I was really thrilled by the recovery of the Falcon 9 first stage last
week. I thought it was the most exciting launch since the first launch
of the Space Shuttle Columbia. At the time, I believed NASA which was
saying that after an initial development period, the Shuttle program
would launch a space ship about once a week. Lots of things would of
been different if the Shuttle could have been launched affordably once a
week.

Now back to SpaceX. Does anyone know what is SpaceX's game plan with a
recoverable first stage? They can just keep on as is and increase their
profit margin. Or they can try to get more customers by lowering their
price. They can also improve their rocket by tearing down the recovered
first stage and scanning the pieces to figure out which need to be
stronger which could be lighter or what not, that, at least in the short
term, probably increases their costs per flight instead of lowering it.
I suspect they will do a little bit of each of the above. But does
anyone have clues of what they are doing? Is there any sign that they
are offering flights for less than before?


Alain Fournier