> You don't simply fill it up and relaunch.

Yes, you do. Or at least, that's what they want to do. They've already reflown a bunch of their landed rockets, including the two boosters on Falcon Heavy. The ultimate goal is to be able to fill it up and relaunch, and the ultimate motivation for propulsive landing is simple - that's what is needed on Mars (parachutes won't do much there), so they want to master it.

EDIT: I meant that today, with Falcon Heavy Test Flight behind us, the two side boosters qualify as reflown - this was their second mission, not the third.

So the FH boosters were reused? The ones that landed back again? Amazing, great news to start a morning :)

Yes!

The left booster "originally launched on July 18, 2016 in support of the CRS-9 mission, and landed back at LZ-1". The right booster "originally launched on May 27, 2016 in support of the Thaicom 8 mission. Notably, it earned the nickname "Leaning Tower of Thaicom"; having developed a significant lean upon a hard first landing."

Source:

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/7vg63x/rspacex_falc... linking to details of:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/cores#wiki_b1025 - left booster

- https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/cores#wiki_b1023 - right booster

No.

This has been gone ove many times, but:

Parachutes aren't cheap or easy. Saltwater is horrible for precision parts. They are trying to gas and go, or at least move, gas and full power test.

SpaceX goal with the Falcon 9 is to be able to land, simply check the core (the engine gets more complicated checkups), and to have it back on the launchpad within of a few days or weeks.

Arianespace (a major european launch company, known for the Ariane 5) has developed their own new engine concept for reusability, which is designed to be restarted unlimited times. Once Prometheus flies, they’ll not only have a reusable rocket comparable to the Falcon 9, but one that can fly, land, be refueled without checkup, and immediately fly again.

SpaceX also aims for that in the long run, but not in the Falcon 9 series itself.

> Once Prometheus flies

Sounds like they are not that committed to the project and if it happens at all it will be a long way off. Will it be worth competing with both SpaceX and Blue Origin?

“We could replace Vulcain 2.1 by Prometheus,” Bonguet told SpaceNews. “Or Prometheus can be the first brick to build the next generation. We will see where we are in 2025 or 2030, and then decide on the right time whether to go one way or the other.”

http://spacenews.com/ariane-6-could-use-reusable-prometheus-...

Prometheus is finished, production on the prototype has started, and the first flights of the prototype are expected in 2020.

If Arianespace follows that schedule, they’ll be a decade late compared to SpaceX, but still ahead of all other competitors in this.

There's no flight scheduled. They're developing a full-scale article to be ground-tested in 2020.

Prometheus or not, Ariane 6 is an expendable rocket in any form that currently or will soon exist. By the time they figure out the very basics of first-stage reusability on a launcher that is roughly equivalent to Falcon 9 FT, SpaceX will have BFR ... likely for quite a while.

At least their reusability plans are not a joke like ULA.

AFAIK, there's no major disassembly between flights. Certainly inspection and test firing, but nowhere near the meticulous detail and overhauls that the Space Shuttle went through after each flight. This is a completely different beast than what many observers' mental models are accustomed to.

A large part of the work SpaceX are trying to do is get it so that they can pretty much just give it a fairly simple inspection, fill it up and relaunch it. They already need far less work between launches than the space shuttle did.