They’re getting good at this landing business.
Interestingly/insanely: The planned “BFR” doesn’t have legs on the first stage. They’re going to land it right back on the launch mounts.
Interestingly/insanely: The planned “BFR” doesn’t have legs on the first stage. They’re going to land it right back on the launch mounts.
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One big advantage of the BFR is it’s being designed and built with reuse in mind. Landing the Falcon 9 was a bit of an afterthought. There will be a final version of Falcon 9 that’s been designed and built for reuse and it should be in service soon (but the second stage will never be reusable). SpaceX will be building up an inventory of Falcon 9’s for a couple of years and then that’s it. All new work will be dedicated to the BFR.
If customers want to use Falcon 9 after that they’ll have to use or reuse the available inventory.
My understanding is that BFR will eventually be cheaper than Falcon 9 due to it being completely reusable, even though it’s more powerful than a Saturn V.
Just a note, the Big Falcon Rocket (smirk) will *also* be built with reusability in mind — but the second stage will be more than the 1/3 the overall cost of a Falcon 9 launch. Currently the Falcon 9 first stage cost is about 2/3 of the cost of getting to orbit with SpaceX (and most of the time lands safely for reuse), and 1/3 of the cost is the EELV (second stage vacuum-bell booster powered expendible vehicle), the fairing, etc, which is lost.
If Musk can talk the FAA and other such national agencies into letting passengers take suborbital flights (a half hour across the Pacific for example, over 2 miles per second average velocity) aboard the BFR before twenty years go by, I’ll be very surprised, assuming I live to see it. Musk is too focused on Mars, and comes off sounding like a huckster (which in a way, he is). The company needs to stick to its knitting and totally dominate all competitors in the launch business worldwide, let someone else pay for launches (instead of nonsense like, we’ll pay for our launches by launching our own constellation of satellites to provide internet access to the entire world, evidently for free) and get the R&D paid for.
I expect that the Merlin 1D engines used in the Falcon 9 and the version of the 1D used for the EELVs will be superseded by the Raptor, a methane-burning closed cycle high pressure engine that is intended to deliver more to orbit and be easy to reuse. The USAF has hired SpaceX to develop the Raptor for second stage use in a future (probably classified) vehicle, but the contract requires SpaceX to spend $2 for each $1 the USAF is paying (total dev cost about $100 million). Since the Raptor is what Musk wants/needs for the Mars project, this has a high potential payoff.
The Mars colonization is wishful thinking, as is the economic basis for it. Robert Zubrin, the “Mars Direct” guy, made a number of spot-on critiques of last year’s version of Musk’s plan, and the new plan answers none of the criticisms. Musk is smart, but he’s not always right, and he appears to be someone who doesn’t hear things that he doesn’t want to hear.