Masten and Armadillo Perform First VTVL Restarts 94
FleaPlus writes "Recently Masten Aerospace, winner of NASA's 2009 Lunar Lander Challenge, demonstrated using its Xombie vehicle the first-ever mid-flight restart of a VTVL (vertical-takeoff vertical-landing) rocket, a critical capability for the emerging suborbital/microgravity science and passenger markets (video from ground). Not to be outdone, John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace (winner of the 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge) flew its Mod rocket to 2,000 feet (610m), deployed a drogue parachute, and then restarted the engine to land (multi-view video showing John Carmack at the controls)."
Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
I would venture to say that this is definitely a win for private-sector aerospace. (:
"John Carmack at the controls" (Score:2)
And now we know why he's doing this.
Re:"John Carmack at the controls" (Score:5, Funny)
to see if you can control a rocket with the WASD keys?
This gives "Rocket Jumping" a whole new meaning.
Re:"John Carmack at the controls" (Score:4, Funny)
Pfft. Carmack doesn't use WASD, arrow keys, *or* the mouse. He has the console permanently open and controls his character's movement entirely with console commands. None of it is scripted, he's just that fast of a typist. In fact, half the time he's used timers to issue the next 90 seconds of gameplay so that he can just sit back and laugh at how predictable the rest of our movements are.
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So Carmack is the new Chuck Norris?
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Carmack has always been Chuck Norris. Our puny minds cannot simply grasp this greatness.
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Now, who's going to be the first person to put a person on one of these? I don't
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Now, who's going to be the first person to put a person on one of these? I don't think that it will be approved by the authorities, and it's probably pretty stupid, but you know that someone is going to strap a lawn chair on their personal rockets, have a ballistic parachute (just in case) and go for a ride.
Actually, Armadillo Aerospace did precisely that several years ago with a much-earlier predecessor to their current vehicle. One of their engineers volunteered to put on a helmet and protective clothing, and rode in a seat on the rocket while an ambulance waited nearby in case there were problems. It didn't go very far off the ground though, as they were much less certain about the rockets they had back then than the ones they have now.
You can see a clip at around the 45 second mark in this video:
http://www [youtube.com]
Not suprising he could do it (Score:3, Funny)
Very Impressive (Score:1, Insightful)
This is incredibly impressive.. the craft is very unstable when the drogue chute deploys but Carmack's software is smart enough to level out just with thrust vectoring (*not* easy to do, especially when you are subject to the varying conditions of our atmosphere).
Re:Very Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
I watched it twice. In the first video I was impressed by the same thing as you, the vectoring stabilizing the falling rocket. On the second watch I was even more impressed when I realized even after the drogue shoot and free fall, the rocket landed just a foot or two from it's original takeoff point. So the vectoring didn't just stabilize the rocket, it also steered it back to the takeoff point.
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It didn't look like they even really tried to get back on the exact spot either... just to simply get the rocket onto the pad so it wouldn't sink into the mud was good enough. Still, you are correct that it landed within just a couple of feet of the original take off point.
It will be very interesting to see what is going to happen when they try for high altitude flights. The next series is supposedly going to take them to about 100k feet, which is where the real fun is going to start. That still isn't in
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It didn't look like they even really tried to get back on the exact spot either... just to simply get the rocket onto the pad so it wouldn't sink into the mud was good enough. Still, you are correct that it landed within just a couple of feet of the original take off point.
I'm not sure, but they may have actually specifically avoided landing in the same precise spot as they took off from, in case the surface was damaged at all from the rocket flames.
Awesome frame rate (Score:5, Funny)
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Are there plans for a rail gun?
If there are, I want to be the first to test fire it. :D
The railgun is a crutch (Score:3, Funny)
I am waiting for the grenades. That's where it is at baby, 4D - you got to bounce AND time them.
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Throw in a rocket halfway up and you are going to the moon baby!
Just a step... (Score:3, Informative)
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These aren't designed to be orbital designs. The VTVL ships are indented for sub-orbital flight.
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Or they will be, after the metric-to-English landing...
Fuel requirements? (Score:2)
Yep, the fuel requirements alone just for getting into orbit are pretty steep. Adding in the requirements of refiring the motor and bringing the whole shebang to earth without a bang makes me think we're going to see even huger fuel cans flying up with even smaller payloads.
Then again, with the ability to start the motor while in freefall, I wonder if they plan to launch these things by dropping them from a high-altitude jet first? Getting them up high before they even fire would save some on fuel.
Cheer
Re:Fuel requirements? (Score:4, Interesting)
Given that most orbital rockets linger in the dense, friction-expensive atmosphere rather shortly and *slowly* there is very little benefit to be had by dropping them down from a plane. I suggest a simple calculation: express the orbital energy as a function of mass and height, and see how small the potential energy is compared to kinetic energy. Hypotethically, if you would lift a rocket up to orbital height without giving it orbital velocity, you'd still need pretty much all of the fuel just to reach the orbital velocity.
The only benefit from launching higher up is for sub-orbital flights that do expend a significant amount of their fuel to overcome atmospheric friction and to gain potential energy. That's why SSOne launches up high.
OTOH, LEO requires ~30 times more energy than sub-orbital. GEO/lunar requires ~60 times more. So, whatever you launch to GEO, the energy used to bring it up to 100km high is so small that you can ignore it and your error is within 2%!
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It actually does make a big difference.
High altitude air launch advantages:
Lower air pressure at altitude means you can use higher expansion ratio vacuum optimised engines with greater exhaust velocity (ie more efficient), For example SpaceX's Merlin 1C engine ground fireable version gets 275kgs thrust for 1 sec from 1kg fuel (Isp=275s), in a vacuum it is 304s, but the vacuum optimised high expansion ratio engine gets 345s.
You do save significant aero drag losses.
You can save a lot of gravity losses that o
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You're comparing apples to oranges: it's obvious that if you don't have to drag all the fuel in the rocket, the rocket is smaller, and whatever ends up on the orbit is relatively a bigger % of your rocket's initial mass. But you did have to drag the fuel in the plane! Maybe it's cheaper to drag it around in an airplane, but here we are essentially arguing as to what your first stage should be: rocket vs. jet, and all that. You don't really "save" anything, you just shift the expense to a potentially more op
Re:Just a step... (Score:5, Interesting)
Very impressive, but these are just jump-jets for now - sort of rocket helicopters. Going from what we saw to something that can get to orbit, deposit a payload, and return to earth undamaged is going to take a lot more work. Good luck to both teams.
I don't think either Masten or Armadillo (or Virgin, XCOR, or Blue Origin) are planning on targeting the ground-to-orbit market any time soon. I think the general target markets for them for the next several years goes something like this:
* testbeds for NASA autonomous lander tech, like autonomous hazard avoidance (NASA can just put their AI/vision equipment on existing lander to test them out)
* suborbital science payloads: there's a lot of scientists who currently have to pay $1 million+ a launch to fly payloads on suborbital sounding rockets to the upper atmosphere and near-space that would love to pay the much-lower prices Masten and Armadillo charge to fly at much-higher flight rates
* microgravity science payloads: getting amounts of microgravity time that can only currently be beaten by flying on the ISS
* suborbital passenger payloads: both "tourists," scientists who want to be able to operate their experiments manually, and training for orbital astronauts. Armadillo just announced that they were planning on charging $102K per person, undercutting Virgin's price by half: http://www.space.com/news/space-tourism-new-deal-100430.html [space.com]
* robotic landers for NEOs/Moon/Mars, boosted to the location by an expendable rocket
* after making tons of money on the above, then maybe they'll start thinking about orbit. Once that happens, it'll probably be with something like pop-up boosters, where a reusable VTVL craft will boost an expendable secondary stage high/fast enough that it can reach orbit.
Let me know if I forgot any. ;)
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I vote this best comment of the article and the Orbital Factories one the worst comment of the article.
Thanks.
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No.... If this was intended for suborbital flight, Why not just land the whole shebang with parachutes?
This is mainly for landing in places with low to no atmosphere like the moon or mars.
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By the way, everyone's talking about Armadillo here. Now I'm not saying they didn't do an awesome job and yes, I think Carmack is at least a demi-god, but let's not forget it was two teams that made it. Congrats to both Masten Aerospace and Armadillo on achieving this pretty impressive milestone!
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The problem with the NASA specs is that they have been written in such a way that only the "selected contractors" can actually meet those specs. That is unfortunately something incredibly common in government procurement circles, where often the contractors themselves write their own procurement contracts (I know.... I've helped to write some of them!) If you write the regulations or specifications in such a way that there can only possibly be one bidder on the contract, you can hardly call it a competiti
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Perhaps. But sometimes the most amazing discoveries are the lower ones on the tree.
Rocket powered drug mules anyone?
Wouldn't be too hard to jump over the border, drop a kg of cocaine in a discreet location, and run back before the police knew what hit them. With the price of cocaine, it might just be economical.
"First VTVL Restarts" (Score:2)
Seventh and eighth, sctually.
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> Seventh and eighth, sctually.
If you're referring to the Apollo landers, that's actually a good point. I guess technically they could be considered lunar VLVT craft, though. ;)
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Yes, perhaps it was a difference in atmospheric conditions (lack of one) that made the big difference...that and the damning gravity :)
Anyways I second FleaPlus's "good point".
Re:"First VTVL Restarts" (Score:4, Informative)
Nope, first with the same engine (hence "restart"). LM landings used two different engines and stages for landing and taking off.
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Nope, first with the same engine (hence "restart"). LM landings used two different engines and stages for landing and taking off.
Thanks for the reminder about the separate ascent and descent stages on the Apollo LM. It's also worth noting that the Apollo LM used a hydrazine mix for fuel, which is quite handy if you want easy and reliable propellant (it spontaneously ignites when you mix it with the oxidizer), but is nasty and toxic, so you don't want to use it for an Earth-based launch where you have people nearby (or are planning on carrying people).
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Correct, but still wrong. The LM DPS restarted during the missions. There was one burn for DOI and the second was the landing burn.
You missed it. (Score:2)
No, the landing stage DID an in-flight restart. That's what I just said.
First DPS burn was the Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI) burn.
Second DPS burn was the landing burn.
After landing was staging, and then the APS burn.
The DPS operation is what is being described.
Quoth TFA: "VTVL launch vehicles conserve fuel by shutting down their engines during the coast and re-entry phase of a flight."
The LM did a burn to DOI and then did another burn to land.
TFA says nothing about using the same engine for takeoff and land
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Yup. We all know! The lunar lander stage did a restart indeed.
But that's a *lander* stage. It was never claimed first lander to do a restart because that's not true. That's like saying a Soyuz is a VTVL because the capsule fires rockets on landing, or that the Mars propulsive landers are VTVLs because they take off from Earth and land on Mars. In fact, those have been re-starts too since the Viking. LOL.
So yeah, first two VTVLs to do in-air restart.
Orbital Factories? (Score:4, Interesting)
So how long before a corporation launches a factory into (relatively) permanent orbit, for manufacturing in microgravity and near-vacuum? Will factories like that be able to dump their products back into the ocean for collection by delivery ships?
I want to see if aerogels [wikipedia.org] can be made in orbit not just cheaply, but with their internal structure oriented so they can be regular windows. They're such good insulators, and have such small mass per surface area that they could probably be dropped from orbit into the ocean without any extra packaging. Or as packaging containing other, more fragile stuff made in orbit and then the aerogel reused for its own applications once it's collected at the surface.
Re:Orbital Factories? (Score:4, Informative)
"Things tend to do that pesky burn up on re-entry thing."
Aerogels are ungodly insulating and resistant to heat. I've seen a piece just a few millimeters thick keep a crayon from melting with a blowtorch heating up the aerogel.
It's a type of glass, just like the ceramic heat shielding tiles used on space shuttles.
Re:Orbital Factories? (Score:4, Funny)
Did you say ungodly?
Burn the blasphemous, heathen aerogel!
Wait, fuck...
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You are correct. This Space Nuttery is absolutely unrealistic and unfeasible. It never, ever made sense and is mostly delusions, fantasies and sci-fi nonsense that makes for good dreams but makes zero economical and engineering sense.
I mean just read Doc Ruby's nonsense. Aerogels? Windows? Is the man on crack? If it were useful, we can make aerogel here on Earth... Who could afford windows made in space? Absolute nonsense.
These space manufacturing fantasies are the justifications that war-mongers used in th
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Almost right. Space is completely hostile to life as we know it.
But it will not be hostile to our descendant's: robots with AI good enough to carry out tasks for us and return with information and goods gathered in space. And one day in the far future, AI that's as good as us. That will be our legacy, while us bags of meat and salt water are stuck down here in the only place in the universe we know of where we can live.
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You really don't know what you're talking about. This article is about the current economics of travel to and from space, which is within reach of industry. What I posted is about a material developed for space, which has extremely valuable properties. Like windows that lose 20% or less the heat that even double-pane/argon/low-e windows currently do, if their inner structure can be oriented properly, which seems likely in microgravity/near-vacuum. Extremely valuable stuff, especially while we're in an energ
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You are fighting an anonymous coward.... likely somebody who is writing just to stir up the pot and really doesn't believe what they are writing in the first place. You've made some good points and obviously touched on a raw nerve. Just smile with it!
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Like windows that lose 20% or less the heat that even double-pane/argon/low-e windows currently do,
You can achieve rates this good just by pulling down a mylar windowshade. The Argon does NOTHING to improve things, not worth mentioning. It's there to keep corrosion from occurring inside the window, and is guaranteed to leak eventually. And low-E windows are stupid anywhere you can get sun: You use high-E (aka "normal") glass and orient your house south (or in the southern hemisphere, north) with proper overhangs, and you use shades or screens to reflect unwanted sunlight.
As for "unlimited energy", that's the most promising benefit of human presence in space, beyond scientific knowledge and inspiring human achievement. Solar satellites or moon bases. Fusion plants or even fission plants safely located on the far side of the Moon. Gravity pumps in orbit; more exotic technologies once we're out there looking further into the future from the tech we brought with us.
It is absolutely critical that we
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Aerogels were developed by NASA for insulation in space. They are closely related to the ceramic tiles NASA invented to shield the Space Shuttles during reentry - over and over again, without damage. They also have very tough mechanical properties, even when made at the surface of the Earth. Evidently you know nothing about them, even though I helpfully included a link to a detailed description of their properties and history.
That is why I say they could be dropped from space without harm. So yes, you are t
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http://www.airglass.se/
melts at 750C compared to 1650C reentry temps (for blunt nosed optimum aerodynamic designed vehicles like space shuttle)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_reentry
Also, the insulating properties of aeroglass is only slightly better than triple glazing (0.5W/m2K compared to 0.8W/m2K - see normal single pane glass at 6.2W/m2k).
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That is but one kind of aerogel and hardly the most ubiquitous kind either. BTW, the re-entry temperature you are quoting here is also the temperature for a blunt body re-entry like is found for a standard ballistic capsule return that is highly dense and mostly a solid hunk of metal wrapped with some protective heat shields. The raw density of aerogels is substantially less and has some very different aerodynamic characteristics involved with it that simply tossing it into the atmosphere would not necess
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If you'd follow the link to the aerogel Wikipedia article I gave in my original post, you'd see that your cherrypicked poor example isn't what I'm talking about. Moreover, I'm talking about manufacturing an even better aerogel in space, which you conveniently ignore. And besides, the Space Shuttles have been successfully reentering the atmosphere without burning up because they're covered in the previous generation aerogel tiles.
The current aerogel for skylights is already (US units) R-10.5:inch at $10:foot
Look for that label... (Score:2)
I might pay extra for that... but only if the product was worth it.
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There are products like some kinds of aerogels, some metal alloy mixing, and certain biological processes (read pharmaceutical industries) where not only is it useful but actually necessary for those processes to take place in space or at least in micro-gravity conditions. In other cases you can also improve the quality of some of these products substantially... again due to the environment. Even at low-earth orbit the vacuum which is present is actually superior to anything which can be obtained in even
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The same cannot be said for helium-3 [wikipedia.org]. It makes sense to get it from the moon (maybe).
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The largest problem right now for orbital factories is the fact that nobody has a facility capable of "housing" such factories at the moment. There is, I suppose, the ISS.... but that monster of a fiscal black hole is something that no corporate entity would ever want to get stuck with in terms of trying to justify costs and would be worth staying clear of just for the bureaucratic red tape alone. With SpaceX and Orbital Sciences trying to simply provide raw cargo logistical capabilities to the ISS alone
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I won't be surprised when a future US government privatizes the ISS or a successor in a giant subsidy to some corporation. I'd hope the American public would get a better return than just the usual honor of subsidizing someone else's private enterprise, but if the corporation were (at least mainly, as in taxes and jobs) American, it would probably be worth keeping American enterprise in the forefront instead of its usual tendency to lag behind any risk.
What would be really cool would be an American Moon bas
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Orbital aerogel manufacture seems like a great win on so many levels. Growing it in vacuum means when its surface is sealed it insulates at something like R-13, even with the internal structure ("haywire") we get at Earth's surface. If orbit's microgravity and micropressure means we can make it even less dense, it could possibly deliver closer to R-20. And without directly powering any evacuation process. Possibly a micro deposition coating, in which case thick sheets could be so not-dense (we'd have to fin
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If you think you have a really good idea here, you might want to talk to Richard Gariott.... seriously! He has the money and is looking for an enterprise that can get himself back in orbit, but this time he can only justify the cost if he can turn a profit on the whole thing.
I'd agree that aerogels sound like an amazing investment opportunity, and is one of the few ideas I've heard that really makes sense for commercial spaceflight in the short term. There are some really interesting ideas but I would ima
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Apogee code word--do you get it? (Score:2)
Apogee code word--did you get it?
I like the Motorola GMRS radios, too.
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"Code word"? "Apogee" was the term for point of greatest distance from Earth long before the company ever existed.
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I see that you did *not* get it.
Thanks for failing to let us know how smart you think you are.
Just like the game (Score:1)
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Fly up to a predetermined altitude (varied depending on competition level), translate horizontally a specific distance (again, how far depended on the competition level), stay airborne for a certain amount of time (length depended, again, on competition level) land on a simulated lunar surface complete with boulders, then fly back with the same flight altitude, time and distance requirements within the allotted time.
Oh, and bring
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Two Words (Score:1)
Fracking No Way
I could see half the people puking as it stabilized and the other half thinking they were about to crash..
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The instability was due to the dynamics of the drogue parachute, which was intended to ensure that the vehicle didn't turn upside down due to air drag before the engine lit. It did that but the length of the parachute harness ended up being such that the vehicle moved unsteadily at that descent rate.
That's a minor problem and easy to fix, with a different length harness or other aerodynamics.
With a vehicle which was aerodynamically stable going down base first, it wouldn't be a problem either. That partic
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In this particular case, I don't think the drogue parachute was really necessary for vehicle control before re-light, but it might be something more critical if Armadillo goes for a much higher altitude attempt. What they were testing was the overall flight profile, which for higher altitude flights will certainly involve a parachute of some kind for multiple reasons.
If anything, the drogue chute in this case actually added instability to the vehicle and to me proved the test all that more in terms of the
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Yes, I'll admit that may have been a concern, but it wasn't really all that much longer of a free fall time than what Maston did. It is hard to say "what if the chute had never been there in the first place" as it was there, but as I said.... it was a part of the overall flight profile.
Other reasons to include a parachute include safety, saving some reaction mass (aka propellant) during the descent phase of the profile on much higher flights, and as has been stated to also help with attitude control when t
iddqd. (Score:2)
It's nice and easy seeing physics works in games and simulations but RL is just so damn sweet. 1up for John and team :)
RDR (Score:2)
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You are not alone.
lunar lander! (Score:2)
I remember playing that on the Apple ][ a long long time ago. And I did it with only a side-view too.
so what's so hard about that?
Kaaaching? (Score:1)