Recycle, reuse: How cheap can SpaceX make space?
A SpaceX booster rocket may soon go where no rocket has gone before: back into space.
The California-based aerospace company has successfully recovered at present seven booster stages, but so far they鈥檝e or sitting in warehouses. That could all change as soon as March, when communications company SES has agreed to let its satellite be a guinea pig for the first re-launch of a Falcon 9 stage one booster.
The rocket鈥檚 previous outing boosted a payload containing resupplies for the International Space Station last April. It then navigated back through Earth鈥檚 atmosphere to land autonomously on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean for the company鈥檚 second successful first-stage recovery.
Second stages are not designed to be re-useable, but about are locked up in the first stage, according to SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
After a , the booster is now being transported to Cape Canaveral in preparation for the SES launch, tentatively scheduled for March. Other SpaceX rockets not slated for re-launch have undergone as many as .
A re-launch will represent a massive milestone for SpaceX, which set out to revolutionize rocketry 15 years ago with the expressed goal of developing reusable vehicles.
Reuse is 鈥渏ust as fundamental in rocketry as it is in other forms of transport 鈥� such as cars or planes or bicycles,鈥� Mr. Musk said in a briefing after last year鈥檚 April launch.
Imagine if you could only use an automobile once, driving to your destination, and then buying another to return home. Only the richest of the rich would be able to go on road trips in such a world. Now imagine that car costs from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.
The way Musk explains it, anyone can see that disposable rockets are a losing game, but former NASA deputy associated administrator for exploration systems development Dan Dumbacher pointed out it鈥檚 not as simple as gassing up your car and driving home.
The space shuttle engines were reusable, he told Space News in 2014. 鈥淲e tried to make them . Look how long and how much money it took for us to do that, and we still weren鈥檛 completely successful for all the parts. I want to be realistic: We are not as smart as we think we are and we don鈥檛 understand the environment as well as we think we do.鈥�
The economics of recycling rockets is very different from that of recycling planes, trains, and automobiles.
鈥淭here are ongoing challenges in translating a reused rocket to tangible capex savings 鈥� , building up a critical mass of reused first stages in the warehouse,鈥� Jefferies International LLC, an investment bank covering telecommunications satellites, wrote in a report studying SpaceX鈥檚 costs.
In addition to the substantial added costs of , testing, and refurbishing, landing a rocket takes more fuel too. As much as 30 percent more propellant, according to French space agency CNES. That鈥檚 more weight the engines need to hoist into space, where kilograms don鈥檛 come cheap.
All these extra costs add up, making how many times a company can fly the same rocket a critical factor. According to a 2014 CNES estimate, a completely reusable first stage booster would have to fly 50 times a year to cut costs by 10 to 20 percent. Chief Executive Stephane Israel of competing aerospace company Arianespace has floated 35-40 launches as the magic number, but SpaceX has yet to state a minimum profitable target.
But SpaceX鈥檚 numbers do paint a rosier picture. While most of the privately held company鈥檚 information is guarded, Jeffries put together a report last year analyzing the savings of reusability based on public comments. 聽
Assuming a more modest goal of 15 annual launches per Falcon 9 (Musk鈥檚 comments suggest he expects 鈥渄ozens鈥�), Jeffries found that SpaceX could save over $25 million per launch from their $61 million sticker price, assuming current profit margins of 40 percent. Jeffries suggests those profits could rise as high as 77 percent per launch, if the company is generous enough to pass along half of its savings to the consumer.
But the March contract with SES, which is SpaceX鈥檚 biggest client in terms of contract number, shows only a 10 percent discount for the risk and honor of being the first to ride a second-time rocket.
The satellite company has repeatedly said it was willing to be that guinea pig, but had publicly stated it was hoping for a 50 percent price drop, Space News reported last April, leaving some to wonder if Musk is playing it safe as SpaceX ramps up its refurbishing operation, or if the economics of reusability are proving as complicated as competitors claim.
Regardless of where SpaceX鈥檚 future pricing structure lands, the company has already brought about significantly cheaper space access through vertical integration, with everything from . Such strategies have already allowed the company to do for $60 million what competitors do for $380 million, and reusability could only help that bottom line.
Plus, Musk still has a few more tricks up his sleeve. Next up, reusable nose cones. 鈥淭hat will certainly help, because each of these costs several million,鈥� he said.
