How can the rest of the world even compete?

Good thread

p.s not really

Do they plan on being able to recover the second stage at some point? That seems like it's still a pretty big cost per launch.

>>8127663
Yes, but it might not happen until development of the methane raptor engine is completed.

>The broader Raptor concept "is a highly reusable methane staged-combustion engine that will power the next generation of SpaceX launch vehicles designed for the exploration and colonization of Mars". According to Elon Musk, this design will be able to achieve full reusability (all rocket stages) and, as a result, "a two order of magnitude reduction in the cost of spaceflight.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/spacex-could-drive-launch-costs-to-low.html

I wonder what they are going to do with the latest rocket?

It consumed a crush core on the landing.

>>8127745

Musk says it should be easy to replace

>>8127745
wasn't the crush cores just for the legs? If so, should be easily replaced i think

>>8127642
SpaceX doesn't stand a chance, by 2020 it will be overtaken by the next superpoower.

>>8127642
The moment space becomes profitable, SpaceX will be subject to a hundred different limitations imposed by nations.

This will come mostly from the fact that SpaceX is an american company and having an american company monopolize space business means that the US will quickly overcome economically everyone else so there will either be some UN discussion that will end up in SpaceX being able to only claim small parts of what they find or an all out war between the US and China or maybe even a direct attack to SpaceX by China as a way to slow them down.

This will obviously be followed by the chinese government investing in Ezupezu-Ekusu, their own space company.

>>8128565
Based Elon will sling shot a tungsten telephone pole around the solar system until it gets to 30% C and hold the world hostage.

When do they stop calling it "experimental landing"?

Or are they going to do like Google? Where most of their services are labeled "beta" forever. So they can avoid responsibility when things don't work as promised.

>>8128401
>>8127774
>>8127745
Yeah, part of a leg. Kind of like blowing a tire on a car: it's not normal, but if it doesn't cause a serious accident, you can fix it easily and at relatively minor expense.

>>8128700
>When do they stop calling it "experimental landing"?
Probably some time after, rather than in the middle of, their first half-dozen successes.

>>8128555
Brazil?

>>8128790
>superpoower
>poower
>poo

>>8128802
Kek
In 2020 they will be lucky if Brazil even exists anymore

>>8128565
Highly unlikely. More likely the US fucks itself in the ass like it did in the past. Once the US pretty much had a monopoly in the Western World. Then the Europeans wanted to have a comm satellite launched. The US refused desiring to keep a monopoly. Result: Europe started it's own program of developing independent access to space. After a while Europe owned the commercial market with 60% market share.

In trying to monopolize satellite construction the US created competition not just in satellite construction but launch services, too, and fell behind. To make matters worse Congress didn't acknowledge its mistake to this day and silly laws that prevent NASA from buying launch services around the world have left it with the world's highest launch costs. Lesson: protectionism is always bad.
I dread the economic havoc should Trump become president and realize his dreams of protectionism.

>>8127642

They won't, in seriousness ULA will catch up even if it takes 5-10 years. And then there's NASA themselves.

Remember, since all the space contracts come from the US government, they will be given out equally amongst the top 2-3 companies. Much like it is for most defense contracting. This is done as a way to prevent monopolies from forming.

serious question

why bother landing the first stage when they could use parachutes?

>>8129287

Im guessing that because a parachute nevers slow you down as much as people think, for example; when the US paradroped sheridans into battle the sheridan had to go one way and the crew on the other.

Something as heavy and delicate as a rocket, even empty, would require a lot of parachutes and even then you could expect some damage.

>>8128565

In that case the US would just monopolize space on their own. At the moment, only the US has a private space industry.

>>8129263

Meanwhile, the US is the only country with a serious space program. The ESA does satellite launches because it's relatively easy and makes money. The US is the only country willing to commit to riskier things actually in space (re: outside of earth orbit).

But this doesn't really matter since space travel will never be profitable and will always rely heavily on government subsidy. In which case, the US spends more on defense than any other country on earth.

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>>8128790
this people are going to space

>>8129293
>The ESA does satellite launches
B... but... muh asteroid landing

>But this doesn't really matter since space travel will never be profitable and will always rely heavily on government subsidy

Thats not true, we just need a better infrastructure on Earth and low orbit, if the goverment invested more on fuel and propellant depots in orbit and the private sector on more industries around such depots any launch would be much cheaper.

>>8127663
It has just one engine.

>>8127642
The rest of the world is too busy slaughtering each other to care about space.

>>8129482

the solution is to do the slaugher in space.

>>8127722
>$10 per pound by 2025

>9 Years from now.

Nope. It'd be fucking awesome though.

>>8129293
>The ESA does satellite launches because it's relatively easy and makes money. The US is the only country willing to commit to riskier things actually in space (re: outside of earth orbit).
Remind me again, which space agencies have landed on objects in the outer solar system?

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Impressive that the damn thing didnt fall over

Brainlet here. Can somebody explain why they land it on a barge?

>>8127722
>memethane

>>8128790
Nah dude clearly Somalia

>>8130591
!: They plan to build a launch base somewhere in-land, and subsequent land inland as well, but they are still not approved to do so. Something about the FAA having an issue with 50 tons of rocket landing in a kindergarten. This gives them experience with precision landings while not being dangerous.
2: Not enough fuel left to fly the booster all the way back to shore

>>8130591
The can't land it in the water, because the salt will fuck up then engines.
They can't land it on land, because of the risk to people.
There's aren't really any other places to land it.

>>8130591
Because every course correction costs fuel. Expending fuel to land the thing already eats away payload capacity. Landing on a barge tries to minimize this loss to ~15% of the payload capacity because the barge can be put into the natural path of the rocket. The land route costs ~30% of the payload capacity, which almost nullifies the cost savings due to reusability.

>>8130591
>>8130683
>The can't land it in the water, because the salt will fuck up then engines.
They tried landing it it in water. In fact, Falcon 9 was originally designed for splashdown recovery with parachutes (so was Falcon 1).

The problem with parachute recovery was with re-entry. They needed a braking burn during the most intense part of atmospheric entry. When they tried without it, the rocket belly flopped in the upper atmosphere and broke up long before the parachute became relevant. Once they decided to that, they figured they might as well do propulsive landing, and stopped buying parachutes to put on the rockets.

The problem is that it always broke up when it fell over and impacted hard on the water, partly because they had made it longer and thinner, partly because they no longer had the parachute to slow the tip, and just in general because that wasn't designed to work on the 1.1 model.

>They can't land it on land, because of the risk to people.
Their first successful landing was on solid ground, near the launch site. They intend to try it again soon.

The barge is for downrange landings. Flyback takes more propellant than downrange landing, so it reduces performance more severely, and they can only do it with a lightly-loaded rocket. Even if the rocket launched over land (as Russia and China do), the location for downrange landing has to be mobile, since different payloads are launched in different directions.

>>8131466
>Their first successful landing was on solid ground, near the launch site. They intend to try it again soon.
Correct, but at no point did that rocket do an overflight of a populated area. Launch towards sea, flip back, land on the beach. Its a bit simpler to get approval for that than launching somewhere in Texas and landing downrange in Floria.

>>8131480
I'm an avid follower of SpaceX's progress, and I haven't heard a suggestion anywhere that they planned in the future to overfly populated areas.

The Texas launches will go southeast over the Gulf, and do a "dogleg" around Florida for some flights.

Their long-term plans don't involve downrange landing at all. Their next-generation fully-reusable rocket will simply be big enough for them to use flyback recovery on every flight.

>>8130589
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oju9y5YZ2AE

Doesn't the extreme heats and cooling fuck up with the alloys?
It would be like annealing or something idk. Since other rockets could be tossed, I assume it wasn't necessary to think about that beforehand.

Are these rockets made from different materials than non-reusable ones?