Gwynne just gave a speech in C Springs today in which she said cost of
refurbishment was about half the cost of new, and that she expected
less rework in the future.
On Wed, 2017-04-05 at 14:02 -0400, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Tue, 4 Apr 2017, William Valliant wrote:
I saw that SpaceX re-flew a first stage and I was wondering if theyfared
any better that the STS did? I remember that the SSME's turned outto
require complete overhauls and that the TPS took a bunch of work aswell.
The shuttle SRBs are probably a fairer comparison. Despite the PR
hype,
the SRBs weren't so much re-used, as salvaged -- that is, they were
stripped down to parts and some of the parts were used to build
later
SRBs. (Much like SpaceX's original re-use concept, in fact...!)
The
casings mostly got re-used, but there was a lot of other hardware --
each
SRB had its own hydraulic system, its own APU to drive the
hydraulics, its
own electronics packages, etc. etc. -- and after every flight it all
got
torn down, inspected, worked on, and then considered for re-use.
The
whole thing was very labor-intensive and it's not clear that it ever
really saved NASA any money.
SpaceX *probably* is doing better than that. But anybody who knows
the
details of how much refurbishing that stage needed, isn't talking
yet.
They may say a bit more about it after they've done this a few times
and
have sorted out what first-stage mods are needed to improve it
(almost
certainly there will be some) and which things really are going to
need
attention every time.
Henry
