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Space Earth NASA Science Technology

SpaceX Makes Aerospace History With Successful Launch, Landing of a Used Rocket (theverge.com) 260

Eloking quotes a report from The Verge: After more than two years of landing its rockets after launch, SpaceX finally sent one of its used Falcon 9s back into space. The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening, sending a communications satellite into orbit, and then landed on one of SpaceX's drone ships floating in the Atlantic Ocean. It was round two for this particular rocket, which already launched and landed during a mission in April of last year. But the Falcon 9's relaunch marks the first time an orbital rocket has launched to space for a second time. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appeared on the company's live stream shortly after the landing and spoke about the accomplishment. "It means you can fly and refly an orbital class booster, which is the most expensive part of the rocket. This is going to be, ultimately, a huge revolution in spaceflight," he said. "It's been 15 years to get to this point, it's taken us a long time," Musk said. "A lot of difficult steps along the way, but I'm just incredibly proud of the SpaceX for being able to achieve this incredible milestone in the history of space."
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SpaceX Makes Aerospace History With Successful Launch, Landing of a Used Rocket

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  • I'm On a Boat! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday March 30, 2017 @07:09PM (#54147505) Homepage Journal

    Major kudos to the SpaceX team! Thank you for letting me get to see the future.

  • by MrLogic17 ( 233498 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @07:15PM (#54147535) Journal

    With this huge milestone down, the next big one is Falcon Heavy - with 3 of these boosters landing for reuse.

    We are on the cusp of a new age of space - prices are going to drop like crazy, and Mars just got a whole lot cheaper to reach!

    • There are a lot of little milestones. Like this mission was supposed to include fairing recovery, but nothing of that was mentioned.
      • Reports are that they did recover one fairing half. I don't know why they didn't get both. The fairing costs several Million and the recovery is supposed to be an in-air capture after the fairing deploys a parafoil.
        • They seemed to be planning on a wet recovery for this set, with a ship in place and no news about helicopters. They might not bother with them until they're confident they can stabilize them for reentry and get the parafoils working. That at least one came down mostly intact is quite promising...

          • They have more chance of being able to reuse a wet fiberglass fairing than a wet engine. It'll be interesting to see whether they go to in-air recovery.
            • Carbon fiber over an aluminum honeycomb core, which might be problematic, especially if it's vented to allow trapped air to escape. I expect they'll use the helicopter approach.

              They just used a medium-heavy lift liquid fueled first stage on its second launch, they'll figure something out.

        • by dbIII ( 701233 )
          I'm reading a bit about the Mercury and Gemini missions at the moment. They didn't hit all targets either with every mission but in the long run things happened. Musk may like to lay on the hype thick but despite that maybe like those earlier missions it's worth accepting that they are not going to get everything right the first time (especially since SpaceX is a new contractor about where Grumman etc were in the Gemini era).
      • by petermgreen ( 876956 ) <plugwash@p10[ ]k.net ['lin' in gap]> on Thursday March 30, 2017 @07:35PM (#54147611) Homepage

        http://forum.nasaspaceflight.c... [nasaspaceflight.com]

        "BREAKING news: Payload fairing LANDED SUCCESSFULLY. Fairing has thruster systems and steerable parachute. Was just shown pic of intact fairing floating in ocean."

    • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @07:53PM (#54147723) Homepage

      Actually, the next milestone is rapid reuse :) Tweet from Musk this evening:

      Incredibly proud of the SpaceX team for achieving this milestone in space! Next goal is reflight within 24 hours.

      SpaceX has a backlog. It'll be nice to see if they can really up their launch rate and clear it all out.

      • They will never clear their backlog. The more they launch, the cheaper it gets, the more others can participate in space economy. It is a pet dream of mine to launch a pico-sat.
  • Some people (Score:5, Insightful)

    by future assassin ( 639396 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @07:27PM (#54147581)

    become politicians and try to enslave the population others take their money and move humanity forward. Imagine if more billionaires did this .

    • Re:Some people (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Thursday March 30, 2017 @07:33PM (#54147601) Homepage Journal

      I'd be the first to encourage people to innovate. But you're painting your portrayal of politicians with a rather wide brush. While we have some deplorable examples of politicians, we also have some who made a major positive contribution to the world.

      Then we can talk about lawyers. You might not like them, but the alternative to using them is that we duke everything out or have shooting feuds to settle our disputes.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30, 2017 @08:40PM (#54147961)

        Then we can talk about lawyers. You might not like them, but the alternative to using them is that we duke everything out or have shooting feuds to settle our disputes.

        Okay, but what's the argument in favor of keeping lawyers?

      • Re: Some people (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Funny. Ancient Athens did not have lawyers. They still had trials and courts and arbitration. Each side of a case represented himself. You don't need lawyers when the law is simple and short enough for the common citizen to understand.

    • by tomhath ( 637240 )
      You need an orderly and law-abiding society for this kind of progress to be made. Be thankful that Musk has the opportunity.
    • it used to be this way in America. Oddly, in other nations, many of their billionaires DO work towards helping their citizens.
  • Truly amazing and a real milestone in humanity reaching for the stars.

    Well done!

  • by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @07:37PM (#54147625)
    one owner. only been driven twice.
  • Bet your ass that rocket was gone over with a fine-toothed comb, at great expense.They won't have proven the economy of re-launching rockets until it's routine with zero to very few accidents and the finance numbers are in.
  • My coworker is at their plant at the moment. I'll have to ask if he got to be in there with all the employees. So cool :)
  • And so is this story. I posted it earlier:
    https://slashdot.org/submissio... [slashdot.org]

  • From Robert A. Heinlein, Excerpts from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

    Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.

    Good thing that Elon Musk listens to experts. I believe those experts are telling him that he can't go to Mars.

    After so many years of reading science fiction it's nice to see some of it becoming science fact. Please keep pushing ahead Elon.

    • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @08:02PM (#54147771) Homepage Journal

      Excellent advice when you have an author looking after your interests who will ensure things work out in the end. But in real life, if you believe that, you should get to work on your perpetual motion machine now.

      • But in real life, if you believe that, you should get to work on your perpetual motion machine now.

        Or the EM drive!

      • Excellent advice when you have an author looking after your interests who will ensure things work out in the end.

        Just FYI, that particular line wasn't from one of his stories, it was part of the "collected wisdom of Lazarus Long", which were meant to be just interesting bits that described his (Heinlein's) mindset.

    • I'm not trying to compare myself to an great scientists or claim that I'm an expert, but that's kind of how I deal with requests from my boss. He'll come up with a "stupid" idea and I'll proceed to shoot it down, and he's happy with that because as he's told me "I know you'll come back with a working solution after telling me it's impossible"*

      It's just my method of problem solving - it comes across as very negative - but at the same time as coming up with problems my mind is thinking about how to solve or w

      • >that breaks the laws of thermodynamics

        That is usually an issue with a particular potential solution, not with the entire solution space for a particular problem.

        Get back to work and come up with another solution to the same problem. :)

    • by dbIII ( 701233 )

      I believe those experts are telling him that he can't go to Mars.

      I don't know where you are getting that from. The most high profile expert (Aldrin) has already told him and anyone else who wants to listen how to get there most effectively.

  • by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Thursday March 30, 2017 @09:30PM (#54148121)

    A great deal of technology went into the success of the re-useable rocket. I'm curious to know how much of that is shared. In bioscience, for instance, there is much sharing of information, presumably for the public good. Does Musk share his discoveries with other space programs?

    We at Slashdot all have an interest in patents and copyright. We are of many opinions but seem generally antagonistic toward locking up Intellectual Property. Should space exploration developments be shared? How would that effect or offset the expensive research necessary to pull off this re-useable rocket success?

    • by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Thursday March 30, 2017 @11:37PM (#54148605)

      Does Musk share his discoveries with other space programs?

      No. As has been pointed out on multiple occasions, SpaceX is doing little or no new science. They are doing groundbreaking, revolutionary engineering, but they're not discovering new things about the universe in order to do it, so there isn't anything to share of the nature you're referring to.

      Beyond the engineering, they are also doing highly effective management. Management so effective that ULA partisans have claimed repeatedly that it's impossible. They're producing quality rockets, with continuously improving quality, with team sizes far smaller and far more effective than ULA can currently field. It may be that someone has written and published something about how they do that, but as with all things managerial, it's effectively impossible for an organization that isn't run that way to remake itself into an organization that is run that way.

      SpaceX is successful not for what they are discovering, but for what they are not doing. They're not operating with a cost-plus contract with the US government, which has the same effect on an engineering project that an unlimited budget has on a movie (see Michael Bay), and they're not operating with a bloated, dysfunctional management structure. Those two simple things allow them to pull off what are being called engineering miracles, but they're not miraculous. It's just that our standards have become so absymally low thanks to decades of bumbling by Lockheed, Boeing, and yes, NASA, that when we encounter competence, it appears amazing.

      When you get right down to it, Elon Musk doesn't have anything to share that would do any good. The Atlas and Delta rocket families already work, after all. Elon Musk could talk about the design decisions he made that made the Falcon 9 far cheaper, but Lockheed and Boeing have reams and reams of PowerPoint presentations about why those were the wrong decisions. They simply can't back down from that now.

      • Well, they do share some new and useful data with NASA, for example their R&D on the PICA-X ablative heat shield and data collected from retro-burn landing that might be used for Mars landings in the future.

        Of course there are also the ITAR restrictions on what information can be publicly shared on rocket technology.

        But yeah, it's mainly working with engineering and economics that are available to everyone, a lot of off-the-shelf components in fact, just a better use of them.
        It's not like there's an ino

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