With the notable exception of the now retired Space Shuttle orbiters, essentially every object humanity ever shot into space has been single-use only. But since December of 2015, SpaceX has been landing and refurbishing their Falcon 9 boosters, with the end goal of operating their rockets more like cargo aircraft. Today, while it might go unnoticed to those who aren’t closely following the space industry, the bulk of the company’s launches are performed with boosters that have already completed multiple flights.
This reuse campaign has been so successful these last few years that the recent announcement the company had lost B1058 (Nitter) came as quite a surprise. The 41 meter (134 foot) tall booster had just completed its 19th flight on December 23rd, and had made what appeared to be a perfect landing on the drone ship Just Read the Instructions. But sometime after the live stream ended, SpaceX says high winds and powerful waves caused the booster to topple over.
Back in May of 2020, B1058 made history as the first privately-built rocket to carry humans into orbit when it sent NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken on their way to the International Space Station. This flight also marked the first time a crewed spacecraft had been launched from US soil since the final Shuttle mission, a milestone that earned B1058 the honor of having the iconic NASA “worm” logo emblazoned on its side.
Its next mission came two months later, when it carried South Korea’s ANASIS-II military communications satellite to orbit, which was followed by the launch of 60 Starlink satellites in October. In December of 2020 the booster made history again when it carried a remotely-operated Dragon capsule to the ISS during the CRS-21 resupply mission, as it was the first time NASA agreed to have one of their missions carried on a rocket with more than one previous flight.
Since then B1058 completed 15 launches, made up of a Starlink deployments and “rideshare” missions that brought several CubeSats to orbit at once. All told, SpaceX says this particular rocket was responsible for carrying more than 860 spacecraft to orbit over the last three and a half years — a staggering figure that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
While B1058 was largely destroyed when it fell over, it’s not a total loss. Jon Edwards, Vice President of Falcon Launch Vehicles, took to social media to say that the company plans on salvaging the booster’s nine surviving Merlin engines (Nitter) and studying any other intact hardware as part of their ongoing work to improve reusability. So while it’s unfortunate that this storied rocket didn’t get the chance to retire to a museum, at least it will continue to contribute to the company’s goals of developing rapidly reusable spaceflight systems.
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It’s missing the top third or so, presumed broken off and in the drink. Someone knows exactly where those expensive grid fins sank. I wonder if they’re worth the salvage operation.
If not some very happy coral will use it for a new home and it will still be in the reuse/recycle category.
By that logic, everything is recycled/reused, given enough time.
Everything is recycled eventually… EVERYTHING … down to the atomic level
Everything is recycled eventually…even comments..😁
What do you mean by “invent”?
What?
B1058?! Bah! They’re not really reusable until they get names not numbers.
I’ve seen Virgin names their airplanes. Does any other commercial carrier name theirs? Does Fedex?
Lufthansa names their airplanes:
https://www.planespotters.net/airline/Lufthansa
Most of them seem to be named for cities in Germany.
Fedex appears to name their planes:
https://www.planespotters.net/airline/Federal-Express
They seem to use “people names.”
“Riding on the ‘City of New Orleans”; Illinois Central Monday morning rail…”
-Arlo Guthrie
“Fedex appears to name their planes”
I didn’t search the entire list, but it would be neat if one was named “Fred X.”
B^)
Or FedUp ….. Like most FedEx ground drivers are. :(
Interestingly there are no major cities like the capitals of the states and other famous like Frankfurt Main
A couple of months ago I flew with an Airbus A320 called Vlade Divac.
https://thepointsguy.com/news/why-some-airlines-give-their-aircraft-names/
Airplanes? Hah!
Scotland names its SNOWPLOWS!
And the Scottish school janitor on The Simpsons names his tools.
“C’mon Imelda, we’ve got worrrk to do!”
Now the FAA will suspend all SpaceX launches pending a safety review, the EPA will ground them to assess any oceanic environmental impact, the FCC will call for an investigation of Starlink spectrum usage before further deployments and the SEC will require additional disclosures to guage potential impact on investors before follow up launches. And absolutely NONE of this will be in any way politically motivated.
LOL 😆
Have you seen what Elon names his kids?
The process itself is still unknown to the public. Dunno if he dances naked under the stars around a bin where 1000000 USD in hudreds is burning, while smoking some “make it legal” until the skyes opens and a note with the name comes caried by two ultra white and shiny pidgeons.
Or, in despair “doh, another kid, how to name it?” he headbutts the keyboard while notepad.exe is open, then prints the result and send it to the lawyers to do what is to be done regarding the naming.
Or it picks a part name / number from the rockets.
Or it does it like in the joke with native americans naming children, when the dad end with: “shut up broken rubber”.
I think he just sends an email to his ex (discount Björk) and has her name them all
I hereby officially name B1058 as Dave. I hope this naming convention is satisfactory to you?
I wouldn’t do that if I were you.
what about ‘Salty Dave’? Any better?
From the start, SpaceX policy has always been not to name the boosters, and just give them ID numbers. Perhaps because they weren’t originally sure how well the reuse program would go.
But now with at least 8 boosters that have flown more than 10 missions in the fleet, it does seem like it’s time to start giving them nicknames at least. Especially since the crew-carrying Dragon capsules have been given names, and they’re set to be reused far fewer times.
maybe call this one Arrinarr a.k.a. “rinse & repete” ?
JetBlue has cool names too
Wow, these ships look look like floating junk yards
it hasn’t seen a paint job in a while. This barge got upgraded last in 2020
Seems like the barge should have a ‘clamp’ system built in automatically go into action as soon as the booster lands to prevent these type of accidents. Been an interesting engineering project as the rocket wouldn’t land exactly in same place on the deck.
It does have a clamp system. It’s called the octo-grabber. It failed this time not because the grabber robot failed, but because the old booster had not had landing leg upgrades installed. It’s those that failed in the heavy seas. Newer boosters have the upgrades, so this (probably) won’t happen any more.
True. The Landing Pad would have worked if it had to turn on a very powerful magnet after ther landing
As Paul said, there is a robotic vehicle that comes out and grabs the booster, but it wasn’t enough given the older style landing legs on B1058. You can actually see it still sitting under the booster in the pictures above. In closeups, it looks like it sustained considerable damage itself.
Before the introduction of the robot, crews would have to go on the barge and weld the rocket’s legs to the deck — a risky operation in anything but the calmest conditions.
I was gonna say it could use some guylines that somehow fasten to the top and tension. Sounds like they already have it worked out though
Only manned launch from US soil since the shuttle retired.. Man, NASA is a mess nowadays. I always thought it was funny how this guy unkilled the electric car and also is holding up the whole US space industry, but he wrecked the favorite social media app of every glowing federal agent and journo so everyone hates him. Pretty funny
Not everyone ;) . Just those on the left…
Quite an echo in there….
Uh, no. He bought control of a electric car company at a time when the tech was getting to the point of being worth doing it again, after being interested in the same sort of car as a couple of people who were starting a company. Most of what he involves himself with ends up being desirable but delivered late if ever and with problems meeting promises. His ventures almost went under because of repeatedly failing, but not failing for long enough to run out of money. By failing to meet promises, but not so many as to cause the product to completely flop, they can end up turning enough of a profit that he recovers. Failing can be advantageous, if you don’t run out of money and goodwill first… And being popular helps you succeed, with or without a good plan to start with. But it doesn’t always work out; if you don’t have the cool-factor, and you go around learning by messing up, you find that in some already successful companies such as the platform formerly known as the bird site, unpredictability just loses you ad revenue.
Well if you’re going to build reuseable rockets your going to crash resuable rockets.