this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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NASA Administrator seems to hint at 2nd Stage recovery (www.youtube.com)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by ptfrd to c/spacex
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Quote from Bill Nelson:

... SpaceX, by having the return of the first stage, has brought the cost down significantly. That has affected the entire launch industry. We'll be seeing attempts at bringing the second stage down on some missions.

The key sentence is (currently) 52 minutes and 48 seconds into the video. Approximately 49 minutes after the event started.

No other mention is made of this. Should we assume he's specifically referring to the 2nd Stage of the Falcon 9? What is the likelihood that he is mistaken? Could he just be thinking of the existing deorbit procedure? Or could SpaceX be putting parachutes on some of their 2nd Stages in the near future?

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[–] threelonmusketeers 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

We’ll be seeing attempts at bringing the second stage down on some missions

Does he explicitly specify Falcon 9 missions here or just say "missions"? If it is the latter, I suspect he is referring to Starship or SpaceX in general.

I'm pretty sure SpaceX abandoned Falcon 9 upper stage recovery quite a while ago. Back in 2018, there were the following two tweets:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/985654333860601856

This is gonna sound crazy, but …

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/985655249745592320

SpaceX will try to bring rocket upper stage back from orbital velocity using a giant party balloon

I think this was the last we heard of Falcon 9 upper stage recovery, and they went all in on Starship development a couple years later.

Edit: After listening to the context of Bill Nelson's quote, I'm pretty sure he was referring to Starship and/or upcoming rockets in general.