SpaceX has not disclosed where the Falcon 9 first stage could wind up, or whether it will be displayed publicly.
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“We have quite a big flight manifest, and we should be doing well over a dozen flights next year”, Musk said during the December 21 teleconference. Two landing attempts on Just Read the Instructions failed, and Musk said the second was caused when the rocket hit the drone ship too hard, breaking two landing leg stops.
In one previous launch, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket disintegrated a few minutes after its launch. Some people interpreted that to mean the stage would fly again, but it’s more likely that Musk was referring to earlier plans to do static tests of the first stage at LC-39A. The costs of making such a rocket every time there is a launch would itself reach high heavens in no time.
However, the New Shephard is created to take passengers into sub-orbital space, whereas the Falcon 9 is created to go into the lower Earth orbit, which is higher up. Blue Origin, led by Jeff Bezos, was the first company to successfully land a rocket, although experts consider SpaceX’s achievement more noteworthy. NASA rocket launches run about $150 million, but could cost far less if the agency can apply some of Space X’s lessons. The image, a closeup of part of the first stage, showed only superficial effects from the flight, such as discoloration from soot deposited by the rocket’s engine plumes, according to a report from the SpaceNews.
Furthermore SpaceX also intends to use pad 39A to launch astronauts on the commercial crew version of the firms Dragon spacecraft staring in 2017, under a Commercial Crew Program (CCP) development contract with NASA.
But Elon Musk, SpaceX’s billionaire CEO and chief technology officer said that the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage that made the first of its kind landing is excluded from the aforementioned plan. He said the rocket didn’t seem to sustain any damage after its landing – a remarkable feat that could one day usher in an era of reusable rockets and, thereby, much cheaper space flights. ‘We achieved recovery of the rocket in a mission that actually deployed 11 satellites, ‘ he said.
“I think, probably sometime next year, we will aim to re-fly one of the rocket boosters”, Musk told reporters last month.
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There was, though, no denying at least the potential for sweeping change in space access that the successful landing could make possible, if recovered stages can be readily and effectively reflown.
