(Henry Spencer) wrote in message ...
In article ,
ed kyle wrote:
According to the web site, the "reusable" Falcon first stage
will reenter at Mach 9, float down to the Pacific on parachutes,
and be fished out of the water by some guys in a rented tugboat!

The story I heard is that the reusability is more public relations than
reality... although things may have changed since then, I haven't had a
recent update.

I get the impression that the "Falcon" first stage recovery
attempts are for engineering research purposes, at best. I
wonder if the tugboat guys won't be fishing aluminum
fragments out of the water.

I'm looking forward to seeing what SpaceX puts on display
next week. Are we going to see a real flight article, or
a repeat of the Roton rollout, where a hover test vehicle
was presented with much hype?

I'm also wondering about the $6 million per launch price, the
projected 2-3 launches per year market, the 30+ full-time
SpaceX employees, and the 35+ contract employees used during
launches. If you figure 2 weeks of contract employees per
launch, you get the equivalent of about 35 full-timers.
$150K employment cost for each (salary plus overhead) gets
you to $5.25 million fixed costs. Three launches brings in
$18 million. For $12.75 million, you've got to pay the rent
and utilities, pay the site fees, pay for expert enviromental
impact statements and so forth, build/assemble three bonafide
two-stage rockets that reportedly carry as much payload as
an early Thor-type, and launch 'em into predictable orbits.

Maybe it is not about money. Or, maybe, it is about creating
a company to sell to your undercut competition later for a
big profit.

We'll see.

- Ed Kyle