Why Falcon 9 is Better than Even SpaceX Thought

[@NASASpaceflight]

Get your broomstick merch! shop.nasaspaceflight.com/collections/broomstick

[@devindykstra]

Falcon 9 is my space shuttle. I grew up with it, constantly inspired by it. No matter what comes next to replace it, Falcon 9 will always hold a special place in my heart.

[@haydentravis3348]

It could just keep getting better. I love some of the designs for recoverable second stages, using Super Dracos like the Dragon, grid fins and a heatshield under the Fair Base. They're beautiful spaceships.

[@john_hawley]

Yikes, I agree 100% however I grew up with the "Space Shuttle" and feel the same way about that beauty // I must be getting old.

[@StrykerFox]

Wow. Just wow.

[@pulloutgang278]

@@john_hawley lol that's how time works

[@altond511]

@@john_hawley I grew up hearing people saying that they would never put a rocket into space. I am getting old. I enjoyed seeing them all wrong though.

[@ClearAlera]

In the grand scheme of things, falcon 9 hasn't been flying for very long, but it's already cemented itself as one of the greatest rockets of all time. My favorite space moment of all time was watching the twin falcon heavy boosters land side by side for the first time. Literally moved me to tears, which isn't easy!

[@JamesWitte]

Agreed. The huge leap is to be expected since the whole thing has been dead since the end of the cold war yet we have had all the recent computational and technology advances in the past 20 years in America.

[@PTQ4Q4Q4Q4]

It's the amount of launches compared to others

[@njsutorius]

I concur

[@Breezely]

I was working with a group of about 30 computer techs in 1981 when Columbia flew the first shuttle mission. One of the techs gutted a broken 13" monitor and put in the circuit board and CRT from a 13" TV so we could watch the launch without attracting the boss's attention. We all kept an eye out for the boss and would occasionally walk by his desk to see how the launch was proceeding. When the launch was imminent it was impossible for any of us to stay away. After it was over we heard a "wow" from the back of the crowd. It was the boss with a tear in his eye. Then he sent us back to work. Most rocket launches are pretty mundane these days and I don't have the patience to watch them. But those Falcon 9 first stage landings still give me the same "wow" moment every time I see them. Can't wait for Starship.

[@Kryptictails]

wow nice story

[@jimgraves4197]

The success of Falcon 9 has without doubt been the turning point in the space flight industry that has truly opened orbital missions up to the public like never before.

[@spheroidialmaster1910]

I have been impressed with the reliability of the system. These are rockets after all, but the on-time liftoff performance and overall consistency of the "nominal orbit insertion" call-out has been impressive. The breadth of market from ride-share to GEO to Starlink to Human missions also deserves mention.

[@av7052]

I never get tired seeing these rockets land!

[@deanlawson6880]

Yes! Always the best part! That never gets old!!

[@lennartlopin2276]

Indeed. Never ever gets old

[@johnwuethrich4196]

They might not call it rapidly reusable. But in perspective: shortest shuttle turn around time was 54 days. Yeah the booster and the shuttle arnt apples to apples.. but in the class of reusable things that go to space it would seem they have the shortest turnaround in history

[@aldunlop4622]

Not to mention the cost of turning around Shuttle in comparison was astronomical.

[@BnORailFan]

@@aldunlop4622 I heard it cost $500 million to refurbish the shuttle after each launch.

[@dsdy1205]

A better way to do an apples to apples comparison is to consider the most important metric of a launch vehicle, fully/partially/not reusable regardless - mass to orbit per year.

[@ninetailedfox579121]

@@BnORailFan On the space shuttles they had to replace all of the heat tiles all around it every single flight.

[@rkan2]

@@ninetailedfox579121 AFAIK they actually needed to be replaced, but they needed to be at least inspected and possibly reglued BUT they were definitely reused. From a reuse point of view it certainly took as long as just replacing them.

[@ralphbradley]

i would add the ability to fulfil flight requests/manifests at short notice, because boosters don't need to be built. must have been helpful with regards oneweb and recent announcements.

[@paulcarpenter999]

I'm sure the same pattern will repeat itself with Starship and Heavy when it starts flying - some functions envisioned to be achievable will not work out, and others will exceed expectations.

[@cameronh3260]

Its gonna be 5+ years after the first successful orbital flight of starship before it matches the reliability of Falcon 9

[@alrightydave]

@@cameronh3260 Probably 10 years to achieve everything Falcon 9 and Heavy can do - including crew, 20t GTO~ while being 3x better from cost per kg perspective than F9

[@cameronh3260]

@@alrightydave in 5 years its gonna be 2027 and Nasa expects them to have a man rated lunar starship way before then, and also if they can do 24hr turn around time like they expect to they can do dozens of test launches per year

[@alrightydave]

@@cameronh3260 I think starship will have a turnaround time as good as Falcon 9 eventually in 10 years of 10-20 days but until then we’re gonna have a low cadence as various variants of starship are still actively under development at start of program. Lunar starship HLS is hard but a lot easier to do than crew starship. Lunar starship is not crew starship either. It’s a small lander, not a complex integrated launch, entry and landing system, so it’ll be 10 years before we see crew despite HLS being 5 (for the full sustainable version, the Artemis III one is much more barebones and not final design)

[@spearamintwolf6225]

Now we just need the government to get out of the way so starship can get to the real testing.

[@YouT-DJ]

To me the aha moment was getting an intact set of boosters back from flight intact for inspection. At that point it's a matter of correcting problems found during inspection and or design flaws. The engineering leap to recover a booster well, that blew everyone's mind.

[@victoriawilliams2786]

Falcon 9 is what got me into trying to watch all launches live. 💝

[@shannonwoodcock1035]

I'm in Ruskin, FL just south of Tampa - on a clear day you can see launches from there. Yesterday I ran outside to look at the Ax-1 launch but there was too much haze to the east. Bummer. Got back inside to watch the 1st stage landing and I must say, they really improved the video signal relay system, both the 1st stage camera and the camera on the drone ship did not drop out al the way thru landing. Can we just admit that SpaceX has it figured out, that they are not wasting the US taxpayer on operational costs compared to the competition? Why is the US Government holding SpaceX back when it comes to Starship? Is it politics as I suspect? Boeing/ULA/Blue Origin and even NASA (SLS looks like a total waste of money if even if it dose launch successfully) There is a ton of money that and influence politicians and other government agencies.

[@tmln4227]

The falcon 9 is the most innovative rocket ever invented ( before starship), it's the best!🚀🧠♥️🔥

[@scotsrule08]

*Enters Starship*

[@Block1618]

I feel like the shuttle was more innovative in terms of number of and depth of innovations. But that was basically at the detriment of the system.

[@simonm1447]

@@Block1618 The problem with the shuttle was it was simply too complicated, and suffered from problems which could never fully solved (like the expensive heatshield refurbishment). It could also not launch unmanned, and a proposed unmanned cargo version was never developed. One of the big achievements of the F9 was to make it relatively inexpensive to operate, reliable and partially reusable at the same time.

[@MartinTheGhost]

ignore the saturn V and the shuttle

[@simonm1447]

@@MartinTheGhost Saturn V was a heavy lifter rocket, specially developed for a single purpose (the moon) with launch costs of $ 2 bn in today's money. It was reliable, but not really versatile. Shuttle was quite complicated, killed a crew of 7 every 60 flights and costed around $ 1,6 bn per single launch, and suffered from problems (heat shield, foam strikes on the wings leading edges) which could never been solved.

[@MistSoalar]

may be an unpopular opinion, but "stage one landing leg deployed" sounds cooler than "lift off" or "nominal orbital insertion"

[@alexdaley7616]

The terminology wasn't created to be cool.

[@Robb1977]

@@alexdaley7616 the whole countdown process was created to sound cool. And i think what mist is getting at is that landing legs only applied to the LEM and falcon 9. Now new shepard has them too, but weve yet to see them do more than some publicity flights with that craft.

[@SuperWeapons2770]

Critique on your videos: When you speak into your mic it picks up the sound of the saliva in your mouth smacking when you speak. I don't record my self, but I have heard from some youtubers that you can remove this with certain kinds of filters on your mic audio, and I would definitely recommend it.

[@brucebennett4274]

Falcon 9 is Sci-Fi become reality... It's awesome, and yet better is soon to come!!

[@kuoster]

Would the chart at 3:28 be easier to understand if the axis were swapped? like, time on the horizontal axis and count on the vertical. (just a thought, had to pause to understand what the chart is showing)

[@p1zd3c]

It would better represent the data to swap axes.

[@Skoop000]

Excellent presentation. Thank you for not stepping on it with annoying music. Keep it up.

[@alanc3933]

Excellent job on this video guys. Always a pleasure watching them and getting useful inforamtion out of them. From time time I learn something I didn't know and that is always a plus. Thank you for doing these an all the other things you guys have been doing. As for Falcon 9 I love atching these launch and get recovered either on drone ships or a RTLS landing. All of those people who said it couldn't be done are sitting there with egg on their faces now. While it has takena little longer to get to where theya re now, SpaceX has not stopped taking what they know and using it to advance future iterations and new spacecraft in order to make it cost less and make it more reliable in the long run. I am looking forward tos ee what SpaceX has next and how the furture of Starship is going to pan out wether it be at Starbase or at the Cape. Again, thank you for all you guys do and I look forward to seeing what you guys are bringing us in the future.

[@Breezely]

I suspect that nearly every rocket engineer on earth would consider Falcon 9 to be a rapidly reusable first stage vehicle even if it did not meet the very aggressive initial goal of 24 hours.

[@GundamReviver]

Plus because they have a bunch of them anyway, from a process engineering standpoint, that 24 hour option is achieved now anyway. (refurbish time devided by amount of rockets available)

[@v44n7]

i mean I am sure they could do it in 24 hs if they really needed too. But there is no need for it

[@ezrarichardson279]

@@v44n7 I agree. There’s just no point!

[@RCTanksTrucks247]

Great video. Very informative.

[@bbirda1287]

Just imagine, in an alternate timeline, Falcon 1 bankrupted SpaceX, NASA never returned to manned space flight, and a return of astronauts to the moon mission remained an unattainable dream for space fans.

[@allan710]

Even more, due to problems with starliner and this war, we would lose the ISS, maybe blue origin in an extent could take the role of SpaceX but be much more delayed. Also, with the failure of falcon 1, tesla probably wouldn't be what it is today, not as aggressive with research and design and maybe they would focus on money much more than they do now and just being an extreme luxury item on a few collections. Also starlink, since the others constellations' ideas only came after starlink. Even if there were other of those, they wouldn't be on time to help in the war in Ukraine. I bet that one last falcon 1 launch, if failed, would cause ripples in human history, specially if starship works out as intended. In future history classes, that launch will probably be regarded as an important historic event, the thing that gave the definitive kick that we needed to the beginning of the space age.

[@loveexplosioninc870]

Bigups to Spacex. The droneships, so amazing in their delivery and more thrilling is the names they have: " 'Just Read the Instructions' and 'Of Course I Still Love You' '".

[@mduckernz]

They are from the Culture series of novels

[@kevinshumaker3753]

Although, due to someone else's rocket testing failures over on 39B, Crew 4 has been delayed, SpaceX almost had 3 Crew Dragons (of the 4 in service) at the ISS this month. Between the Broomsticks, Dragons (both Crew and Cargo) & Cygnus (and, _maybe_ SLS and Boeing, eventually), I believe the Russian Guy didn't realize how committed the US is to ISS & Space, Commercially and Nationally.

[@steveaustin2686]

Crew-4 was delayed, because AX-1 was delayed. AX-1 lifted off this morning, Apr 8th to the ISS and Crew-4 is scheduled for April 20th IIRC. So 3 of the 4 Crew Dragon's are planned to be at the ISS this month. Crew-3' Endurance is already there. AX-1 is using Endeavour, and Freedom launches with Crew-4.

[@kevinshumaker3753]

@@steveaustin2686 But there won't be the 'overlap' that would have had 3 Crew Dragons there at the same time, which would have been a record setting situation...

[@steveaustin2686]

@@kevinshumaker3753 Apparently, NASA only uses two docking ports for crewed spacecraft on the ISS, so every time AX-1 was backed up, Crew-4 backed up. Starliner had the same issue when Crew Dragons we're doing the 2 & 3 crew swap and it had to wait for it's attempt to do the OFT-2 flight. Then Starliner got sticky valves. They are trying OFT-2 again in May, but have to wait for Crew-3 to come back first.

[@tonii5690]

Don't forget Dreamchaser launching this year.

[@paulking962]

Today's launch was Awesome 👌

[@PiDsPagePrototypes]

Second Stage reuse Recovery To The Ground is where the problem lie there - Orbital Recovery And Reuse from an orbiting refilling platform should be the goal there, enabling F9 Second Stages to be used as orbital tugs, sending them out to collect old satellites or push satellites in to new orbits. Heck, have a set of second stages meet up with a Luna Starship and they could act as a kick stage so the Starship can arrive at the Moon with more fuel in reserve, or even, the second stages could be used to push DragonX modules around, from a LEO platform for restocking and sending to Luna or Mars - an Inter-Orbital Drone Delivery Service :) When you think about those possibilities, wasting all the second stages currently in deep orbits by bringing them back to the ground, doesn't make any sense.

[@danieljensen2626]

Once starship is up and running my impression is they're planning on just retiring Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy entirely (although they will keep doing crew launches with it until Starship is human rated). At this point there is no further development for Falcon 9.

[@PiDsPagePrototypes]

@@danieljensen2626 Y'know, I'm not so sure on that future for the boosters (lets keep the second stages a different discussion). Agreed F9 won't be getting developed further, but that's no reason to retire it once Starship is flying - The boosters are proven reliable, to a point where customers are confident in them, for flights of sensitive payloads, government or corporate, that dependability is worth paying for. I could almost see the F9 boosters being kept flight ready and stored, so special customers can book a launch and have a payload in orbit the day after it's delivered to the Space Coast. Back to the second stages I was commenting about, given they're fueled on the pad and have quick disconnects and mounting points, they wouldn't need to be modified or developed further to use as Orbital Tugs, only possible hardware needed specific to them, would be a capture mount to collect each payload with, and that could be an easy fit on to the current payload mounts,.. Beyond that, just an upload of mission software and a fuel station to park next to. Building such, an orbital refiling platform for the F9 second stages, would be like a first iteration of building the same sort of platform for the fuel carrying Starship to dock to. As mission counts for Starship ramp up, a refilling platform is going to be more useful then just an extended refiller Starship, same goes with a base of operations to swap crews around for the manned versions, swapping from atmospheric capable launch vehicles to space-only transports.

[@nigelcampbell8460]

These kind of researched topic-based videos are what going to keep me engaged with your channel. Keep it up

[@DaveF63]

I think there needs to be some clarity. Even if the minimum flight to flight turnaround is 27 days, it doesn't mean the inspections took that long.

[@SuperSMT]

Yesterday's launch was on a booster with a new record 21 day turnaround, and they said refurbishment took only 9 days

[@DaveF63]

@@SuperSMT Yes! I heard Jessie say that. I knew she'd confirm for me. She's my girl (I wish). I suspect the 9 days will reduce even further.

[@pebody1013]

These narrated videos are your best content! More please!

[@andrewsarchus6036]

I like the pure simplicity of the Muskian concept. Hey, want a heap more thrust and a bigger rocket while still maintaining reusability? Just strap 3 Falcon 9's together and you got it with Falcon Heavy!

[@gamingonthespectrum]

As much as i like musk the idea of strapping three cores together to make a heavy lift rocket is not his invention. the delta IV heavy, is the main example that comes to mind

[@SuperSMT]

Except that turned out to not be simple at all! Elon tried at least once to cancel the whole Heavy program. It was much tougher than they expected

[@SRFriso94]

One thing that I think goes kind of underreported is just how reliable the Falcon 9 has become. People often point to CRS-7 and AMOS-6, but those happened in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Outside of those two, Falcon 9 has flown with a perfect record, and has undergone a lot of growth since then. Yes, there is the occasional booster that doesn't make it down to the ground in one piece, but that risk is for SpaceX, not the customer, so it means the insurance premium is lower too, on top of it costing like ten million dollars less to fly on a used booster over a new one.

[@VicariousAdventurer]

Also they are flying the first stage to a higher apogee (ex. AX-1), so they are more confident in their return profiles.

[@1flash3571]

They never stay complacent. and always improving it.

[@dphuntsman]

Great summary, guys!!

[@zhongxina9420]

currently the Falcon 9 has done 315 consecutive flights

[@tairdudeusa7981]

Pretty damn good broomstick!

[@zowik6970]

Falcon 9 is amazing rocket

[@batchint]

that timeline for stage 1 refurbishment was awesome.. thanks

[@SierraSierraFoxtrot]

Wow , I've never seen the external footage of the separation at 2:10, where is it from?

[@motokid6008]

Do we have any idea to what extent SpaceX plays musical chairs with the engines?

[@1flash3571]

I am sure they just replace the ones that are not working well. I don't think they do musical chairs with the engines. More work for them.

[@JaviAirwraps]

Best NSF video of 2022, so far. Please, NSF, i would love more vids like this! Y'all are the best =)

[@Jay-qs1ef]

Great video, amazing footage, and thorough detail. Keep up the great work!

[@GerardHammond]

This is one of the best NSF videos ever.

[@andrewowens5653]

Nice video. As a humanitarian gesture, you should send a free broomstick t-shirt to the director of Roscosmos.

[@donjones4719]

Compulsively offering a counterpoint: A lot of effort went into iterating the F9 and over the years, as versions were superseded, SpaceX retired or, IIRC, expended them. This was especially true once Block 5 started flying. As NASASpaceflight notes, a couple of the early Block 5s were retired early. Reusability cost a lot in reduced payload mass, in full reserve needed, and in vehicle dry mass. By avoiding the use of isogrid tanks and other expensive fabrication techniques the F9 is cheaper to make than an Atlas V. The recovery fleet is quite expensive. What if SpaceX had devoted their engineering talents to continually reducing fabrications costs, including simplifying the Merlin? When did SpaceX reach the break even point on reuse - where in the run of, say, the first 100 boosters? I'm a huge fan of the F9 and it's ability to do those crazy hoverslam landings, but I suspect the break even point was a lot more towards the end of that 100 than most of my fellow fans think. To pick a number out of the air, I'm guessing that till somewhere in 2020 Tony Bruno was actually right when he said reuse wasn't economically worth it (even though, one way or another, F9 was cheaper than Atlas V.) Of course F9 isn't just about economics; learning landing and reuse has been the main path towards Mars prior to Starship.

[@Obvsaninternetexpert]

if they start launching 400 starlink satalites a week it will be worth it..... but if you were launching 5 missions a year... then no

[@mrwjs]

To all you aspiring KZbinrs, take a sip of water before recording a voiceover 😉

[@artsyastronaut9033]

Hopefully in 10ish years they’ll make a video like this on starship

[@winstonsmith478]

Rocketlab's Neutron will be even more impressive for turnaround time. Always returns to launch site. Captive fairing design (clamshell opening) for fully reusable first stage and fairing. Lightweight specially formulated Rocket Lab carbon composite structure. Uses methane for soot reduction on airframe.

[@denysvlasenko9175]

It's easy to be impressive in PowerPoint.

[@DataSmithy]

I would think the main limiting factor for SpaceX launch cadence, would be how fast and cheap they can build their second stages, since that's the main throw away element.

[@PeterKocic]

Could it be true to say that turnaround time for the boosters might be lower than data points show? I mean, they might be refurbished and ready to go for many days/weeks before actually going on a next flight? Or is their flight schedule so packed they are actually short on boosters?

[@arizona_anime_fan]

you're likely right, i don't think their booster fleet is that short. they have a 14 active boosters and 2 more coming on line shortly right now. and their launch cadence is about 1 every 4 days right now. even just 12 boosters would give them 60 or so days between launches without straining their supply of ready boosters.

[@AxelPironio]

The sound quality of the voice over is disturbing. It doesn't sound natural/real at all

[@theharbinger2573]

So what happened to the new (or new ish) booster that collapsed after recovery and bent most of the engine bells? Overall, how much of the 27 days or recovery are devoted to the engines? How often do they have to replace an engine? Thanks for zee video, it was very interesting.

[@lifeingiseasy8187]

I am not an expert at all, but I would say probably the majority of the time because the engines are the most important parts. Well that and just general structural stability of the fuel tanks

[@SuperSMT]

Yesterday they beat their turnaround record, now just 21 days. And during the webcast, they said only 9 of those days were needed for refurbishment!

[@joee1325]

love the content, great job!

[@christopherbeddoe406]

Falcon 9 is AMAZING. I can't imagine how much money they are making off of Falcon 9.

[@shannonwoodcock1035]

SpaceX is making good coin, but at the same time they are saving us the taxpayers a ton more coin because their launch costs are so much lower.

[@GundamReviver]

@@shannonwoodcock1035 meanwhile imagine the enraged shouting in classic rocketry board rooms. "ELON MUSK MADE THIS IN (A CAVE) A SWAMP! OUT OF (A BOX OF SCRAPS) ROCKET STUFF!

[@madtech5153]

@@shannonwoodcock1035 although all those savings are being spent towards Blue origin and Boeing haha

[@ezrarichardson279]

@@madtech5153 lol

[@SuperSMT]

All of it and more are being reinvested in Starship and Starlink

[@RV4aviator]

Excellent content, and full of new info. Falcon 9 has redefined what is possible in Rocketry, not only proven reusability, but has SLASHED the cost of kilo to Orbit limits. Come on SpaceX, let the World see a big painted logo on a Falcon 9 first stage that reads. " BEST BROOMSTICK ON EARTH ".....!!!!!

[@MoteofVolition]

It's wonderful what the NSF team is doing. You are chronicling a large part of this new space age. Keep on NSF!

[@bohemianlamb4309]

Thank you for all you do! Love you guys.

[@SteveInPalmSprings]

Ian - Thanks again for a great Saturday show. Lots of wonderful information in an easy to understand format. Your presentation remains excellent Continued best wishes.

[@CreeperIan02]

Thank you for the kind words! :)

[@SnowmanTF2]

Being able to refly in 24 hours is only part of why that goal exists. A less visible benefit is fewer human time/costs interacting with one per cycle, which reduces launch costs and can simplify staffing needs. Giving the options of supporting a larger fleet with the same staff size, maintain a smaller fleet of first stages with less people (given company growth that allows individuals with rarer skills to be allocated to Starship/Super Heavy development), or somewhere between. Reducing the average inspection/refurbishment time also helps mitigate chance could hit a string of cores needing more complex scheduled maintenance or accident repairs at the same time.

[@F_K3NT_D]

I like it. Great video

[@MadMan020998]

Brilliant video! Very informative. Is there somewhere we could see a copy of those charts? (If there's one which kept current that would amazing) Keep up the good content! Can't wait for the next one!

[@oldmanstumpie1061]

Cool vid. Thanks NSF

[@mrdebris1217]

Great video, thanks. But did I miss the part how often the Merlins have to be replaced?

[@dinocr6783]

Well DONE!! That was Awesome! One little OCD change I would suggest is change "cheep" to inexpensive. Can't wait to see the next update! Thanks NSF!

[@johndododoe1411]

Nice short video, much easier to watch than 20 minutes of people walking around the build site with one or two interesting moments or 6 hours of scrubbing a launch. But I acknowledge the extreme patience needed to capture footage by babysitting a camera for many uneventful hours and realize how small things like people walking in a particular direction can be the highlight of your day even if boring to viewers.

[@KertaDrake]

Rapid re-use isn't necessary if the vehicles are overall cheap enough that you can just have a hundred of them to assembly line refurbish from landing to back to the pad. As long as the vehicles last enough flights to bring down the costs overall, it's a win!

[@RM-hr7ug]

Great review!

[@arnoldsmith982]

great to watch spacex work

[@stephensfarms7165]

Thanks great news SpaceX, keep up the great work.

[@iowafarmboy]

And to think, before SpaceX, reusing the 1st stage was considered impossible and not even worth pursuing.

[@askarielad]

SpaceX is the best thing that the world has ever known yet.

[@darren8453]

A bit of a shame that you didn't consider the evolution of the weight to LEO from Falcon 9. If I remember it right, the Falcon 9 now launches close to what the Falcon Heavy was supposed to. This makes the actual Falcon Heavy launches that much more impressive, but quite rare as there are so few payloads needing that capability at present. Even the idea of it being cheaper to launch a reusable Heavy over an expended single rocket hasn't happened, because the booster has proven so much more capable than expected.

[@Robb1977]

Falcon heavy was one of the most intriguing rocket chapters in history. Providing one of the coolest flights and footage since the shuttle or saturn days... yet not much more useful than the falcon 9, and a hell of a lot more complicated.

[@NO3V]

You put that years-on-the-y-axis graph in there to have at least one thing to annoy me right? Right? Ha, jokes on you! My OCD is on vacation and I still loved the video! 😛

[@thampton1000]

The first time I saw Falcon 9 dual landing, was the first landing I ever saw. Thought it was a computer simulation at first!!! I thought of Musk as a con man 10 years ago. Now I think he is a Alien like Howard Hughes, Leonardo da Vinci...

[@MikeWiggins1235711]

You're reminding me of that line from the movie "Close Encounters of The Third Kind": Support Leader: [Looking the returnees] They haven't even aged. Einstein was right. Team Leader: Einstein was probably one of them.

[@BlackandWhitecustoms]

He isn't an alien but can probably channel them or channel Nikolai Tesla

[@bbirda1287]

The Falcon Heavy simultaneous booster returns still look like magic. Rocket science is hard, but synchronized rocket sports are art on another level. And hitting the freaking X on the pad!

[@markknister6272]

Always play to win! SpaceX👍

[@johndowning2231]

The Falcon 9 is the Ford F-150 of orbital operations!

[@atmosrepair]

Any mention of the future plans to attempt to land boosters on a stationary platform? Or better yet, to attempt to land on a surface most closely resembling the surface of the moon?

[@randomnickify]

Underestimate? Remember how people were fighting over whatever it will even work? :) Spacex were cautious.

[@OenopionOenopion]

It would have been interesting to get some cost data in this video, in particular what SpaceX is needs to charge customers per flight versus comparable non-reuseable launch vehicles, and whether SpaceX can continue to drive down the cost per launch.

[@1flash3571]

They really don't make that much money compared to ULA, or Boeing, or Russians. Also, ULA gets yearly money even if they don't do anything just so that they are in a standby mode. The reason is that just in case new projects are coming and the workforce needs to be ready to get it going. It is in the several billions of dollars. SpaceX don't get any of that. They actually have to get a contract before they can get any money......

[@westrim]

5:50 So they are now... sea fairing.

[@mikepeterson9733]

Anyone know what are the issues for rapid turn-around on Falcon 9? De-coking the turbo pumps for each of the Merlins is definitely one. Are the COPVs an issue (like opening the LOX tank, inspection/re-wrapping COPVs)?

[@Steph.98114]

I think the main issue is just transporting the booster from the landing pad to dock and then back to the launch centre

[@juanok2775]

what is minimal refurbishment though?

[@remesremes4994]

Thanks. As always from NASASpaceflight outstanding information based on best facts available. It's getting more and more rare these days. Do we have any knowledge what a turnaround time of 65 days means? Is it one person occassionally brushing the merlin or is it a whole team spending weeks?

[@JohnBeeblebrox]

02:10 unfeasible (not infeasible) :-) Good post, I learned a lot.

[@baderchallouk1629]

What happens with the second stage after dropping its payload ? Does it stay in orbit as space trash or burn up in atmosphere?

[@GunnarLof]

It usually make a last burn to slow it down for reentry and then burn up. This depends on it having enough fuel though.

[@filanfyretracker]

all LEO launches are usually reentered, GEO is probably grave yard orbited, no clue on GTO.

[@wkrpaz5620]

Very Good Guys

[@MicahTischler]

Not to be rude, but it'd be nice if some of the membership tiers included ad-free versions of these videos.

[@captianmorgan7627]

'Increased longevity and quicker turnaround time' are somehow in both the 'didn't make it' and the 'surpassed expectations' categories......

[@-A-c]

Elon and team certainly made a real workhorse here.

[@johnruckman2320]

I also like how SpaceX has repeatedly proven the experts "can't be done" wrong. I'm wondering since they can't economically land the second stage, and they are thinking of building a starship garbage truck, could they use it to recover the second stages as they clean up the space junk for safer flights?

[@gumnaamaadmi007]

Looking back at the rate of various rocket/STS launches in the 90s and 00s, it's almost scary how 'routinely' SpaceX has made Falcon flights happen. A 24-hour turnaround is simply not needed at this time.

[@Veptis]

Is this the cool and upcoming stuff you mentioned during the stream today?

[@JohanMsWorld]

My main question is could SpaceX take enough of cargo mission to fly Starship often enough for it to mature into a valid crew transportation if you count out Mars Cargo missions? How much need for cargo to LEO are there in the coming years? Johan.

[@catprog]

Starlink alone will require many launches.

[@Mae-nr7wr]

i hope starship will have the same success

[@lynntparsons]

Awesome ❤

[@robertoaguiar6230]

Falcon 9 might as well be one of the best rockets ever made or in use today. It is rated safe enough to deliver astronauts to the ISS, and it's the base for falcon heavy, which also recover it's boosters.

[@j3i2i2yl7]

It seems that the success of SpaceX has been due its agile response to problems, which is in stark contrast to Artemis or the Shuttle, which are/were over conservative and micromanaged and put a premium on using demonstrated tech.

[@RockinRobbins13]

Falcon 9 has sent two missions to the Moon for India and Israel, plus sent the DSCVR four times the distance to the Moon to the L1 Lagrange point.

[@jilow]

Gotta love the American Broomstick!

[@thomaswilliamson298]

A generation from now, the Falcon 9 might be seen as the VW Bug of the space era.