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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully once Starship launches, we'll never see a disposable core again.

Even a reusable rocket reaches the end of its service life eventually, and at that point it can make sense for the last flight to be expendable.

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.

Makes sense for NASA to donate, but say SpaceX could recover $10m in materials from an expended Starship, that's a steep ask.

When the time comes, I hope they choose to donate it to a museum, or if not, the funds are raised to buy it off them.

I mean it's a $10m ask/potential write-off, so there is that. The "first one" will be even more rare/valuable and NASA might make a deal for it.

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.

You'd love Gasworks Park in Seattle: https://www.seattle.gov/parks/find/parks/gas-works-park

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> 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.

Appear that that description omits the lede! But the park does seem singularly interesting per the Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Works_Park

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 ;)

They are different classes of launch vehicles. This payload is not really a good one for starship, and conversely, starlinks will never fly on heavy

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.

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?

They wanted to use it before Xmas to keep an eye on Ukraine, and they didn't want to have to wait?

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