SpaceX Affirms Its Reusable Rocket Strategy with Recent Achievements
While SpaceX's Starship vehicle has been the highlight this week, the company's Falcon 9 rocket has been silently achieving impressive feats. It's all about the value of reusing the first-stage of the rocket, a concept that SpaceX has been championing for the last ten years.
Marking the Milestones
One significant achievement took place during the launch of a certain batch of satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida. During this mission, the Booster 1096, which was on its second outing, successfully landed on a designated drone ship. This marked the 400th drone ship landing executed by SpaceX.
Less than a day later, another Falcon 9 rocket launched a different set of satellites from a nearby launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. Following this, Booster 1067 made its way back and landed successfully on another drone ship.
The Booster 1067 is exceptional. Since its introduction in June 2021, it has been part of various missions. These include taking two Crew Dragon vehicles to the International Space Station and launching some Galileo satellites. The recent launch was its 30th flight, a first for a Falcon 9 booster.
A Decade of Innovation
These milestones come about ten years after SpaceX started making strides with its first-stage reuse concept.
The company first managed a controlled entry of the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage in 2013, during the debut flight of version 1.1 of the vehicle. This marked the first real-world application of supersonic retropropulsion, a concept that was up until then only theoretical.
Supersonic retropropulsion involves igniting the rocket's nine Merlin engines as the vehicle travels faster than sound through the upper atmosphere. This process has to contend with external temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The intense force of reentry causes the engines in the outer ring of the rocket to flare.
Despite the odds, the first stage made it all the way down. It landed in the ocean, intact. From then on, the company focused on perfecting the process. By December 2015, SpaceX managed to land its first rocket on a pad along the Florida coast. The first drone ship landing followed shortly after in April 2016. Less than a year later, SpaceX re-flew a Falcon 9 stage for the first time.
Overcoming Skepticism
Many had doubts about SpaceX's approach to reuse. In the mid-2010s, both European and Japanese space agencies were planning their next generation of rockets. However, they chose traditional, expendable rockets over reusable ones. As a result, they are now trailing SpaceX in terms of launch technology by about a decade. If the ambitious Starship rocket proves successful, this gap could grow even larger.
In the United States, SpaceX's main rival has traditionally been United Launch Alliance. Their response to SpaceX's plan to reuse first stages a decade ago was dismissive. The company's engineers wrote papers and conducted studies arguing that SpaceX's plans were not feasible.
About a decade ago, United Launch Alliance shared a graphic demonstrating that their approach was superior. They called this approach SMART, an acronym for Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology. The inference was that SpaceX's booster flyback approach was foolish.
The United Launch Alliance analysis in 2015 suggested that the SMART plan would result in cost savings from the second launch of a booster. In contrast, they argued that SpaceX's approach would need ten flights before it could yield any cost savings.
Little did they know that a decade later, SpaceX would fly the same rocket 30 times and have an annual launch pace that matches the total number of rockets United Launch Alliance has flown in its 20-year existence. As for SMART, it remains a theoretical concept.