SpaceX Milestone – 100th Merlin 1D Engine Completed
SpaceX Reaches Milestone With 100th Merlin 1D Engine, SpaceRef Business
“The 100th Merlin 1D engine has come off the assembly at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. According to SpaceX it was less than two years ago that production began on Merlin 1D. Currently SpaceX produces four new Merlin 1D engines per week and they expect production will ramp up to five per week before the year is out.”
I wonder if Elon is planning to build raptors at a similar rate and with a similar number of man hours per engine. Bigger doesn’t have to cost all that much more if you design your process for it from the being. Bigger tooling and a little more material.
Image Spacex building 10 recoverable BFRS a year. Each one with a useful life of fifty launches. Till you refurbish it with new engines for the next fifty launches.
What if he sold giant rockets like Boeing has sold jetliners?
You could build a space economy on that.
Didn’t Musk say he has the plans for his mars colonial transporter almost done?
There needs to be a market to support such a goal first. We’ve still got some way to go before that exists.
I don’t disagree with you but what I discribed seems to be very close to what Musk is doing. He is going to build his affordable BFR anyway. And folks like nasa will have all this capablity if they can figure out what to do with it. Hasn’t Musk just said you can use his rockets to go to the moon too.
There is no (commercial) market for SLS, none, zero. So why must there be one for SpaceX’s BFR? If Musk can find the money to fund it himself, “market” is irrelevant. Never underestimate a motivated billionaire. He might just surprise you.
He might be able to fund development himself but, if he hasn’t got any actual or likely customers, he certainly can’t even dream of producing dozens or even hundreds as DTARS suggested. You see, that’s SLS’s big advantage – NASA don’t need a ROI of any kind. They build for politics, not profit. SpaceX needs to restrict itself to what it can sell unless Elon intends to fly to Mars to avoid bankruptcy proceedings!
I’m sure that Falcon 9, Dragon, and Dragon 2 are all expected to
provide ROI. Using that ROI is how Elon Musk will obtain at least some of the
money to develop his big launch vehicle. But, do note that SpaceX is not a publicly held company. So, Elon Musk is not beholden to stockholders who might expect ROI on every SpaceX project.
Elon Musk isn’t likely to send spacecraft to Mars in anticipation of ROI. Musk is doing this because he can and its because he wants to do it. The reason Musk started SpaceX in the first place is because he found out how ridiculously expensive it would be to fly even the smallest of unmanned spacecraft to Mars using (at the time) existing launch vehicles.
Again, I don’t see why you’re assuming that SLS gets a “free pass” on its billions of dollars of development costs while simultaneously claiming that a future SpaceX big launch vehicle does not get the same “free pass”.
Because it will be given all the money it needs by politicians for the sake of jobs, even if it never flies. SpaceX can’t expect the same.
You can’t have a market without affordable tranportation.
We still got some way to go before that exists.?
What Market? Future resources we will need to survive here on earth or in space.
We dont need these resources now???
We need clean safe energy solar or nuclear power from space.
Where will we find such energy when the population doubles again and again in the next few hundred years. Our glacers are melting. We will even need energy for safe drinking water.
How will we support all these people without affordably going into space?
The market is there if you can get into space cheap enough.
Burning money/SLS that should be used to make access to space cheaper is a crime against humanity.
It is interesting that SpaceX is accused by its critics in government and industry (all with paid axes to grind) that it is an immature technologist, making “hobby rockets”.
In the real world, versus the spin world, the RD-180
SovietRussian rocket engine powering Atlas Vs into space has flown 55 times, 49 on the Atlas V.The Merlin 1D has flown into space, all with perfect success, 80 times, with another 10 in a few weeks.
So, who’s the amateur?
perfect success is not quite correct, there was the unit that blew off the nozzle ( or whatever they spun the issue to be despite photos). the “hobby rocket’ may refer to the simplicity of design instead of breaking edge technology. it always seems that rocket engine buyers and vendors want latest state of the art, or totally new art instead of simple designs. The RS-27 engine is a prime example of a simple low tech engine used everywhere until the market changed, though with smaller satellites being built again its probably too late to put back in production
The engine that flew on CRS-2 and had a failed fuel dome was a Merlin 1C, which was a conventionally built engine with tons of milling etc.These last 100 engines are Merlin 1D’s, which are explosively hydroformed. Different processes, and therefore not comparable.
The “hobby rocket” was a deliberate insult by Sen Shelby to disparage SpaceX. His owners don’t want to actually compete.
As Terry said, the engine failure was a Merlin 1C.
Sen. Shelby, what do you prefer.. simply made US built, or Russian state of the art? Bet his answer would lose votes.
I thought rocket buyers want dependability?
I wouldn’t be surprised if ”the “hobby rocket’ refer[s]to the simplicity of design instead of breaking edge technology.” But that’s a classic way of putting down your competitors. It’s the same as saying, “anyone could do that.” It could be true, but if doing “that” is a good idea, so what?
Musk interview today
I read tweets of question answers by jeff Foust.
Many interesting questions.
Question
How will SLS effect you?
Musk laughs
Then says SLS schedule is pretty far out there.
And with that the interview is over.
Lolol seems pretty funny to me 🙂
Seems like such a waste to throw this beautiful piece of technology away after only one use. Hopefully that will be rectified in the near future.
Latest SpaceX news…
SpaceX is completing a 90 meter by 50 meter football field size floating platform in a Louisiana shipyard. It is to be used if possible in December with the next nasa cargo flight for a falcon first stage soft landing. The give it a 50/50 chance but 80-90% chance of successful landing in 2015.
SpaceX would like to reuse the stage. After a few successes they plan on-shore landings.
Musk believes that they will not try to recover the falcon 2nd stage. There is too much performance lost to make it worthwhile. They do plan to make the next version (I am assuming the BFR and not the FH)
fully reusable.
Five engines a week supports over 27 Falcon 9 launches a year (I’m ignoring the Heavy, since the market isn’t there) – a launch rate that is nowhere near what is currently planned. Note that this assumes all are expendables. If reuse actually takes place, far fewer will be needed. I fail to see the need for this production rate, since it will only serve to generate inventory that must be stored and periodically inspected.
There are already Heavy launches on the announced schedules (each taking 28 engines) and a number of heavys not yet announced (along with a horde of F9s not yet announced). Plus, they will not be reusing F9 second stages.
SpaceX needs hundreds of engines in the pipeline just to meet the planned launches. Remember, there is about a 2 year lead time between a sale and a launch.
If you consider a reusable fleet of say 10 F9s and 10 FHs, that is 370 engines needed for the build out. Add in a typical 10% engine turnover (wear-out) and 2nd stage replacements and you can see that SpaceX is barely able to function at 5 engines per week for the next few years.