SES-10 Post-Mission Press Briefing
Тут не наши "люди добрые"™ пообещали полностью набрать англоязычный текст этого брифинга (звук в оригинальном видео - IMHO, дерьмовый) - и я сразу закину его сюда. Там много любопытного...
А пока - что есть:
Good evening everyone, this is the post-launch news conference for the SpaceX SES-10 Mission. Here tonight to give us a status of the launch and the mission is Elon Musk, CEO and lead designer, SpaceX; "Alright" and Martin Halwell chief Technology Officer, SES.
We'll start now with Elon Musk.
E: I already gave some basic remarks on the webcast, but this represents the culmination of continuous work at spacex to be able to refly a rocket booster. the most expensive part of a whole engine from a launch standpoint is the boost stage. It represents up to 70% of the cost of the flight. so being able to refly the rocket booster ultimately with the oly thing changing between flights being the propellant is that, for at least that portiln of the flight, the cost reduction is over 100, a factor of 100. In fact, all of the propellant cost for the flight is just .3% of the cost of the rocket, uh, of the mission. So, um, even when you factor in maintenance and capitalalization of the cost of the rocket, the potential is there, just as it is with air flights of road travel or anything in transport, the potential is there for over 100-foldreduction in cost factors for space, which means that it - if we could achieve that - SpaceX and others will also do the same - it means that humanity can become a space race civilization, be out there among the stars. This is what we want for the future.
so, yeah (laughter)
M: Well, absolutely wonderful day, absolutely outstanding - what an amazing mission for SES-10 - a perfect mission, we have a perfect orbit, we have acquisition of the satellite. We actually got acquisition of the satellite around about 35 minutes earlier than we expected. In fact, of all the three missions we have had with spaceX this is absolutely the most calm, no problems whatsoever, absolutely smooth mission, it really could not have gone better. We are hugely, hugely excited by this. To be part of this, I think we made a little bit of history today. actually, just to open the door into a whole new era of spaceflight, and to be part of that I feel very priveleged. nd it is great thanks to Elon all the people of spaceX who really made this possible, and jsut pushed us forward to the next stage. So bring it on, fantastic.
E: And I'd like to say, thanks for taking a chance on SpaceX. It's not the first time you've taken a chance on us, and I just really want to say thanks for having the faith...
M: Thanks Elon. Actually, several people have said, asked of me the other day, "Oh, you're taking a big risk, "
E: Right, SES got a lot of flak by the way...
M: Nah, we got a lot of flak it's a...; I said to some of you guys the other day, "You've got to decouple the emotion from the engineering, that's the most important thing. And the engineering team tht Elon has working for himis really second to none, and he asks vrey simple, profound questions, and he gets very good answers, and the proof is in the pudding, here we are - we did it. We did it together, (E: Thank you) and it was absolutely fantastic.
(Applause)
So we are not going to take some questions in the room. When you are recognised, please state your name, and your affiliation, and ask thta you please wait until the microphone comes to you. We do have a limited amount of time this evening, .. I did want to admit that, but we'd like to begin now with Marcia Don.
MD: Marcia Don, Associated Press, from Mister Musc - Will you refly this booster, and when is your next flight of a reused booster, whether this one or another one.
E: We have several reflights planned for later this year. If all goes well, I think we may fly as many as six, maybe as many as six reflitghts. For Falcon Heavy, two of those boosters, the two side boosters are reflown boosters - that one will be two cores right there - that'll be an exciting mission, one way or another - hopefully in the good direction. (L). We're not going to fly anything - we'll probably fly something really silly on the first flight of Falcon Heavy as it is quite a high risk mission. Two of the things to look forward to later this year, that'll be quite fun, because the two side boosters will come back and do a synchronised aerial ballet and land - two of the side boosters will land back at the cape. That'll be pretty exciting to see two come in simultaneously, and the centre core will land down-range on the drone-ship. If all goes according to plan which.. Her, Her, rockets... so...
MD: What about this one, will you fly this one again?
E: We think this one soft of has some historic value. So we are thinking of seing if perhaps the cape might to have it as something to remember the moment. So we were going to present it as a gift to. yeah.
BH: Bill Hardwick, CBS News. You know, Elon, I got an email from a retired Shuttle engineer who goes all the way back to Apollo, and his email was sent to me and it said, "It ain't bragging if you do it.".(Laughter) And, ah, what message does this message give to your competitors. You mentioned the space industry earlier but, it seems like - Well, I'll ask you: do you think other people are going to follow in your footsteps, or do you think this is something you're going to be doing exclusively in the near term.
E: I think hopefully this will - it will inform the decisions of other space organizations. And really this has been put into the either really too hard or not really feasable, and I think we've shown that something a lot of people thought was somewhere between impossible or 'you just shouldn't do it' to 'hey, it works', and then I think in order to be competitive in launch costs I think it is going to be necessary to do the same thing. Just as you can imagine if we were an aircraft company, selling aircraft that can be flown many times, and everyone else was selling aircraft that can be flown once, well, I mean, you know - that's not a very competitive position to be in. You really want to have aircraft that can be flown lots of times.
Once it is clear that some thing can be done, then I think that will encourage others in that direction -I hope it does. Because I think there shouldn't be just SpaceX, there should be manylaunch companies that succeed.
IK: Thanks for coming over, congratulations; Irene Klotz, with Reuters (E: Unclear - Been there forlike, 10 years, many more??) Do you have other customers that were not as, perhaps afraid as Mr Hallywell here, (E : Safe to say um..), and tell us what a life limiting factor will be now, first stage....
E: Sure. I'd like to say, Nasa's been incredibly supportive, in terms of pushing the envelope with new things, and then, on the commercial side, SES has been by far the most supportive. I couldn't have said enough thanks for that. So the next thing is to try to fugure out how do we achieve very rapid reuse, with minimal refurbishment, minimal - without any sort of hardware changes in the vehicle. With this being the first reflight, we were incredibly paranoid about everything. So we sort of ... the core airframe remained the same, the engines remained the same, but any auxillary components that might be slightly questionable we changed out. So now our asperations will be zero hardware changes, reflight in 24 hours, the only thing that changes is we reload propellant. Um, we might get this toward the end of this year, if not this year I'm confident we'll get there next year.
IK: So without inspections, no inspections, you'd just refly..
E: Oh, you look at it, you have a day. They'd certainly inspect it, and there will be quite a lot of health monitoring. There's a lot of sensors on board to say when the things are good or if they are not. The on-board heath-check system - just a lot of sensors that confirm the health of the rocket. Just like aircraft, really.
I'd like to take a question from the phone please, we have on the line Chris Davenport, from the Washington Post.
CD: Hi Elon, thanks. Just want to follow up on Bill Hardwick's question, you just said that this is a big monent not just for SpaceX, but for the industry as a whole. Blue Origin and others are obviously working on reusability, but Bezos just showed an artist's rendering of a Ship, that looked a lot like your drone ship, and we were wondering what your reaction to that was, and if you have ..
E: What is that saying about the best form of flattery? (Laughter) Actually, I think it is good. Frankly, as a company it shows that the path is working. Other companies should copy that, It'd be silly not to. You woulfdn't want to arbitrarily not do the right thing simply because some other company is. So I think that it is the right move to - well obviously we think it's right b3cause it's the decision we made, it is that rapid and complete reusability that is the key to opening up space, and becomming a space-fairing civilization and a multi-palnet species and having the future being something that's incredibly exciting and inspiring and that we all look forward to.
All right, we'll have a question from the phone please. It's David Hoslier from Buisiness Insider
DH:
E: Oh, actually, one little bit of breaking news which .. The fairing, the big nose cone - the top of the rocket, that actually successfully landed as well. (Audience: Wow, laughter, applause) That was definitely the cherry on the cake. So we actually have a parachute that - the fairing has it's own thruster control system and a steerable parachute. So it's its own little space craft. So the thrusters maintain its orientation as it comes in, as it reenters, and then we thow out the parachute and the parachute steers it to a particular location, and I was just shown a picture of an intact fairing floating in the ocean, (Audience: with the SES logo on it, M: It's the wrong half.. E:It's the half without the M:it's got a US flag on it.) But, yeah, that's really exciting - cause that fairing over 5m diameter, it just - you can fit a bus inside that fairing, and it costs 6 million dollars to make that fairing, and at one point we were debating, should we recover it or not, and I was like, "Guys, imagine you had 6 million dollars in cash in a pallet flying through the air, and it was going to smash into the ocean - would you try to recover that? Yes, yes you would. So, rather than have it smash into tiny pieces, it looks that's looking quite promising. Yeah, so maybe what we'll have is i kinda like a bouncy castle for it to land on, and then aim to reuse the fairing as well. And then the only thing left is the upper stage, which - we didn't originally intend for Falcon 9 to have reusable upper stage, but: it might be fun to kinda like a hail mary and, yeah - what's the worst thing that could happen, it blows up, it blows alrady away ( M:Elon, we need to discuss this...(Laughter) ) Yes.
Dave,did that answer your question, I didn't want.. I want to make sure you've got your question.
DH: You answered part of my question about the second stage, but I wanted to know how it fits in nowt that you've done this, how does it fit in with your grand scheme, your grand plan here to get to Mars, to launch astronauts and things like that: how does it affect those plans, will you refly boosters with astronauts on top, how does this affect the mars plan forward.
E: This is really a critical part of the mars plan, if you consider the goal of Mars is not to be a single mission, but one where we establish a self sustaining city on Mars. In order to do that, there's some threshold cost in terms of cost per tonne to the surface of Mars that has to be achieved in order for that to be feasable. If that cost per tonne exceeds the gross world product of Mars, which it currently does, then that's obviously not going to happen. There needs to be at least a hundred-fold, if not a thousand-fold reduction in the cost of a tonne to Mars. Maybe 10-thousand fold. And reusability is absolutely fundamental to that goal. So this I think is very helpful to prove a point, that it's possible, and I hope people start to think that as a real goal, to which we should aspire, to establish a civilization on Mars. It's really - this is really not just about humanity, it's a bout all the lack that we care about FIXME.
I'd like to go back to the room for questions, Stephen Clarke
SC: He Elon, Stephen Clarke, from SpaceFlightNow. Couple of questions, First of all, do you have customers who've signed up for reused rocket ori future used booster (E: We've got one sitting right here) Beyone Mr Hallwell
E: There's currently - excluding Falcon Heavy flight that is just basically on SpaceX's dime, nobody's paying us for that because it's a demonstration flight, essentially a test flight, that's two of the reused boosters, three are I think 3 or 4 others that have signed up on a contingency basis - like, if this one works, then sure - and so I think probably we'll see more of those customers being willing to go on a - I shoudl use the right terminology - Flight Proven Booster. that's right, Flight Proven.
SC: Touche. I have a follow-up as well, Could you update us on where Falcon Heavy is - are you testing things at McGregor right now, where are you at with qualification of hardware, and what driving the launch date and do you expect it to delay here.
E: Falcon Heavy was one of those things sounds - at first it sounded easy: we'll just take two first stages and use them as strap-on boosters. And like - actually, no, this is crazy hard, and required redesign of the centre core and a tonne of additional hardware. It was actually shockingly difficult to go from single core to tripple core vehicle, and we're now done with the testing, and the cores are in final fabrication, I think they finish in about 2 or 3 months, our expectation is probably a late summer launch of Falcon Heavy.
James Dean...
JD: James Dean...
E: I'll just still say: Our priority is still launching our.. Since we have a backlog, because of the, we had a whole gap of time as we recovered from the Issue we had last year, our priority is of course that we are making sure that we launch our customers, so Falcon Heavy is necessarily a second priority to making sure that our customer's needs are met.
JD: James Dean, Florida Today; Elon how confident were you going into the countdown, and through that first booster phase; and then, regarding reusability: in one of the concerns I guess is about the flight rate, you'll need to make it pay off - even those who are for it say "well, you've got a long shot now, this means you have to make it worth it", so for you, what do you think, is today the day to celebrate, of maybe years from - what
E: Just a little celebration is in order... If you jsut say, how much effort has SpaceX put into Falcon Reusability, and nobody was paying us for reusability, so it had to be on our own dime, it's probably - at least a billion dollars that we spent developing this, so it'sll take a while to pay that off. And then we need to get really efficient at the reuse of boosters adn fairing, so I would expect the economics to start becomming sensible next year - so it's pretty close - and we expect the boosters to .. I mean, with no refurbishment, be capable of 10 flights, with moderate refubishment to be capable of 100 flights. So you can imagine that if the cost of the rocket is 60 million dollars - we're not re-using the whole thing, but - with the fairing, assuming fairing reuse works out, and we amorsize the cost of reuse of the booster, we really looking at 3/4 of the rocket cost dropping by an order of magnitude, maybe more.
JD: Were you confident going into today?
E: I did have two boxes of Zanax, it did help. So, I was odly.. I felt calmer than I should, I should really feel - I was odly enough nervous that I wasn't nervous enough. Nested level of fear, nested fear. But I felt odly calm, and, um, yeah, worked out as well as one could expect, and it is really credit to the SpaceX team for doing an amazing job.
L Laruren ..., verge: I was wondering if you could talk about the new facility that you guys have onthe cape, and how that will work into the refurbishment process of rockets, and if we're interesting .. today, I wonder if you could talk about the robot that we've seen on the drone ship lately.
E: What robot are you talking about? We have a refurbishment facility at the cape. Most of the refubishment has been done at the launch site again, we've got space at 39A and we've got space at 40 and there's a whole sparate rocket, sort of rocket hangar actually rockdttry. Both of these are getting kind of big, sort of a forest of rocket boosters. There's about another 20 flights or something this year, something in that order. If most of those succeede, we're going to need quite a big hangar. So, yeah, the facilities for that - and the robot thing is - in order to secure the rocket remotely. We cabn't put any people on board if the rocket is sliding around, it's too dangerous, so the little droids that people have seen are in order to remotely secure the legs of the rocket, so the rocket is stabilized, doesn't move around, and even in high seas we still have a crew board the drone ship and safe the rocket.
L When we'll see that one in action?
E: Actually - certainly in the next few months. Today was fine, because the seas were calm the rocket's not moving around, and so we don't really need the droids. But it's more a heavy seas situation. We had that one where it was quite stormy, and the booster was like sliding from one side of the drone ship to the other, and the only thing that stopped it from going overboard was there was like a lip on the edge, it was like banking atains the lip on one side to the other side, but it made it to port.
Robinson Manuel , with the New York Observer, Could you give us an update on the development of the Interplanetary Transport System, and what's next in terms of - what's the nex component to be tested following the carbon fuel tank and the Raptor engine?
E: I think we'll provide an update on the design of the Interplanetary Transport System - Interplanetary Transport System also includes the propellant depot on Mars - that's why it's sort of - I actually usually don't like the word 'system', but we can't call it a rocket if it includes a propellant depot. So the Mars planetery transporter or Mars Transporter, ir Interplanetary Transporter - We've come up with a number of desibn refinements, and I hope I'll be ready ot put that on the Website withing a month or so.
RM: Just want a follow-up The timeframe has shifted since Gh, I was wondering if if yuo guys had any updated timeframe of when you think that firstmission will be launched - If I'm correct, the first one is uncrewed amd I right
E: Yes the first one will be uncrewed, I don't want to steal thunder from that announcement. I'm pretty excited about the upgrades strategy since Gh, it makes a lot more sense, it's - we have to not just get it done technically, but figure out how to get this done without going bankrupt. So it's like, our goal is to get people on Mars before we're dead, and the company is dead. So like, either one of that. Ideally, the first. We don't want to take so long that dead by when that happens, and we don't want to kill the company in the process. So we have to figure out not just solve the technical issues, but the economic issues. I think the new approach is going to be able to do that. Hopefully.
I like to go back and take some more questions from the phone, next on the line is Alex nat, from Forbes
Hi elon, thanks for taking my call, I have to ask, ... as the .. a question, what is the pricing discount on a flight proven launch option versus a standard option.
E: Actually we're trying to figure that out, but it will be a meaningful discount, we do have figure out some way to pay off the development costs of reusability, so prices can not be as .. prices can not be as much as the price savings, because we need to repay the massive developemnt cost, but it will certainly be less than the current price of the rocket, obviously, and will be far lower than any other rocket in the world.
Thank you.
Next question is also on the phone, it is Kery sheridan, from Ajants france press
KS: Hi, thanks for taking my call, Could you just repeat for me, I'm not sure if I heard you correctly, how many times might you be able to reuse one of the boosters ... fins you're working on .. involved in refurbisnment.
E: The design intent is that the rocket will be reflown with zero hardware changes. The only thing that changes is to reload propellant, 10 times. Then with moderate refurbishment that doesn't have a significant effect on the cost, it can be reflown at least 100 times. Actually, really, make that a thousand but it's probably. But the Mars vehicle will be designed for a thousand flights
Ken Krimmer, Universe today: thanks for doing this, congratulations on the flight;, my question is about refurbishment - what is the lessons you have learned? You got 8 cores back, and you've got one today, there has to be some things that are used more, that is more prone to failure. What are those, what are the things that keep you up at night. What are lessons you have learned and implemented. And the second question would be, for your moon-shot - are you going to have a vigorous sicence program, any science program, and can you tell us about it, thanks.
E: Sure, well I want to be sure we don't wire this press conference into all things, because today is about the fact that the rocket booster was reflown and succeded, so I want to contain things to that cause there's lots of exciting things in the future - that'd be a very long press conference if we do all that. Technical elements that are most tricky for reuse is - the base heat-shield for the rocket, the grid fins. If you saw on the webcast, you may have noticed that the grid fins were lighting on fire. So we have a new design for the grid fin that is quite a bit more advanced than the current one. And it's... , I believe it will be the largest titanium forging in the world. It's a special alloy of titanium that's very good at high heat flux, whereas this grid fin is made of aluminum, but it's covered in thermal protection so it's - but it ggets so hot that it lights on fire a little bit. Which is not very good for reuse. But the new grid fins should be capable of taking a scorching and being fine. And they'll also have significantly more control authority, so, that should improve reusability of the rocket. It will improve the payload to orbit by being able to fly at a higher angle of attack and use the aerodynamic element of hte rocket to effectively glide like a fixed ___. It does have a glide rationof 1 if flown at the right angle of attack, but you need control authority, particularly pitch control authority, that's more than we currently have to achieve that. So grid fins, base heat shield, paint I guess - paint can get a little toasty, so maybe having more of a thermal barrier coating instead fo paint. There's a million little things, but we've got the base heat shield things addressed, we've got a good plan for the grid fins, and it's like a bunch of little things thta need to be ironed out, but overall we've got a plan to achieve the 24hr, zero hardware change reusability by next year.
Another question around please: How about Brenden Burn, from WMFP, ...
BB: With those challenges, it's still a little early; with the data you are getting back with this booster,is there anything that stands out in your mind that you're worried about - how's this boooster doing?
E: I wsa looking at the telemetry all the way up and down, everything looked great. It looks... really good, eyeballing it, the only things we need to be addressed on this booster to refire is to replace the thermal protection onthe grid fins and on the rear heat shield, and to repaint areas on the rocket where the paint bubbled. I'm not aware of anything else that we'd need to do.
So big sta...
And we've got a plan for all of those elements.
More questions in the room - How about Tim Hurholtz from
E: Just eleborate on that thing - one thing that's not well understood about spaceflight is that altitude is not the thing that maters, it's velocity. It's a little counter-intuative, becaues people see a rocket see a rocket pointing up, andit goes straight up, and you think 'the way rockets go to space is they go straight up and then suddenly gravity stops at some point, and that's how you get to space. That's not at all how it works. And so we have the word orbit. The way things go up and stay up in space is they zoom around the earth that the outward acceleration, outward radial accelarationi is equal to the inward acceleration due to gravity, they null out, and that's why you don't fall down. And the thing that really is most, is to deal with is the heat of re-entry. Now, generally this is good thing, so we don't get pummeled by meteors all the time, because they get burnt up in the upper atmosphere - so it's good. But then if you want to make a rocket come back and not also be vaporized, that's hard. And you have this heavy heat shield, or you want to get a payload to orbit. So the trick is to figure out just the right level of armour in just the right places, with advanced materials, best analytical techniques, so that it's - you have all the thermal protection that you need, but not so much that you don't have any payload to orbit - that's really the trick of it. And actually missions like the ones we just did are the hardest missions, because anything going to geosynchronous transfer orbit means it's a high velocity mission, and that means the booster's comming in really hot - it's comming in fast, which means it's comming in hot. The peak heating is as the cube of velocity - really nayy.. to think about - it means that the heating difference between mach 1 and mach 8 is 500, roughly. crazy heating difference. And then once you pass the melting point of metals, your thing melts and you're toast. So that's realy the ... it's dealing with that velocity that is the thing.
TH: Tim Hurmholtz from Quartz: Martin, I wanted to ask you, to follow up on something you said earlier, about SES deciding to back SpaceX, you said you had to separate the emotion from the engineering; What emotion are you talking about - is that about SpaceX, or about inovation in the aerospace industry generally...
M I was really referring to the comments that we had over the last couple of days when we spoke to the press, and we spoke to the people and we had little press conferences, and many people came back and said, "You're taking an inordinate risk here, you have an extremely expensive spacecraft, has a very important mission to do in latin America, aren't you taking a hugh chance here? What I was trying to react to there is to say, "actually, I don't think we are. because we'd actually worked through this problem. We worked very, very closely together with SpaceX, and that's really probably why we've done more of these types of missions with spacex than anybody else. We've been the first on Proton, all this type of stuff, but with SpaceX ew have a certain transparency, we have a certain depth of relationship and also access to engineering specifics through our US citizens that allow us to be able to have that confidence in the fact that the engineering is good, and that we can go ahead with such a mission and make that investment, and be happy that this hugely expensive spacecraft can fly on this particular booster. That's really where I'm coming from, you've got to get away from the ideal that it's second-hand, you know, it (E: Flight Proven) Flight Proven - It may make it, it may not you know - that doesn't interest us whatsoever. You actually have to go into this really with a sang froid, you have to go into this really cold blooded, and just work through the various different issues, understand the testing, understand the engineering associated with this, and then you make your decision. And that's exactly what we did. We have 3 more flights this year with SpaceX, on two of those flights we are considering now moving them to pre-flown.
E: Great, that's good. (Chatter)
TH: Question for you Elon - (E: absolutely) in Mexico you showed us a photo in your presentation, of a very early days at SpaceX, with a mariachi band, and 21 people in a hallway (E: From a Mariachi band to here) Since that time you've mentioned, 15 years, it's been a lot of work, I'm just curious, is this a day of personal satisfaction for you, do you feel vindicated in this mission to lower the cost of space access?
E: Yes, this is a huge day. My mind's blown, frankly, yeah. I was really quite speachless after all of that . It's the culmination of a tremendous amount of work by a very talented team, I can't credit the engineering team, the production team, at SpaceX, for ___, for what they achieved.
M: Maybe just coupled to the - I think that after we did the SES-8, which was the first commercial GTO mission that we did with SpaceX, I made the comment that the industry will be shaking it it's boots. Oh, I think it's shaking now. I really do.
E: It'll spur change, for the better. M: Hey, that's good.
Another question in the room, how aout Marco Santtana, from Orlando Sentenal
MS: I was wondering, littel bit off what just said. Could you try to put this into perspective - I mean you had a sucessful career, obviously sucesses and failures, .. But could yo put it in perspective, on where this fits in with all of that; and the second question I want to ask briefly, is, Why are you keeping the rocket at the cape, when did that decision to keep it here come?
E; It's just this one booster, it has some historic significance having it remain at the cape would be good. Well actualy, future ones will probably remain at the cape too, they'll just be going through a, um, just flying, a lot. As we building up the space fleet. What is the second one?
MS: Where do you fit this in to your whole career?
E: Definitely one of the best things ever (laughter) Not sure - there's 15 years, a lot of blood, sweat and tears.
More questions in the room?
Fetey Sincerty with the Uniker Phoenix, and there's been a lot of history, there's been quite an ammount of history made from LC39a (E: Yeah, it's like times square, it's like the - I mean, when NASA said that they would lease it to us, allow us to use that pad, it was s a total honour, Nuts, that's wher the Apollo 11 moonlanding, that's where they launched from, coolest launch location that I can think of.) Was this part of your design to lease this pad, or did this...
E: It came up and,... NASA asked us if we had interest, and we were like, 'Hell Yeah'.
More questions how about Marcos, from Al
Thank you. As SpaceX regularly launches satellites and cargo to the International Space Station, so today's achievement, how could open the door to many new endeavors, in space.
E: Well, I think the case is goint to be reduction in the cost of access to space, If... I think, over time, the current archetecture of Falcon 9, I think, will certainly allow for a dramatic reduction in the cost of access to space, but then, looking ahead to our next generation of vehicle, the big rocket, the current code name is BFR, or Big Falcon Rocket (laughter) I don't know why people laugh, That vehicle is taking all of what we've learned and created something that is fully reusable, and really, the impact that the primary booster is being designed to reflight withing less than an hour. You could once per hour with the primary booster. And I'm really confident that that archetecture, with a high flight rate, which we think will occur, will achieve 100-fold reduction in the cost per unit mass into space, into orbit - or really anywhere in the solar system. So I think what the significance of today is proving that it's possible to do that, at least with the primary booster, and next would be the upper stage as well, And I'm highly comfident that it is possible to achieve a 100-fold reduction in the cost of space transport, and maybe more. Maybe, I don't know. And with the same budget, we'll do 100 times more things. Mind blowing, really
Next question from Craig, Channel 13.
Congratulations, Craig .. 13, With the kids here, is this the example of recycling, the environment, recycling boosters, teaching them about the environment, personal, bad things
E: I thought it was like, potential for historic moments so, get to know the kids, and have them see it directly,
More questions in the room, Stephanie Segal, NBC News
SS: Hi, Elon. With reusability now an option, how will you decide which mission s will be using flight proven rockets, versus first time, or is soley based on customer requests.
E: It's customers that are willing to take flight-proven booster, or some will still want to see a lot more flights before they are comfortable with what we will call a flight proven booster. they may use a different term - . So, .. But I .. It seems as though .. we might do half a dozen, or more, flights of reflown booster this year, and then next year, probably double that. And I'd expect that, for the Falcon archetecture, probably 3/4 of our missoins are with a re-flown booster.
M: As an operator, i could add to that, my belief is that within 24 months, people like spacex, or spacex certainly will offer a service to orbit, and it will be irrelevant if it's new, or it's pre-flown, it'll be irrelevant, within 24 months. That's what this means today.
E: The goal is to make this normal. This is normal. What are you talking about? Of course the thing comes back and lands. Why wouln't it.
We have time for one more question I think, in the room, very back please.
CG: NSF: In terms of more short-term reusability efforts, how does this sort of conform to the bock 5 upgrade to Falcon 9, and for the Falcon Heavy side boosters, is late summer also and indicator of when SLC40 will be back, since we heard that Falcon Heavy wouldn't go from go from 39A until SLC40 is back up.
E: Wow, you really into the details there. Yes, that's all basically correct. We need ot get 40 up and running again, so that we can start doing single-stick flights from 40, which allows us to do the heavy flights from 39A. Necessarily, 40 would have to be reactivated before 39a was in use for Falcon Heavy. Falcon Heavy, I really want to emphasize, is a high risk - that's a high risk flight. 27 engines are lighting simultaneously. That's a lot of engines. Technically, it should be called a Falcon27. We thought that would sound too scary, so we called it Heavy. Yeah. So certainly we wouln't want to take the risk of something going wrong with that pad, and then having no pad on the east coast, so, gotta get 40 up and running, confirm that's good, and then we can launch Heavy from 39a, and... Block 5, the nomenclature I think is - I think we aren't using the right nomenclature - cause, it'smore like a point release, than a .. it's ... block 5 is more like version 2.5 of Falcon 9, is probably the most accurate way to think about it. And the most important part of black 5 wil be operating the engines at their full thrust capability, which is ~ abou 7 or 8, almost 10% more than what they currently run at. Number of other improvements to have reusability - goes to the forged titanium grid fins, so that'll bring in a number of factors - block 5, version 2.5 incorporate a number of elements that are important to NASA for human spaceflight.
All right, with that, we'll conclude the post launch news conference for the SpaceX SES-10 mission. for more information you can go to spacex.com or SES-10, or follow us both on social media.
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Good evening everyone, this is the post-launch news conference for the SpaceX SES-10 Mission. Here tonight to give us a status of the launch and the mission is Elon Musk, CEO and lead designer, SpaceX; "Alright" and Martin Halwell chief Technology Officer, SES.
We'll start now with Elon Musk.
E: I already gave some basic remarks on the webcast, but this represents the culmination of continuous work at spacex to be able to refly a rocket booster. the most expensive part of a whole engine from a launch standpoint is the boost stage. It represents up to 70% of the cost of the flight. so being able to refly the rocket booster ultimately with the oly thing changing between flights being the propellant is that, for at least that portiln of the flight, the cost reduction is over 100, a factor of 100. In fact, all of the propellant cost for the flight is just .3% of the cost of the rocket, uh, of the mission. So, um, even when you factor in maintenance and capitalalization of the cost of the rocket, the potential is there, just as it is with air flights of road travel or anything in transport, the potential is there for over 100-foldreduction in cost factors for space, which means that it - if we could achieve that - SpaceX and others will also do the same - it means that humanity can become a space race civilization, be out there among the stars. This is what we want for the future.
so, yeah (laughter)
M: Well, absolutely wonderful day, absolutely outstanding - what an amazing mission for SES-10 - a perfect mission, we have a perfect orbit, we have acquisition of the satellite. We actually got acquisition of the satellite around about 35 minutes earlier than we expected. In fact, of all the three missions we have had with spaceX this is absolutely the most calm, no problems whatsoever, absolutely smooth mission, it really could not have gone better. We are hugely, hugely excited by this. To be part of this, I think we made a little bit of history today. actually, just to open the door into a whole new era of spaceflight, and to be part of that I feel very priveleged. nd it is great thanks to Elon all the people of spaceX who really made this possible, and jsut pushed us forward to the next stage. So bring it on, fantastic.
E: And I'd like to say, thanks for taking a chance on SpaceX. It's not the first time you've taken a chance on us, and I just really want to say thanks for having the faith...
M: Thanks Elon. Actually, several people have said, asked of me the other day, "Oh, you're taking a big risk, "
E: Right, SES got a lot of flak by the way...
M: Nah, we got a lot of flak it's a...; I said to some of you guys the other day, "You've got to decouple the emotion from the engineering, that's the most important thing. And the engineering team tht Elon has working for himis really second to none, and he asks vrey simple, profound questions, and he gets very good answers, and the proof is in the pudding, here we are - we did it. We did it together, (E: Thank you) and it was absolutely fantastic.
(Applause)
So we are not going to take some questions in the room. When you are recognised, please state your name, and your affiliation, and ask thta you please wait until the microphone comes to you. We do have a limited amount of time this evening, .. I did want to admit that, but we'd like to begin now with Marcia Don.
MD: Marcia Don, Associated Press, from Mister Musc - Will you refly this booster, and when is your next flight of a reused booster, whether this one or another one.
E: We have several reflights planned for later this year. If all goes well, I think we may fly as many as six, maybe as many as six reflitghts. For Falcon Heavy, two of those boosters, the two side boosters are reflown boosters - that one will be two cores right there - that'll be an exciting mission, one way or another - hopefully in the good direction. (L). We're not going to fly anything - we'll probably fly something really silly on the first flight of Falcon Heavy as it is quite a high risk mission. Two of the things to look forward to later this year, that'll be quite fun, because the two side boosters will come back and do a synchronised aerial ballet and land - two of the side boosters will land back at the cape. That'll be pretty exciting to see two come in simultaneously, and the centre core will land down-range on the drone-ship. If all goes according to plan which.. Her, Her, rockets... so...
MD: What about this one, will you fly this one again?
E: We think this one soft of has some historic value. So we are thinking of seing if perhaps the cape might to have it as something to remember the moment. So we were going to present it as a gift to. yeah.
BH: Bill Hardwick, CBS News. You know, Elon, I got an email from a retired Shuttle engineer who goes all the way back to Apollo, and his email was sent to me and it said, "It ain't bragging if you do it.".(Laughter) And, ah, what message does this message give to your competitors. You mentioned the space industry earlier but, it seems like - Well, I'll ask you: do you think other people are going to follow in your footsteps, or do you think this is something you're going to be doing exclusively in the near term.
E: I think hopefully this will - it will inform the decisions of other space organizations. And really this has been put into the either really too hard or not really feasable, and I think we've shown that something a lot of people thought was somewhere between impossible or 'you just shouldn't do it' to 'hey, it works', and then I think in order to be competitive in launch costs I think it is going to be necessary to do the same thing. Just as you can imagine if we were an aircraft company, selling aircraft that can be flown many times, and everyone else was selling aircraft that can be flown once, well, I mean, you know - that's not a very competitive position to be in. You really want to have aircraft that can be flown lots of times.
Once it is clear that some thing can be done, then I think that will encourage others in that direction -I hope it does. Because I think there shouldn't be just SpaceX, there should be manylaunch companies that succeed.
IK: Thanks for coming over, congratulations; Irene Klotz, with Reuters (E: Unclear - Been there forlike, 10 years, many more??) Do you have other customers that were not as, perhaps afraid as Mr Hallywell here, (E : Safe to say um..), and tell us what a life limiting factor will be now, first stage....
E: Sure. I'd like to say, Nasa's been incredibly supportive, in terms of pushing the envelope with new things, and then, on the commercial side, SES has been by far the most supportive. I couldn't have said enough thanks for that. So the next thing is to try to fugure out how do we achieve very rapid reuse, with minimal refurbishment, minimal - without any sort of hardware changes in the vehicle. With this being the first reflight, we were incredibly paranoid about everything. So we sort of ... the core airframe remained the same, the engines remained the same, but any auxillary components that might be slightly questionable we changed out. So now our asperations will be zero hardware changes, reflight in 24 hours, the only thing that changes is we reload propellant. Um, we might get this toward the end of this year, if not this year I'm confident we'll get there next year.
IK: So without inspections, no inspections, you'd just refly..
E: Oh, you look at it, you have a day. They'd certainly inspect it, and there will be quite a lot of health monitoring. There's a lot of sensors on board to say when the things are good or if they are not. The on-board heath-check system - just a lot of sensors that confirm the health of the rocket. Just like aircraft, really.
I'd like to take a question from the phone please, we have on the line Chris Davenport, from the Washington Post.
CD: Hi Elon, thanks. Just want to follow up on Bill Hardwick's question, you just said that this is a big monent not just for SpaceX, but for the industry as a whole. Blue Origin and others are obviously working on reusability, but Bezos just showed an artist's rendering of a Ship, that looked a lot like your drone ship, and we were wondering what your reaction to that was, and if you have ..
E: What is that saying about the best form of flattery? (Laughter) Actually, I think it is good. Frankly, as a company it shows that the path is working. Other companies should copy that, It'd be silly not to. You woulfdn't want to arbitrarily not do the right thing simply because some other company is. So I think that it is the right move to - well obviously we think it's right b3cause it's the decision we made, it is that rapid and complete reusability that is the key to opening up space, and becomming a space-fairing civilization and a multi-palnet species and having the future being something that's incredibly exciting and inspiring and that we all look forward to.
All right, we'll have a question from the phone please. It's David Hoslier from Buisiness Insider
DH:
E: Oh, actually, one little bit of breaking news which .. The fairing, the big nose cone - the top of the rocket, that actually successfully landed as well. (Audience: Wow, laughter, applause) That was definitely the cherry on the cake. So we actually have a parachute that - the fairing has it's own thruster control system and a steerable parachute. So it's its own little space craft. So the thrusters maintain its orientation as it comes in, as it reenters, and then we thow out the parachute and the parachute steers it to a particular location, and I was just shown a picture of an intact fairing floating in the ocean, (Audience: with the SES logo on it, M: It's the wrong half.. E:It's the half without the M:it's got a US flag on it.) But, yeah, that's really exciting - cause that fairing over 5m diameter, it just - you can fit a bus inside that fairing, and it costs 6 million dollars to make that fairing, and at one point we were debating, should we recover it or not, and I was like, "Guys, imagine you had 6 million dollars in cash in a pallet flying through the air, and it was going to smash into the ocean - would you try to recover that? Yes, yes you would. So, rather than have it smash into tiny pieces, it looks that's looking quite promising. Yeah, so maybe what we'll have is i kinda like a bouncy castle for it to land on, and then aim to reuse the fairing as well. And then the only thing left is the upper stage, which - we didn't originally intend for Falcon 9 to have reusable upper stage, but: it might be fun to kinda like a hail mary and, yeah - what's the worst thing that could happen, it blows up, it blows alrady away ( M:Elon, we need to discuss this...(Laughter) ) Yes.
Dave,did that answer your question, I didn't want.. I want to make sure you've got your question.
DH: You answered part of my question about the second stage, but I wanted to know how it fits in nowt that you've done this, how does it fit in with your grand scheme, your grand plan here to get to Mars, to launch astronauts and things like that: how does it affect those plans, will you refly boosters with astronauts on top, how does this affect the mars plan forward.
E: This is really a critical part of the mars plan, if you consider the goal of Mars is not to be a single mission, but one where we establish a self sustaining city on Mars. In order to do that, there's some threshold cost in terms of cost per tonne to the surface of Mars that has to be achieved in order for that to be feasable. If that cost per tonne exceeds the gross world product of Mars, which it currently does, then that's obviously not going to happen. There needs to be at least a hundred-fold, if not a thousand-fold reduction in the cost of a tonne to Mars. Maybe 10-thousand fold. And reusability is absolutely fundamental to that goal. So this I think is very helpful to prove a point, that it's possible, and I hope people start to think that as a real goal, to which we should aspire, to establish a civilization on Mars. It's really - this is really not just about humanity, it's a bout all the lack that we care about FIXME.
I'd like to go back to the room for questions, Stephen Clarke
SC: He Elon, Stephen Clarke, from SpaceFlightNow. Couple of questions, First of all, do you have customers who've signed up for reused rocket ori future used booster (E: We've got one sitting right here) Beyone Mr Hallwell
E: There's currently - excluding Falcon Heavy flight that is just basically on SpaceX's dime, nobody's paying us for that because it's a demonstration flight, essentially a test flight, that's two of the reused boosters, three are I think 3 or 4 others that have signed up on a contingency basis - like, if this one works, then sure - and so I think probably we'll see more of those customers being willing to go on a - I shoudl use the right terminology - Flight Proven Booster. that's right, Flight Proven.
SC: Touche. I have a follow-up as well, Could you update us on where Falcon Heavy is - are you testing things at McGregor right now, where are you at with qualification of hardware, and what driving the launch date and do you expect it to delay here.
E: Falcon Heavy was one of those things sounds - at first it sounded easy: we'll just take two first stages and use them as strap-on boosters. And like - actually, no, this is crazy hard, and required redesign of the centre core and a tonne of additional hardware. It was actually shockingly difficult to go from single core to tripple core vehicle, and we're now done with the testing, and the cores are in final fabrication, I think they finish in about 2 or 3 months, our expectation is probably a late summer launch of Falcon Heavy.
James Dean...
JD: James Dean...
E: I'll just still say: Our priority is still launching our.. Since we have a backlog, because of the, we had a whole gap of time as we recovered from the Issue we had last year, our priority is of course that we are making sure that we launch our customers, so Falcon Heavy is necessarily a second priority to making sure that our customer's needs are met.
JD: James Dean, Florida Today; Elon how confident were you going into the countdown, and through that first booster phase; and then, regarding reusability: in one of the concerns I guess is about the flight rate, you'll need to make it pay off - even those who are for it say "well, you've got a long shot now, this means you have to make it worth it", so for you, what do you think, is today the day to celebrate, of maybe years from - what
E: Just a little celebration is in order... If you jsut say, how much effort has SpaceX put into Falcon Reusability, and nobody was paying us for reusability, so it had to be on our own dime, it's probably - at least a billion dollars that we spent developing this, so it'sll take a while to pay that off. And then we need to get really efficient at the reuse of boosters adn fairing, so I would expect the economics to start becomming sensible next year - so it's pretty close - and we expect the boosters to .. I mean, with no refurbishment, be capable of 10 flights, with moderate refubishment to be capable of 100 flights. So you can imagine that if the cost of the rocket is 60 million dollars - we're not re-using the whole thing, but - with the fairing, assuming fairing reuse works out, and we amorsize the cost of reuse of the booster, we really looking at 3/4 of the rocket cost dropping by an order of magnitude, maybe more.
JD: Were you confident going into today?
E: I did have two boxes of Zanax, it did help. So, I was odly.. I felt calmer than I should, I should really feel - I was odly enough nervous that I wasn't nervous enough. Nested level of fear, nested fear. But I felt odly calm, and, um, yeah, worked out as well as one could expect, and it is really credit to the SpaceX team for doing an amazing job.
L Laruren ..., verge: I was wondering if you could talk about the new facility that you guys have onthe cape, and how that will work into the refurbishment process of rockets, and if we're interesting .. today, I wonder if you could talk about the robot that we've seen on the drone ship lately.
E: What robot are you talking about? We have a refurbishment facility at the cape. Most of the refubishment has been done at the launch site again, we've got space at 39A and we've got space at 40 and there's a whole sparate rocket, sort of rocket hangar actually rockdttry. Both of these are getting kind of big, sort of a forest of rocket boosters. There's about another 20 flights or something this year, something in that order. If most of those succeede, we're going to need quite a big hangar. So, yeah, the facilities for that - and the robot thing is - in order to secure the rocket remotely. We cabn't put any people on board if the rocket is sliding around, it's too dangerous, so the little droids that people have seen are in order to remotely secure the legs of the rocket, so the rocket is stabilized, doesn't move around, and even in high seas we still have a crew board the drone ship and safe the rocket.
L When we'll see that one in action?
E: Actually - certainly in the next few months. Today was fine, because the seas were calm the rocket's not moving around, and so we don't really need the droids. But it's more a heavy seas situation. We had that one where it was quite stormy, and the booster was like sliding from one side of the drone ship to the other, and the only thing that stopped it from going overboard was there was like a lip on the edge, it was like banking atains the lip on one side to the other side, but it made it to port.
Robinson Manuel , with the New York Observer, Could you give us an update on the development of the Interplanetary Transport System, and what's next in terms of - what's the nex component to be tested following the carbon fuel tank and the Raptor engine?
E: I think we'll provide an update on the design of the Interplanetary Transport System - Interplanetary Transport System also includes the propellant depot on Mars - that's why it's sort of - I actually usually don't like the word 'system', but we can't call it a rocket if it includes a propellant depot. So the Mars planetery transporter or Mars Transporter, ir Interplanetary Transporter - We've come up with a number of desibn refinements, and I hope I'll be ready ot put that on the Website withing a month or so.
RM: Just want a follow-up The timeframe has shifted since Gh, I was wondering if if yuo guys had any updated timeframe of when you think that firstmission will be launched - If I'm correct, the first one is uncrewed amd I right
E: Yes the first one will be uncrewed, I don't want to steal thunder from that announcement. I'm pretty excited about the upgrades strategy since Gh, it makes a lot more sense, it's - we have to not just get it done technically, but figure out how to get this done without going bankrupt. So it's like, our goal is to get people on Mars before we're dead, and the company is dead. So like, either one of that. Ideally, the first. We don't want to take so long that dead by when that happens, and we don't want to kill the company in the process. So we have to figure out not just solve the technical issues, but the economic issues. I think the new approach is going to be able to do that. Hopefully.
I like to go back and take some more questions from the phone, next on the line is Alex nat, from Forbes
Hi elon, thanks for taking my call, I have to ask, ... as the .. a question, what is the pricing discount on a flight proven launch option versus a standard option.
E: Actually we're trying to figure that out, but it will be a meaningful discount, we do have figure out some way to pay off the development costs of reusability, so prices can not be as .. prices can not be as much as the price savings, because we need to repay the massive developemnt cost, but it will certainly be less than the current price of the rocket, obviously, and will be far lower than any other rocket in the world.
Thank you.
Next question is also on the phone, it is Kery sheridan, from Ajants france press
KS: Hi, thanks for taking my call, Could you just repeat for me, I'm not sure if I heard you correctly, how many times might you be able to reuse one of the boosters ... fins you're working on .. involved in refurbisnment.
E: The design intent is that the rocket will be reflown with zero hardware changes. The only thing that changes is to reload propellant, 10 times. Then with moderate refurbishment that doesn't have a significant effect on the cost, it can be reflown at least 100 times. Actually, really, make that a thousand but it's probably. But the Mars vehicle will be designed for a thousand flights
Ken Krimmer, Universe today: thanks for doing this, congratulations on the flight;, my question is about refurbishment - what is the lessons you have learned? You got 8 cores back, and you've got one today, there has to be some things that are used more, that is more prone to failure. What are those, what are the things that keep you up at night. What are lessons you have learned and implemented. And the second question would be, for your moon-shot - are you going to have a vigorous sicence program, any science program, and can you tell us about it, thanks.
E: Sure, well I want to be sure we don't wire this press conference into all things, because today is about the fact that the rocket booster was reflown and succeded, so I want to contain things to that cause there's lots of exciting things in the future - that'd be a very long press conference if we do all that. Technical elements that are most tricky for reuse is - the base heat-shield for the rocket, the grid fins. If you saw on the webcast, you may have noticed that the grid fins were lighting on fire. So we have a new design for the grid fin that is quite a bit more advanced than the current one. And it's... , I believe it will be the largest titanium forging in the world. It's a special alloy of titanium that's very good at high heat flux, whereas this grid fin is made of aluminum, but it's covered in thermal protection so it's - but it ggets so hot that it lights on fire a little bit. Which is not very good for reuse. But the new grid fins should be capable of taking a scorching and being fine. And they'll also have significantly more control authority, so, that should improve reusability of the rocket. It will improve the payload to orbit by being able to fly at a higher angle of attack and use the aerodynamic element of hte rocket to effectively glide like a fixed ___. It does have a glide rationof 1 if flown at the right angle of attack, but you need control authority, particularly pitch control authority, that's more than we currently have to achieve that. So grid fins, base heat shield, paint I guess - paint can get a little toasty, so maybe having more of a thermal barrier coating instead fo paint. There's a million little things, but we've got the base heat shield things addressed, we've got a good plan for the grid fins, and it's like a bunch of little things thta need to be ironed out, but overall we've got a plan to achieve the 24hr, zero hardware change reusability by next year.
Another question around please: How about Brenden Burn, from WMFP, ...
BB: With those challenges, it's still a little early; with the data you are getting back with this booster,is there anything that stands out in your mind that you're worried about - how's this boooster doing?
E: I wsa looking at the telemetry all the way up and down, everything looked great. It looks... really good, eyeballing it, the only things we need to be addressed on this booster to refire is to replace the thermal protection onthe grid fins and on the rear heat shield, and to repaint areas on the rocket where the paint bubbled. I'm not aware of anything else that we'd need to do.
So big sta...
And we've got a plan for all of those elements.
More questions in the room - How about Tim Hurholtz from
E: Just eleborate on that thing - one thing that's not well understood about spaceflight is that altitude is not the thing that maters, it's velocity. It's a little counter-intuative, becaues people see a rocket see a rocket pointing up, andit goes straight up, and you think 'the way rockets go to space is they go straight up and then suddenly gravity stops at some point, and that's how you get to space. That's not at all how it works. And so we have the word orbit. The way things go up and stay up in space is they zoom around the earth that the outward acceleration, outward radial accelarationi is equal to the inward acceleration due to gravity, they null out, and that's why you don't fall down. And the thing that really is most, is to deal with is the heat of re-entry. Now, generally this is good thing, so we don't get pummeled by meteors all the time, because they get burnt up in the upper atmosphere - so it's good. But then if you want to make a rocket come back and not also be vaporized, that's hard. And you have this heavy heat shield, or you want to get a payload to orbit. So the trick is to figure out just the right level of armour in just the right places, with advanced materials, best analytical techniques, so that it's - you have all the thermal protection that you need, but not so much that you don't have any payload to orbit - that's really the trick of it. And actually missions like the ones we just did are the hardest missions, because anything going to geosynchronous transfer orbit means it's a high velocity mission, and that means the booster's comming in really hot - it's comming in fast, which means it's comming in hot. The peak heating is as the cube of velocity - really nayy.. to think about - it means that the heating difference between mach 1 and mach 8 is 500, roughly. crazy heating difference. And then once you pass the melting point of metals, your thing melts and you're toast. So that's realy the ... it's dealing with that velocity that is the thing.
TH: Tim Hurmholtz from Quartz: Martin, I wanted to ask you, to follow up on something you said earlier, about SES deciding to back SpaceX, you said you had to separate the emotion from the engineering; What emotion are you talking about - is that about SpaceX, or about inovation in the aerospace industry generally...
M I was really referring to the comments that we had over the last couple of days when we spoke to the press, and we spoke to the people and we had little press conferences, and many people came back and said, "You're taking an inordinate risk here, you have an extremely expensive spacecraft, has a very important mission to do in latin America, aren't you taking a hugh chance here? What I was trying to react to there is to say, "actually, I don't think we are. because we'd actually worked through this problem. We worked very, very closely together with SpaceX, and that's really probably why we've done more of these types of missions with spacex than anybody else. We've been the first on Proton, all this type of stuff, but with SpaceX ew have a certain transparency, we have a certain depth of relationship and also access to engineering specifics through our US citizens that allow us to be able to have that confidence in the fact that the engineering is good, and that we can go ahead with such a mission and make that investment, and be happy that this hugely expensive spacecraft can fly on this particular booster. That's really where I'm coming from, you've got to get away from the ideal that it's second-hand, you know, it (E: Flight Proven) Flight Proven - It may make it, it may not you know - that doesn't interest us whatsoever. You actually have to go into this really with a sang froid, you have to go into this really cold blooded, and just work through the various different issues, understand the testing, understand the engineering associated with this, and then you make your decision. And that's exactly what we did. We have 3 more flights this year with SpaceX, on two of those flights we are considering now moving them to pre-flown.
E: Great, that's good. (Chatter)
TH: Question for you Elon - (E: absolutely) in Mexico you showed us a photo in your presentation, of a very early days at SpaceX, with a mariachi band, and 21 people in a hallway (E: From a Mariachi band to here) Since that time you've mentioned, 15 years, it's been a lot of work, I'm just curious, is this a day of personal satisfaction for you, do you feel vindicated in this mission to lower the cost of space access?
E: Yes, this is a huge day. My mind's blown, frankly, yeah. I was really quite speachless after all of that . It's the culmination of a tremendous amount of work by a very talented team, I can't credit the engineering team, the production team, at SpaceX, for ___, for what they achieved.
M: Maybe just coupled to the - I think that after we did the SES-8, which was the first commercial GTO mission that we did with SpaceX, I made the comment that the industry will be shaking it it's boots. Oh, I think it's shaking now. I really do.
E: It'll spur change, for the better. M: Hey, that's good.
Another question in the room, how aout Marco Santtana, from Orlando Sentenal
MS: I was wondering, littel bit off what just said. Could you try to put this into perspective - I mean you had a sucessful career, obviously sucesses and failures, .. But could yo put it in perspective, on where this fits in with all of that; and the second question I want to ask briefly, is, Why are you keeping the rocket at the cape, when did that decision to keep it here come?
E; It's just this one booster, it has some historic significance having it remain at the cape would be good. Well actualy, future ones will probably remain at the cape too, they'll just be going through a, um, just flying, a lot. As we building up the space fleet. What is the second one?
MS: Where do you fit this in to your whole career?
E: Definitely one of the best things ever (laughter) Not sure - there's 15 years, a lot of blood, sweat and tears.
More questions in the room?
Fetey Sincerty with the Uniker Phoenix, and there's been a lot of history, there's been quite an ammount of history made from LC39a (E: Yeah, it's like times square, it's like the - I mean, when NASA said that they would lease it to us, allow us to use that pad, it was s a total honour, Nuts, that's wher the Apollo 11 moonlanding, that's where they launched from, coolest launch location that I can think of.) Was this part of your design to lease this pad, or did this...
E: It came up and,... NASA asked us if we had interest, and we were like, 'Hell Yeah'.
More questions how about Marcos, from Al
Thank you. As SpaceX regularly launches satellites and cargo to the International Space Station, so today's achievement, how could open the door to many new endeavors, in space.
E: Well, I think the case is goint to be reduction in the cost of access to space, If... I think, over time, the current archetecture of Falcon 9, I think, will certainly allow for a dramatic reduction in the cost of access to space, but then, looking ahead to our next generation of vehicle, the big rocket, the current code name is BFR, or Big Falcon Rocket (laughter) I don't know why people laugh, That vehicle is taking all of what we've learned and created something that is fully reusable, and really, the impact that the primary booster is being designed to reflight withing less than an hour. You could once per hour with the primary booster. And I'm really confident that that archetecture, with a high flight rate, which we think will occur, will achieve 100-fold reduction in the cost per unit mass into space, into orbit - or really anywhere in the solar system. So I think what the significance of today is proving that it's possible to do that, at least with the primary booster, and next would be the upper stage as well, And I'm highly comfident that it is possible to achieve a 100-fold reduction in the cost of space transport, and maybe more. Maybe, I don't know. And with the same budget, we'll do 100 times more things. Mind blowing, really
Next question from Craig, Channel 13.
Congratulations, Craig .. 13, With the kids here, is this the example of recycling, the environment, recycling boosters, teaching them about the environment, personal, bad things
E: I thought it was like, potential for historic moments so, get to know the kids, and have them see it directly,
More questions in the room, Stephanie Segal, NBC News
SS: Hi, Elon. With reusability now an option, how will you decide which mission s will be using flight proven rockets, versus first time, or is soley based on customer requests.
E: It's customers that are willing to take flight-proven booster, or some will still want to see a lot more flights before they are comfortable with what we will call a flight proven booster. they may use a different term - . So, .. But I .. It seems as though .. we might do half a dozen, or more, flights of reflown booster this year, and then next year, probably double that. And I'd expect that, for the Falcon archetecture, probably 3/4 of our missoins are with a re-flown booster.
M: As an operator, i could add to that, my belief is that within 24 months, people like spacex, or spacex certainly will offer a service to orbit, and it will be irrelevant if it's new, or it's pre-flown, it'll be irrelevant, within 24 months. That's what this means today.
E: The goal is to make this normal. This is normal. What are you talking about? Of course the thing comes back and lands. Why wouln't it.
We have time for one more question I think, in the room, very back please.
CG: NSF: In terms of more short-term reusability efforts, how does this sort of conform to the bock 5 upgrade to Falcon 9, and for the Falcon Heavy side boosters, is late summer also and indicator of when SLC40 will be back, since we heard that Falcon Heavy wouldn't go from go from 39A until SLC40 is back up.
E: Wow, you really into the details there. Yes, that's all basically correct. We need ot get 40 up and running again, so that we can start doing single-stick flights from 40, which allows us to do the heavy flights from 39A. Necessarily, 40 would have to be reactivated before 39a was in use for Falcon Heavy. Falcon Heavy, I really want to emphasize, is a high risk - that's a high risk flight. 27 engines are lighting simultaneously. That's a lot of engines. Technically, it should be called a Falcon27. We thought that would sound too scary, so we called it Heavy. Yeah. So certainly we wouln't want to take the risk of something going wrong with that pad, and then having no pad on the east coast, so, gotta get 40 up and running, confirm that's good, and then we can launch Heavy from 39a, and... Block 5, the nomenclature I think is - I think we aren't using the right nomenclature - cause, it'smore like a point release, than a .. it's ... block 5 is more like version 2.5 of Falcon 9, is probably the most accurate way to think about it. And the most important part of black 5 wil be operating the engines at their full thrust capability, which is ~ abou 7 or 8, almost 10% more than what they currently run at. Number of other improvements to have reusability - goes to the forged titanium grid fins, so that'll bring in a number of factors - block 5, version 2.5 incorporate a number of elements that are important to NASA for human spaceflight.
All right, with that, we'll conclude the post launch news conference for the SpaceX SES-10 mission. for more information you can go to spacex.com or SES-10, or follow us both on social media.