Jeff Findley wrote:
In article , says...

Well, there is that, but I was actually referring to the "no required
refurbishment" assertion.

As long as the Merlin engines were designed from the start to be
truly reusable (which I suspect they were), then I don't see why a
Falcon 9 V1.1 first stage would be much harder to quickly re-fly
than DC-X. DC-X proved it was possible two decades ago and that was
with the additional (cryogenic) headaches caused by using LH2 as a
fuel.

Fair enough - but in the case of DC-X they were able to look at the
engines etc after each of the tests. And I'm not questioning the
principle of "no refurb" reuse as much as the "confidence" assertion.
Unless one includes Grasshopper (which may indeed be applicable here
at least to a point) I would think that having confidence in knowing
there will be no refurb required would call for examining a few
successfully recovered stages. Sure, they've brought two stages to
sea level (more or less) but just how much of those stages have they
been able to examine?

rick
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