SpaceX Releases Video of Falcon Rocket's Splashdown 49
First time accepted submitter cowdung (702933) writes In spite of Elon Musk's characterization of the landing as a KABOOM event. Judging by this video SpaceX has managed to land the first stage rocket booster nicely on the ocean after their Orbcomm launch on July 14th. It seems we're one step closer to a landing on dry land. Both this and the previous landing seem to have gone well.
Hopefully the next landing test camera has something to deice the camera lens.
Getting good use out of commercial launch tests (Score:1)
Two missions for the price of one.
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Well, I'm sure it cost at least a little more than doing just what they were contracted to do. It's just that we haven't gotten to the point of taking space launches for granted yet.
When we do, some middle manager will whine endlessly about this sort of experimentation.
Re:Getting good use out of commercial launch tests (Score:5, Informative)
'some middle manager will whine endlessly about this sort of experimentation.'
And will be sacked by the board.
Around 60% of the total cost of the rocket is the first stage.
The aim is to have this reusable in a few hours turnaround time.
If this works, savings per launch are tens of millions of dollars, even if it only works half the time.
If the second stage can be made reusable as well, going from $60M price to launch 10 tons to LEO to half of that _and_ making more profit per launch is quite possible.
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middle manager
I imagine it's hardest on the accountants.
etc.
I wonder how long it would've taken NASA? (Score:4, Interesting)
That is flat freaking amazing. NASA does some pretty cool stuff, but I can't help but wonder how many billions it would have cost taxpayers for them to manage development of technology like that? It's hard not to see NASA as an organization with its best days well behind it.
Re:I wonder how long it would've taken NASA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that before or after Congress fights for pieces of the rocket like dogs over a bone?
Re:I wonder how long it would've taken NASA? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's really hard to do this kind of landing burn (nicknamed 'suicide burn' as you run out of fuel as the landing feet touch the ground at 0 velocity, and miscalculation and splat or a nice bounce (elon called it the hover slam)) with a solid rocket booster, which we keep buying/making to prop up the ICBM industry with civilian dollars. The shuttle ended up with SRBs instead of L(iquid)RBs purely due to political reasons.
Actually, for the Saturn V, blueprint drawings do exist made by NASA of a cockpit on the side of the main booster tank with glider wings, to take it the 300 miles back to a safe landing site. Obviously that complication got scrapped in the mad rush to get to the moon in a decade.
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Yeah, since we build and deploy new ICBMs only a few times in the years that they've existed, it would be nice to have companies with experience building those types of rockets in case we ever decide to modernize that part of the nuclear force.
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which we keep buying/making to prop up the ICBM industry with civilian dollars.
More like to feed dollars to Utah as demanded by their powerful senior senator. (ATK's Thiokol unit is based on Utah and Hatch has been seated since 1977 and his predecessor served from 59-77)
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Actually when engaging in time travel energies are typically measured in Jigawatts, an N-dimensional trans-vector-valued unit which only passingly resembles a Gigawatt...
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The problem with the recovery of the boosters (for the Shuttle) was that it was almost as expensive to re-use them as to make new ones from scratch. By using a liquid fuel rocket and landing it on solid earth SpaceX will have a lot less work to do to refurbish the first stage of the Falcon 9.
Re:I wonder how long it would've taken NASA? (Score:5, Informative)
For starters, NOBODY has taken anything as large as the first stage to space and landed it under power on earth. This is absolutely a first.
Secondly, they have the cheapest launches going. Why? Because they automated heavily. That has not been done.
Thirdly, no escape system has been a pusher system ever before (though boeing is attempting it as well).
Fourth, no capsule has landed under power on earth. If he succeeds at that, it will be a first.
Fifth. nobody has successfully launched a rocket with 28 engines. If Falcon heavy succeeds, it will be a first.
Sixth, nobody has built a full-flow staged combustion engine using methane. SpaceX is working on just that, with raptor.
Now, do not get me wrong. I support NASA, as does most ppl from SpaceX. BUT, to claim that SpaceX is not doing anything innovative, is just as wrong as those that knock NASA.
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I imagine it's a similar mindset to those who claim that Apple has done nothing innovative. While true in terms of component technologies it overlooks the fact that innovations are possible in integration and refinement as well.
SpaceX may occasionally push things a little further than those before them (28 engines? What is the current record holder?) but there's not much really new in terms of basic technology. They're "just" refining the use of mature technology and scaling laboratory experiments up to
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(28 engines? What is the current record holder?)
Off the top of my head, SpaceX already holds the record with 9 engines on a single stage. There have been stages with 8 engines (Saturn 1B?). The Soviets tried 30 engines on the N-1, but that failed 4 times in 4 attempts. There's been a Delta variant with 8 boosters clustered around the first stage. If you count engines with multiple nozzles, the number goes up (5x4 nozzles on the Soyuz, but that's only 5 engines).
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Hey Mods, but not the idiots who already got to the OP, mod the OP back up, it's not Flamebait. As a total fanboy of SpaceX, I don't totally agree, but there are legitimate points for discussion. I'd say that SpaceX innovations so far are manufacturing and management not extension of spacecraft capabilities, yet. They've got lots of good things in the works but most are not yet demonstrated.
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Don't disregard manufacturing and management savings. Space-X seems determined to be the least expensive way to put stuff in LEO by far, and if we can put lots more stuff in LEO we can do a whole lot of things with spacecraft. As Stalin said about the Red Army in WWII, "Quantity has a quality all its own."
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Reducing cost through optimization of manufacturing can be more important than lots of original research, for instance the recent boom in photo-voltaic solar has much more to do with the plummeting $/W for panels made with decades old technology then it does with the constant stream of announcements that some group has eeked out .5% better efficiency out of cells made of unobtanium. I'm not saying that basic science research or materials science research should be halted, just that people who poo poo people
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I was really astonished when I read about the old NERVA project.
NERVA demonstrated that nuclear thermal rocket engines were a feasible and reliable tool for space exploration, and at the end of 1968 SNPO certified that the latest NERVA engine, the NRX/XE, met the requirements for a manned Mars mission. Although NERVA engines were built and tested as much as possible with flight-certified components and the engine was deemed ready for integration into a spacecraft, much of the U.S. space program was cancelled by the Nixon Administration before a manned visit to Mars could take place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They had planned to use this and other technologies to have several space stations, a permanent base on the Moon even a mission to Mars before the end of last century, possibly even as early as in the '80s. The NERVA project was specifically cancelled by the Nixon administration because it worked too well, as easy access to Mars would have lead to a more committed and therefore costly space program. I can hardl
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I can think of two good reasons why SpaceX would want to stick with chemical rockets:
1) They're a relatively mature technology, allowing engineering resources to focus on refinement and integration with of systems.
2) Can you imagine the public uproar against the first NUCLEAR rockets operated by nearly unsupervised PRIVATE enterprise? The protests would cause no end of headaches.
And actually, let's add one more applicable not just to SpaceX but to all terrestrial rocket use:
3) damage potential of the inev
Moving forward well (Score:5, Informative)
Why the annoying sound track ? (Score:2)
Not everyone has such a short attention span that they need jangley noise to keep them from moving to another web site.
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Not everyone has such a short attention span that they need jangley noise to keep them from moving to another web site.
Because I'm assuming actual audio from the video, if it were recorded, would be useless for PR purposes? Just turn off your sound if the music bothers you.
From their official page (Score:5, Interesting)
Landing on a floating platform would be so crazy-awesome I can't even stand it! NASA should really stop wasting its time with its outdated SRB shiz.
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I'll be impressed when it lands on a moving Tesla that Elon himself is driving.
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You're probably thinking of floating platform as something that moves around like a boat, more likely it's going to be a converted deep sea oil platform like Broglio Space Centre [wikipedia.org] or Sea Launch [wikipedia.org].
What flyout and back plan? (Score:1)
When they are done with the booster, they are a ways downrange and heading away from the launch site.
What is the proposed trajectory after the booster separates from the payload.
How much extra fuel must be onboard to accomplish this trajectory.
It is a neat video though.
Re:What flyout and back plan? (Score:4, Informative)
At the point where the booster separates, it has burned most of its fuel, and weighs a fraction as much as it did at launch. As a result, it requires far less fuel to kill its velocity and put itself on a trajectory back towards the launch site than the initial launch did (far less mass to accelerate on the return trip).
It does still require some extra fuel (hence why they talk about having to use expendable Falcon 9s for missions that are close to the max payload capacity until they can get Falcon Heavy flying), but for small to medium sized cargoes, they have the fuel to burn.
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Also worth mentioning that the fuel typically only accounts for 5% or less of the cost of a launch, so increasing that by some small fraction represents a miniscule additional expenditure compared to the gains to me made from recycling the launch vehicle.
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a lot more vertical than usual
http://scarina.files.wordpress... [wordpress.com]
Re:Daily Elon Musk article (Score:4, Interesting)
He's head of 3 technology companies that are currently in the news, so suprise, news articles about him and his companies are showing up on a technology news site. Get over it.
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Right. Because posts like yours in response to what is actually quite an interesting and newsworthy event in the commercial space sector - and not just another crazy pipe dream from old man Musk - aren't masturbatory at all.