Spacex flies ‘lessons learned’ rocket

down on a barge a few hundred kilometers out at sea.

This lower segment of the Falcon will now be inspected by Spacex engineers. Their expectation is that it will have

To the casual eye, the Block 5 does not look very different to the Falcon versions that have gone before it. But it actually includes multiple upgrades, both internally and externally, that on the company’s business model.

Although, Musk warned customers they would not see an immediate drop in prices because he still needs to recover the heavy investment that went into the development of Falcon technology.

The company still has some way to go to re-fly an entire Falcon because it still disposes of the upper-stage — the segment that puts the satellite payload in orbit.

But even that, in time, could be retrieved, believes Musk. And his team is already working on a strategy to bring back the fairing that protects the satellite on the early part of an ascent.

Jettisoned about three minutes into the flight, this clamshell-shaped structure would be brought back down on parafoils to a ship equipped with a big net. A clean catch has not yet been achieved.

Musk said the Block 5 will be the last major iteration of the rocket.

In the future, design and development effort will increasingly be focused on a much larger vehicle codenamed BFR — or Big Falcon Rocket.

This is intended as a multifunction transport system to take significant numbers of people to locations such as the Moon and Mars, or to ferry them quickly between widely separated locations on Earth.

Again, the BFR would be reusable.

Friday’s satellite payload, Bangabandhu-1, was notable for being Bangladesh’s first geostationary communications spacecraft.