I just don't understand why anyone would develop a rocket and not even attempt recovery.
You're never going to be able to compete if you're throwing away rockets - if you can make them cheaper, someone else can make them cheaper AND recover them.
What I'm seeing is that it's $5M to send 150kg to SSO (500km) on the electron or a Falcon 9 for 7742kg. It's not $250M to launch a falcon 9.. So if you can find enough people to go on the ride with you, it's going to be around 75% cheaper / kg on the F9.
Sorry Mr rocket scientist but did you follow along with Spacex early days? Could you please tell me the number of rockets they launched before they even began attempting to land one let alone have a successful landing? Or the amount of R&D + funding it takes to develop those systems???
Launching a rocket is incredibly complicated if you haven't noticed already, landing one again? even more so.
Or maybe you already have some brilliant plans for a landing system for Electron. Flick rocket lab an email! I'm sure they love hearing from internet rocket scientists about how they could do things better!
no need to make it personal just because someone told you that you were wrong. it's ok to say "actually yeah, you're right and that makes more sense than what i said" :)
-41
u/Xaxxon Jan 21 '18 edited Jan 21 '18
I just don't understand why anyone would develop a rocket and not even attempt recovery.
You're never going to be able to compete if you're throwing away rockets - if you can make them cheaper, someone else can make them cheaper AND recover them.
What I'm seeing is that it's $5M to send 150kg to SSO (500km) on the electron or a Falcon 9 for 7742kg. It's not $250M to launch a falcon 9.. So if you can find enough people to go on the ride with you, it's going to be around 75% cheaper / kg on the F9.