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NASA Administrator seems to hint at 2nd Stage recovery (www.youtube.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 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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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Most likely this is referring to Neutron and Starship. There is absolutely no way we could recover a Falcon 9 second stage without massive weight increases, and essentially a total redesign. If they were working on achieving reusability on Falcon, there is zero chance Elon would have the ability to keep it under wraps.