Booster, Second Stage, Crew Or Cargo Capsule Would All See Multiple Uses

SpaceX Founder Elon Musk outlined a fully re-usable commercial space system Thursday in a speech that was webcast from the National Press Club in Washington, DC and archived by C-SPAN.

SpaceX Animation Image

In a video SpaceX has placed on YouTube, the company foresees a transportation system in which all components can be recovered and re-used, including the booster and second stages which would take the crew or cargo module to orbit. In the video, animation shows both the first and second stages being returned to their launch site at Cape Canaveral in Florida, not falling back to Earth under parachutes into the ocean, but descending on engine power to a precise, controlled landing on the ground. The crew module returns to Earth in much the same way.

In his speech, Musk said up to now, the complexities of such a system have kept it from being built, but that "probably in the last 12 months or so, I've come to the conclusion that it can be solved and I think SpaceX is going to try to solve it." He did say that while the video was a fairly accurate representation of the system, it does not give away any proprietary company secrets.

Musk said the company could fail in its effort, but if it is successful, it could greatly reduce the cost of transporting people and cargo to low Earth orbit. As an example, he said one of the company's Falcon 9 rockets costs about $50 to $60 million, but that the fuel for each launch is only about $200,000. He said using a rocket, for instance, a thousand times, could reduce the effective cost of each launch to only about $50,000.

SpaceX is scheduled to launch a Falcon 9 rocket with an unmanned Dragon 9 capsule to the ISS in January. Musk said the current problems with Russian Soyuz spacecraft have caused that projected launch date to be pushed back from November to assure that the correct personnel with the correct training can be on board when the Dragon spacecraft arrives at ISS. The components of the Falcon 9 rocket are already designed to be re-usable following recovery from the ocean.

FMI: www.spacex.com

SpaceX Animation Image