The Fate of Four Landed Falcon9’s – Space Pod 6/1/16
June 1, 2016
This week, SpaceMike asks, now that SpaceX has four landed Falcon 9 first stages, what are they going to do with them?
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I still think reusability will be much more expensive than single use.
Although it is a great accomplishment I think that the total cost will
turn out to be not worth it.
As they start routinely reusing 9 out of 10 engines, they’re going to have to start retasking a lot of their workers since not so many engines will need to be made. This retasking will start accelerating their progress towards other objectives.
I expect SpaceX to gather enough data from these recovered rockets to redesign the next generation of first stage rockets for more complete re-usability. Examining a series of spent rocket stages will enable them to pinpoint where and why damage is occurring, and therefore enable them to re-engineer the assemblies to withstand such forces without damage. That will be necessary for true re-usability.