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'Flight proven' SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket poised for second launch

James Dean
FLORIDA TODAY

All those cool rocket landings SpaceX has pulled off over the past year or so?

They’ll amount to little more than expensive stunts unless the company shows that those recovered Falcon 9 boosters can be re-launched again. And again. And again.

SpaceX’s highly anticipated first opportunity to prove that its rockets can be reused is expected next week, with the planned 4:59 p.m. Wednesday launch from Kennedy Space Center of a commercial communications satellite on what's being called a “flight proven” booster.

CEO Elon Musk has long argued that reusability is the innovation that will revolutionize the launch industry by driving down costs, a prerequisite to fulfilling his dream of colonizing Mars.

“In order for us to really open up access to space, we’ve got to achieve full and rapid reusability,” Musk said last April at KSC. “And being able to do that for the primary rocket booster is going to be a huge impact on cost.”

A Falcon 9 rocket lands off the West Coast of the United States in January 2017.

[Mysterious equipment spotted on SpaceX drone ship at Port Canaveral]

Musk was speaking after SpaceX had landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on a ship at sea for the first time, minutes after the rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral with International Space Station supplies.

That same booster, which flew faster than 4,000 mph and dropped from more than 87 miles up, now is being prepped to lift the SES-10 satellite to a high orbit for Luxembourg-based SES.

It’s uncharted territory for a big, liquid-fueled rocket.

Blue Origin has launched and landed its smaller New Shepard suborbital rocket five times in Texas.

Space shuttle solid rocket boosters and orbiters were reused, but only after costly and time-consuming refurbishment or reconstruction between flights.

That’s not what Musk, or Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, are after.

“Rapid and complete reusability is the thing that’s really important for the reusability to be cost-effective,” said Musk. “Like an aircraft.”

A successful launch this week would be a major breakthrough for SpaceX, but it will take many more such successes to prove reusability is the game-changer it is promised to be.

Boosters and their nine Merlin main engines represent about two-thirds of the cost of a Falcon 9 mission, which SpaceX advertises for $62 million for a commercial satellite. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, has said savings from re-flights will be “substantial.”

SpaceX and SES have not disclosed how much of a discount SES received for taking a chance on being the first to re-fly a Falcon, under a contract announced in August.

Shotwell last year said she was offering “about a 10 percent price reduction” for recovered boosters, a number that could grow as SpaceX recoups its investment in landing and recovery systems.

Those systems include stabilizing fins, thrusters and landing legs on the rocket; building landing sites on land and modified barges called “drone ships” for ocean landings; a new Port Canaveral facility where recovered stages will be stored and refurbished; and people to perform the work.

“It’s great that we land," Shotwell said at a satellite industry conference last summer. "We spent a fortune on Falcon 9 upgrading it so that we could land. But really, that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to be able to re-fly it."

It’s also unknown how much work has been needed to clear the flown rocket for a second mission.

[SpaceX 'super-excited' about Port Canaveral complex]

After the drone ship landing in the Atlantic Ocean last April, Musk projected that the booster could fly again in as little as two or three months.

It has been nearly a year, in part because of the Falcon 9 explosion last September that grounded SpaceX for the last four months of last year.

SpaceX says another booster recovered from a more demanding, higher-orbit launch, underwent minimal refurbishment before its engines were successfully fired multiple times on a Texas test stand, for as long as a launch would take.

The boosters return from space charred with soot, having survived high-speed re-entry through the atmosphere and multiple engine firings to slow their descent.

“It comes back surprisingly, really surprisingly, in good shape,” Shotwell said last summer.

Examining the first booster SpaceX ever landed, at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in December 2015, Shotwell said a tray of wires looked “pristine,” and a section connecting the rocket’s two stages was “still shiny and beautiful” inside.

SpaceX does not refer to flying “used” rockets, which might imply a degree of wear and tear. Instead they are “flight proven,” implying a second flight will be less risky than the first.

SpaceX hopes to reach to a point where boosters can fly 10 or more times, and eventually need just a few weeks between flights.

“There probably will be some failures in the future, but we’ll iron those out, and get it to the point where it’s routine to bring it back, and where the only changes to the rocket are maybe to hose it down, or give it a wash, and add the propellant and fly it again,” said Musk. “That’s the key.”

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean.