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- Title
- ToryBruno's comment from discussion "Tony on reusability One would want a fleet average flight rate of around 10 to make propulsive flyback economically sustainable. We are watching closely for someone to begin approaching this."
- Authors
- ToryBruno
- Word count
- 652 words
I know Tory is a cool, and intelligent guy ... knows more about this stuff than I could ever hope to.
And basically, his comment is detailed and accurate.
But he's still wrong-ish. I see it in the mindset he (and the entire "old-school" space industry) brings to the challenge.
(Paraphrased—) "You start with an expendable booster then start adding stuff to make it reusable ... a 2nd 'X', a 2nd 'Y' ...".
SpaceX never started with an expendable booster. Even though they didn't actually land one until a few years ago, they have been designing for reusability since Day 1. There is no "2nd 'X'" on a Falcon, because they designed the 1st 'X' (and thru iterations, redesigned) to get the job done.
It's this kind of hole in their thought processes which gave-and continues to give-New Space (not just SpaceX but Vector, Blue, etc) the advantage.
... says the Armchair QB.
Tory is who Elon wants to be.
If you want to see real science and seriousness follow his twitter, he puts out a lot of good information into the void.
Tory Bruno is right. Booster reuse isn't right for ULA, at least not yet. But that doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing for SpaceX and others.
Reuse is only part of the economic equation. Vertical integration and other manufacturing cost reductions are important, too. If SpaceX can build reusable rockets cheaper than their competition can build expendable ones, then it doesn't matter as much that they get high per-rocket flight rates right off the bat. They can start with not as cheap as SpaceX expendable, but cheaper than the competition and work down to cheaper than SpaceX expendable.
The other part is high total flight rate. A launch provider has to fly a lot to get the experience needed to perfect reusability and to achieve the economies of scale that make it worth it. If you only launch a handful of times a year, like ULA, it's not worth it. That's where the genius of Starlink comes in. In a limited, inelastic market SpaceX is producing their own demand.
And economics is only part of the reuse equation. To reach their primary end goal of settling Mars SpaceX has to haul hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo. They need rockets that can haul as much at a time as possible, and to launch as many at a time as possible. They need orbital refueling for the former, and they need to build up a stockpile
for the latter. Both require reuse.