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?
That’s actually what worries me about this. If they are thinking of reusing 2nd Stages from the Falcon 9, does that suggest we need to start being more pessimistic about Starship timelines?
Not necessarily, of course. I think they’re committed to continuing to fly the Falcon 9 as long as customers want it? So extra F9 reusability could still be worth the investment, even if they were predicting Starship to be operational very soon.
Also, this could just be recovery for inspection, not for reuse.
I believe the speaker is referring to starship about returning the second stage