Hello, space friends!
It’s Erik von Ancken with your weekly newsletter about all things space! This week, we look at reusability because it’s here to stay.
The numbers do not lie.
- 17. That’s how many times the Falcon 9 rocket booster has flown that yet again launched this weekend from the Space Coast and subsequently sucessfully landed.
- 200. That’s how many SpaceX has recycled and relaunched a rocket booster after successfully bringing it back to Earth.
- 51. That’s the number of launches from the Space Coast so far this year, on track to break a record.
- 3. That’s the number of launches from the Space Coast that were not performed by a SpaceX reusable rocket.
ULA sent up two of those three rockets, which in itself is staggering (newcomer Relativity Space was the third non-SpaceX rocket launcher so far this year, sending up its developmental Terran One in March).
United Launch Alliance (ULA) is the Boeing/Lockheed partnership that used to be the primary launch provider for the Air Force (now Space Force) and NRO (National Reconnaissance Office). ULA was the military’s tried-and-tested launch provider, the “go-to” guys when the U.S. government had to put something important into orbit.
And ULA was (still is) really good at it. ULA still brags about how it has had 100% mission success.
The problem, though, is that throwing away rockets is really expensive. Too expensive. No one wants to throw away tens of millions of dollars when they don’t have to.
Rocket builders don’t specifically reveal how much a rocket launch really costs, but industry estimates calculate that a ULA launch is as much as double the cost of a SpaceX launch. And SpaceX’s launch cost will continue to fall as it figures out how to recapture and reuse more of its rocket boosters. (SpaceX once tried to catch the rocket nosecone fairings in a giant net draped over a fishing trawler -- now the fairings fall into the sea because SpaceX has figured out how to water-proof them, pluck them out of the ocean and recycle them.)
ULA’s launch cost, once the Vulcan rocket comes online, will drop but not by much. Vulcan is not reusable.
Granted, most of SpaceX’s launches this year (and last year) were for SpaceX by SpaceX to place into orbit the company’s growing Starlink internet-beaming satellite network. But reusing rockets makes launching rockets much more cost-effective for SpaceX and thus much more feasible.
And reusability -- and the lower launch cost -- is the reason that more and more (if not most) customers are choosing SpaceX, not ULA or any other launch provider.
It’s ultimately why SpaceX launched 48 times this year on the Space Coast and ULA has only launched twice.
These numbers offer a grim future for non-reusable rockets and a dire message: if you’re not building a reusable rocket, don’t build it at all.
📧 Have any topics you’d like to discuss? Send me an email here.
👋 Here’s a little bit about me.
I’ve covered space for News 6 beginning in the days after Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry in 2003.
Since then, I’ve been at Kennedy Space Center reporting on nearly every space shuttle launch and the retirement of the shuttle program with Atlantis’ final flight in 2011.
I’ve climbed aboard Shuttle Atlantis’ flight deck and flown twice with the Air Force Thunderbirds in an F-16.
I’ve also reported on the rebirth of KSC and the Space Coast, covering the first SpaceX cargo missions to the International Space Station, leading up to the first crewed launch to the ISS in nearly a decade when the newest American-made rocket with American astronauts blasted off from American soil.
And I continue to track NASA’s SLS as the Artemis I Moon Rocket is readied for rollout and first flight.
I was at KSC when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos first announced his plans to bring his Blue Origin space tourism company to the Space Coast and reported from Long Beach, Calif., on up-and-coming aerospace tech, including Virgin Orbit.
I’ve interviewed Elon Musk one-on-one, and I very much look forward to speaking with you, too, in this “space.”