Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) will attempt reflying one of its next upgraded Falcon 9 boosters, while likely opting to retire the first stage used in Monday’s night’s “perfect” launch and milestone ground landing, according to company CEO Elon Musk.
Musk told reporters in a post-landing conference call that the company would attempt a first-stage reflight next year. SpaceX will have plenty of opportunities in 2016, as Musk said it should do “well over” 12 launches next year. Musk said SpaceX will “probably” keep Monday’s upgraded Falcon 9 first stage on the ground due to its uniqueness after performing a pair of tests to ensure it could fly again: a static fire test and a full-thrust, hold-down firing.
Musk believes it will be relatively “straightforward” to refly a first stage because SpaceX has performed multiple full-duration firings of the boost, or first, stage on the ground. He said the company has fired the engines between 10 and 15 times, including all the engine restarts that had to occur while the first stage was in space.
Musk wants to refly the whole first stage and, eventually, the whole rocket, which he priced at roughly $60 million to build and approximately $200,000 to fuel. Musk imagines the company will have a whole fleet of boosters accumulating “quite rapidly” because it is building upgraded Falcon 9 rockets at a rate of one every three weeks. He said even if the success rate is only two-thirds, over time it will be more than 99 percent and very close to 100 percent.
SpaceX, Musk said, will figure out how to make reuse as easy as possible so that almost no work is required between flights, aside from refilling the propellant tanks. Musk expects it will take SpaceX a few years to “iron all that out.” Commercial space advocate and industry consultant Rand Simberg said Tuesday the next step for SpaceX with the first stage is to figure out if there are some design changes that have to be made to insert more refurbishment margin in various places to reduce the amount of work in-between flights.
Monday’s launch and landing at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., couldn’t have gone better for SpaceX, though Musk said he gave himself pre-flight about 60-70 percent chance of success. The rocket landed almost on the center of the company’s “X” painted onto the landing pad at Cape Canaveral at 8:38 p.m. EST. The launch was originally planned for Sunday night, but SpaceX delayed it 24 hours after MonteCarlo simulations showed the company it had a 10 percent better chance of landing the rocket on Monday.
Musk, in a Monday pre-launch blogpost on SpaceX’s website, said the upgraded Falcon 9 had higher performance than the previous version due mostly to increased boost thrust, deep cryo oxidizer and a much larger upper stage engine bell. It also had a number of reliability enhancements, such as a redundant stage separation system and greater structural safety margins, he said. Simberg said although he was impressed by the launch and landing, he was particularly impressed considering how much was new on the upgraded Falcon 9.
SpaceX has talked for a while about how reusing the first stage is key to reducing the cost of access to space. Simberg believes now the company must figure out how to recover and reuse the second stage to further reduce the cost of the rocket. This will be harder, he said, because the second stage flies much faster and has to fall from a much higher altitude as it goes all the way to orbit. SpaceX, Simberg said, can’t just drop it into the atmosphere, or it will burn up on re-entry.
Simberg said once SpaceX figures out how to slow the second stage down under its own power, it must next figure out how much propellant that will take and if recovering the second stage is feasible. Simberg said recovering the first stage is the big payoff because most of the cost of the rocket is in the first stage, so SpaceX can live with “throwing away” second stages for quite a while, perhaps indefinitely.
SpaceX’s milestone landing is bad news for Arianespace, according to Charles Miller, president of NexGen Space LLC and former NASA senior adviser for commercial space. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) new-generation Ariane 6 rocket, which Miller said hasn’t flown yet, will feature a first stage using strap-on boosters based on solid propulsion and a second and third stage using cryogenic liquid oxygen and hydrogen propulsion. Airbus Safran Launchers, which is serving as prime contractor and design authority for Ariane 6, will review the rocket’s preliminary design in mid-2016.
Arianespace’s solid motor focus for Ariane 6 is designed to keep costs low, but Musk may be able to reduce costs faster through reusability. A request for comment was extended to Arianespace.
“It would be a waste of money to build that launch vehicle,” Miller said Tuesday. “If Europe wants to build it, fine, but Elon’s already on to the next thing. It would be useless.”
Arianespace Chairman and CEO Stéphane Israël told Defense Daily via a spokesman that the company has a plan to stay competitive. Israël said when Ariane 6 comes online in 2020, Arianespace’s per kilogram cost to orbit will be able to match or beat competitors. He also said the company plans to remain the leader in the commercial launch services marketplace by offering reliable launch services and transparent business practices.
Israël said Arianespace just had a record year, signing the equivalent of seven Ariane 5 launches, 22 Soyuz and three Vega, all together worth $2.7 billion. The company, he said, also delivered 21 satellites with 12 launches over 12 months, 12 of which went to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) and nine to other orbits.
“The reservoir of wisdom and expertise that comes with over 35 years experience of launching every mission profile for every operator makes Arianespace a formidable player in the market,” Israël said.
SpaceX after liftoff delivered 11 Orbcomm [ORBC] OG2 communication satellites into the proper insertion orbit, also a significant feat as it was SpaceX’s first flight since a launch failure in late June. Launch took place at 8:38 p.m. EST, according to the Air Force. The mission was SpaceX’s second and final Orbcomm mission from Cape Canaveral, according to the Air Force.
SpaceX also scored a big win with the successful relighting of the second stage to help deliver the satellites to proper orbit. Musk said the upper stage performed a coast and then restarted to prove out the “coast-and-restart” capabilities. Simberg said SpaceX had previous issues with relighting the second stage.
OG2 prime contractor Sierra Nevada (SNC) said Tuesday it successfully completed the solar array deployment and initial on-orbit checkout phase for all 11 satellites. SNC said the launch utilized an innovative configuration of three stacked EELV Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) Grande rings to carry the 11 satellites to orbit.
SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment for this story.