SpaceX signs first contract for reused rocket

In October SpaceX is going to relaunch a rocket that they already launched and landed! This is absolutely amazing: SpaceX signs first customer for launch of a reused rocket

 

It's fantastic. SpaceX is pioneering and is going to bring down the costs of space travel significantly.

<3 Elon Musk

 

They are already the cheapest by 10 or 20 million I believe. Reusing the first stage of the rocket is said to bring down the cost by about 30% from about 66M (?) to like 45M (?) and as they get better at reusing them with less turn around time and less testing the price will drop even more. They are also scaling up their rocket manufacturing plant so that will make them even cheaper to make from the start. I absolutely love SpaceX.

 

All this is great but it's not like the reusable rockets are new or anything.
I'm waiting for space elevators to be developed to make mining ops actually lucrative to jump start space travel by a large margin.

 

Reusable orbital rockets are absolutely new. The October launch is going to be the first time an orbital rocket has been relaunched by anyone.

 

Yeah but there has been developmental news (and testing) about it for years from spacex.

 

Yes but they just announced when they are first relaunching it and that's super exciting. They are paving the way for super cheap rockets to space and hopefully this will lead to a new space race by private companies. Musk's goal is to retire on Mars and that's fucking amazing.

 

Yeah but that excitement would be completely destroyed if someone found a suitable material for an earth based space elevator in the next few years. All cost cutting done by space x would be irrelevant.

It's cool but it isn't enough.

That will be one uncomfortable and short retirement given our current tech.

I think I'd prefer floating cities on venus.

 

I don't think anyone is actively working on a space elevator and it would take years (if not decades) to engineer and build so in the short to medium term I don't think it is serious competition to SpaceX. Their slightly longer term goal is to reduce their current cost (about 66M) by a factor of 10 to 6.6M a launch. They believe they can do this by reusing rockets and making their manufacturing more cost efficient.

Ultimately Musk has stated that getting the price down to about $1,100/kg for a Falcon Heavy launch is what he would be aiming for. My quick Wikipedia jaunt says that a guy thinks it would be possible for a space elevator to reduce the price to $220/kg but it seems like that might only be based on the cost of the electricity to run the thing. It looks like estimates for the price to develop one and build it are about 20B so I'm not sure how much that would raise the price per kg. There is also mention of the fact that space elevators have a limited throughput which might make them more expensive (there are relatively many rocket launch sites in the world compared to the theoretical 1 space elevator).

All from: Space elevator economics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and SpaceX - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So basically for the short term SpaceX is unmatched in how cheap they are and how willing they are to innovate.

Musk plans to retire on Mars with the ability to return home if he wants to. His plan is to have voyages to Mars every 2 or so years when Mars and the Earth are at their closest points so the colonies that are setup would be completely self reliant. He's got decades to get the tech he needs in place for that to happen and I really think he will actually manage to do it.

 

In the next few centuries we will all see "The Pale Blue Dot" with our own eyes.

 

Elon Musk is the man. I watched live as the first rocket landed on the barge for the first time. Absolutely incredible what they are doing

 

I haven't watched any of them live since I always forget about them. I have seen them afterwards though. Maybe I should play to watch the next one live.

 

Their hosts they have for the livestream are pretty good. They try to explain all the technical terms as best as they can. Nothing better than watching the rocket come down and hearing all the employees go crazy !

 

Pretty funny that one of their rockets exploded on the launchpad today. And they expect investors in their "reused rockets?"

 

I hadn't seen the news. That really sucks. Hopefully they find the issue and are able to fix it for future launches. I guess we won't be seeing SpaceX launch anything for awhile.

 

How do you expect to advance in technology without failure?

 

I would say sooner than that, space tourism is already a thing for the super wealthy.

 

I do believe the Russians have sold $17M seats to really rich people wanting to go up to ISS. Musk is hoping to drop the price of a ticket to Mars to a more "reasonable" $500k upper middle class / upper class professionals can afford to go to space if they make it their life's goal.

 

Rocket technology has advanced far enough to prevent the explosion of rockets on their launch pads.

My point is the investors will not be happy with the project, and will now be very cautious about their future, if any, investments.

 

Luckily, SpaceX is privately held and not actively seeking new investors. Musk has stated he will not make the company public until they are flying routine missions to Mars for this exact reason, overreactions to setbacks that were bound to happen.