SpaceX will try to prove its rockets are reusable with second launch
All those cool rocket landings SpaceX has pulled off over the past year or so?
They’ll amount to little more than expensive stunts unless the company shows that those recovered Falcon 9 boosters can be re-launched again. And again. And again.
SpaceX’s highly anticipated first opportunity to prove that its rockets can be reused is expected next week, with the planned 4:59 p.m. Wednesday launch from Kennedy Space Center of a commercial communications satellite on what's being called a “flight proven” booster.
CEO Elon Musk has long argued that reusability is the innovation that will revolutionize the launch industry by driving down costs, a prerequisite to fulfilling his dream of colonizing Mars.
“In order for us to really open up access to space, we’ve got to achieve full and rapid reusability,” Musk said last April at KSC. “And being able to do that for the primary rocket booster is going to be a huge impact on cost.”
Musk was speaking after SpaceX had landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on a ship at sea for the first time, minutes after the rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral with International Space Station supplies.
That same booster, which flew faster than 4,000 mph and dropped from more than 87 miles up, now is being prepped to lift the SES-10 satellite to a high orbit for Luxembourg-based SES.
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It’s uncharted territory for a big, liquid-fueled rocket.
Blue Origin has launched and landed its smaller New Shepard suborbital rocket five times in Texas.
Space shuttle solid rocket boosters and orbiters were reused, but only after costly and time-consuming refurbishment or reconstruction between flights.
That’s not what Musk, or Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, are after.
“Rapid and complete reusability is the thing that’s really important for the reusability to be cost-effective,” said Musk. “Like an aircraft.”