this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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I wonder if this decision is a mistake. Seems like ship development is on the critical path, and booster development is very much not.
If the estimated increase in risk from the reusing Super Heavy for the first time is substantial, it might be better to delay that until some more progress has been made with Starship.
I thought with falcon pre used boosters were more valuable as they have been proven? Maybe it's the same.
Well I certainly wouldn't want to launch on an F9 booster on its first flight![1] And NASA recently gave a clear sign that they share that logic to at least some extent.[2] So I'm definitely open to that possibility, for Super Heavy, and maybe SpaceX already believes it.
But as an outsider my guess is that, if nothing else, the 'unknown unknowns' should give us significant concern on the first attempt. I'm guessing a 20% probability that the booster reuse significantly hampers Flight 9.
[1] - Nor on its 2nd actually. My theory is that there could be manufacturing defects in/around the reusability hardware that don't get stressed until after the main stress of the first flight, which the second flight then uncovers. E.g. a landing leg attachment fitted imperfectly causes a crack in the rocket body during the 1st landing, and the crack causes a RUD at max Q during the 2nd flight.
In other words the first section of the bathtub curve might not be as steep as we'd like.
[2] - I think within the last year there was a problem during transport of a brand new F9 booster, and NASA said they were glad to subsequently give it a test flight on a Starlink mission before it was used for a NASA mission.
Think the booster has largely been going well so maybe they are just confident with it and running the risk. The ship probably still isn't ready now so maybe they happy to risk it.
Good point on 3 being the tested one though. But this isn't any old engineering. I imagine they xray-ed a lot of that booster and know the structural integrity far better than a normal product.