Alan Boyle has a story on today’s hoped-for test of first-stage recovery by SpaceX.
[Update a few minutes later]
Amanda Wills interviewed Elon last night.
3 thoughts on “Reusability”
Comments are closed.
Alan Boyle has a story on today’s hoped-for test of first-stage recovery by SpaceX.
[Update a few minutes later]
Amanda Wills interviewed Elon last night.
Comments are closed.
Life is a risky endeavor. Risk is one of the hardest things to understand. For example it’s often less risky to include more risky options in a mix of options than not. It can be shown that leads to a better result than avoiding all more risky options.
One of the most remarkable things is that regardless of whether 1st stage reentry/hover worked on this flight they’ve already trailblazed new territory. This is the first flight of an orbital launcher with landing legs on the first stage. That’s a big deal. It further validates SpaceX’s testing MO. If SpaceX gets free 1st stage reusability test flights, in a 100% operational flight profile, for free with every Dragon launch that is tremendous. And with these they can crash each and every one with no consequence, as that is the expected fate of the first stage regardless. Ultimately they’ll get a testing program that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars if they did it themselves but will cost less than a tenth that because customers are paying for the flights.
And because of the way they’ve developed the rocket they’ve managed and contained the risk into the best possible area for their customers. Look at a hypothetical Blue Origin launcher, there will be substantial risk for any customer of their vehicle for the first few flights due to lack of experience and real-world flight validation. With SpaceX they already have many flights’ worth of track record and experience in launching in the expendable(ish) profile, so there’s little risk to payloads of riding the F9 v1.1. The vast majority of the risk is pushed onto just the 1st stage return part of the flight, which puts that risk on SpaceX, not on their customers.
That’s always been the genius of SpaceX. Spaceflight isn’t about avoiding risk, nor is it about embracing risk. Doing it well is about risk management. SpaceX has been carefully playing the risk management and mitigation game from day 1. They acquired expertise in building launch vehicles by building smaller ones first, then they used that to build commercially viable vehicles. They started with the basic components of a manned capsule and have been essentially testing and validating them on unmanned cargo flights. They built a fundamentally reusable vehicle and flew it in an expendable mode for several flights to prove the hardware. They’ve flown and tested the majority of the components of the Falcon Heavy, further reducing the risk of that first flight. And so on.
When you accept risk and plan for it you can manage it and mitigate it thoughtfully. When, as with NASA, you reject and shun risk you tend to ignore it or end up forced to embrace it, leading to hugely flawed designs with an incoherent approach to risk (like the Shuttle, or SLS).
Well said Robin. It may be that SpaceX provides case studies that will go well beyond just space. Perhaps even revitalizing a generation of industries.