[AR] recovery and Falcon 9 (was Re: Human Rated Hydrogen Tanks...)
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 1 Jul 2019 19:20:20 -0400 (EDT)
On Mon, 1 Jul 2019, Anthony Cesaroni wrote:
... 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.
One should always bear in mind that Mr. Musk's decisions are not made by a
committee of beancounters, focused tightly on financial statements and the
next quarter's stock prices. They're made by one guy, who makes no secret
of having a private agenda, and might not have revealed all of it yet.
The secret might simply be that the current system is an intermediate step
in the master plan, and doesn't have to make economic sense by itself.
He's *already* done that at least once: Falcon 1 was a sea of red ink
from start to finish, but contributed technology, experience, and (hugely
important) credibility to Falcon 9. Don't overlook the possibility that
Falcon 9 recovery is just another stepping stone.
(Or was originally meant that way -- SpaceX's plans haven't always worked
as expected, as witness, e.g., the complete failure of the *original*
Falcon 9 recovery scheme.)
When analyzing (say) Boeing's decisions, one can pretty safely neglect the
possibility of non-economic motives or even non-short-term-economic
motives; for SpaceX they are a real possibility. This is a somewhat
unsatisfactory explanation because it makes the situation much more
difficult to analyze, and I'm not saying it is *necessarily* the answer,
but here it deserves consideration.
Henry
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