JF Mezei wrote:

On 2017-10-30 14:14, Fred J. McCall wrote:

Those are two different things. NO ONE has claimed the former because
Falcon 9 isn't intended to go there. As for the latter, over 20% used
boosters in the first year of offering them commercially IS a 'high
rate' for anyone who is sane.


I argued that they had not YET achieved higgh reflown rate. The response
was that they had done 15 this year and this constituted high rate of
launches.


No, that's not what happened, Mayfly. If I didn't know how defective
your communication skills and long term memory are, I would assume you
were deliberately lying. What happened was that you complained that
SpaceX has not demonstrated an (unqualified) launch rate yet. People
told you what the LAUNCH RATE was so far this year. If you had meant
launch rate of 'used' boosters you should have said that. You didn't.


The mentality in this group is that the reflying is a mission
accomplished when it is still at a prototype/evaluation stage.


No. I've been using the word 'production', assuming you knew what it
meant. Perhaps I need to explain and go over the timeline once again
for you. PAY ATTENTION, YOU ****ING YAMMERHEAD!

In 2014-2015, SpaceX did DEVELOPMENTAL TESTING of reflying boosters,
including both 'water landings' and some 'solid surface' landings. In
2016 SpaceX did OPERATIONAL TESTING of reflying boosters. At the
beginning of 2017 SpaceX declared reflying boosters to be COMMERCIAL
PRODUCTION and has not had a failure so far this year. Now, what
'production' means in this context is that they are done testing and
are engaging in routine commercial sale. So reflying *IS* "a mission
accomplished" and it most decidedly is ***NOT***
"prototype/evaluation". "Prototype/evaluation" ended in 2015.


My comment had nothing to do about whether SpaceX had accomplishjed good
so far, or whether they will do better. It was about people claiming
they had already achieved high flight rates for re-used boosters.


Over 20% of all boosters flown this year were 're-used boosters'.
That's a pretty high flight rate for the first year of the capability
being production.


Yeah, if you compare it against Boeing, even doing 1 reflight is a high
rate. But compared about their plans for commodity reflight and very low
turn around times, they aren't there yet. So you can't claim "mission
accomplished".


They're selling it commercially now. That is, by definition,
"commodity reflight". Turn around time is SUFFICIENTLY LOW. That's
"mission accomplished".


We still don't know what the realistic turn around time will end up
being. We still don't know how many times boosters will be reflown in
practice. Somewhere betwene 6 months and 24 hours is a huge variance in
how re-usability may end up working. Somewhere between 1 re-use and say
10 re-uses is a huge variance.


'We' don't need to know anything. Block 3 hardware will almost
certainly only refly once. Block 4 hardware is a transitional design
and will also probably refly only once. Block 5 hardware is the final
design and will refly 10 times with only inspections and up to 100
times with refurbishment. Note that flying the earlier hardware only
once isn't necessarily (or even likely) a limitation of the hardware,
but rather a result of need. Reflying the old hardware once is enough
to get SpaceX into Block 5 hardware.


Yes even at the worse case scenario (1 reflight after 6 month turn
around) it still represents a big step against the "big guys". But that
still leaves a huge gap to the goal stated by Musk of approaching the
re-usability similar to commercial aircraft.


He never said that about Falcon 9, you Falcon idiot. You're now
talking about BFR. Yeah, BFR isn't done. No one has said it is.



The first (and thus most expensive, since it got a lot more
inspection) refurbishment cost "substantially less than half the cost
of a new booster" and was accomplished in less than five months. You
don't seem to think that's significant. The rest of the planet pretty
much does.


I did not say that. Just because they have moved ahead on a path doesn't
allow the cheerleaders to claim it has reached the destination at end of
path.


Have you never heard of 'continuous improvement'? You NEVER 'reach
the destination'. You've never actually met any real cheerleaders,
have you?


In fact, the mere fact that this argument continues shows you are
unwilling to admit there still remains uncertainty on how re-usability
will turn out in terms of turn around costs/time and how many times a
booster gets re-used before it is discarded.


The mere fact that this 'argument' continues shows your head is so
firmly lodged up your ass that it can't be removed with dynamite. We
know that Block 3 hardware can be turned in less than 6 months and
costs significantly less than half of what a new booster costs. I
already told you how many times a Block 3 booster will get reused and
why. So what don't we know again? Not what don't YOU know, which I'm
sure is quite a long list, but what don't the rest of us know?


And that is exactly my point: cheerleaders refuse to see that there is
still a lot of uncertainty in how this will turn out and claims it is a
done deal, already proven.


Your only 'point' is the one on top of your head where your skull
tapers in where the rest of us have a brain.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn