Rocket Lab Becomes Second Company After SpaceX To Launch and Land Orbital Rocket (forbes.com) 65
Thelasko shares a report from Forbes: In a major milestone, the New Zealand-based launch company Rocket Lab has successfully recovered an orbital-class rocket after parachuting it back to Earth from near-space -- only the second company in history ever to do so. Yesterday, Thursday, November 20 at 9.20 P.M. Eastern Time, the company's two-stage Electron rocket lifted off from the company's launch site on the Mahia Peninsula on New Zealand's North Island.
Named 'Return to Sender', the mission lofted 30 satellites into a sun-synchronous orbit 500 kilometers above the surface of Earth -- the most satellites ever flown on an Electron rocket. Of the satellites launched, 24 were small communications satellites called "SpaceBees" from the California-based company Swarm Technologies. The others included a space junk removal test, a maritime observation satellite, and an earthquake investigation satellite -- while a small gnome also made its way to space for charity. The launch was especially notable, however, for Rocket Lab's recovery efforts. Shortly after the launch, the first stage of the rocket descended back to Earth under parachute, falling into the ocean where it was then recovered by a waiting ship several hours later. Rocket Lab's plan is to catch its smaller rockets with a helicopter as they fall from space under a parachute. At some point, possibly next year, the first helicopter recovery will be attempted.
"First, the company says it wants to perform a few more splashdown tests in the ocean like this one, to check everything is nominal," reports Forbes. "If all goes well, however, SpaceX quite soon might not be the only private company that's able to launch, recover, and re-launch its own rockets."
Named 'Return to Sender', the mission lofted 30 satellites into a sun-synchronous orbit 500 kilometers above the surface of Earth -- the most satellites ever flown on an Electron rocket. Of the satellites launched, 24 were small communications satellites called "SpaceBees" from the California-based company Swarm Technologies. The others included a space junk removal test, a maritime observation satellite, and an earthquake investigation satellite -- while a small gnome also made its way to space for charity. The launch was especially notable, however, for Rocket Lab's recovery efforts. Shortly after the launch, the first stage of the rocket descended back to Earth under parachute, falling into the ocean where it was then recovered by a waiting ship several hours later. Rocket Lab's plan is to catch its smaller rockets with a helicopter as they fall from space under a parachute. At some point, possibly next year, the first helicopter recovery will be attempted.
"First, the company says it wants to perform a few more splashdown tests in the ocean like this one, to check everything is nominal," reports Forbes. "If all goes well, however, SpaceX quite soon might not be the only private company that's able to launch, recover, and re-launch its own rockets."
Congratulations to Rocket Labs (Score:5, Informative)
Well done to Rocket Labs staff! Even more well done when they eventually reuse the rockets multiple times.
So far only SpaceX has done the reuse of a booster. Looking forward to others joining them in the big leagues. Still waiting for the fully reusable cargo and manned craft with deep space ability.
Re: Congratulations to Rocket Labs (Score:1)
Re: Congratulations to Rocket Labs (Score:4, Informative)
This was a system test, to make sure the guidance and the chutes worked. The plan for reusability is to catch the booster with a chopper.
Re: Congratulations to Rocket Labs (Score:2)
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Since it ended up in the ocean instead of on terra firma wouldn't it be a successful 'watering'?
Re: Congratulations to Rocket Labs (Score:2)
Re: Congratulations to Rocket Labs (Score:2)
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How much of that had to do with salt water intrusion is an open question. I would think the nasty combustion residuals would be the main issue.
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My understanding was that more than anything else that was because of Morton Thiokol's abysmal design, manufacturing and quality control procedures. NASA couldn't trust any part of the damn things to be consistently up to spec, much less after reentry and recovery.
Re: Congratulations to Rocket Labs (Score:4, Interesting)
You're correct, but it's still an incredible achievement.
Note that they kind of had to do it the way they did. Parachutes work better at smaller scales, while powered landing works better at larger scales. And Electron is very much smaller scales - here's it next to Starship's cargo bay [spacexvision.com]. :) Versus Falcon 9, it also doesn't come in as hot - it has about 10% more orbital energy per kilogram, 6% the mass, and 10% the cross section, so overall it's an easier heating challenge.
Just because parachutes are easier at smaller scales however doesn't make them easy. Of particular note is that SpaceX tried to recover the Falcon 1 with a parachute, and failed - the parachute got destroyed during deployment. They were initially mad at the parachute manufacturer who claimed that they'd be able to do it, but later came to understand the scale of the challenge and how hard that task would have been (though they had already moved on to the Falcon 9 so never pursued it further).
I really love the team at Rocket Lab. They have the same sort of innovative, fast-iterating spirit that SpaceX does (plus, Peter really loves Venus, which earns him points in my book ;) ). Right now they seem perfectly content to eat up the market for "small, dedicated launch vehicles" and are struggling to be able to meet all orders. But I do hope they go bigger eventually.
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You can call it what you want, that's your call. I'm calling it successful. Startlingly successful even.
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Yea, more like a successful watering.
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I'm finding it hard to visualize how a helicopter is going to catch a rocket dropping from the sky with a parachute. Wouldn't the spinny round things spinning on the top get in the way?
I assume they thought of something.
Re: Congratulations to Rocket Labs (Score:5, Informative)
Here is video of their test capture - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Just keep the chopper far enough away from the main canopy. The helicopter's hook captures a drogue chute that trails behind
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The "parachute" is like most steerable sport chutes today, and not like the traditional rocket chutes. As a result, it glides forward at some speed, and so the helicopter is able to close on it from behind at a relatively modest rate of descent, with a very long cable and hook assembly far below the helo. Kind of like flying formation. Pretty straightforward stuff, and they've successfully demonstrated the method already by dropping a rocket body shape from another helo and then catching it.
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I wouldn't call it "straightforward" - that takes some serious pilot skill. But yes, it is doable. :) It looks like they've probably moved past of most of the technical issues.
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I believe that returning space probes have been caught by helicopters before. This is just a matter or scaling up.
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The shuttle SRBs were fished out of the sea and reused, but they hit the water pretty hard, and they had to replace so much and strip them down so much that it's questionable how much they saved, if anything.
SpaceX reuses their fairings that hit the water, but it's a lot more refurbishment work than if they land in the net.
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Not throwing shade, but seawater is really corrosive so how much reuse they'll get is still in question.
PFFFF.. land em in Lake Michigan and then take them to Detroit to turn into exotic car parts, bbqs and the like. Who gives a shit about industrial pollution there these days, the exotic alloy hulls might even make good high walled fishing boats to protect boaters from the carp that will eventually infest that little pond! [youtube.com]
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That's the point of landing it on a platform. Mind you, salt air and spray is also highly corrosive. But really nothing compared to (most flavors of) rocket fuel.
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Damn Slashdot for not being able to edit. Actually, you are throwing shade, and not all that accurately. Seawater is _slightly_ corrosive. They will need to spray it down as soon as possible, but a few hours of exposure is really nothing for materials design to stand the stress of supersonic flight, massive vibration, etc. You can be pretty sure this thing isn't built of steel. More likely some stupidly tough aluminum alloy, I didn't check.
I'm thinking, the seawater splash cuts out a massive amount of compl
Space shuttle did that, too. (Score:2)
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Perhaps China will now be in that position soonish.
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They threw away that massive fuel tank and the major amount of refurbishing between flights disqualifies them.
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The Space Shuttle reused both stages, including all of its engines. That's better than SpaceX and Rocket Lab.
I wouldn't say refurbishing disqualified them, they still did it. But it certainly killed the viability of the program. In fact, I think having a reusable upper stage was too ambitious. The heat shielding caused a lot of problems, and the orbiter itself took out a lot of payload capacity. SpaceX originally planned to make a reusable Falcon 9 upper stage, but it was quickly cancelled. As for BFR, Star
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The Buran only went to space once. So no reuse as a space vessel.
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The Space Shuttle wasn't really re-usable so much as it was refurbishable, and such extensive work was required between flights that it would have been cheaper to build a new expendable vehicle for each launch. They practically rebuilt the thing after every launch, with 25,000 people involved in operations and taking months to refurbish them between each launch. It cost more to launch it than the Saturn V, despite that being expendable.
first job for space junk removal (Score:4, Funny)
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The gnome is attached to the upper stage. This stage deploys the satellites, then does a deorbit burn. No junk left behind.
Boeing working on relandable passenger jet (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing. Boeing is working on a passenger jet that lands safely at the end of its journey, instead of piledriving itself into the ground.
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Re: Boeing working on relandable passenger jet (Score:2)
The black knight told me that's just a flesh wound^W^Wpre-existing condition, and their cause of death is clearly Covid.
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...piledriving itself into the ground.
Hopefully it'll stay there - after all, it's a Boeing.
Congrats! Also no helicopter catch ever (Score:1)
First, good job, Rock Labs! Way to loft a rocket into space, release birds into the right orbits, and then send the first stage to land close to where you want it. There are still companies working on this (BO are you reading me?) that don't have even thought down.
However.
They show they can catch it with a helicopter and have a promo video showing it because they launched a test from a higher helicopter and caught it with a lower altitude helicopter. Good job! That's not the same as catching something g
Re: Congrats! Also no helicopter catch ever (Score:4, Informative)
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What am I on? Maybe a lot of caffeine.
10 m/s. That's (for the math lazy) 600m/min, 3600m/h, or 36Kmh. That's crazy fast, dog.
SpaceX uses propulsive braking the final landing speed is near 0 (pick your units).
It's just too early to address the CG/CoM issues with a helicopter with an outstretched set of arms
grabbing a Proton going 10m/s. A C-130 at speed has CG/CoM issues with that.
Look, I'm a fan. If they do it - more power to them. I just think physics wise this isn't going to happen,
and I've explaine
Re: Congrats! Also no helicopter catch ever (Score:3)
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You're off by an order of magnitude. Check your math. 10 m/s is 36000 metres per hour. 36 kph.
Pfffft (Score:1)
land (Score:1)
Re: land (Score:2)
If it is not damaged, but lands softely, who cares?
Bag of potatoes speed is quicker than kid gloves made from real kids speed too.
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This was the test of the boostback and reentry/chute. They have separately tested catching a dropped booster with a helicopter.
The next test will combine both things into a non-damaging recovery.
Bloat, everywhere... (Score:2)
Now even our spaceships run an entire browser VM because they are implemented in Electron!
When will the bloat ever stop??
Title (Score:2)
Rocket Lab Becomes Second Company After SpaceX To Launch and Splashdown an Orbital Rocket
FTFY
Actually, to be pedantic, it probably should be:
Rocket Lab Becomes First CompanyTo Launch and Splashdown an Orbital Rocket
Although SpaceX's first landing attempts were simply over the open water, allowing the rocket to "pretend" it was landing on solid surface, those don't count as splashdowns because that term specifically means landing in water under parachute.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I'm not a space his
I like that there is skill and risk by humans here (Score:2)
SpaceX is a software powered company. And they perform science fiction (2 launches later today, Saturday, East and West coasts).
But it's almost all software. Yes, there is a ton of astronaut training, and they can go full manual, but the quality of the software is being proven. Over and over again.
The Rocket Lab capture approach doesn't really use software (OK, radar and whatever tracking/telemetry, but the rocket appears to be in freefall and there's a guy in a helo grabbing it).
It uses humans in helico
Landing? (Score:1)
If falling from the sky with a breaking device can be called that.:-)
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as it was recovered intact, it would appear that the breaking device failed . . .
Also the best sailors (Score:3)
Kiwis are the best sailors as evidenced by owning the Americas cup and designing the best yachts ever for the next one. Got to be something in that. Oh, and they controlled covid, it never had a chance going up against that sailor mentality.
Bad name choice (Score:2)