We don't know what is required for reflight, but they don't seem to be
spending a lot of time making it pretty. They seem to have a lot of
margin in engine performance, and I doubt if they are tearing down each
flight, probably just inspecting. The avionics shouldn't need any
maintenance, and I doubt they're changing propellant tankage or
structure. Why should we think they're doing anything other than
inspections? And if so, how could that cost more than building a new
vehicle?
On 2019-07-01 15:03, Anthony Cesaroni wrote:
We worked on a very detailed design, manufacturing and ConOps exercise
for one of the major players in 2014. The vehicle had a lot of
similarities to Falcon at the time. The first and second stage
propulsion system in particular. It's a long story including a prior
court challenge over certain aspects of propulsion IP.
At the time, recycling of the first stage system was discounted very
early. The refurbishing cost was not any less than building a new
booster, primarily due the analysis indicating less than 12% of the
system component cost was cleanly reusable for lack of a better term.
It was difficult to merge the recovered booster back into the
production cycle without complicating what was believed to be a simple
and cost-effective production plan. It really required a whole
separate recovery and production line right down to delivery of the
finished booster otherwise it killed the cost efficiencies of the
proposed line. This also increased the plant NRE as well as field
operations cost significantly. The planned approach was KISS.
The current SpaceX recovery method would at first glance be a lot
gentler on the hardware than the recovery method that we reviewed at
the time, but we didn’t have to carry a lot of extra fuel and
additional systems to accomplish the task, just a measurably higher
amount of thermal protection, payload and structure. Taking all this
into consideration, my question is what reason is there to think that
refurbishment costs for a Block 5 first stage are *less* than
manufacturing costs. I've been involved in four orbital system
propulsion projects since 2000 and I'm currently working at the flight
hardware level of my fifth. I'm not convinced of the claimed economics
of recovery and re-use in a cost effective launch system given the
utilization rates, current state of the art manufacturing methods and
performance limits of available propellants. Maybe Mr. Musk will share
his secret someday.
Anthony J. Cesaroni
President/CEO
Cesaroni Technology/Cesaroni Aerospace
http://www.cesaronitech.com/
(941) 360-3100 x101 Sarasota
(905) 887-2370 x222 Toronto
-----Original Message-----
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Rand Simberg
Sent: Monday, July 1, 2019 4:35 PM
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AR] Re: Human Rated Hydrogen Tanks (was Re: Re: tank frost (was >
SpaceX's customers neither buy satellites by the pound, or pay for
launch by the pound. Launch costs per pounds aren't particularly
relevant to launch economics except for bulk commodities (which are
not yet a launch market). For example, CRS payloads tend to be volume
limited, so SpaceX is still better off getting the booster back than
not. Do you have some reason to think that refurbishment costs for a
Block 5 first stage are more than manufacturing costs?
