Re:SpaceX just landed a rocket on a drone ship for the first...
by CydeWeys on Saturday April 09, 2016 @11:57AM
(#11461798)
> I'm just surprised that the cost of damage from seawater to a dumb rocket with a parachute and floats
Maybe it helps to think by analogy. Which is harder, putting a car on a ferry to carry it across a river, or just driving it into the river and fishing it out the other end? Sure, you'll have to replace the engine and the electronics and lots of other stuff (i.e. all the most expensive parts of a car), but if you're only doing it once, it's cheaper to ford that river Oregon-Trail-style than to get yourself a ferry. But if you're doing it many times ...
The point is, there's lots of extremely high precision, expensive stuff on a rocket, that don't appreciate being dunked in water in exactly the same way that, say, your computer or car wouldn't. Those engines are incredibly complicated, high performance, and expensive, and they don't have the benefits of economies of scale like other consumer goods that are manufactured in the amounts of millions or billions per year. Each rocket has nine Merlin engines on it; that's an awful lot to essentially have to replace with every launch. The barge is cheaper.
Maybe it helps to think by analogy. Which is harder, putting a car on a ferry to carry it across a river, or just driving it into the river and fishing it out the other end? Sure, you'll have to replace the engine and the electronics and lots of other stuff (i.e. all the most expensive parts of a car), but if you're only doing it once, it's cheaper to ford that river Oregon-Trail-style than to get yourself a ferry. But if you're doing it many times ...
The point is, there's lots of extremely high precision, expensive stuff on a rocket, that don't appreciate being dunked in water in exactly the same way that, say, your computer or car wouldn't. Those engines are incredibly complicated, high performance, and expensive, and they don't have the benefits of economies of scale like other consumer goods that are manufactured in the amounts of millions or billions per year. Each rocket has nine Merlin engines on it; that's an awful lot to essentially have to replace with every launch. The barge is cheaper.