X number could come down much, but they were of a mind to find out because of Elon's ambitions. Tory has no such ambitions, so he takes the 10X number at face value and probably would be content to live with it - especially, as you say, with cost-plus contracting.

Didn't mean to imply you did... apologies if it came across that way.