Post-Landing Telecon — First Falcon 9 Landing
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (1)
Transcript
0:00Elon MuskHeading up to LV1 in a moment, but if there are any questions, the red code in the live webcast and happy to answer them. Everything we've seen thus far is the mission appears to be perfect.
0:18Elon MuskThe satellites were deployed right on target and the Falcon 9 booster came back and landed, it looks like almost dead cent.
0:34Elon MuskOn the landing pad and then the upstage to the coast and then restarted to prepare the coast and restart capability. So it looks like as far as we can see right now, it was absolutely perfect.
0:53Elon MuskSo yeah, could not have asked for a better mission or a better day. This was really amazing for SpaceX actually. It means a lot of pressing for the picture of volume.
1:08Elon MuskSo yeah, I'm happy to jump into questions. Ladies and gentlemen. If you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad and we'll pause for a moment to compile the Q and A roster.
1:30Elon MuskOkay, your first question comes from the line of Bill harwood. Thank you, Mr. Love. One question I've been asked by anchors in New York is if you can perfect this technology to the point where you can begin actually reusing boosters, can you give us even a sense realizing no exact numbers are available, just a sense of what that might mean for lowering launch costs?
1:49Elon MuskThanks. Yeah, absolutely. So the Falcon 9 rocket costs about $60 million to build. It's kind of like a big jet. But the cost of the per pound, which is mostly oxyge and the gases, is only about $200,000.
2:13Elon MuskSo, you know, that means that the potential cost reduction over the long term is probably in excess of a factor of 100.
2:34Elon MuskThank you. And your next question, Councillor Law line of Chris Davenport. Hey, Elon, thanks so much for taking the time to do this and congratulations. I wanted to ask how confident were you leading up to the launch today that you'd be able to pull off the landing?
2:52Elon MuskThanks. My personal probability, a lot of people ask me that before the flight. I thought we had probably about a 60 chance of success, maybe 70%. There's just so many things that have to go right and it's an incredibly complex set of maneuvers that the booster has to make because it's sort of flying away from the pad at 5,000, in this case 5,000 kilometers an hour.
3:31Elon MuskIn the upcoming flights, it'll be going 8 or 9,000 kilometers an hour, or roughly 5,000 miles an hour in the wrong direction. So it has to deploy the upper stage, do a U turn, contain the propellant without centrifuging.
3:50Elon MuskThe reusing has to be done with boosters because it's an evacuate with attention attitude thrusters because it's in a vacuum, it has to be done quite rapidly and then restart to boost back.
4:00Elon MuskIn this case an opposite arc to Cape Canaveral, which was quite a scary maneuver. And then deployed the hypersonic grid fin maneuver from hypersonic through supersonic subsonic. And then finally to light the engine for landing.
4:25Elon MuskI ran out on the causeway to just sort of watch the landing and the sonic boom about the same time as the rocket touched down. So I actually thought at first that it had exploded.
4:41Elon MuskBut it turned out to be just that. The sonic boom almost exactly coincided with the touchdown point. So that the sound reached me several seconds later. So at first I thought well you know, at least we got close.
4:57Elon MuskBut then I went back into launch control and it was this amazing video of the rocket still standing there on the launch pad. Almost landing zone, I should say.
5:08Elon MuskSo. Yeah. I can't, I can't quite believe it.
5:19Elon MuskAnd your next question comes from the line of state of the fork. If you can identify where you're from. Hi, this is Stephen Clark from Spaceflight Now. Can you hear me?
5:33Elon MuskYep. Yeah, I was just wondering. Elon, thanks for doing the call. I was just wondering what your plan is for this particular booster over the coming days and weeks and do you intend to fly it again?
5:44Elon MuskThanks. Yes. So the plan is to take the booster onwards here,
5:58Elon MuskLaunch Complex 39A. That's the Apollo 11 launch site that we are releasing from NASA here at the cave and do a static fire on the launch pad there. So confirm that all systems are good and that we're able to to full thrust the hull down firing of the rocket.
6:30Elon MuskAnd then I think we'll probably keep this one on the ground just because it's kind of unique. It's the first one that we brought back. So I think we'll probably keep this one on the ground and just confirm through tests that it could fly again and then put it somewhere to just to score because it's quite neat.
6:57Elon MuskSo I think we'll end up re flying one of the subsequent boosters. We have quite a big flight manifest and we should be doing well over a dozen flights next year.
7:13Elon MuskI think probably before sometime next year we would aim to refly one of the rocket mixtures.
7:25Elon MuskAnd your next question comes from the line of James Dean. Hi, thanks Johan. Congratulations. Can you try to put this event in historical context? Where do you think it ranks?
7:48Elon MuskI think this is quite significant. I don't say exactly where it would rank. But I do think it's a revolutionary moment. No one has ever brought a booster or class booster back intact.
8:16Elon MuskAnd this is something that was actually, it was like a useful mission. It delivered 11 satellites to orbit and then came back and landed. That's perhaps the thing that's really significant that we did.
8:36Elon MuskWe achieved recovery of the rocket in a mission that actually deployed Leonard satellite. I mean this is a fundamental step change in technology compared to any other rockets that has ever flown.
9:02Elon MuskYeah, I mean if you read the blog post that I wrote pended quite hastily just before the launch while we're going through the countdown, that I think would give some good context.
9:20Elon MuskThis is a first stage capable of basically hauling 125 tons at over 5,000 miles an hour,
9:36Elon MuskWhich is an incredible amount of energy to transfer to a payload.
9:51Elon MuskThis is really a world of difference compared to other rockets. I mean it would be like having an aircraft that can be used many times when all the other aircraft could be used once.
10:10Elon MuskHow confident are you? Could you touch on how challenging you think it will be to get a reflight accomplished? Straightforward actually,
10:24Elon MuskBecause we've done multiple full duration firing of the Bruce stage on the ground.
10:37Elon MuskWe fired the stage including all of the engine restarts that had to occur while it was in space and then coming back for landing. I think we must have and in turn the engine testing.
10:57Elon MuskI think we've effectively five the engines now depending on which engine it is between maybe 10 to 15 times. So doing another batch like that would not be a problem.
11:14Elon MuskWe see no degradation.
11:20Elon MuskForgive me for jumping in again, but are you talking about reflying the Merlins as well or just the stage? Every single stage. I think it's very important to refine the whole rocket.
11:34Elon MuskYou know, I think these sort of aircraft or really any other mode of transport analogy is appropriate here. You can imagine if a company was making aircraft that could be flown many times enough or another company that's making aircraft that could be flown one or even if most of the aircraft could be flown many times instead of it was single use.
12:02Elon MuskLike if someone kept the engines but threw away the airframe, that really wouldn't count.
12:18Elon MuskAnd again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad and your next question comes from the line of Scott Powers.
12:30Elon MuskCongratulations. First of all, while the landing was certainly remarkable for everybody and you're excited for that, the launch itself must have also brought some emotions too considering what happened last time.
12:42Elon MuskCould you describe what you were going through as it went out. At what point you thought you're back to business?
12:53Elon MuskWell, I had to lift off. I ran outside the launch control center onto the causeway to watch the ascent. It was just wishing to all the space that it would be.
13:08Elon MuskIt would just lead into orbit. And I think that would have been a good take, my friend. And then, yeah, I was in touch with the rest of the crew in launch control and they were giving updates on the flight.
13:34Elon MuskAnd then I watched the booster come back in flight, its engine and landed. Really felt like it was almost right on top of us, even though it was maybe three or four miles away.
13:50Elon MuskAnd as I mentioned earlier, the sonic boom sound only travels at about 1,000 kilometers an hour.
14:05Elon MuskThe sonic boom reached me just at the right touchdown. So I thought it had exploded at first. And then, and then I went from motion control. Now that it was okay, that's pretty much what happened.
14:24Elon MuskThank you very much. And our next question comes from the line of Keith Cohen, Keith Cowing. Ask for watch dot com. Hey Elon, I just wanted to let you know I've seen a spaceship named Falcon take off and ran twice today, once in a movie theater on my screen.
14:41Elon MuskSo thanks for that. If I could, on Bill Harwood's earlier question, how do you expand upon having a rocket like you said, that you can reuse at some point?
14:51Elon MuskWhere do you amortize the number of flights at some point? Do you have an engine that sort of supports the cost of launching at cost for somebody? Have to really plan that out yet.
15:00Elon MuskOr you just wait to see how many of these you actually get back? Well, I mean, I think that we're going to get quite a few rockets back. So imagine we're going to have a whole fleet of booster rockets accumulating quite rapidly because we're building them right now at about one every three weeks.
15:22Elon MuskSo there's really going to be, I mean, even if the success rate is only maybe two thirds, but I think over time will be more than 99%. It's going to be very close to asymptotically approach 100%, I think over time.
15:44Elon MuskAnd then we'll figure out how to make the reuse as easy as possible. Really. No work is required between reuses apart from refilling the propellant. Yeah, so I think we'll have to.
16:00Elon MuskIt'll take us a few years to iron all that out and make sure it all works well.
16:10Elon MuskI think it works pretty well for the future. And I think this is a critical step along the way towards being Able to establish city autonomous.
16:35Elon MuskIt's really fundamental to the this is not what it would cost. It would really be unaffordable. There would be a difference between something costing less than 1% costing 100%.
16:53Elon MuskSo it's all the difference in the world. Absolutely fundamental. I think it really quite dramatically produced my computer.
17:13Elon MuskThat's all this is about.
17:21Elon MuskAnd your next question comes from the line of Eric Berger. Hello. Congratulations Elon. I want to maybe talk a little bit about what you were thinking tonight. You know, you didn't do this in the desert kind of in the, you know, no one's watching you had the world watching you start landing.
17:42Elon MuskAnd I'm just kind of wondering the kind of pressure you felt right before it came down and what it felt like as you saw it and saw the reaction of people online and at your company headquarters.
17:56Elon MuskI haven't had much chance to look at things online.
18:12Elon Musk13 years since SpaceX started and you know, many, many plus calls. Obviously we had, you know, some good results but with.
18:30Elon MuskOne of the minings there and we did almost three flush make a big deal of it. We did stop lands of rocket underwater TW and those were very high velocity emissions, I think in one case exceeding the 300 gigajoule kinetic energy transfer and altitude of about 200 km.
19:02Elon MuskSo we did do that twice, but we're just starting to show press release the videos on YouTube.
19:13Elon MuskAnd so it really needs.
19:24Elon MuskQuestion.
19:33Elon MuskAll right, great questions. I'm open for that. One more please, real quick. Your next question comes from the line F. Tarek Malik. Hello Elon. Thank you so much for doing this.
19:49Elon MuskOne more question has to do with the next booster now the Falcon Heavy. I'm just wondering how much of this successful landing can be applied now or scaled up to that heavy rocket.
20:03Elon MuskAnd what's your confidence Boost your confidence for that booster too. Thank you. So the Falcon Heavy essentially consistent Falcon 9 with two modified bow stages attached and strap on boosters.
20:21Elon MuskSo that would be quite, quite an exciting aerial ballet with two side boosters dropping off and trying a symmetrical back to the launch site. Obviously we need to have another landing spot for two boosters and then the third one would be center core.
20:49Elon MuskAlthough I think most heavy emissions we'll see the center core land on the ship most likely because it's really going ridiculous to chat.
21:08Elon MuskThe transfer energy of energy more than double that of Fox 9. So the poly maximum transfer energy.
21:30Elon MuskOkay, thank you. Great, thanks. Everyone can hit us up at media. Com if you have any follow up. Have a good night. This does conclude tonight's conference call. You may now disconnect.