There's really not a lot of costs that can add up for reuse of these stages. It'll require a bit of cleaning up, a few new bits and pieces replaced and added, and a lot of inspection work. But most of the cost of the stage is in manufacturing the engines and tanks, so it should add up to enormous savings, even if it's relatively costly to reuse each stage compared to the theoretical limits.
Edit: the flip-side is that the reliability and robustness improvements from reusability may be as big a win as cost. Currently it costs tens of millions of dollars to launch a rocket to orbit, which means it's almost never done except as part of a paid launch. Moreover, despite the seemingly high number of launches very few of those launches represent expanding the test-envelope much, every single launch is typically straight down the middle of the performance envelope, to maximize the chance of success. That results in learning very little about these vehicles despite how much they've been flown. By introducing reuse and dropping the cost of flight it may become possible to do real test programs, which would make it possible to determine the flight envelope characteristics of vehicles and help lead to improving designs over time.
And with the amount of redundancy built in they might even go with 'acceptable loss' in terms of engines that cut out early in flight. Which makes you wonder how many engines they could lose and still complete a mission.
Falcon 9 is designed to withstand losing one engine and still make it to orbit.
Reusability makes it more interesting. There's a lot of extra fuel on board now which could be used to make up for lost engines if you're willing to throw away the first stage.
Good point. Orbcomm already paid off the booster. Now SpaceX can take it up for a joy ride for only a few hundred grand of gas and really fly the fins off it.
I bet they relaunch this booster on their own dime as a demo.
I have no inside knowledge, but I'd suspect Orbcomm paid next to nothing for this launch.
Between "You'll be the first launch since the last one... You know, that one with a small anomaly..." and fact that this was the first launch of a new version of the falcon 9 (with slightly different engines, cooler/more pressurized O2), I know that if I were negociating for Orbcomm, I'd ask spaceX to cross the last digit on their bill (and probably have a much more expensive insurance policy in return).
And to delay a _commercial_ launch in order to accommodate weather for the _landing_ ? AFAIK, that's another world's first in history and I think that tells a lot on the underlying story.
Don't get me wrong, this is an amazing achievement, and the economics of it don't really matter when it comes to the technical prowess
Is was a substantial discount, but not "next to nothing". Something like $42 million for two launches, versus $65 million for one launch. And they've been patient with delays and such, which costs a lot of money too.
The launch service provider has the last say on the date of the launch. The customer provides orbital parameters, and the launch just needs to make sure that insertion happens. Delaying for weather is pretty common, and as long as the payload gets to where it's supposed to, everyone's happy. The Orbcomm contract wouldn't have had a launch date specified, except in terms of NET (no earlier than) or similar. The launch windows are decided by SpaceX based on the requirements, and are the other constraint, and there was a window on both days.
Not quite. These satellites were indeed originally supposed to go up on a Falcon 1, but not 11 at a time. They got a pretty big discount, but not quite a pittance.
There's really not a lot of costs that can add up for reuse of these stages. It'll require a bit of cleaning up, a few new bits and pieces replaced and added, and a lot of inspection work. But most of the cost of the stage is in manufacturing the engines and tanks, so it should add up to enormous savings, even if it's relatively costly to reuse each stage compared to the theoretical limits.
Edit: the flip-side is that the reliability and robustness improvements from reusability may be as big a win as cost. Currently it costs tens of millions of dollars to launch a rocket to orbit, which means it's almost never done except as part of a paid launch. Moreover, despite the seemingly high number of launches very few of those launches represent expanding the test-envelope much, every single launch is typically straight down the middle of the performance envelope, to maximize the chance of success. That results in learning very little about these vehicles despite how much they've been flown. By introducing reuse and dropping the cost of flight it may become possible to do real test programs, which would make it possible to determine the flight envelope characteristics of vehicles and help lead to improving designs over time.