It's important not to get too intoxicated with your own success. If BFR is as successful as their Falcon series, it'll be ready in 5-10 years. If there are unanticipated challenges with BFR (after all, this is literally rocket science), having a lower-risk approach mitigates that risk.
They're planning to discontinue Falcon 9 to free up factory space for BFR production while continue launching with their existing stock of reusable rockets. So there's quite a bit of risk there if BFR ends up getting too delayed.
If BFR is as successful as Musk hopes (_especially_ around the reusability aspect), I think BFR would replace the F9 and Falcon Heavy as a lift vehicle.
If BFR is actually fully reusable it would be cheaper to launch than the F9 (due to the non-reused second stage).
Not a big surprise -- Falcon Heavy's development has been delayed several times now by Falcon 9 launch problems. Arianespace doesn't have very much room on their manifest after this.
They're going to get around it because this is a secondary market for BFR. Primary market is launching satellites (especially their constellation).
Remember, this point-to-point idea was basically an after-thought. It's decades away, but the rocket will be launching within the next 3-5 years. So they'll have decades to get it right, and the manufacturing line and much of the infrastructure will be paid for.
But you're right about demand. The biggest economic problem is that it's too big. Each BFR needs 1000 passengers. To be economic, it needs to fly multiple times per day, so each BFR needs to fly like a million people every year. Look around to how many people fly long-haul, and you saturate the existing market VERY quickly.
BUT the world is getting richer. Soon (50-80 years?), there will be 5-10 billion middle class folk in the world, an order of magnitude more than now. And if the time for travel can be cut short like this, then you should have some demand induction taking place. So maybe it'd start making economic sense.
There is a fundamental advantage for BFR versus existing aircraft: SpaceX is able to make Falcon 9s and probably BFRs for about the same cost (a little less, actually) per unit dry mass as a 737 or 777 or A380. But a BFR can do trips that'd last 15 hours in a 777 or A380 in less than 1 hour. That means you can do 10 times as many trips, cutting your amortization time and crew hours by an order of magnitude. But that depends on having enough demand, which is pretty questionable except in the long-term.
And BFR is well past the blueprint stage anyway. They're doing actual fabrication and testing of many parts of that rocket already. It's the main engineering focus of the company -- Falcon 9 is effectively done and Falcon Heavy is a side project (also mostly done).
Yea, the BFR is designed to be fully re-usable, unlike the partial re-usability of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. Which is why Musk believes it will be far cheaper than either.
Now Elon has always been excessively optimistic, but in the long run he's probably right (More likely in BFR2 or BFR3, than first BFR design, in my opinion).
very true, by the time falcon heavy launched it was more of a novelty than anything else. I'm surprised it wasn't scrapped entirely and the effort redirected to BFR.
It has literally been built and tested. The hardware is ready and just waiting for the launch pads.
The major reason why Falcon Heavy was delayed for so long is that they were able to make major improvements on the F9. It would not have made much sense to work on a more complicated rocket when there was so much potential in F9.
Falcon Heavy was developed for a pittance compared to the SLS. Even if its delayed another 3 years the SLS would not make a lick of sense.
It makes sense. If BFR works, it will make all the rockets obsolete, by simply being fully reusable. Hence the only sensible thing to do is to concentrate 100% of the efforts on it.
I think people are missing an important point when talking about Falcon Heavy. Yes it was delayed, but the Falcon Heavy that was eventually launched, was WAY, WAY better then the one announced in 2011.
The payload of the 2011 version was almost reached by the Falcon 9 itself. That was one of the major reasons for the delay, not design and production issues. The Falcon Heavy profited from all the advancments on Falcon 9 and it made no sense to actually build a Falcon Heavy before Block 4.
In fact the first costumers for Falcon Heavy flew on Falcon 9 instead.
That's an excuse that might have worked before the Falcon Heavy started flying. Not a reason to have kept funneling money into an obsolete design afterwards, and not a reason to keep doing so now.
While that it is true it hides what is going on. Falcon Heavy was delayed because they managed to massively improve F9 and many of the Falcon Heavy contracts are actually now flown on the F9. The last couple flights that did not land were all FH contracts.
So the Falcon Heavy we are gone get now is way, way more powerful and all 3 boosters will land and be reusable. The side boosters are actually reused F9 boosters.
Falcon Heavy is late, but making Falcon Heavy economical means making all of the 3 F9 first stages it uses reusable. They haven't cracked that yet, they've got 2 good landings and a lot of data, but it's far from certain whether e.g. the landing attempt next week will be successful.
Most of their customers do not need the extra payload / push of Falcon Heavy and so they're concentrating on making F9 itself work first. This is reasonable I think.
One of the things that slowed it down a lot was the continual development of the Falcon 9.
With the Block 3/4/5 series of the Falcon 9 (5 is the final design and mostly focused on reusability upgrades, 4 is interim) they have a relatively stable base rocket to develop the Heavy variant against.
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