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On 2018-04-24 07:10, 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.


If SpaceX truly stops production of Merlin engine as it moves its
operatiosn to BFR/BFS, despite recovering stage 1s, won't they
eventually run out of engines for stage 2?

or will SpaceX in reality continue to produce the engines at least for
the upper stage config ?

If they can recover stage 2 engines reliably, this could enable ending
production of the engines to retool for BFR/BFS ?

I personally can't imagine Merlin production to completely stop until
after BFR/BFS is flying successfully. Same for Falcon production
especially due to the oddball expendable or partially expendable flight
due to performance reasons.

That said, SpaceX can certainly scale back production considerably once
Block 5 first stages/boosters are flying successfully, assuming it meets
its goals of 10 flights between refurbishments with 100 flights overall.
Reducing first stage/booster production by nearly a factor of 100 is
huge when it contains 9 Merlins and the upper stage only one.

Jeff
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