Hacker News Reader

Minor correction, Gwynne said that this rocket only took 4 months to inspect. The rest of the delay was due to pushing the launch schedule back after one of their rockets exploded, with payload atop, during testing.

You are correct, they are retiring this rocket. In fact, SpaceX is giving a piece of the rocket to SES to hang in their conference room.

View on HN

Sometimes I think SpaceX is landing stages so it can put them in museums, parking lots, and conference rooms.

Did they say why they're retiring this stage? A commenter at Ars said they spent a lot of time bringing it up to the latest rev. Seems like a shame not to fly it again.

Because once you have shown it is possible once, it means it can be done again. Why destroy a piece of history when you can destroy number 2 trying to fly it a third time?

They most likely spent the time bringing it up to the latest rev because of the performance improvements and increased reliability of the newer version. They didn't really care about how much time it took to get the second one to fly, as long as they could get it done. This was a really big milestone for their future plans, so it didn't really have a monetary or time limit.

Because its historic. Latter ones will not "suffer" this fate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com