Elon Musk is a moron, but what SpaceX is doing is kind of amazing in revolutionizing spaceflight, and they don't need you to cut them slack.mbasic wrote: ↑Fri May 05, 2023 10:58 am What are you getting at here? That I should cut them some slack because we are comparing quasi-reuseable rockets with one time use units of the 60's?
As an aside, I thought/heard the whole re-useable aspect is a joke.
By the time you have recover, inspect, certify, refurbish a re-useable rocket .... the cost and "turn-around" time doesn't make sense.
Especially if you are putting people on them.
Reuseable rockets are ... to your point I think .... harder to engineer and make, and more expensive than disposable rockets.
They still only will have so many launches in them.
If something fucks up on the reentry/landing part .... ooof, that's a huge loss and really fucks up The Books.
The re-usability aspect is absolutely not a joke, and is really key to the incredible cost reductions in launches that SpaceX has pioneered. They're basically a full order of magnitude cheaper than their competitors, and the reusability is why.
Here is a chart from wikipedia showing how many times the latest Falcon 9 boosters have been reused. 8 of them have been reused 10 or more times. Thats incredible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F ... e_boosters
Here, we see costs per kg to launch to low earth orbit. Note that the y-axis is logarithmic. Falcon Heavy costs around 1500/kg whereas its closest competitor in the US, Delta IV heavy costs almost $12000/kg.