Elon’s Mars Plans

He had an AMA yesterday. I’d be more interested in this, if I gave a rat’s patoot about Mars.

I found this bit more interesting:

Musk was asked about the reusability of the Falcon 9 rockets currently flying. He stated “I think the F9 boosters could be used almost indefinitely, so long as there is scheduled maintenance and careful inspections.” He emphasized that the current Falcon 9 rockets in production would be retired soon and that their next version would be designed for easy reuse. The new Falcon 9, which he calls “Falcon 9 Block 5” – the fifth and final version in the Falcon series, is scheduled to have its first flight in six to eight months.

I assume the cores for the heavy will be of similar design. I wonder how often “careful inspections” need to occur? Every flight?

8 thoughts on “Elon’s Mars Plans”

  1. Well, Shotwell is on record saying that their current iteration might get 2 reuses out of it, and so far they have demonstrated 0. Jumping from 2 to indefinite in one iteration ? Just your regular Musk hyperoptimism.
    IMO long way to go before this becomes more economical than Shuttle SRBs ever were.

  2. Mars solves the financing problem. But no worries, in 20 or 30 years people will figure this out.

    1. Ken pardon me for relying on my memory of your previous points. But isn’t your point that people going and living there will create a market wouldn’t the same thing apply to any location you can put large amounts of people be it a Cloud City on Venus, on the surface/ orbiting the moon, or orbiting/co orbiting with a asteroid/icy Rock to mine . The latter is I believe our hosts preferred location, of not resorting to be in a Gravity Well.

  3. The inspection schedule will be a work in progress for a very long time, and it will tell us a great deal about the ins and outs of space flight vehicle reusability. There is (or was) a great deal of data from the Shuttle, and I hope that it has been preserved. A great deal can be learned from comparing the two, given the vast differences in flight regimes and basic design approaches. This, in turn, will inform future designs, and chart the course for rational improvements in safety and mission assurance. This is where the evolution of RLVs begins. It will be an exciting time for technologists like us.

  4. Don’t forget that New Sheppard flew to approximately 100 km, 4 or 5 times. While its flight regime wasn’t as rigorous as a F9 first stage, it still represents solid data on rocket booster reuse.

  5. the fifth and final version in the Falcon series, is scheduled to have its first flight in six to eight months.

    That should make Eric Berger happy. And it implies that SpaceX will have achieved their development goals while having paying customers on their fund test launches.

    A theme on Rand’s blog has been that safety, or competence, comes through doing an activity frequently enough that skills do not atrophy. How does reusability affect the skills it takes to build or do significant refurbishment on the Falcon 9 line?

    Once SpaceX transitions from building rockets to flying/landing and repairing them, will they lose the skills learned by producing the rockets? Eventually one or all of the fleet will need to be replaced, would this take place piecemeal or in batches? Will they just abandon the Falcon 9 altogether?

    Maybe refurbishment will keep the needed skills sharp but it is interesting to think about how reusability might have problems through being successful.

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