this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Yep, its widely used, and its mission profile can be replaced with other existing rockets for around the same cost, and you've always got Blue Origin you know, mastering the basics /before/ tackling more advanced problems.
Musk and Shotwell are still pretty far from delivering on the level of cost savings per launch that Musk has been touting for over a decade at this point.
Off by about a factor of ten.
Shotwell and her /brilliant/ engineers will never build a point to point rocket system, much less one that is economically viable.
Turns out refurbishing a rocket and reusing it is really time consuming and that process basically cannot be significantly sped up without cutting corners that will lead to losing rockets, or by some totally new rocket design philosophy that has yet to be designed.
SpaceX is the company that recently did not even realize that their orbiter module had disassembled itself until 3 minutes after this occurred, then claimed that they had intentionally triggered the abort system.
Shotwell is a joke, as is Starship. At their current rate of development, at best they are looking st something like a promised human rated moon landing capable craft in a decade plus, after some serious redesigns.
Problem is NASA will have picked a different contractor by then, and SpaceX's financials are so bad they will likely go bankrupt, or, at best, just stick with the Falcon 9 and maybe try to actually come somewhere close to the launch costs they originally targeted.
I think you’re intentionally cherry picking some tiny quibbles and ignoring the enormous body of evidence that proves their success. For instance, the vast majority of your complaints are about things they haven’t done (despite saying they would). This is normal in an engineering/marketing dynamic.
This is also why I only focus on actual flight hardware when comparing launch vehicles.
Having competition is great and does not invalidate success in the slightest. I’m looking forward to more competition in the industry. I have my eye on Blue Origin this year.
You could not have chosen a more appropriate topic. This is something we have hard data on, and it turns out that you can in fact refurbish a Falcon 9 without issues in a very short time. The current record is 9 days. I’m pretty sure they’ve done a couple hundred refurbishments by now.
I don’t agree with you about Shotwell, but Starship is certainly a gamble. I have no doubt they’ll get to orbit, but the reuse architecture is harrowing at best. And I agree that Artemis is unlikely to use Starship as a lander.
I suspect using an expendable second stage for Starship (just like Falcon) is the better architecture, but I guess we’ll see if they can pull it off very soon.