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To: ScubaDiver

He lands boosters on drone barges after blasting off with huge payloads. That science alone just floors me. Amazing every time I see it.


11 posted on 04/07/2021 7:07:42 AM PDT by Shady (Prince Andrew must be dethroned...ASAP.. )
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To: Shady
If I remember correctly SpaceX said the "design life" of the latest gen of Falcon boosters is 10 launches. I think they have one at 9 now. So the question of the day for techies is, for the 10th and "final" flight of that booster will they bother to expend the fuel (rocket, drone ship) and personnel time to recover it?

I'm kind of guessing the answer is yes for two reasons. One, they wouldn't want to be seen as contributing to pollution both in the air from what might burn up and in the ocean for what might not. Two, their engineers will no-doubt want to take it apart and examine it for wear and tear. I remember talking to a couple of their engineers a few months before they successfully recovered their first booster. They were not going to re-fly that one, but rather tear it down to look for what was close to failure after a flight.

I imagine something similar will happen after they get one that has completed it's entire design life. They'll take a look and see what components are maybe over-designed, or possibly evaluate if it is safe to up the lifetime to 11 or 12 launches...

Speaking of design life, and getting back to Starlink... What is the design life of the little sats? I seem to remember it is measured in a few months for the initial set, and something like a year or two for the current gen? That would mean SpaceX would have to maintain a fairly consistent pace of launches to replace sats going out of service or expand coverage & bandwidth.

22 posted on 04/07/2021 8:03:29 AM PDT by ThunderSleeps (Biden/Harris - illegitimate and everyone knows it.)
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