More on SpaceX’s reusable rocket plans

Elon Musk is really pushing hard to build a reusable rocket. An epic game changer, if he succeeds, as it drops the price per point to orbit way down:

It would drop cost for Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket—a scaled-up version of the Falcon 9 that’s currently rated at $1000 per pound to orbit—to just $10. “That, however, requires a very high flight rate, just like aircraft,” Musk says. “At a low flight rate, the improvement is still probably around 50 percent. For Falcon Heavy, that would mean a price per pound to orbit of less than $500.” Falcon Heavy is particularly amenable to reuse of the first stage—the two outer cores in particular, because they separate at a much lower velocity than the center one, being dropped off early in the flight.

Filed under the topic Uncategorized on February 11th 2012 at 7:06 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.