Rocket Lab Successfully Captures Falling Electron Rocket With a Helicopter (theverge.com) 35
After nearly three years of preparation, small satellite launch company Rocket Lab has successfully caught one of its rockets in mid-air today, after launching the vehicle to space from New Zealand. The Verge reports: But by catching and reusing its rockets after flight, Rocket Lab hopes to cut down on the manufacturing cost associated with building an entirely new rocket for each of its missions. The goal is similar to that of SpaceX, which has become famous for landing and reusing its rockets post-flight. Rocket Lab also claims that recovering and reusing its rockets could also help speed up its flight cadence. "By bringing one back, it just saves a tremendous amount of time where you don't have to build a whole new rocket from scratch," Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab, tells The Verge. "So we'll obviously see some good cost savings, but I think the most important thing for us right now is just getting the vehicles back into the production line."
When Electron launches to space, computers on board the vehicle guide the booster back through Earth's atmosphere, maneuvering it in just the right way so that it stays intact during the fall to the ground. Once the rocket reaches an altitude of about 8.3 miles up, it deploys a drogue parachute to slow its fall, followed by a main parachute. As the rocket leisurely floats down toward the ocean, that's when the helicopter will arrive and attempt to capture the line of the parachute with a dangling hook, avoiding a splashdown in salty seawater. UPDATE 4:08PM PST: Rocket Lab confirmed the helicopter catch. The summary and headline have been updated to reflect the successful mission.
You can view the livestream of the launch here.
When Electron launches to space, computers on board the vehicle guide the booster back through Earth's atmosphere, maneuvering it in just the right way so that it stays intact during the fall to the ground. Once the rocket reaches an altitude of about 8.3 miles up, it deploys a drogue parachute to slow its fall, followed by a main parachute. As the rocket leisurely floats down toward the ocean, that's when the helicopter will arrive and attempt to capture the line of the parachute with a dangling hook, avoiding a splashdown in salty seawater. UPDATE 4:08PM PST: Rocket Lab confirmed the helicopter catch. The summary and headline have been updated to reflect the successful mission.
You can view the livestream of the launch here.
Congrats Rocket Lab!!! (Score:2)
Not an easy achievement!
One step closer to routine reusable rocketry. (Score:3)
Can't wait for routine round trips to the Moon.
Re: One step closer to routine reusable rocketry. (Score:2)
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Re:post is premature (Score:5, Informative)
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spy satellites used to do this back when it had to be film. The sat would go up, fly over russia etc, take a bunch of pics, and then would eject the film canister. Big planes with giant "V" shaped catches would grab the chute lines as it fell toward the ocean. If they missed, it was deliberately made to sink so the russians wouldn't be able to get to it first and see what we were photographing or see how good/poor the qualitry was.
But those canisters were really light compared to a first stage engine. S
Your definition of "success" needs work (Score:2, Informative)
This wasn't successful. They had to drop the load. It didn't work.
Again, people have tried this before and it didn't work out. Maybe these guys have some secret sauce, I don't know.
Re:Your definition of "success" needs work (Score:5, Insightful)
The catch WAS successful, as much as it needed to be. Yes, they had to then drop it because of helicopter sling load dynamics, not because they couldn't catch it.
It didn't work just like the first few Falcon 9 landings didn't work. Baby steps, sometimes.
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high chance of error (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. (Score:3)
They can do this because the rocket is fairly small, and within the mass for a helicopter to catch and carry. They are having no problems predicting where it will enter, and getting the aircraft in the right place, and no problems catching it either.
They've still got something to work out when it comes to the loads on the helicopter post catch - not a lot of information to go on about this for now, however.
Re:Not really. (Score:4, Informative)
The link said that the 1st stage was caught only for a few secs before the pilot offloaded it.
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However, the helicopter pilot noticed “different load characteristics” that Rocket Lab had not experienced during previous testing.
“At his discretion, the pilot offloaded the stage for a successful splashdown, where it has been recovered by our vessel for transport back to our factory,” Murielle Baker, a communications representative for Rocket Lab, said during the launch livestream. "
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So it was a partial success at best, I think. I do wonder if it's harder to catch a 1st stage mid air or to land it. Catching it mid air will have to take into account possibily random wind conditions, etc, compared to knowing exactly where you want to land. And there is always the human factor for every catch (the heli pilot).
And depending on the helicopter, there is a weight or size limit for the first stage, whereas I don't think you have a real limit on size /weight if you are landing it (with appropriate number of braking rockets, etc).
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Landing is definitely much more difficult than catching. A larger concern is that for landing the booster it has to carry enough extra fuel to brake to almost 0 meters/second. To be caught the booster only needs to carry a parachute with a long tail.
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It doesn't take much fuel to keep an almost empty first stage in the air. Falcon 9 actually had a bigger problem with the empty stage being so light that even a single engine (out of nine!) couldn't throttle down enough to hover. it was just too powerful, and they had to use the "hoverslam" maneuver. Now they're landing so accurately that they wear out the SpaceX logo on the landing pad faster than they can repaint it.
Also, they tested doing a parachute landing with the first two Falcon 9 rockets, and real
Re:Not really. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a limit on landing, that is, it is not practical to land small rockets, and Electron is a small rocket.
The reason comes from the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, which dictates the ratio between fuel and the rest of the rocket and the square-cube law, which allow bigger rockets to carry proportionally more fuel. To put is simply, bigger=better. By the way, it was the whole idea behind the "Sea Dragon" rocket project: instead of trying to optimize things, make the rocket huge. The problem with big rockets is obviously that it is a waste of payload if you only have to launch a small satellite, and that's the reason why small rockets like Electron exist.
Electron is already at the limit of how small an orbital launcher can be, which means that there is very little margin on what you can add that is not strictly essential to getting the payload into orbit. Even a relatively light parachute is a lot, and Rocket Lab doesn't intend to make all its launches reusable for that reason, carrying the extra fuel for a powered descent is, I think, inconceivable.
On the other hand, there is no helicopter big enough to catch something like a Falcon 9, so really, it is all about size. For BFR/Starship, the rocket is so big they not only have enough margin for a reusable first stage but also the second stage without sacrificing too much payload.
Re:high chance of error (Score:4, Funny)
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Not really. The helicopter isn't out there idling for hours. It's not like you can't predict when something entirely within your control happens.
Elon musk's rockets don't redirect themselves either, they just steady themselves and slow for landing. The drone ships he uses know exactly where they need to be in advance too.
The helicopter option is also more flexible and can react faster than a drone ship, so there's no reason to think this would be more error prone than trying to land your equipment. ...
Which
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It's cheaper to catch it than to land it. These are small rockets and adding the necessary fuel, wings, control hardware and landing struts would add a lot of weight and complexity.
Not quite. (Score:2)
It then came into view of the company’s helicopter, which then successfully caught the rocket for a few brief moments. However, the helicopter pilot noticed “different load characteristics” that Rocket Lab had not experienced during previous testing.
“At his discretion, the pilot offloaded the stage for a successful splashdown, where it has been recovered by our vessel for transport back to our factory,”
Funny way of saying he dropped it like a rock because something was terribly wrong.
This is an amazing feat but the process needs to be fully automated because human error is simply too high.
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Or a quite accurate way of describing 'This looks a bit different, I'm not taking any risks here.'
FAKE NEWS! (Score:1)
congrats (Score:2)
Re: congrats (Score:2)
Same. The cost of the helicopter mission has to be less than the cost of launching the mass of the landing fuel. And the logistics of helicopter-catching, once the kinks are worked out, seem simpler than landing.
Catching a rocket with the tower where it's going to launch from, though -- now that is elegant.
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That's not the complete metric to make your decision on though. Really, you want to compare ((cost of engineering a self-landing first stage) + N*(cost of fuel per landing)) to (cost of engineering helicopter capture) + N*(cost of helicopter capture per landing)).
When you include the engineering and development costs, the helicopter method almost certainly comes out cheaper for the first several launches... hard to say what the precise count is, though. 10, 20?
What they need is the simplest engineering poss
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Finally, a step toward a second reusable company. (Score:3)
Re:Finally, a step toward a second reusable compan (Score:5, Informative)
If they deliver on the Neutron, https://www.rocketlabusa.com/l... [rocketlabusa.com], that will keep them up there with Space X's Starship.
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"Successful" (Score:2)
The did catch it, but it was undersized, so they had to let it go.
I saw the helicopter passing over Christchurch (Score:2)
I thought I saw the helicopter flying out over Christchurch on my way to work at about 9:00am this morning. After searching online, I found this website that confirmed it. I was standing towards the middle of the loop it made over the central city on the return flight. https://flightaware.com/live/f... [flightaware.com]