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I was expecting a bigger discount. Surely when SpaceX does a mission with a "CPO" first stage their mission cost is reduced by much more than 10%?Only a 10% discount for used stages.
If you read between the lines, it's pretty clear that they could offer a larger discount, but when you look at their launch backlog, they have way more demand than they can handle right now, so why not take the money and use it for more R&D?I was expecting a bigger discount. Surely when SpaceX does a mission with a "CPO" first stage their mission cost is reduced by much more than 10%?
What Shotwell envisions as a great year for SpaceX would mean launching every customer that wants to launch and is ready to launch this year. But, even Shotwell can’t fully predict how many launches that goal would entail. “Who knows how many launches that is? That could be up to two Falcon Heavy flights and maybe 24 Falcon 9 flights, but there is a bunch of movement in the manifest at the end of the year so I don’t know how many people need to fly this year or how many are ready. But we want to be prepared for everybody that wants to fly this year,” she says.
"...the final spin on Falcon 9 will be rolling out a little bit later than mid-year, and that is really the stage that rolls in all the lessons learned on reusability that we have learnt to date. Those vehicles will be highly reusable — 10 times at least. When those vehicles are flying regularly, we will start seeing more pressure around the launch price side,”
By "final spin" I assume she is referring to Block 5.
BO still seems many years behind SpaceX overall. Is there any public info showing that China is making real progress towards reusable first stages?Right now the company seems to have a five to ten year advantage over all competitors. The one exception, though it isn't a big one, is Blue Origin. It will be very interesting if two privately owned companies focused on getting humanity off planet outdoes every government sponsored launch company on the planet. China will be the one country to take reusability seriously
BO still seems many years behind SpaceX overall. Is there any public info showing that China is making real progress towards reusable first stages?
Amazing to see Ariadne publicly acknowledge that they do not intend to develop reusable rockets. They might as well put up a "Going Out of Business in 5 Years" sign.
The SpaceX global broadband internet satellite constellation that is being developed. I think Elon said the total number of satellites would eventually be around 4,000. We don't know much about it or far along the development is, but no satellites have been launched yet.What is starlink?
Gwynne Shotwell was at Stanford last night and was interviewed by Steve Jurvetson (on the BOD of both Tesla and SpaceX and huge investor in each) concerning all things SpaceX. No video of the interview has surfaced yet but here are some of the things talked about:
-larger Raptor currently under construction
-hope is for manufacturing facilities at all BFR launch pads
-confirmed that Boca is explicitly for BFR
-suggested that SpaceX could fund BFR and Starlink simultaneously, albeit with a bit longer timeline
-reiterated December for FH and possibly LC-40
-BFR P2P wouldn't be economical for short trips, but could be cheaper than economy flights for long trips
-fairings to be regularly reused by H2 2018
-S2 recovery will not actually attempt recovery, more just explore the orbital reentry regime
-confident that SpaceX can make carbon composite prop tanks operational, BFR could be ready before the stuff needed to live on Mars
-SpaceX will build the Martian infrastructure if they have to, would prefer other companies to start work on it
-not likely a coincidence that Musk started TBC, tunnels will be crucial until domes and terraforming on Mars
I'll post a video of the interview as soon as one surfaces. It looks like there was a lot of interesting information.
Thanks to NSF user "vaporcobra" for the list.
Thanks @Grendal . I started a thread about this earlier today, see Posts on reddit about Shotwell's talk at Stanford this week If the SpaceX mod wants to merge that thread with this one they are welcome to do so.
The SpaceX global broadband internet satellite constellation that is being developed. I think Elon said the total number of satellites would eventually be around 4,000. We don't know much about it or far along the development is, but no satellites have been launched yet.