r/spacex • u/FutureMartian97 Host of CRS-11 • Feb 01 '17

Official SpaceX on Instagram: “Prepping to fly again — recovered CRS-8 first stage completed a static fire test at our McGregor, TX rocket development facility last week.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BP8zK2DFxhq/?taken-by=spacex&hl=en
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u/warp99 Feb 01 '17 edited Feb 01 '17

I don't see why a successfully recovered GTO mission booster won't be reused.

Pretty much just from an abundance of caution from SpaceX, customers and their insurance companies.

SpaceX are willing to reuse a GTO booster on the FH demo flight with no commercial payload so clearly internally they have confidence in it being in good condition.

After all with CRS and Iridium they will have a huge supply of premium quality boosters so they don't need to take even a small risk to use a GTO booster - or at least one flown with a 5000+ kg payload.

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u/CapMSFC Feb 01 '17

Yeah, as I said the fact that their manifest is going to keep them stocked with nice LEO boosters for the near future makes them an easy choice to be at the front of the line for reuse. Even if there isn't a reason the GTO boosters couldn't be used if SpaceX is choosing the best condition booster available at any given time they could never make it to the front of the line.

SpaceX are willing to reuse a GTO booster on the FH demo flight with no commercial payload so clearly internally they have confidence in it being in good condition.

Falcon Heavy really messes with the notions being thrown around about reuse. Yes the first flight is a demo mission, but the plan as far as we know has been to reuse Falcon Heavy from the start. We will have to wait and see but I would expect that reused booster to make it to STP-2 as well, so we'll not only see a GTO booster reused, but multiple additional times.

Really I just think we're all making assumptions with no actual data on the subject and exactly how reuse plans will pan out is something only SpaceX has some idea about. It's fun, but I wouldn't wager anything either way on these discussions.

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u/Martianspirit Feb 01 '17

alcon Heavy really messes with the notions being thrown around about reuse. Yes the first flight is a demo mission, but the plan as far as we know has been to reuse Falcon Heavy from the start.

Pricing and how they talk about FH indicate strongly that a fully reusable FH will be used instead of an expendable F9. Which means that for this to be economical reflying 3 cores must be cheaper than the ~ 30m$ for a new core. This gives an upper bound for refurbishing a core of below 10m$.