Falcon 9: SpaceX's Reusable Rocket
Video from the channel Megaprojects about Falcon 9, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 12:28. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.
What it covers
A look at SpaceX's Falcon 9: its origin, the financing model with NASA, first-stage reuse, its performance and the launch plans in place when the video was published, in 2021.
Historical context
SpaceX was set up in 2002 in a warehouse in El Segundo, California, on the initiative of Elon Musk and engineer Tom Mueller; by 2005 it had 160 employees and was finishing the Falcon 1. The Falcon 9 was developed with funding from NASA's COTS program, launched in 2006: the initial $278 million contract was expanded to $396 million, and SpaceX contributed $450 million. According to the video, NASA estimated that under a cost-plus contract development would have exceeded $3.6 billion. The first launch was in 2010, and in May 2020 it carried astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley on a Crew Dragon, the first crewed flight from U.S. soil since the shuttle's final mission in 2011.
Key facts
Vertical landing arrived in 2015 with the Full Thrust version (v1.2). As of the video, first stages had landed 92 of 103 times, mostly on autonomous drone ships, and 28 had been reused, one of them ten times. The Block 5, in service since 2018, is designed for ten flights with minimal maintenance and up to a hundred with full refurbishment. It stands about 70 m tall and 3.7 m in diameter, weighs 549 t, and each Merlin engine produces about 850 kN. It carries more than 20,000 kg to low Earth orbit, more than 8,000 kg to geosynchronous orbit, and about 4,000 kg to Mars. Of 129 launches, only one ended in total loss and another was a partial failure.