Main Engine Cut Off - T+44: SpaceX and the Age of Reusability

Episode Date: April 1, 2017

SpaceX made history this week by launching SES-10 with a previously-flown first stage. I discuss implications of this achievement, the things we learned from Elon Musk in the post-flight press briefing, and the doubters, as always. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 8 executive producers—Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, and three anonymous—and 41 other supporters on Patreon. SES-10 Hosted Webcast - YouTube Press event with Elon Musk - Everyday Astronaut SES, SpaceX, and the Steady Beat of Progress - Main Engine Cut Off One More Step - Main Engine Cut Off SpaceX’s reusability effort faces one more big challenge — Space Intel Report Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Subscribe on iTunes, Overcast, or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo. We are here after what may be the most historic event that I've ever covered on this podcast. We've had a lot of great topics, we've had a lot of great things to talk about in the last year or so that I've been doing this show, but in terms of days that will go down in spaceflight history, the launch of SES-10 by SpaceX yesterday, the first launch to reuse a first stage that they've recovered, is probably the top day that I've talked about yet in this short year time. So I'm really excited to get in and talk about some things that happened with this flight, some fallout of what

this means for the industry at large. But I'll tell you what, after that flight last night, the drama on Twitter, that started to get hot again. It started to heat up a little bit. Maybe not as hot as it was with the SLS and SpaceX moonshot and all that, that we were talking about a few weeks back, but it started to heat up again, and I was loving it. It started to get particularly hot with what you could classify shuttle huggers. People that were saying, well, this is only the first reused rocket since the space shuttle took off from the same pad.

And then others were saying, oh, but New Shepard did this too. And what about if we're going to go with that? Why don't we talk about DCX 20 years ago? Why don't we talk about X-15, you know, back in the 60s? And that's all fine. You know, we can slice and dice this up any way you want. We can categorize this stuff to fit your preferred narrative, whether you think SpaceX has achieved something incredible, or whether you think that SpaceX is never going to achieve their goals and you always doubt them continually on their way to their goal. No matter where you fit on that spectrum, we can categorize this as you see fit. But I think in reality, we all know the score. We all know what this means for the industry. And even if you're someone who says that SpaceX gets too much credit and that what the space shuttle did was just as much reuse

as this, you know, if you want to argue that, that's fine. But I think we know the score here. Because the main aspect that we're talking about here is not so much, you know, winning on a technicality or being first to do something. It doesn't really matter in the long run who was first, who did it best. What matters is momentum and progress. And when you look at what the space shuttle did back in the day, when you look at what New Shepard has done recently, those are different things. New Shepard is obviously applicable to the Falcon 9 discussion because

it has momentum. It is fresh. It is changing. It is leading to New Glenn. So there is a certain amount of comparison you can put there. It doesn't matter which one of those was first. It doesn't matter which one of those is bigger or smaller because they both have the right kind of momentum. When you take that and look back in history at something like the space shuttle, or any other vehicle you want to put in there that was even partially reusable, the difference is momentum. And with this relaunch of the first stage of a Falcon 9, with this first successful use of a previously flown rocket. That is a massive achievement, especially because for the past few years, it's been a constant barrage of that's never going to work. That's not a smart idea. That won't pan out. You won't be able to launch one of

those things again. Look at how much heating it's taking. Look at the aerodynamic stresses it must be going through. Look at how much seawater it's exposed to on that ship. All of these things that people have been saying about this idea. This is a big moment when you're talking about momentum into the future and putting those doubters to the side and doing it. This is a very, very big moment. And even if you think SpaceX gets too much credit, you still, I think you still have to admit that This is a very, very big moment. And even if you think SpaceX gets too much credit, you still, I think you still have to admit that this is a big moment. And it's a big moment for not just SpaceX, but for the industry at large. And that goes for whether you think reusability will pan out or not. If you're someone who doesn't think reusability will pan out,

this is still a big moment. Because if you take the long view here, say that you're 20 years in the future looking back at this era, if reusability doesn't pan out, this would still be a moment you'll talk about. If it does pan out, this will obviously be a big moment that you talk about. But either way, this is a big, important moment

that is worth the respect to talk about it and not just say, eh, shuttle did it. And you can tell this sense of finally achieving it from Elon Musk himself, from the other SpaceXers you saw around the flight, around the launch and landing. There is a certain sense of we did it, we've gotten here. And that's not to say that they have achieved their ultimate goal. This is really just the end of the beginning phase of their journey. They are nowhere close to the end goal that they've set for themselves. But for so long, SpaceX and the doubters of SpaceX, and when I say

the doubters of SpaceX, I mean the doubters of reusability, they have set this moment as something that is impossible to achieve, is farther out than SpaceX wants to admit, etc, etc. So finally, rolling out a rocket that has been to space before, and has launched something up to the ISS before, and launching something up to GTO with it, that is a big moment for those people that have been working so hard at this. It is a big moment to say, no, this is possible. We are doing this. It's not taking as long as you might think it is to get to this moment.

Sure, we have a lot of work to do to get our refurbishment time down, to eliminate refurbishment in a lot of ways, to make this more economical. But we've done it. We've done the thing. This is a proof of concept in a lot of ways. And that's definitely been said by SpaceX when they talk about the Block 5 version of Falcon 9, which will be the one that will be reused many times. They've said that this is still the proof of concept is because they're not at that version of Falcon 9 yet. So to sit there and act like

every rocket they reuse is going to need four months of refurbishment is just, you know, keeping your head in the sand and not realizing what is going on here, what kind of tactics they're taking, and what the roadmap is overall. Now I want to dive into what Elon Musk talked about in the press conference after the launch, because there was a lot of good information coming out of that session. And all of the reporters there did a great job asking very good detailed questions and got a lot of good info on what the near future of SpaceX looks like. But just to keep harping on this for one more minute, I've talked in the past episodes about SpaceX and reusability, about the doubters of that kind of always moving the goalpost every

time that SpaceX or Blue Origin achieves something. Every time that somebody working on reusability completes a task, the doubters of reusability say, well, it's good that they've done that one, but let me know when they do the next one, because that's going to be, oh, it's going to be so much harder. And then a few months later, they achieve that task, and they go back to these same doubters and say, are you convinced yet? And they say, no, no, that, you know, it was all logical that they were going to get there, but that next one, boy, is that going to be a big step up. That's going to be a lot harder to achieve. It's going to take longer, and I think their timelines are unrealistic. And then they achieve that one, and this cycle just keeps going on and on and on, and we've seen it time and time again.

and this cycle just keeps going on and on and on, and we've seen it time and time again. We saw it from the earliest days of Falcon 9. Well, it's great they did grasshopper flights, but let me know when they relight their engines on an operational flight. And then SpaceX goes ahead and does it. Oh, well, it's great they relit their engines. Let me know when they do a real nice soft touchdown on the ocean. And SpaceX does that. Oh, it's great, but let me know when they do it on a pad, and then they do it on a pad, and then they do it on a boat, and then they relight the engines that they brought back. They do it a full flight duration, test firing, and on and on and on. They've done so many of these little tasks,

and the goalposts keep getting moved and moved by the doubters of reusability. And that did happen again this morning. I saw an article from Space Intel Report, and it's a quote from Jean-Yves Le Gall, the president of the French Space Agency. After recovery, now the reuse. The final step for SpaceX is cost reduction. Logically, if you reuse material, the cost should drop, but it all depends on refurbishment costs. The day when a rocket can land and take off without interruption is not yet here, in my view. a rocket can land and take off without interruption is not yet here in my view." Now aside from the epic levels of couching it and saying, oh the days when it can land and take off again it's not yet here, obviously that's not yet here. And really all this is is just moving that goal post one more time. Now they've done a reflight and they finally move that to economics. But the difference now is previously they've said,

oh, well, this technical achievement is going to be so hard. And they've moved the goalpost from a technical achievement to another technical achievement. Now they're moving the goalpost from technical achievements to economical achievements. And once all these technical achievements are met, and once they have so much data on getting these stages back, they've gotten so many stages back, so many engines back, and they're going to be able to improve their hardware to take that heat better and to make future reuse easier and quicker. Now you're putting yourself up against an economic achievement. And not only that, but you're standing pretty flat-footed while doing

it. So you're saying, well, their technological achievements, their momentum that they have, that's going to slow down when they meet economy. And that's a big bet to make. It's a much scarier bet to make than saying, well, that tech is never going to pan out. It's never going to be useful. It's going to be a lot harder than they think. It's going to take a lot longer than they think. it's never going to be useful, it's going to be a lot harder than they think, it's going to take a lot longer than they think. Once all of that is settled, it's a huge bet to make that the economics of this aren't going to work out. And to that point, Elon Musk in the press conference addressed a lot of questions that we all have about the economy, the economics of reuse overall. So we're going to get into that in just one minute. First, I want to say a huge thank you to all of you out there that have supported Main Engine Cutoff on Patreon. This episode of the

podcast is produced by eight executive producers, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, and three anonymous executive producers. They are responsible for this episode of Main Engine Cutoff, and I am hugely, hugely thankful. And in addition to the eight executive producers, we've got 41 other patrons over on Patreon, supporting the blog and podcast, everything I'm doing here, week in and week out. And I'm very, very thankful for their support. If you want to help support the show, head over to patreon.com slash Miko and give as little as $1 a month. All of your support is greatly appreciated. And if you want to support the show in another way, tell a friend, share a link on your favorite social network to an episode of the podcast or something I'm writing over on the blog at mainenginecutoff.com. Share something I'm working on and spread the word a bit. That is

also a very, very huge help. So either Patreon or share a link, and I'm very, very grateful for anything you do to help support the show. So what I figure I'd end this week with is just a rundown of everything that was covered in the press conference after the launch with Musk and give some, you know, maybe lightning round style like I did last week, where I'll read out some of the stuff that he said and talk about that a bit and how it's going to apply to their future.

And a lot of these plans are something that we've touched on over time, but this is a really good summary of where things are at with Falcon 9 reusability and some other plans that SpaceX is working on. They've also talked here a bit about ITS, a bit about the Pad 40 renovation. A lot of stuff came up that is very pertinent to the current state of SpaceX and where things are going in the next few months. So I'm going to do this sort of chronologically. I listened back to the press conference and just

made a bunch of notes about what was in there. So we're going to this sort of chronologically. I listened back to the press conference and just made a bunch of notes about, you know, what was in there. So we're going to do sort of chronologically. If you've listened to the press conference or you're following along on Twitter, this is the order that things happened. So let's just run through this here. this year. They've talked before that there's going to be as many as six reflown cores this year. And Elon Musk himself confirmed that the two side boosters on the Falcon Heavy demo mission are going to be previously used cores. TICOM-8 has been converted to a Falcon Heavy side booster. We don't yet know what other core is currently being converted. My prediction is that the Iridium Flight, the first Iridium flight's core, might be converted to it. Other people have been guessing at the CRS-9 core since that was in pretty good condition. It's tough to tell exactly what they're going to do there, but they are reconverting, not reconverting, converting Falcon 9 cores to side boosters. They've at least done it once, and it seems like they're going to do it at least one more time, if not make it a standard thing that they do to manage the fleet that they build up over time. What was interesting was when asked

what they're going to do with this core, Elon Musk said that they're going to offer this one up to the Cape as a display piece. He's been sort of touch and go over time about giving museums hardware. That's been a very touchy subject with him. And this is kind of cool that this seems to be the first thing that he's offering up as they've obviously put one on display at SpaceX before, but none outside of SpaceX headquarters. So this is the first time that he's saying, you know what, here's this hardware for, you know, display purposes for a historic piece of hardware at the place that a lot of this work happened. So that'll be cool to see. I don't know. He was kind of vague on giving it to the Cape. I

don't know if he meant the Air Force or Kennedy Space Center. We'll see where that ends up. It would be kind of interesting to put that in the Rocket Garden at KSC Visitor Center. But, you know, there's a lot of other logistics involved here. So that'll be cool to see a used core go up somewhere around the Cape Canaveral area. That was really nice to hear. The next interesting thing that he mentioned, somebody asked about what was the discount for a reflown core as opposed to a brand new launch vehicle. And Musk kind of gave a marbly mouth answer to that to say that they don't yet know, they don't have it nailed down, but he did mention that they are going to, you know, work off the development costs that they've put into this, and that even without a cost reduction, they are still a very cheap launch option, and this makes that even cheaper, or less expensive, I should say. They're not going

to cut into their margins right away. I've talked about this many times. They don't have much of a reason to cut deeply into their margins right off the bat, but that is something that they will get to eventually. Once the pressure from their prices is put upon other launch providers and other launch providers start to bring their costs down, SpaceX will follow suit and use the margin that they've built up with reusability to lower their prices farther and farther until they get to a point when they can't anymore and they're still winning launches. So that'll be something longer term to talk about. But for now, they're going to have a bigger margin for these flights. They're going to offer a little bit of

discount, but there's no reason to gouge themselves in a way, if you will, when they still have such a huge price advantage over all, mostly every other option out there. And again, ULA with Vulcan is working on cost reduction. Arian Space is working on cost reduction. So it's, the pressure from SpaceX is being applied to other launch providers. Once it starts to be applied back, we'll see a more dramatic reduction in launch price for SpaceX. The next topic was stage reuse limits and how many flights we can expect to see out of a stage before it's retired. Musk said that the intent was to design the stages in a way that they could be reflown 10 times without any refurbishment and up to 100 times with refurbishment there on out. So sort of in a way where you're doing some flights and then you do some moderate refurbishment on what's needed you do some more flights and you do another round of

light refurbishment which kind of assume means swapping out different components as they get damaged maybe different engines as life cycles of different parts come up to their limits so you know really right off the bat the 10 thing, that gives them quite a healthy fleet of launch vehicles, and I think they'll learn a lot there as they get so many stages back and reuse so many other stages. Once they have a fleet and not just a production line flow, I think they're going to learn a lot about how to manage the fleet, and that will make their decisions for them in a lot of ways once they do get farther down the line of operational reusability. The other thing you got to consider with stage limits is not just how many flights, but how many years. If you put 10 flights on any particular stage, how many years is that of operation? Because by the end of a five-year cycle or something like that, you might be up against the next generation design or maybe some hardware changes that have been incorporated at that point. So, you know, at a certain point when you have these cores living on long enough, their lifetime is going to catch up

to the development cycle and need to be swapped out. So it's not just, you know, how much they can hold up in the environments of flight. It's also how many upgrades are happening in that time from when they were rolled out to when they were flown last. And at what point do you need to switch over to newer hardware? That's something, again, that's not going to come up until they're well on the road of operational reusability, which is becoming a buzzword out of SpaceX and Blue Origin both. These are all things that we haven't yet really come up to. So I think that's something that maybe five, 10 years down the line, we'll see where they're bumping up against this limit of development time versus how well the stages hold up in flights. And that might even be more so of a thing that we'll see with ITS, for example,

you know, that's on a flight out to Mars. By the time it gets back to Earth, that's a few years old at that point. And, you know, what are the changes that are going to happen in that multi-year period between when it leaves Earth and gets back to Earth? And that's something that'll be interesting to see how they handle. But again, that's really long-term thinking we're talking about there. The next thing in the press conference that people seem to completely overreact to was a comment from Musk saying that the next goal after this is to achieve 24-hour turnaround of a launch vehicle. People completely overreacted to this because he said,

I think we can do that next year. And they immediately jumped to, is SpaceX going to have a launch and then launch the next day? But I think what he was really getting at was that final version of Falcon 9, Block 5, which we've heard so much about that it's coming this year, it's coming this year. That's the one that's got a lot of upgrades built into it for ultimate reusability. And, you know, they're learning a lot from the cores they're getting back, and they're implementing design upgrades to components that they see come back with a lot of damage. So once they get to

block five of Falcon 9, the intent is that that doesn't need refurbishment when it comes back to land. So when they do a, you know, launch and return to launch site landing, once block five is up and running, we could see them roll that out for a static fire the day after a launch, if not even do a test launch of their own accord, you know, no customer on it or anything, but just kind of do a launch to test out a rocket the day after. People overreact to that by looking at it and saying, like, that's crazy that they just re-flown one and they think they can re-fly one within 24 hours. But when you look at it in terms of the Falcon 9 development schedule, when they get to Block 5, that is the intention that that design is going for.

and nine development schedule, when they get to block five, that is the intention that that design is going for. So I think the motivating force to saying that was different than what he actually was saying there in a very Elon fashion. He said something that was out of step with what he meant. And people, I think, took that one way too seriously and kind of blew it out of proportion in a lot of ways. But I think what that was all about was Block 5 is coming this year, if not next year. After that, Elon touched on the fact that there are other customers that have been curious about reused flights and that they kind of signed on for contingency basis. So SES, in this case, they signed a for-launch package with SpaceX. They agreed to one of those launches being a reflight of a core, and a contingency on this launch, if it went well, that they might fly two other launches

on reused boosters. And there are a couple other customers out there that have a similar deal with SpaceX, that they were going to see how the first one goes, and maybe see how the second one goes, and then optionally can switch to a reused core. And that obviously comes with benefits for SpaceX because it does kind of lift a little bit of tension off of their production line. They don't need to produce as many cores for as many flights as they have booked. They can start using some of this back catalog of stages as we get closer to that Block 5 version and its operational reusability, etc, etc. That offers some big production line improvements for SpaceX. In terms of other reusable components of the Falcon 9,

at some point in the press conference, somebody ran out and showed Elon a phone with a picture on it of one half of the fairing splashed down successfully in the ocean. And at that point, Elon Musk told us, confirmed the rumors that this was going to be an attempt on this mission, that the fairing made it through re-entry, and with the thruster control that it has built into it, and then popped its own steerable parachute and successfully splashed down in the ocean, and this was really a test to see what they can do with fairing reuse. On past launches, we kind of saw in the background of the video,

we saw some thrusting coming out of a fairing. So there's been a lot of rumors about this for the past year or so that they're getting close to trying this. And it sounds like, you know, this first time they're doing some re-entry tests and a parachute test and some basic recovery and they have a steel parachute.

So hopefully they did some testing on the navigation of that parachute back to a landing site. It's still one of those things that's, I think, you know, too early to really start talking about how useful it is, because they have a lot of work left to go. They can't let these things touch the ocean water in the way that this one did, if they want to reuse it in the future. That's been a limiting factor. So for a while there was talk about arrow capture in the way that ULA might do with the engines of Vulcan. And now it sounds like from this press conference, Elon Musk said that he referred to it as a bouncy castle, which is pretty amusing. But some sort of inflatable landing zone out in the ocean that the fairing would aim for and crash down there instead of, you know, plunging into the ocean.

A la the shuttle solid rocket boosters. Bouncy castle is a hilarious phrase in this case. And I, I don't, you know, it'd be funny if they made it look like a bouncy castle. Uh, that seems like an Elon Musk sort of thing to do. Uh, but we'll find out, but that's really encouraging that they're still working on that kind of stuff. Uh, and then he kind of had a throwaway line that upper stage reusability would kind of be a Hail Mary that's fun to go for, and kind of threw everyone into tizzy because upper stage reusability was something that has kind of been, had a tortured past in Falcon 9, you know, talked about as something that they were definitely going to do,

and then something that, well, you know what, our focus would be better spent on ITS. Now it sounds like it's back in favor. It's a really interesting comment because the second stage has historically been a trouble spot for SpaceX. They do have a development contract with the Air Force to develop Raptor as an upper stage engine. So there's always been these kind of rumors about a Raptor upper stage for Falcon Heavy or something like that. Who knows what's going to come of this. This may have just been a throwaway line when Elon was on top of the world here after the first reflight, but it's just interesting at all that it's still popping around his head as something that may be a future plan for SpaceX. I don't think we'll see anything come of that for quite a while, but man, that would be a lot of fun to watch if they did venture into upper stage reuse.

Just a few other things here that he mentioned. They're going to have a design update for the ITS. He did call it the BFR again, the Big Falcon Rocket, which I just like that name so much better. I think ITS is a gross name, so it would be fun if they named it something more friendly than ITS. They said that they'll have an update on the design of that in the next month or so, and sort of stressed that some of that updated plan would include how they were going to finance this, how they were going to structure this kind of mission and architecture. So it's interesting to see what comes out of that if it's, you know, now that we kind of see how some of the political fallout is happening with NASA and the NASA budget and they're kind of reacting to that it'll be interesting to see how much is there about uh

you know financing it outside of a NASA-led effort and then he did address the what everyone's calling the Roomba which is a small robot that is on the deck of the ASDS that comes out and attaches to the rocket in a hold down point. This was something that had, there had been photos of this taken previously. Those photos that were initially posted were actually taken by Stephen Marr, who's a listener. I got an email from him after I posted a link to it on the site, and he told me about how he captured those photos. He was on a helicopter tour over Port Canaveral area and brought his camera since he knew that he would be in the area of all of this hardware that we love

to look at and got incredibly lucky with these shots that this robot happened to be out on the deck of the ship. This was something, again, that we've heard rumors about for a while, but no specific mention of. And Stephen was able to capture some photos of them testing this out on the deck and that was brought up to elon musk and he said that you know it is in fact a robot to go out and hold down the stage so that in heavier weather the the rocket stage doesn't kind of toss around the deck of the asds they have had some instances in the past in heavier seas when the stage kind of walks across the deck where, you know, in heavy seas it would slide one foot and then slide another foot and eventually, you know, be banging up against the railing on one

side of the deck and then sliding all the way across to the other side. And the only reason that that stayed up was because of that lip that it was running into. So this robot would go out and attach to the hold down points of the rocket and keep it secure for the trip back to port. We didn't see anything happening with that. It sort of seems like they're just doing some testing and we might see some of that in the future and a couple flights from now. So that's fun thing to keep our eye on. Pretty interesting invention there that SpaceX has developed. Musk also did address the flaming grid fin that we saw in the video of this launch. We've seen in the past grid fins come back pretty torched,

and in this live stream we actually got to see one catch on fire, both the ablative plate and some of the structure of the grid fin itself. And he talked about the fact that in the future, I guess this is a Block 5 upgrade, the grid fins will be switched to titanium. Right now, they're aluminum with a blade of paint, and they're going to switch those to titanium, which is obviously much more expensive than aluminum, but holds up better in heat and will last longer. And this is kind of interesting because, you know, once they get to the point of reusability,

they're going to be able to make decisions about materials differently than they do right now. Right now, they make these decisions based on what is cheap and light because they need a lot of it, they need to produce a lot of it. But when they're able to reuse this so much, the calculus of what kind of material to use changes quite a bit and they can make these decisions to go with something that's more durable yet more expensive like titanium when they know they're going to get 10 something that's more durable yet more expensive like titanium

when they know they're going to get, you know, 10 flights out of it or even more than that. So this is an interesting thing that we're going to see that we're going to kind of go from economies of scale thinking to economies of reusability thinking. So it'll be very interesting to see what they switch outside of the grid fins even when it comes to that. The last question of the day was from chris gebhardt of nasa spaceflight who i just absolutely adore following on twitter and uh chris and the and chris the other chris nasa spaceflight everyone over there does such a good job covering the nerdier sides of all this stuff that we're talking about so uh great question

from him about what their block 5 upgrade schedule is and what their schedule for Falcon Heavy is with how it lines up to the refurbishment of SLC-40. In that regard, Elon Musk did confirm that they need to get 40 up and running before they can do Falcon Heavy work over at 39A. And that's because they want to get that launch pad back up and operational for Falcon 9 flights so that they can use 39A for the more intensive and risky Falcon Heavy flight. And that also comes with, you know, Dragon 2 flights on Falcon 9, but they really want Slick 40 to be operational for their commercial flights, for the cargo flights, the ISS that they're flying right now, so that they can use 39A for their more exploratory missions

like Falcon Heavy and Dragon 2 flights. It's good to hear a confirmation of that. We all had sort of assumed that was the plan, and that does indeed seem to be what they're shooting for. So right now, late summer seems to be what they're targeting for a Falcon Heavy flight. That'll probably slip to fall sometime, but you know, it's always six months away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think the strategy here makes a lot of sense. And then he did touch on what Block 5 includes. That does include the higher thrust Merlin engines, so about 10% more thrust than they're operating with right now. It includes the new grid fins with, you know, I don't know whether that will be titanium right off the bat, but new grid fins that will hold up better, new legs we've heard in the past, and also updates for the human capabilities that they need of

Falcon 9 to launch Dragon 2 up to the ISS. That will all be part of the Block 5 upgrade, but just to throw us on one last trip, Elon Musk told us that Block 5 was actually the wrong nomenclature, and it's more correct to say version 2.5 of Falcon 9. And this just threw everybody into a tizzy because we've had Falcon 9, Falcon 9 version 1.1, Falcon 9 version 1.2 full thrust, Falcon 9 full thrust, Falcon 9 fuller thrust, and then we heard that blocks were the right way to refer to Falcon 9, and now when asked directly, blocks are actually wrong. It's version 2.5, so I don't know where all the version numbers are in there, but man, that was just a little bit frustrating. We finally thought we got the version numbers nailed down of Falcon 9 just in time for Elon

Musk to throw us into a tizzy, and I think he might just get some enjoyment out of that, watching people freak out about what version is what and try to keep track of all this stuff. So at this point, I'm thinking that he just gets enjoyment out of seeing how people handle all of that. Whatever the case, final version of Falcon 9, or at least ultimately reusable version of Falcon 9, is still the end goal for this year. And we're going to hope to see that fly either late summer, early fall. We'll see when they get around to that, but that'll be really interesting to watch because it has big implications for reusability and for Dragon 2 flights. So that was about it in the press conference itself, but a lot of good info coming out of

there, a lot of confirmations of things that we had previously assumed, and just overall a very, very successful day for SpaceX and for reusability as a whole. I know that, you know, somewhere the Blue Origins out there were cheering SpaceX on proving this right, because a rising tide lifts all boats in this case. And while a lot of people want to make this a SpaceX versus Blue Origin fight, I think, you know, we here know that this is not a fight between SpaceX and Blue Origin. This is a fight between the future and reusability and the old way of doing things. So mark one for the future and reusability today. A very exciting day in spaceflight land. So thank you very much for being here, for listening to the show.

Thank you again for all of your support over on Patreon, and I will talk to you next week.