13
NASA Administrator seems to hint at 2nd Stage recovery (www.youtube.com)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by ptfrd@sh.itjust.works to c/spacex@sh.itjust.works
11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Quote from Bill Nelson:

... SpaceX, by having the return of the first stage, has brought the cost down significantly. That has affected the entire launch industry. We'll be seeing attempts at bringing the second stage down on some missions.

The key sentence is (currently) 52 minutes and 48 seconds into the video. Approximately 49 minutes after the event started.

No other mention is made of this. Should we assume he's specifically referring to the 2nd Stage of the Falcon 9? What is the likelihood that he is mistaken? Could he just be thinking of the existing deorbit procedure? Or could SpaceX be putting parachutes on some of their 2nd Stages in the near future?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] ptfrd@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago

That's actually what worries me about this. If they are thinking of reusing 2nd Stages from the Falcon 9, does that suggest we need to start being more pessimistic about Starship timelines?

Not necessarily, of course. I think they're committed to continuing to fly the Falcon 9 as long as customers want it? So extra F9 reusability could still be worth the investment, even if they were predicting Starship to be operational very soon.

Also, this could just be recovery for inspection, not for reuse.

[-] cosmic_skillet@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago

I believe the speaker is referring to starship about returning the second stage

this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
13 points (100.0% liked)

SpaceX

1944 readers
30 users here now

A community for discussing SpaceX.

Related space communities:

Memes:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works
few@sh.itjust.works