On 4/24/2018 7:10 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:
I'm glad they're working on upper stage recovery. My guess is that
BFR/BFS will take a bit longer than Elon's aspirational schedule
products. As such, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy will remain the workhorses
of SpaceX for many years to come. Anything they can do to cut their
costs increases the cash they can funnel into BFR/BFS development.

I am of the opinion that the existing F9 and F9H architectures will be
(crew-wise) underutilized. In a perfect world, a "white knight" would
step forward and say, "Look we love what you have flying already. And we
want to build our own (crewed) space program around it." That WK *could*
be NASA, but thanks to politics (and SLS) its likely going to have have
to be either business, academia or another country. Politics makes all
things complicated. But if an ally (like Australia) came forward, esp.
if they not only came with a checkbook but with a request for contract
to have SpaceX build an Australian launch complex with them....

But let's see what Bridenstein can pull off.


Same goes for Starlink. That needs to be developed, built, and launched
quickly in quantity for them to maintain the number of satellites that
goes with their FCC agreement. That's a "use it or lose it" type of
thing. You can't apply for and be granted bandwidth and just "sit on
it". You have to use it. Improving Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy reuse
will help keep costs down for launching Starlink as well.


All good.