[AR] Re: Falcon 9 lifetime of 5 flights?
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2020 14:10:16 -0400 (EDT)
On Sun, 5 Apr 2020, James Fackert wrote:
As far as being more profitable due to booster reflights, well, that's the
name of the game, especially if your goal is to advance spaceflight...
Also, that little word "more" is supposition, not established fact.
About four years ago, when SpaceX was just starting to have successful
first-stage recoveries, a friend observed (roughly): "There's something
odd at SpaceX. They claim to have a sizable backlog of commercial
launches. They claim to be geared up for volume production. They claim
their commercial prices are profitable. And yet their commercial launch
rate is desultory. What's wrong with this picture?"
His guess, looking at the SpaceX-plant crowd scenes in the launch videos,
was: "Their commercial prices assume first-stage reuse -- commercial
Falcon 9 launches are *not* profitable without it."
Henry
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