A Reusable Rocket

The latest from SpaceX.

I wonder what the performance penalty is for carrying the deorbit/landing propellant?

[Update a couple minutes later]

Clark Lindsey is taking notes from the webcast of Elon Musk’s talk at the National Press Club today:

/– Exciting announcement to make but first preface motivation for SpaceX
/– His goals since college were to contribute to development of the Internet, electric vehicles, and expanding humanity into space.
/– Discusses why space is important.
/– Life becoming multiplanetary – next stage of life’s development that started with birth 3.8B years ago
/– Next natural step.
/– Life insurance – something humans could do or a natural disaster could destroy life on earth
/– What is an appropriate expenditure on life insurance – probably a 1/4 per cent of GDP is reasonable
/– One of the greatest adventures humanity could pursue.
/– Got to be more to life than just solving problems.
/– We all went to the Moon with the Apollo crews
/– Need some of those things.
/– Makes you feel good about the world.

More to follow, no doubt.

[Update a few minutes later]

Marcia Smith is covering it. Apparently he’s proposing a business venture for a Mars settlement.

Cool.

[Update a few minutes later]

There’s a thread running over at NASA Space Flight. Not that this has much of anything to do with NASA space flight.

[Update a couple minutes later]

More notes from Clark:

/– Pivotal break-through is a fully reusable, rapid turnaround rocket
/– 2-3% of expendable initial total mass gets to orbit
/– Adding reusability cuts into that 2-3%
/– Very tough engineering problem. Wasn’t sure for awhile that it could be solved. In past year decided that it could be.
/– SpaceX will try to do it. No guarantee of success.
/– Calculations and simulations say it should work.
/– See simulation (video above).
/– Some inaccuracies in animation, including some due to proprietary techniques.
/– Powered vertical landing of both stages.
/– Falcon 9 is the lowest cost rocket in world at ~$50M
/– Fuel is only about $200,000
/– So if could reuse it would lead to 100 times reduction in cost.
/– Fully reusable rapid turnaround is absolutely required for practical spaceflight and making humanity multiplanetary.
/– A little base is not interesting.
/– Definitely going to be an adventure to make this happen.
/– Doesn’t think mining anything on Mars to bring back to earth is viable.
/– If you could make moving to Mars cost around $500k, that would be a viable business model.
/– If only 1 in a million decided to do that, that’s 8000 people. Probably number would be far higher.

Q&A:
/– Near term – use for sat launches, ISS resupply, etc. Have $3B in orders. Moderately profitable.
Have to stay profitable to make all this happen. Most orders of any launch provider in the world.
/– Made competition is China, which has told them SpaceX they intend to compete with them.
/– Role of govt?
US space spending still leads the world. Budget crisis is limiting this.
Expect compression of all budgets including space.
/– Launch facilities- plan on developing a new commercial launch site.
/– NASA has been a major benefit to SpaceX.
/– USAF wants to maintain ULA monopoly through 2018. SpaceX has 1% lobbying power of Boeing/Lockheed-Martin
/– Russian launch situation wrt ISS?
SpaceX launch will probably be delayed until crew with proper training is on board.
Probably in January assuming current launch schedule met.
/– Soyuz is a good vehicle with good record.
Lot of experienced people are retiring so wonder about long term problems with Russian rockets.
China is the long term competitor.
Little progress in Russian technology since Soviet times.
Confident that SpaceX can handle Chinese competition.
/– Can SpaceX fast track launch to ISS?
Could launch astronauts on next flight if acceptable safety level was same as Shuttle.
Need launch escape system to exceed that.
Will take 2-3 years to build and test the LES.
Using a system that also allows for powered landings.
/– With NASA funding, are you transparent as NASA projects?
Generally a very open company.
Have to obey ITAR limits.
NASA and FAA get very detailed information. Both have oversight roles.

Emphasis mine.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s more:

/– Can you sustain a tragic failure?
Think it will be OK.
Other modes of transport suffer accidents with loss of life.
There would be no transport if no risk allowed.
/– Enough private market business to sustain SpaceX.
SpaceX is largest customer. But have a big manifest of private orders.
Even a pencil maker probably sells 40% to govt. customers.
/– Getting a job at SpaceX?
NASA spending only about $300M on commercial crew, and that’s spread over 4 firms.
Looking for engineers who have worked on and solved real hardware problems.
Very demanding environment.
/– Climate change debate?
Can’t be 100% sure of human caused global warming.
But essentially running an experiment to see if putting large amounts of CO2 into atmosphere will have an effect.
Oil is a finite resource. Need to plan ahead for other alternatives.
Lean towards sustainable technologies. Lean slightly away from non-sustainable tech.
/– Tech loans and Tesla?
Solyndra has become a political football.
Portfolio investment programs – must assume that some firms in a portfolio will fail.
A number of top notch venture capitalist lost on Solyndra as well.
Tesla doesn’t face same problem that Solyndra did: commodity price collapse due to Chinese competition.
China probably put $40B into its solar industry.
Elon expected solar prices to fall and didn’t think Solyndra was a good bet.
Solar City is doing super well. Growing at 50-100% per year and positive cash flow.
Just show up at board meetings and hear the good news.
/– Innovation in the US?
Least bad at encouraging innovation.
Silicon Valley is great at that.
Still could be better. Avoid excess regulation. Tax system reform
Small companies are like tadpoles that die very easily.
Governments tend to protect big companies which don’t in fact need protection.

You don’t say…

[Update a few minutes later]

Todd Romberger: “Interesting that a private company has more clearly stated goals and strategies for enabling the settlement of space than NASA itself.”

[Update a few minutes later]

Lyrics from the song in the video:

They will not force us,
They will stop degrading us,
They will not control us,
We will be victorious.

“Burn the land and boil the sea
You can’t take the sky from me…”

[Update about quarter to three Eastern]

CSPAN has the video. It’s about an hour.

[Update early afternoon Pacific]

Marcia Smith has the story up now.

49 thoughts on “A Reusable Rocket”

  1. Awesome stuff! See, the private sector shouldn’t just do the “routine stuff” and let “NASA” do the “difficult stuff”. SLS, eat Falcon’s dust!

  2. If they can do this based on CRS and / or Bigelow resupply funding and / or an IPO, or if Bezos is successful, then we may not need an exploration program to get RLVs!

  3. Very exciting. Did Musk say anything about the payload to orbit of a reusable F9, or when they might start test flights?

  4. I like his analogy about life insurance and how 1/4 of one percent of the GDP should suffice.

    Personally, I pay about 1/5 of one percent of my gross income each year for a very good policy.

  5. I wonder if the old space smear merchants will try to tar SpaceX as another Solyndra, benefiting from a cozy relationship with the Obama administration to the detriment of the “real” space industry.

  6. Interesting that they used an anticapitalist anthem (and a darn catchy one) for the video.

    Musk is one of the “fat cats” that they want to give a “heart attack”.

    In any case, best of luck to them. It’s pretty ambitious.

  7. Kistler wasn’t able to attract the follow-on investment required by their COTS milestone schedule.

    It’s not enough to have a good idea, you must be able to show how you’re going to turn it into a profitable business. With VC’s that typically means you have to show that you have the right management in place to execute your business plan. Apparently they were not able to do that.

  8. Kistler’s problem wasn’t COTS, or funding in general, it was management. Mr. French ran both Rocketplane, and Kistler into the ground.

  9. From Martha Smith’s article:

    After a speech that focused on the long-term future, Musk replied to questions that were mostly about the near-term. He expressed gratitude to NASA, saying that SpaceX would not be where it is today without the agency’s support. The Air Force was another matter. Saying he was surprised the Air Force did not have more interest in SpaceX, he lamented the fact that the Air Force plans to extend its contract with the Boeing-Lockheed Martin United Launch Alliance until 2018 because of concerns about preserving the industrial base. “For some reason we’re not included in the industrial base,” he asserted, even though SpaceX rockets are American-made while the Atlas 5 uses Russian rocket engines and other non-U.S. hardware.

    I love SpaceX but they need to step up their flight rate (no launches likely this year) and demonstrate their reliablility. Until they do that, they’re unlikely to get the military to put a billion dollar payloads on their boosters.

    In some ways, the Air Force reminds me of the poor battered wife who keeps going back to her husband after he beats the crap out of her. It doesn’t matter how many times a company suffers massive overruns and schedule delays (cough: Lockheed), the Air Force will keep going back hoping that next time will be different. I saw it while I was in the service and even more now that I’m a contractor.

  10. I love SpaceX but they need to step up their flight rate (no launches likely this year) and demonstrate their reliablility.

    Which would be a lot easier if NASA started buying propellant in orbit ASAP.

  11. Nice video, I am more interested in their short term progress than long term aspirations. It is great they have long term specific goals, unlike NASA, but I’m withholding an increase of enthusiasm until they dock with the ISS.

  12. A very catchy tune, with great lyrics. The video ends with “we will be vic-tooo-ri-ous”! I think we should a buy it on Amazon so we’ll be helping Blue Origin too. 🙂

  13. Fully reusable rapid turnaround is absolutely required for practical spaceflight and making humanity multiplanetary.

    I think this is probably true, and not just as an ideal. However, I think one mistake often made is assuming that we must acheive this goal in the first step. I think there is value in simply being able to recover large pieces for analysis and salvage. Adding such capability is much cheaper than adding capability to fully reuse, and far cheaper than the capability for rapid turnaround. Like any elephant, if this is taken slowly, you just might eat the whole thing.

    What I saw of Dragon, I think they came up with a cost effective way of applying TPS. If they can do the same with the Falcon segment, then you solved a portion of the recovery problem. You’ll also need propellant to help control entry, but then you have a simple problem of how much added TPS/Propellant weight (and ground recovery assets) can you implement and still hit your cost points. That will gain you big pieces to analyze for performance gains and maybe salvage.

    Once you learn to recover large pieces well, then you can start finding a good way to recover with less damage. I’m afraid if you try to do it all at once, you’ll spend too much time on the chalkboard losing income, because you’re having to make too many guesses at the environmental effects to the recovered stage.

  14. MPM,

    [[[Which would be a lot easier if NASA started buying propellant in orbit ASAP.]]]

    Gee, that makes it sound like they are just another government contractor…

    A far better way would be to just start flying their Dragonlabs. The Biotech industry is waiting for SpaceX to move beyond NASA.

  15. More business would obviously help. “Advice” that is meant to sabotage the prospects of commercial space won’t.

    We will be vic-toooo-ri-ous!

  16. Gee, that makes it sound like they are just another government contractor…

    You’d rather have them launch it using a single source vehicle provided by the aerospace major with MSFC’s fingers all over it I presume. Someone has got to launch that propellant anyway. You might as well do it competitively.

  17. Curios if they had some spare mass to orbit for a mission they could cram a science pallet in the second stage for microgravity research. An experiment that only needed short duration to run a few quick experiments could hitch a ride. Or maybe a door could open up on the side and chunk a few microsats out.

  18. Great video and concept, but I’m getting impatient about seeing more actual flights.

    Don’t get me wrong: I’m very excited about SpaceX, and wish them every success. That said, however…

    While SpaceX is mostly being paid to provide a service, the loans and payments to Tesla and Solar City smack of crony capitalism to me. I don’t like that phrase. I prefer the term “fascism”. The meaning of that word has been distorted by misuse and overuse. It describes a political/economic system, and does not automatically imply jackboots and armbands.

    In Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism, he said that Mussolini, who was a socialist in his youth, invented fascism as a sort of “new, improved” version of socialism. He took the advantages of capitalism and harnessed them in service to the State. The very concept of “public-private partnerships” is inherently fascist.

    In my opinion, fascism has largely triumphed and is now the dominant economic system throughout the world. China is basically a fascist country, even though they still use the symbols and trappings of communism. The People’s Liberation Army owns and operates businesses.

    I am concerned about Elon Musk accepting so much government assistance. The more the government assists his businesses, the more control they can assert. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

    I wrote a similar comment a few months ago on a SpaceX thread at NSF.com, and it was promptly deleted as off-topic. That’s not the first time that has happened. “Off Topic” is my middle name. I think I may be on thin ice over there…

  19. MPM,

    I fail to see how turning SpaceX into a even more of government contractor then it is will advance space commerce.

  20. rickl,

    You are on the right track. The more government invests in an industry, the more difficult it is for that industry to be competitive globally.

    A good case history would be the “help” the U.S. government gave to the American merchant marine, starting after World War I. Ever notice all the, Cruise ships, Container ships bulk carriers and Supertankers built in the USA and flying the U.S. flag? That is the future of New Space if they don’t break their NASA dependence.

  21. >>Great video and concept, but I’m getting impatient about seeing more actual flights.

    Exactly.

    As they say in software development, sometimes shipping the product is the most important feature the product can have ..

  22. I meant to mention the “too big to fail” banks which “required” taxpayer bailouts in my earlier comment. They were super duper big shots with friends in high places.

    That is pure, unadulterated, 200 proof fascism.

  23. Running like hell from NASA sounds like the best thing SpaceX could do. I think the only reason they’re not has nothing to do with money.. it’s pity.

    I think you’re right that it isn’t about the money, and wrong about pity.

    Using NASA accelerates SpaceX’s manned program schedule. SpaceX has grown by 50% to about 1500 people over the last year, and it’s a good bet that a significant number of those 500 new hires are former NASA people.

    Three things need to happen.

    1) SpaceX must deliver people to and from the ISS safely
    2) someone else must do the same
    3) Bigelow then must launch an independent space station

    By the time those three things happen, SpaceX should be close to having some reuseable Falcon. They could cycle a four- or five-launch pattern of Bigelow modules, propellant, people, satellites, and cargo – and wouldn’t need NASA at all.

  24. 1) SpaceX must deliver people to and from the ISS safely
    2) someone else must do the same

    And this had better happen quickly because Bigelow today laid off over half his workforce.

  25. “And this had better happen quickly because Bigelow today laid off over half his workforce.”

    Who will build the toilets?

  26. They have done so with the Falcon I, which is on hold because of lack of demand. But so far the only Falcon 9 launches have been for NASA, although commercial customers are waiting.

    Yes, I saw the article about the Bigelow Aerospace layoffs. Looks like he is cutting his burn rate until someone gets around to providing him with a HSF option, which unfortunately, looks like it will be a several years from now thanks to NASA’s slow motion timetable. So much for CCDev “accelerating” commercial HSF…

  27. I can’t fault Elons decision not to allow humans on the current Dragon since it is fully capable (yes, fully.) If Bigelow had a customer today and both men were willing, Dragon could start servicing them immediately.

    The real bottleneck still seems to me to be launch facilities.

  28. Ken,

    Bigelow has half a dozen customers. What he don’t have is spacelift thanks to NASA hogging it for ISS.

    1. Accurate to some extent but not total. SpaceX is doing things incrementally. The ISS demonstration has to be done before any commitment to any similar facility. If I were Bigelow, I’d take the risk and put a suitable target in orbit and contract with SpaceX to demonstrate both cargo and crew with the existing Dragon (not waiting for the abort system.) What would others think? They’d be calling them both too dangerous cowboys not to be trusted.

      You are right about the launch facility as a bottleneck. I’m sure Elon is more aware than either of us. These are dangerous times for a company that has to proceed carefully. I expect things will improve significantly in the future and the govt will not be such an impediment for SpaceX.

  29. Ken,

    Bigelow Aerospace already has TWO targets in orbit, Genesis 1 and 2. No docking module, but a rendezvous with Genesis 2 would accomplish as much as SpaceX’s COTS 2 flight…

    Here is a link via Bigelow Aerospace to its current position.

    http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/genesis-2-tracking.php

    According to a recent interview the external camera’s are still working and gather research data for Robert Bigelow. I am sure Robert Bigelow wouldn’t object if SpaceX wanted to come close enough to have the Dragon’s picture taken 🙂

    1. No docking module

      Now that’s thinking like a businessman. Does anybody make money in your scenario?

      OTOH, a BA330 (which has two different docking modules) becomes a money maker bringing us back to the original thought.

      1. Ken,

        Genesis I and II were only designed as sub-scale test modules and they have performed brilliantly in that regard. But no docking modules were added because they were not intended to be human tended. When they were designed in the Pre-COTS/CCDev days Elon Musk was promising crewed Dragon flights by 2010, a goal he would have probably met, but for COTS.

        But that is one lesson Robert Bigelow has learned, don’t trust New Space hype nor New Space policies. That is why I suspect he has decided to go into a holding pattern until the New Space industry, or at least firms like SpaceX and Boeing, decide that its time to move beyond NASA.

  30. Regarding launch facilities. Assume SpaceX is willing to pay the cost for an independent site. Does regulatory red tape make that harder than using the two (is the island three) government sites?

  31. Ken,

    I could think of a couple where red tape would be minimal and which would provide real operation advantages. It depends entirely on how soon SpaceX is planning to move beyond NASA.

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