Rivals Seek To Match SpaceX's Reusable Boosters

"SpaceX catching its huge Starship booster shortly after liftoff was a major achievement. It was also a shot across the bow for competitors.

Developing reusable boosters for its Falcon vehicles has been key to SpaceX's efforts to cut the cost of space flight. 

Advancing the technology with Starship -- the bigger and more powerful rocket it is developing -- could extend the Elon Musk-led company's cost advantage versus rivals, especially in launches to low-Earth orbit, where SpaceX and others operate satellites.

Spurred by SpaceX's efforts, competing launch companies are pushing to develop their own reusable boosters, reclaim rocket engines after flights to use them again or create other hardware on their vehicles that can endure more than one mission. Rivals face tough hurdles ramping up those systems and trying to catch up to SpaceX's lead with reusability.

"We need reusability for rockets, just like we have reusability for cars, for airplanes, for bicycles, for horses," Musk said in a video that SpaceX posted online earlier this year.

For decades, almost all rockets have relied on expendable boosters, a proven technology that has underpinned thousands of launches. Single-use boosters, which are jettisoned after propelling a vehicle to orbit, remain critical in flights like deep-space missions that require more power and fuel, rocket executives who use them say. Reuse has its own challenges too, including the time and resources needed to refurbish boosters after they land for other missions.

In SpaceX's case, reusable Falcon boosters have enabled more frequent flights for customers, and especially for Starlink, the company's satellite network. Flying more with the same boosters allows the company to spread expenses over many missions and bolster profit margins. 

The company in August launched a Falcon 9 booster on its 23rd overall flight. 

Through Thursday, SpaceX had flown 100 Falcon 9 missions this year, according to data from Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who closely tracks space activities.

The list price for a dedicated Falcon 9 flight stands at about $70 million, SpaceX says on its website. 

Missions on United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan Centaur vehicle are expected to start at about $97 million, according to space-industry executives.

 Some launchers are working on vehicles that would cost around $50 million a flight.

Launch prices generally run higher for government agencies that often have tougher missions than commercial clients and pay more to guarantee sensitive payloads are safely delivered.

A spokeswoman for ULA declined to comment on pricing, and SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment.

"The Falcon family has dramatically changed the economics of space launch and put strong pressure on the rest of the industry," said David Thompson, former chief executive of the rocket company Orbital ATK, which Northrop Grumman purchased several years ago.

Roughly seven minutes after launching the Starship vehicle in mid-October, SpaceX guided the return of its 232-foot-tall booster, called Super Heavy, between two arms at a launch tower in Texas.

SpaceX's longer-term flight plans for Starship are something out of science fiction. After a booster is caught, the company would fuel it, stack another spacecraft on top of it and quickly launch the integrated vehicle again to low-Earth orbit. SpaceX envisions getting large amounts of cargo, satellites or people into space using this method. 

For deeper voyages, spacecraft would be refueled in orbit.

The latest launch provided a glimpse of that operation, but overcoming technical challenges and ramping up flights are likely years away. Beyond hurdles like landing Starship and showing that those ships and boosters can be quickly reused, SpaceX faces regulatory constraints in conducting flights from its Starbase complex in Texas and from Florida's Space Coast.

A fully and rapidly reusable Starship would push down SpaceX's costs by limiting the need to crank out new hardware and cutting downtime between flights, space industry executives say. 

Bain, the consulting firm, has estimated that Starship would reduce the cost of getting each kilogram to low-Earth orbit by 50 to 80 times.

"They will be ready. It will work. We have to respect that," Steven Rutgers, chief commercial officer at French rocket company Arianespace, said of Starship at an industry event in June. "We need to constantly improve ourselves."

Developing Starship isn't cheap, putting pressure on SpaceX to march toward operational flights. Though SpaceX receives NASA payments for work related to a lunar mission with a variant of Starship, the company said in a recent court filing that the Starship program and Starbase cost almost $1.5 billion annually.

SpaceX executives have said Starship's initial missions, which could begin as soon as next year, will focus on launching the company's own Starlink internet satellites. The business increasingly drives SpaceX's revenue.

SpaceX's rocket peers are moving toward reusability, but they are behind the progress Musk's company has made.

The huge booster that will power New Glenn, the orbital rocket Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is developing, is designed to be reusable. That rocket is slated to launch for the first time next month.

ULA, the rocket operator owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is looking to recover the two engines that help power the first part of its new rocket, Vulcan Centaur. The parent company for Arianespace, whose new vehicle is powered by an expendable booster, has also invested in a startup developing a reusable booster.

Last year, Rocket Lab USA used an engine that had flown before on a flight of its Electron rocket and is working on a new vehicle, called Neutron, with a booster it could use again.

Jason Kim, chief executive of Firefly Aerospace, said the reusable vehicle the Texas-based company is developing with Northrop Grumman would give launch customers more flexibility and better pricing.

"It really comes down to the affordability and the schedule," Kim said.

For now, reusable boosters won't work for every mission. SpaceX has conducted missions that use boosters a single time, such as during an Oct. 14 launch of a NASA spacecraft that will study a moon orbiting Jupiter.

Starship, the SpaceX vehicle, will also have an expendable version, according to the company's website." [1]

1. Rivals Seek To Match SpaceX's Reusable Boosters. Maidenberg, Micah.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 28 Oct 2024: B.1.