SpaceX Falcon 9 booster lost in landing failure | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX Falcon 9 booster lost in landing failure

spaceflightnow.com

34 pointsverzali17 comments

Falcon 9 booster landings became such a normal event that it's only news when it fails. Meanwhile every other rocket provider just tosses their booster in the ocean. (Edit: Rocket Lab does recover it from the ocean, using a parachute)

In any case, SpaceX was on a streak for so long but these past few months they got a failure (-ish?) on their second stage and now this. With so many launches every week it's bound to happen sometime, I guess.

Yeah, though it's a little weird that two failures should happen in relatively short order.

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. But they definitely want to be alert, because a third time would suggest that something else is going on. Perhaps a slip in manufacturing standards.

I wouldn't get too worked up, given that 23 launches is utterly unprecedented. Still, it's odd.

Is it really weird that two very overworked boosters fail after they both get overworked around the same time? The only odd thing is that they have multiple very overworked boosters.

The first failure wasn’t an overworked booster, it was a second stage which are always new off of the factory floor as they aren’t recovered.

The two failures aren’t related though if I’m not mistaken. This is an issue on a first stage on landing while the other was an issue on a second stage engine.

I think it’s just a weird coincidence. But they’re also launching so often that it was bound to happen.

I think they also had some 200+ consecutive successful landings which is wildly impressive.

> Falcon 9 booster landings became such a normal event that it's only news when it fails.

A bit like the airplane industry they are trying to copy -- make these things routine....

This booster alone has in its lifetime orbited

- 8 humans,

- 2 of the 31 active GPS satellites,

- 574 Starlink satellites, and

- 40 of Starlink competitor OneWeb's satellites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b...

It's probably a valve failure.

Valves have a hard job, since they have to survive in extreme cold and heat and not deform too much, if at all.

SpaceX is probably one of the few companies on earth that can detect metal fatigue well. I suppose at some point they'll also have the most reliable valves on the market. Material that has done 23 transitions between extreme hot/cold is something no other company probably has, and is a gold mine of data for materials people.

23 transitions between extreme hot and cold doesn't sound too difficult to do in a lab though. I guess it's harder to do in a lab if at the same time you want to reproduce the space and time distribution of forces experienced by the material during a space flight.

I am curious, so I know that a big part of SpaceX is the re-usability aspect. But at what point is the rocket basically paid for (except for continued Maintence)?

Given that this is this rocket's 23rd flight, was this really a "loss" for SpaceX or was the rocket already basically paid off.

I realize launches for Starlink make this a more complicated number.

Launch costs for a Falcon 9 are about near 70 million dollars now which is also the estimated production price of the rocket including launch. So it seems they are not making a big loss even when the first stage explodes on the first landing attempt. It's already 'paid off' after one single use.

Price estimates of a first stage are in the 15-20m dollar range so every reused stage will net them about that (minus refurbishing costs) as a bonus.

Interesting, I figured that they were basically subsidizing the first launch in the hopes of making it back in later launches.

I could have sworn I remember there being an article about them doing something for the Government and they wanted a fresh rocket so it cost more. But maybe I am remembering wrong.

So roughly first rocket at cost and then if they are successful (which is for sure an incentive) the rest is profit above maintenance cost.

The flight cost more because they also wanted to fly much further

NASA used to want a fresh rocket, now they prefer the second flight to the first because any "bugs" get shaken out during the maiden voyage.

They've always made money on the bulk of their first flights but the income is much better for later flights where the booster is already paid for.

SpaceX builds and launches one of these for about $50-60 million and a reflight costs them about $20 million. They charge about $70 million per flight. They've made their investment on the first flight and more than double that income on all future flights. Compare that to a new $55 million dollar rocket for every launch, and you see how after a couple dozen reused flights a booster has earned SpaceX hundreds of millions of dollars more than using new all the time.

SpaceX already dominated pricing with its cheap flights before reuse, built on cheap costs from vertical integration and advanced manufacturing processes (plus skilled workforce) but reuse made winning every launch contract even more lucrative and today no one else can possibly match them.

More importantly reuse lets them fly often as they refurb in about a month and have a fleet of about 16 boosters. That lets them hit 3 flights a week when the operation is going smoothly and that is how something like Starlink can be profitable despite requiring over 100 launches a year. The cadence is ridiculous and that could not be had without reuse at anywhere close to SpaceX's workforce sizing today.

> This was the booster’s 23rd flight

I did not realize that they had a booster with that many launches.

This booster is the record holder.

I'm sure they expect that a long-lasting reusable rocket will eventually fail.

SpaceX must be eager to study the wreckage to see where to improve their reconditioning process.

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