It's indeed kinda refreshing to see a company actually put such a high pricetag out there... and all the more frustrating that so many companies demand contact info for a "quote" when I don't need to do that to launch something into outer fucking space.
Well you don't need the quote to get an idea of how feasible it would be for you to afford it. But I think you'd need a quote once you started fine-tuning your ask.
That goes for anything sold B2B for more than a couple hundred dollars.
But still, I can immediately budget it at that price, and if the price comes down 20% in negotiations that pays for everything else that's behind schedule and over budget
Makes you wonder if this customer actually did though. If they were forced to dispose of the central booster due to the needs of the payload, that central booster must be costed in.
For Falcon Heavy you are probably right (since there aren't many clients and they all have specific requests) but it is my understanding that the publically listed reusable F9 price is the one being paid by most customers.
Honestly, I think this would absolutely justify the Contact For Quote.
What's your payload? What size is it? Will it be a dedicated flight, or can we ride share with other customers?
So many questions just to do something silly like "launch something into outer fucking space". Also, nitpick, but is geosync orbit actually outer space?
There's no definitional difference between "outer space" and just space. They're synonymous, and most commonly defined to begin at 100 km altitude. If there's any difference, it's that outer space refers to the physical region, as opposed to "space" that might refer to the mathematical and relativistic concept.
"Deep space" is another definition, which commonly means beyond lunar altitude.
Other regions of space typically use a specific descriptor - interplanetary, trans-Jovian, trans-Neptune, interstellar, extra-galactic.
It's also defined for Mars (80 km) and Venus (250 km), with the same definition of where winged flight is possible based on atmospheric density and local gravity.
For an airless body, there's no real meaning to the definition, the surface is pretty much equivalent to space.
The 100 km comes from the "von Karmen line", the altitude at which the speed you'd need to be flying to generate enough lift to stay level would equal the orbital velocity.
For the moon, there is no such altitude, so space comes right down to the surface.
Geosynchronous orbit is at 37,000km (well above ISS which iirc is at 400km), so by most definitions that is in space. Often that threshold is put as low as ~100km, when the atmosphere becomes too thin to support winged flight.
> Honestly, I think this would absolutely justify the Contact For Quote.
Absolutely, which is exactly why it's so ridiculous that so many sales teams demand implied consent to receive their spam solely to get some kind of number for something far, far less.
I was gonna reply with some random island for sale, as those usually are very expensive. But they don't come near the 442.2 million USD figure, most expensive I can find is 133,467,632 EUR (https://www.jamesedition.com/real_estate/ko-kaeo-thailand/pr...).
Interesting that a whole island costs the same amount or less than just one airplane.
The planes are so expensive because they're specialized planes meant to be in the air nearly 24 hours a day - this justifies spending a huge amount of money on improving their fuel efficiency. A friend who works in large commercial aircraft once told me that the break-even point for money spent redesigning planes to be lighter was $1,000,000 in R&D spending per pound of weight saved. Older models which are typically used for intermittent cargo service can cost just $20m for a 747.
Based on this forum thread [1] the marginal cost per pound to fuel efficienciy is about "0.0155 gallons per pound per 1,000 statute miles". Over a 737's life it may fly about 50 million miles [2]. Combining facts one and two results in a fuel consumption per marginal pound of 775 gallons. Current jet fuel prices are about $3.40 per gal [3].
Wow, thanks for the effort put into answering a passing curiosity!
Of course any change to the aircraft has many other downstream implications (ability to source parts for repairs, lifetime of the part, maintenance requirements), but it's cool to think that for an "all else the same" replacement that the bar is still so high.
With the falling costs of advanced materials I do wonder if next gen aircraft will be substantially different.
The challenge is with design, certification, and manufacturing (forming and joining), not with affording the material. Plus, high strength steels can bear more stress than titanium, although they weigh more. This may be needed for certain space-constrained components.
A 1 lb saving saves $2,600 in fuel costs over the life of the craft.
However, an airline's break even point is a portion of that (perhaps $1,000) because the fuel costs are spread out over the life of the craft and there is an opportunity cost to spending money on the more efficient plane.
Of that $1,000, the aircraft maker will only capture a portion of the value - the airline expects to do better than break even. The airplane manufacturer may be able to charge $500 more for the aircraft.
They might hope to make 2,000 aircraft for something big like a 787 (although that number varies a lot depending on the model). That's 2,000 units times $500 = $1 million.
If you could take a top spec model, cut the weight by 400lbs without effecting the crafts capability, you could certainly sell it at a premium yeah, it would be some difference between the current price and the fuel cost savings shedding 400lbs casuses over the lifetime of the aircraft. Cerium estimated $2,600 per lb over the lifetime of the craft so yeah, that's a ~$1,040,000 in value there.
Oh, they are paid. According to the contract they take various types of payment ranging from: Sunday mornings drinking bad wine, tithes all the way to lifelong celibacy and blood sacrifice.
Real estate is usually all about location, land itself is plentiful and cheap around the world, it's all the stuff required to make it livable and proximity to where people want to be that's expensive.
CSB: I was trying to solve a problem for a client and thought Starlink may be able to help but i had no contact at Starlink nor SpaceX. So, on a whim, i emailed sales@spacex.com and told them what i was up to and the help i needed. I got a response back the next day from a Starlink lead in the state where my project was at ( client was a state government) asking how she can help. I was pretty surprised and impressed.
The couple seconds of tracking camera footage of the boosters coming back down looked amazing. I wish it wasn't so foggy at the pad!
When the second stage separates there's a few cables that are flying around. Does anyone know what those are used for? Electrical connections between the stages maybe?
I recall that the synchronous landing was unintentional, they are supposed to be staged a few seconds apart for tracking purposes. Also the live feed for the first launched accidentally used the same camera feed from one booster on two windows, instead of the second booster on the second window. This was corrected in the archived video (what you see currently on YouTube for the first launch isn't exactly what was shown live). So that made it look like (from the on board camera perspective) that both landed at exactly the same time.
Was watching it at work, and a crowd was gathered around the desk thinking it was a trailer for a new Star Trek film or something. Told them, no, this is real, and the look on my non-geek office mates faces was absolutely priceless.
When I was a kid, I used to watch Thunderbirds [1], which I loved dearly - except that I always thought it fanciful to show Thunderbirds 1 and 3 landing upright back at the Tracy Island base. Many, many years later, of course, my scepticism was erased by watching exactly that happen in real life, courtesy of SpaceX's Falcon 9. Inspirational and astonishing.
Our brains are wired to see twins (and symmetry) as evidence of intent as opposed to randomness. Lots of examples in art, and of course both the WTC twin towers and the 9/11 attacks. There’s more power seeing two of something.
Perhaps? Can you think of a counter-example, where seeing an event happen once is more attention-getting and memorable than seeing the event happen twice in a row in quick succession?
Imagine you see a herd of deer trotting along, and one goes down. A hole, or ditch, or maybe a predator? Now imagine two deer go down at nearly the same time. Different implications, or at least different probabilities to the possible implications.
I'll stand by my over-generalization for now, but I'm open to counter-examples.
The word for "lack of deformity" is "form" which we generally use to refer to something which was generated based on a rule, as opposed to complete randomness.
You're not alone. I watched it live before work this morning, and I simultaneously got the chills and started tearing up. It hits all of my aerospace nerd, rocket geek, engineering-minded nerves at the same time, and it's quite an experience.
It's hard to measure objectively but I feel I was dramatically more impressed seeing first Falcon Heavy come down than I was seeing the first successful (non-heavy) landing. I've shown a lot of people (who aren't otherwise into space) the original Falcon Heavy landing video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c
The most common response, by far, is: "Is that real?"
It really is just that amazing. Even look at the YouTube comments. It's enough to make even the internet become a place of shared awe, wonder, and inspiration. Makes one wonder what the world would be like if we had media that focused more on things like this and less on things that divide and agitate people.
Now that Falcon 9 landings have become so routine, it feels surprisingly wasteful to see that mission profile with the center booster burning up without even trying.
I wanted to write something about that lack of center booster reuse on falcon heavy feeling irrationally worse than a single F9 launch in the non-reusable profile (for a slightly higher payload iirc), but then I discovered that the non-reusable F9 profile hasn't happened in quite a while. Nice! When they started with the reuse, I was expecting the full payload profile to be a far more regular occurrence. (even if in hindsight I see that none of my reasons for that expectation make any sense)
When you are watching SpaceX launch videos, pay attention to the velocities at which the various engine burns begin and end. Reaching higher velocities (for comparable payloads, etc.) requires burning more fuel - so there is less fuel left in the tank to perform boost-back burns, entry burns, and landing burns. Not enough fuel for a boost-back burn (the typical situation) means "barge landing". Not enough fuel for an entry (& landing) burn means "expended first stage" - which also means "remove the weight of the useless landing legs before launch".
And if the customer is paying SpaceX to take a heavy payload to a high velocity / orbit...well, they are paying for it. Today's launch was actually the third-most-performant (and -expensive) Falcon Heavy launch mode. #2 has both side boosters landing on barges (so the boosters don't need fuel for boost-back burns). #1 expends everything - just like all of SpaceX's competition does.
If you watched the liftoff, after the vehicle was above the fog, the plume from the core looked much weaker than from the boosters. I think they throttle that stage down so it's using less fuel, leaving fuel to be burned after the boosters are done. This will also reduce the velocity at which the boosters are staged so they have an easier time getting back.
After the boosters stage the core will be throttled back up (if it hadn't been already).
An earlier design has propellant transfer from the boosters to the core stage while they were still attached, but I guess that was decided to not be worth it (if the engine thrust growth was high enough simple throttling would be enough.)
Propellant (and oxidizer) cross-feed systems would have added a notable amount of weight, a lot of design complexity and cost, and a metric sh*t ton of critical failure scenarios.
Additionally, the center core is throttled to make sure the vehicle safely gets through the dangerous "max-Q" part of the launch where stress from the atmospheric drag is highest.
Makes sense. They throttle even on the F9 for that reason, and the FH is essentially three F9s with an upper stage that is not the mass of 3 F9 upper stages.
> Not enough fuel for an entry (& landing) burn means "expended first stage" - which also means "remove the weight of the useless landing legs before launch".
Landing gear? Where we're going we won't need landing gear!
>"wasteful to see that mission profile with the center booster burning up without even trying."
My understanding was that the intended orbit / mission profile means that they must fly the center core in expendable mode. Otherwise, the satellite wouldn't be able to reach the intended orbit with the intended amount of fuel for the mission's duration.
Likely yes. Though there may be few ways to land the core booster:
1. Expend side-boosters to save enough fuel in the core for the entry+landing burn.
2. Land side-boosters on drone ships instead of flying back to land.
First option is likely the least favorable one, since two side-boosters combined price may be higher than the single core. Even though the core itself is likely more expensive than a single side-booster, since it caries the load of the payload plus side-loads from both side-boosters. Second option may be complicated logistically due to a lack of drone-ships. Landing three (or even two) rockets in the ocean was never done before.
At one point (I don't know if it's still the case) for certain launches the US government laid claim to "100% of the thrust available from a booster" or somesuch, basically not leaving anything left over for landings. I'm not sure it was ever documented why they had this requirement.
What surprised -me- was that all three boosters were brand new, rather than, say, expending a booster that's already flown half a dozen times or such.
> What surprised -me- was that all three boosters were brand new, rather than, say, expending a booster that's already flown half a dozen times or such.
Using new boosters was probably a contract requirement, but even if it wasn't, the Falcon Heavy center core isn't interchangeable with regular Falcon 9 cores, as it has to be strengthened to handle the additional load the side boosters put on it.
Or gives them more lee-way for maneuvering or - makes it a tiny bit harder for spies to figure out what orbit they're going to place the satellite before the launch.
Or because someone asked "how high" and got back "as high as you can go".
It could be something with a large fuel tank that can be adjusted in capacity so that it will be 100% of whatever Falcon can offer for the target orbit.
It's probably more cost-effective to keep the craft and scrap it. The structure itself is a significant amount of steel, and the engines contain expensive superalloys.
If a spacefaring vessel lasts long enough that it needs to be decomissioned due to wear and tear, that mf'er belongs ONLY in a museum. I hope to live to the day where that isn't universally true, but it is not today.
I'm sure the first couple will be preserved, but they'll quickly become as common as derelict airplanes or ships. Has SpaceX kept any of their Falcon 9 boosters besides the first one that landed? I think the old ones are disassembled for analysis, then scrapped.
> I'm sure the first couple will be preserved, but they'll quickly become as common as derelict airplanes
I've always been a fan of putting such things on pedestals outside of public buildings, VFWs, etc. A bit less feasible with full rockets, but the engines at least would be fairly easy to put in parks so kids can climb on them.
> Gas Works Park has a play area with a large play barn, and big hill popular for flying kites. Special park features include a sundial, and a beautiful view of Seattle. Access to Lake Union is restricted at Gas Works Park, as the lake sediment contains hazardous substances.
Yeah, the picture captures some of it, but you really have to see it (preferably with kids) as there's just giant old industrial equipment painted and ready to climb on. Some of the valves even turn!
SpaceX would get considerably more than $10M in marketing / brand goodwill by donating to a museum. So for the first 1 or 2 decommissioned rockets, I think donation beats scrap ROI.
i've been to boca chica, starhopper and the older starships are quite literally parked on the side of the road. I bet if you showed up with the gear to move them they'd probably just give them to you ;)
Yes, it's really odd to see a GEO launch rather than a GTO at launch. GTO is a geosynchronous transfer orbit with apogee at GEO and perigee at LEO that uses the satellite's thrusters to circularize to full GEO. Starship can't do a GEO directly, it would need refueling or a kick stage to do GEO.
Since we really don't know why the Space Force wanted direct GEO we can't know for sure if refueling or a kick stage would have met requirements or not. Would it be good enough as long as the satellite to stay hidden inside the fairing during refueling?
I'm pretty sure the goal with Starship is that the economics are so much better that it's used even for awkward launches. I do not believe they are targeting Falcon Heavy launches in the long-term, assuming the best-case Starship scenarios.
I think that due to how much F9 has managed to eat into FH's market, FH flights we see are more likely to only happen when the payload is heavy enough to need the center core to be expended.
For example, for a GTO insertion, an expended F9 can do 8.3t while a completely reusable FH can do 8t, but the expended F9 is going to be cheaper overall. Thus FH is only worth using when the payload is heavy enough to require at least the center core to be spent. This might be different for Lunar payloads though.
When I skipped through the video to the point where they explain that this was a mission without center reuse I was surprised to hear that they actually do seem to offer a three booster reuse profile. Perhaps my surprise was from confusing "no second stage reuse" with "no center booster reuse"?
But if it's a wash (as you say) between non-reusable F9 and 3x reusable FH I'd probably go for a single EOL core anyways, for the lower total count of failure modes alone. Even more so if launches in that weight class are sufficiently rare to be served from "organic" churn of reusable F9 launches (they clearly are).
In any case, my mention of surprise in the top level comment was not meant as "how wasteful, losers, boooh!", but as an statement of amazement, "have we/they really come that far that a part of me is unimpressed by two of three?", and on a meta level surprise about how a non-reuseable F9 feels less disappointing to me: a non-reuse F9 is a valid compromise to eke out the last bit of payload, whereas the FH raises an expectation of being better in every way that's then disappointed by "a third of a step back" in terms of reuse compared to what we now consider a regular F9 launch. We consider the reusable F9 regular, crazy!
Do you have any source for this? I would expect that a FH launch that reuses all 3 first stage cores would be cheaper than an expended F9. A few hundred thousand extra in fuel costs for the side boosters is cheaper than the few million dollars that the 9 expended engines would cost.
But I still believe you -- the infrequency of an FH launch probably increases the ancillary costs. I'd just like to see your source.
As for the price, the official numbers are $67m for a new F9 and $97m for a reusable FH (from their respective Wikipedia pages).
Additionally, my reasoning is (as you mention) related to cadence. FH flies very infrequently and requires more ground expenses to prepare, recover and then refurbish 3 boosters. Additionally there's the opportunity cost of keeping a center core on standby (as it's purpose built for FH [1]) and the opportunity cost of keeping the side boosters either on standby or converting them to F9s.
Elon has previously mentioned that with Falcon rockets the main costs per flight are the second stage (~$10m, expended), fairings (~$3-4m, reusable), refurbishment (~$1m) and fixed ground costs, which can be reduced by increasing cadence [2]. In the case of FH the second stage and fairing costs are the same, the refurb costs are tripled and due to much lower cadence the ground costs are higher. Meanwhile, F9 flies frequently, so it has lower ground costs per launch and the booster's cost can be more easily amortized via several flights before the expendable launch.
Additionally, [2] mentions that the marginal cost of building an F9 booster is ~$15m, so all the extra costs of FH only need to be greater than $15m to make it worth just using an expendable F9.
Hmm yeah, digging around it seems that Wikipedia is probably incorrect with the expendable pricing. Seems like there aren't really any recent numbers available for expendable F9s as the last intentionally expended F9 was 3 years ago.
Have to consider overall risk mitigation waste impact. E.g. if the additional complexity of adding a center booster increases risk of full mission failure, then, integrated over time, it can be a more wasteful decision if the goal isn’t to test that. Especially considering the satellite that would get destroyed and all the impact of having to rebuild that across the global supply chain.
It's not impossible, but it's certainly trickier. You'd have to save plenty of fuel to kick back into the atmosphere and land, re-entry is much more strenuous, and you'd have to complete a full orbit to land back where you launched. Nothing is a showstopper, but it would take development.
The booster was doing 14,000km/h at MECO which is about 3.8km/s. Orbital velocity is 7-7.5km/s depending on altitude and escape velocity is even higher, so no, it was not at escape velocity or anywhere near it.
The way the boosters land feels so alien and CGI-like. I'm curious how close you can get to viewing the landings in real life, would really love to take a trip to do that at some point.
As I said in another comment, I was on the base for this launch and landing. We were standing at the SpaceX Hangar AO which is about 4km from the landing site. There may have been closer personnel, but the majority of us on-base were around there.
The tourists viewing the launch were scattered around the Cape, with the most popular spot being here: https://goo.gl/maps/ohaudmEggCLmr7gu8
Which is about 13 km from the landing site.
I had the same thought when watching it, it looked like they had overlaid a CGI demonstration of what the landing was supposed to look like. Really cool stuff.
Just a minor nitpick but I think the part you're referring to (actually at 11:50 in the video) is showing Chinese soldiers specifically, not just random Chinese civilians. I'd bet that there are few people in either the US or Chinese military who would disagree that the other side is an adversary right now, even if they're not at war.
I don’t think the people who defend the territory where ~90% of every Mac, iPhone, iPad, and many other products are created is an “adversary”, any more than the police in Cupertino are.
Space exploration is, I hate to use the word "traditionally" here, but it has a history of being extremely nationalistic. We give astronauts from different countries their own different names. We put big flags on things. We fund space missions because it keeps us ahead of other countries. It's funded like a war because it's very nearly a wartime activity, except mostly it's used for good, almost by accident.
A country with a impressive history of not declaring war on another state and who has drawn the ire of USA simply because they see it as credible economic competition?
To be fair, the Chinese society has seen it's share of war. Let's not also forget the Chinese are rapidly expanding their military. In the calculus of a command economy, what is the point of military spending, if not to use it?
They've effectively declared war on Taiwan by now. Maybe not diplomatically but their president for life has been saying they'll take it through force, which amounts to the same thing.
One really cool thing I heard in this video, is the double sonic booms from each booster.
There are reasons behind it that I don't really understand, but each booster makes 2 distinct sonic booms as it comes in to land. With Falcon Heavy launches, it makes a total of 4 of them!
I don’t understand either, but read that supersonic objects generate shockwaves at nose, root of wings(if any), and tail. Shockwaves also may reflect off terrains.
Possibly it should always be “BAbababang-baaaang…”, and the first three might be either indistinguishable or ones after the first are too weak, except it becomes noticeably apart on extremely long objects like F9?
In this case the two booms come from the "nose" (the engines, since at this point the booster is flying backwards) and from the grid fins at the far end. Given that the Falcon 9 boosters are about 70m tall, that would mean about a fifth of a second delay between the two booms when the booster is traveling at Mach 1.
As a kid I used to watch the Space Shuttle come in for landing, and it always had a distinct triple-boom on entry. Someone said it was the body and wing tips each making their own boom, but I never really confirmed it.
Something like this is only possible at the end of an unimaginably long chain of absurd and impossible feats of organization.
The things he is concerned about when he's "futzing about with content moderation" are deep enough in that chain that it's easy to lose connection, but are absolutely part of it.
The difference is that this is a full ride to GEO, so the satellite stays attached to the second stage and the second stage does the circularization burn at GEO. Thus it has a much higher mass penalty than most commercial launches, which are to GTO, where the rocket only puts the satellite on the path to GEO (a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit) and the satellite does the circularization burn at the destination.
Even Falcon 9 can put a 6.4t satellite onto GTO in expendable mode and Falcon Heavy can while recovering all 3 boosters, but direct insertion into GEO of 6.4t would probably be stretching the limits of Falcon Heavy if even doable at all.
When does/do the research/space programs enabled by these more frequent launches start to benefit us all? It must have already contributed to something somehow. Agriculture? Defense? Oil exploration? Seems like the sort of information that's hard to find.
There's the Dragon 2, the only US human space vehicle in operation, as the Space Shuttle has been retired in 2011 due to expenses and safety issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon_2
Something I’ve wondered about Starlink. What data does that company glean from the communication that traverses its network? What are the privacy implications?
Oh please, it's perfectly feasible. The catch is you need to put more energy in than you get out, and it won't save you any money. But it's not "against the laws of physics and chemistry"
(The reason it might be done despite costing more money is mostly PR.)
It's quite feasible on Mars, where the concentration of CO2 is much higher (albeit the air is also much thinner), and a cornerstone of SpaceX's plan to produce methane fuel in situ.
To be more precise: the laws of physics and chemistry will never allow to pull CO2 from the atmosphere in an energy efficient way
The consequence is that, unless all your electricity generation and raw resource extraction needed for the process has basically zero emissions, it's probably better to just use regular fuel. Burning fossil fuels to create fuel that you then burn has more CO2 emissions than just burning fossil fuels once (since you need way less fossil fuel in the first place). And the US grid is, right now, not in path of not burning fossil fuels. So the idea of pulling CO2 from the atmosphere and be carbon neutral doesn't seem plausible.
> To be more precise: the laws of physics and chemistry will never allow to pull CO2 from the atmosphere in an energy efficient way
I see. Now that is a big difference. I don’t know enough to tell if you are right.
> it's probably better to just use regular fuel
Maybe. There is one reason why spacex might still do it even if it is less energy efficient.
Their mars plan depends on in-situ resource extraction. If they can’t generate fuel on mars they can’t send their rockets back.
This will be a very hard technological challenge. If they can find a path to derisk their co2->methan plants here on earth it would be worth doing it even if it costs them money. They have to master the tech anyway.
Now clearly doing the conversion here on earth is not the same deal as doing it on mars. The atmosphere is quite different as a start. I don’t know enough to tell how much this matters. Maybe they can just tweek some process parameters and make a machine which works here on earth and on mars “sameish” enough that it helps with learning. Maybe they can process the exhaust of some industrial process into a kind of “martian atmosphere” analogue close enough that they can learn from that.
They will want to test their ISRU equipment before heading to mars. And they want to it eventually in large enough scale that the output can power their rockets back. It stands to reason that even their tests must be at a certain point on a huge scale. So why not fill the methane they get from the testing into their rockets at that point here on Earth too?
There is a lag between the service being available and missions being planned to use it. The US government is finally starting to see the light and is presently benefiting from lower costs and better performance compared to legacy providers. Starlink wouldn't have been possible without this, both competitive constellations are considering using SpaceX for launch services too. This area alone is providing incredible value to humanity already but also doesn't require human capabilities.
One benefit is the connectivity provided by Starlink to Ukraine's front line defending forces. Which, amongst other things, increases the quality of reconnaissance, tempo of battle, and should translate to fewer defender and civilian casualties.
The long term effects of a more rapid Ukrainian victory (and a dramatic Russian defeat) are difficult to estimate.
What exactly are you referring to? If you mean the satellites, Earth observation satellites run by governments play a big role in things like agriculture by aiding weather predictions. Defense should also be relatively obvious from that (even private Earth observation services are proving helpful to Ukraine for instance).
If you mean the rockets, there's the perk of making it easier for smallsats to get rides, enabling all sorts of smaller research/Earth observation and making it easier to train the next generation of talent in the field.
If you mean things like Starlink, one thing coming in the next few years that should play a decent role in the world is the idea of cellular connectivity anywhere by direct satellite uplink. It would be extremely low bandwidth, basically text-only, but likely to still be a fairly big deal for monitoring remote environments and for search and rescue purposes.
Not sure what kind of impact you are looking for. Nobody is going to show up at your doorstep with a check. That said, you can look around you for a lot impacts. If you really want to be specific to the frequency of launches, increased availability of starlink for indidvidual and military needs.
The view from below of the boosters after entry burn where you can clearly see they're not just falling straight down but actually achieving some horizontal velocity across the ground was really cool. I've always known that they had some cross-range capability, but this was a really excellent visualization of it!
Scott Manley did a good break down of their landing profile. They maintain a ballistic trajectory set to miss the landing pad / barge and it's only on successful re-ignition of the engine that they align with the landing pad.
Did I miss something or did this rocket have no stack - it was a single stage (with boosters, but aside those still one undivided rocket)? Can anyone comment on that please.
It's side boosters, center booster, and second stage. But the second stage is the same diameter as the boosters, so you can't easily see the difference if you don't know what to look for.
I read that last time falcon heavy flied was in june 2019, 3 years since. Why has it not flied to space since then? No mission or problems needed to be resolved?
falcon heavy was always this awkward middle child relative to F9 and Starship. Like iirc it was announced pretty close to F9 blk5 going to production, but very late, and then the starship concept took off and consumed resources and attention. The moment starship is operational then FH is cancelled I bet. I bet F9 hangs around even after Starship is operational however.
Range control uses radars to determine the location and speed of it. Also, pretty sure it's got non-COCOM limited GPS receivers to be able to do the landing, which also would give you velocity.
i believe the orbit and mass requirement meant there was no fuel left for landing the center stage. I think the configuration where they can't re-use the booster is called "full thrust".
"Full Thrust" is the name for Falcon 9 v1.2 when they upgraded to Merlin D engines which are a lot more powerful than Merlin C. All current Falcon 9's are Full Thrust, expandable or reusable.
This is a launch of falcon heavy, there's only been a handful (unlike single falcon 9, which are more common and might be the "random SpaceX launch" you had in mind). It's also a live stream instead of a news article.
But other space news events are interesting too of course
It’s entertaining and completely in line with what you would expect out of media and propaganda. There were a bunch of interesting Soviet missions that are basically unknown and obscure in the West. And this Chinese station seems quite notable, but again I basically never hear about it. But then that’s expected, NASA has a massive PR arm that makes sure the tax payers are well informed of its accomplishments. The CCP knows that even if it put massive resources into western media outreach, western news sources would be talking about human rights abuses in the next breath. And it’s extremely rare for a paper to do actual investigative journalism, so even if a western journalist found this station particularly newsworthy, they would have to do all the heavy lifting to get the story published. And probably be getting some explicit or implicit political pressure not to focus so much on a non-ally’s success.
Modular space stations are significantly easier to achieve than landing two rocket boosters at the same time. Humanity has been doing modular space stations since the 80s (Mir).
It would cost 10x as much and would be 5 years behind schedule, intended to be the main vehicle for several decades (rather than soon to be replaced by an even more capable vehicle), entirely expendable, still stuck to its original parameters due to risk averseness and not at all commercially competitive. See: SLS, Space Shuttle (and to a lesser extent, Ariane 5 & 6)
Falcon reusability was perfected through lots of explosions in landing attempts, good luck getting NASA or ESA to risk that given how dumb the average taxpayer can be about iterative development like that.
> Falcon reusability was perfected through lots of explosions in landing attempts, good luck getting NASA or ESA to risk that given how dumb the average taxpayer can be about iterative development like that.
It's even worse than just risk averseness. There was a very telling comment by the CEO of ArianeGroup a few years ago[1] about why they weren't investing in reusable rockets--they were afraid that it would be too efficient, so they would end up laying off workers because they wouldn't have enough demand for new rockets. In the twisted world of government programs efficiency is often seen as a bad thing. Space programs are jobs programs. The SLS program was hamstrung by Congress requiring that it reuse 50-year-old Space shuttle tech because it's a jobs program. Getting to space efficiently isn't even a priority.
More recently ESA has reversed course[2] because SpaceX is eating their lunch, but they're still probably a good decade out from having a reusable rocket, and it's unlikely they would be heading that direction at all if not for the pressure from SpaceX.
This is exactly the reason I don't do R&D work for the DoD anymore. Cost plus contracts incentivize the performer to have more staff than required to make more profit and to never deliver anything early or over perform in any way. I just couldn't live with myself if I min-max'd the situation.
To be fair, their concern about having so few payloads that they wouldn't be building enough boosters isn't completely wrong for Europe. There is some merit to the idea that they needed to maintain a large workforce trained in rocketry to hold onto their capabilities and that government funded programs are good for that until private industry firmly takes hold.
The issue of course was that they were giving into stagnation and assuming that demand wouldn't grow to meet supply, while SpaceX took it the other way and came up with the demand to utilize the supply they had created (also helps that Russia torpedoed its own commercial launch industry and all other providers are stuck in a delayed generational transition, highlighting the unpredictability of demand in the industry).
Now that European launch companies are starting to make progress, perhaps this need for government 'protection' will also go away. It desperately needs to go away in the US since we already have several private companies who've made it to orbit (plus a nearly 20 year tech lead on the rest of the world courtesy SpaceX) and hopefully SLS's obsolete-ness will quickly become too hard to ignore when the Artemis 3 crew is shown transferring from the cramped Orion capsule to the spacious HLS.
And to add to this, SpaceX isn't enriching Musk, quite the opposite. Half of his PayPal wealth was invested into SpaceX to develop Falcon 1 (the other half was invested in Tesla). Then SpaceX was awarded a NASA contract to develop Falcon 9 and Dragon. All the profit they made from commercial use of Falcon 9 was reinvested into developing Falcon Heavy, and all the profit SpaceX has made since has been reinvested into Starlink and Starship. Musk hasn't gotten any return on his investment into SpaceX, and rather continues to invest more money (earned from Tesla) into SpaceX to speed Starship development.
I'm not saying this to play up Musk as some philanthropist, but to clarify that it is the government that has benefited from the investment that Musk and other investors have put into SpaceX, rather than the government enriching these investors. Every other rocket made prior to SpaceX, the full development and operation was funded by the government, and the contractors profited immensely, so it is weird to call out SpaceX/Musk for this when they are one of the few exceptions to that rule (along with RocketLab).
But also to point out that SpaceX is a passion project and would likely never have accomplished the things it did if it was run primarily as a profit-making endeavor, or as a utilitarian government project.
Depends on what you consider it's mission objective. If you consider it a jobs program that we happen to get a rocket out of, it's an astounding success. If you consider it a rocket program it's an abject failure.
To give you an example of why it's a jobs program and not a rocket program. Congress forced NASA to build a multimillion dollar testing facility they never intended to use for the SLS nor for any other rocket NASA has.
You can absolutely blame NASA for that. They are calling the shots and making the design decisions.
Its not like NASA puts out a check and simply waits for the rocket to arrive. With the NASA process, they own the design, they are in meetings on specifications, they requests tests, ect. They micromanage and direct work down to the nuts and bolts, literally and figuratively.
By analogy, they are the head Chef in the kitchen. With SpaceX, they are the customer at the restaurant.
A lot of it is above even NASA's level. SLS had a bunch of requirements imposed on it by Congress who see NASA primarily as a jobs program/pork barrel and want to make sure the money goes to the right places.
The Shuttle was at least an innovative vehicle and a first attempt at reusability. It was a failure, but most first attempts at anything will be.
This doesn't compare at all with the SLS, which is just recycling old tech, and even going backwards from the Shuttle in that it gives up on reusability entirely instead of trying to learn and improve from the Shuttle's mistakes.
The point you are trying to make is that that government is unlikely to succeed in terms of timeframe or budget, and that is probably true. Yet, your argument doesn't support that point. SLS is also a project that is built by private corporations. SLS vs Falcon Heavy is simply a battle between two different government contractors. One is not more government-based than the other.
Research how and where SLS must be designed, manufactured, integrated, and tested. Then research who designated that process and how.
Calling Falcon Heavy and SLS equivalently government-led is laughable. The amount of by-design government red tape and congressional district handouts is astounding.
SLS is a joint project between many large bureaucratic private organizations, and thus design-by-committee is more of a function of the way that those institutions operate, and their need to coordinate with one another.
Congress cared that it met payload requirements and mission requirements. That these institutions were unable to deliver within reasonable time and budget limits is a result of their own dysfunction.
Since rocket production is extremely capital-intensive, the market is very thin. The number of players capable of even giving it a go is low. And thus, it has all the hallmarks of a typical market failure.
Private companies the entire time could've realized the potential profits and competently worked to achieve them, even outside of begging for government contracts. That they didn't do this for many decades is their own fault.
> Congress cared that it met payload requirements and mission requirements.
This is just not correct if you mean that they only cared about payload and mission requirements. Congress mandated that certain technologies were to be used from non-competitive, single-source suppliers in order to prop up industry in particular congressional districts. Cost overruns are practically by-design because as long as it doesn’t raise too many eyebrows it’s just more money to their local industry and constituents.
It isn't as if there was this long line of sad rocket companies waiting out in the cold, shut out of their dreams of outer space by the mean old government. There simply weren't any others except for the go-to contractors that NASA always relied on.
Now that there is a critical mass of billionaire nerds and venture capitalists who want to build rocket companies, there is now competition in this sector. It is a case of monopoly vs competition. That is the real answer.
You're confidently incorrect to be claiming that one is not more government-based than the other.
SLS follows the old model of NASA contracting where NASA sets all the design requirements and the contractor follows them (ie the choice of solid boosters, the use of Shuttle technology etc was all set by NASA and the final vehicle is owned and operated by NASA). The contractor is effectively given a blueprint and asked to build it, with all construction costs covered.
This is in strong contrast to F9 and FH which follow the new model where the government only sets the rough requirements (payload capacity, target orbits, vibration tolerances etc) but doesn't care about the specific details (beyond making sure that they make technical sense). Payments are made for reaching specific milestones, how that relates to internal costs is entirely on the contractor and the final vehicle is still owned and operated by the contractor, with NASA acting as just another client. It's a much more hands off approach compared to SLS.
> SLS vs Falcon Heavy is simply a battle between two different government contractors. One is not more government-based than the other.
This is completely false. SLS was established by Congress with various mandates on the technology and process to design and build it.
Falcon Heavy was not.
Many of the issues with SLS can be traced to Congress's requirements that they put on the project, like forcing it to reuse 50-year-old STS technology.
If congress asked Intel to build a computer meeting specifications from 50 years ago, regardless of how stupid that request is, and they somehow failed to do that in a resonable amount of time or budget... it would be an astounding display of incompetence. And failing to even try to create a new showcase technology of something better is just additional incompetence.
>Imagine how much better the program could be if it were directly funded by the government instead of being indirectly funded by the government and enriching the world’s biggest arsehole in the process
There are plenty of other threads on HN where you can talk about how much you hate Elon Musk and the like. This is not one of those threads. Just let people enjoy things.
People seem to forget that NASA isn't much of a rocket manufacturer. Those "NASA rockets" of the past were manufactured by corporations contracted by NASA. Space Shuttle orbiter? Built by Rockwell. Mercury-Atlas launch vehicle? Convair. Saturn V? Various contractors, particularly Boeing for the first stage and Rocketdyne for the F-1 engines.
This ruffles the feathers of a certain sort of "space commie", who have traditionally hoped that exploration of space would be impossible for capitalism, leaving space as the great utopia for the future of state-run communism. This was always a dumb point of view, but SpaceX has them particularly upset now because NASA is less involved in the design process than ever before, and it's becoming apparent that capitalism has no trouble getting to space.
Judging by the shuttle era and our lack of ability to even launch Americans into space for the last decade thanks to failed programs that have come since, I think it’s a matter of how much worse this program would be.
It's pretty amazing and makes me feel proud that in our country, America, there are several private individuals and companies who are capable of launching rockets into space (it's not just Mr Musk), despite the fact that in other countries, this is something that requires massive government support. America's private-sector is heads and shoulders more advanced than many foreign governments. That's amazing to see.
In the US there is government support in the sense that companies can compete for and win government contracts, fwiw. But I get what you’re saying. We are lucky to have the right conditions overall for entrepreneurial efforts to have a chance at succeeding. And it would be wise to continue fostering this.
If only we could somehow make the public sector hire it's own personnel, pay it well and let it build the rockets instead of feeding either Boeing shareholders or the narcissistic idiot.
Most people convinced of public sector inferiority only perceive the hollowed out and thoroughly corrupted husk left by the neoliberal policies. Mostly because it's been systematically destroyed their whole life and they never noticed.
You mean the Russian space program? They are still flying their one good ship developed 70 years ago. And the money goes to a handful of corrupt people who are good friends with “the leader”.
Or take ESA. They are currently struggling to finish development of Ariane 6. A rocket with tech already obsolete years before it is even ready to fly for the first time.
As others have noted, NASA's rockets have largely been designed, built, and operated by private contractors for its entire history. The difference was that those projects were managed by NASA via cost-plus contracts, often at mind-boggling cost.
The crowning achievement of this system was the Apollo program. Which was followed up by the Space Shuttle, a system so expensive and full of compromises that it wasn't really good at much of anything except freezing the state of US space travel at the technological level of 1976 for thirty years.
NASA doesn't design and build its own one-off plane when it needs to send some people to a conference in NYC; they buy them commercial airline tickets. Likewise, purchasing launch services from a commercial provider is far cheaper and more effective than engaging contractors to build a rocket to spec.
NASA Rockets projects were never largely designed by the corporations. NASA has always been deeply involved in the design and micromanaged decisions down to the nuts and bolts.
Boeing, as well as many other contractors, got America to the Moon. The thing you are pining for is utterly Soviet, not the way America's space program has ever worked.
I'm always a bit bothered by the cheering during a SpaceX launch. Maybe I'm just historically attached to the scenes of stoic engineers at JSC mission control, but space fight is always hard and risky, and cheering at every event shows a lack of humility, IMO. Cheer when the mission is successful. As an extreme case, imagine cheering as Challenger cleared the launch tower.
Yes, big distinction between manned vs unmanned. I don't remember if the situation was the same for the first crew dragon launch. It's just something that stuck with me since watching one of the first broadcasts of high profile falcon launch.
