Posted on 12/21/2015 8:08:25 PM PST by Jack Hydrazine
The third attempt at a historic reusable-rocket milestone was the charm for SpaceX.
The private spaceflight company brought the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth for a soft touchdown tonight (Dec. 21), pulling off history's first-ever rocket landing during an orbital launch. (Blue Origin, the company led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, landed its New Shepard booster successfully last month, but that occurred during a suborbital test.)
The Falcon 9 blasted off at 8:29 p.m. EST today (0129 GMT on Dec. 22) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, tasked with delivering to orbit 11 spacecraft for the satellite-communications company Orbcomm. The two-stage Falcon 9 separated, and then the rocket's first stage performed a series three "boostback burns," coming down for a pinpoint touchdown at Cape Canaveral. [SpaceX's Epic Falcon 9 Rocket Landing in Pictures]
SpaceX's mission control in Hawthorne, California, erupted in raucous cheers when the first stage came into view of a camera near the landing site — then went even more nuts as the booster stage slowed and touched down successfully at SpaceX's "Landing Zone 1," a facility previously used by the Air Force for rocket and missile testing.
SpaceX had tried to land Falcon 9 first stages twice before, both times on an uncrewed "drone ship" hundreds of miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. On each occasion — once in January 2015, and then again in April — the booster stage hit its target but came in a little too hard and crashed on the ship's deck.
Today's landing was a milestone moment for SpaceX, which aims to develop fully and rapidly reusable rockets as a way to open the heavens to exploration. Such technology could slash the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 100, potentially making Mars colonies economically feasible, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said.
Mars settlement is no idle dream for Musk; he established SpaceX back in 2002 primarily because he wants to help humanity become a multiplanetary species, Musk has repeatedly said.
Today's launch was the first for SpaceX since June 28, when a Falcon 9 broke apart less than three minutes after blasting off from Cape Canaveral, scuttling the seventh uncrewed cargo mission the company is flying to the International Space Station for NASA. (SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion deal to make at least 12 such flights with the Falcon 9 and its robotic Dragon capsule.)
The June failure was likely caused by a faulty steel strut in the Falcon 9 upper stage. Musk has said that, going forward, the company will test every one of the hundreds of such struts that go into each Falcon 9.
SpaceX has also been revamping the Falcon 9 since the accident, adjusting its stage-separation system and electronics, among other features, Musk said.
"I think it's a significantly improved rocket from the last one," he said on Dec. 15 during a talk at the annual winter meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
Today's launch was originally scheduled for Sunday night (Dec. 20), but analyses showed that lifting off tonight provided a 10 percent better chance of landing success, Musk said.
The 11 satellites that launched aboard the Falcon 9 all deployed successfully, and will complete a 17-spacecraft Orbcomm network in low-Earth orbit.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: “Elon Musk’s SpaceX Won’t Get Us To Mars”
Published on Sep 5, 2013
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said Elon Musk’s company SpaceX will not be the first to colonize Mars. In fact, no private enterprise will be taking humans to the Red Planet, according to the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space. Find out more with John Iadarola!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW74vsCNQtc
Well done, SpaceX.
While I agree that this is an "accomplishment", it's not a "great accomplishment." The real issue with reusable launch vehicles is not whether it can be done, but rather if it can be done to make economic sense.
A launch system is made up of much more than the vehicle -- it's the manufacturing infrastructure, preparation and launch facilities, and the cost and difficulty of refurbishing and reusing the "reusable" vehicle. Reusable does not equal cheap -- Shuttle was a reusable system; the reason it was expensive is because it took a lot of man-hours of highly skilled workers to refurbish the vehicle for reuse.
Because SpaceX is a non-public company, we have no idea what it took to develop the recoverable (and that's all that has been shown for now) first stage. Even Musk does not know how much it will cost to operate a hypothetical reusable Falcon 9 system because he doesn't have one yet. Yes, he has successfully landed a Falcon 9 first stage booster and yes, that is something. But it's not what his cheerleaders and the facile analyses of a brainless space media claim.
The determining factor as to whether this is an advance or not is if SpaceX can put a payload into orbit cheaper than what they are now charging. We don't know that now and may not know it for several years. After a single booster flies five or six times, and the price for launching a satellite comes down, then I'll grant you his "great accomplishment."
Oh, and all of Musk's talk about colonies on Mars is still pure BS. He still doesn't have a clue as to what a single human Mars mission would take, let alone the establishment of a self-sustaining settlement there.
It is s lower energy profile to simply drop downrange. Turning around and coming back takes somewhat more fuel. The new and improved v1.1 Falcon has that margin on many more launch profiles. (Payload weight and orbit height)
Reducing price per pound per orbit by 90% so far, the intent behind this reusability is to cut that last 10% by 90%. Spectacular, if they can pull it off. What will happen of course is, NASA will continue to fund various companies and then cut the amount paid to SpaceX.
That Falcon 9 failure in the summer was the first, and was the first real bump in the road since those Pacific island launch failures.
I got a 5’ cardboard sit-inside Gemini capsule with control panel one Christmas (wayyyy cool), watched rocket launches in paused classes, took pics of our TV screen, built the Gemini and Saturn and Apollo/lander models.
Miss that feeling of awe and pride. Got some back just now!
It felt good when America was great.
Okay, jealousy is starting to sit in. My parents were not impressed at all and did not care. If it didn’t have anything to do with the Dallas Cowboys, then it wasn’t important.
Must have been molar-grinding time for Barky. Here he thought he'd neutered all those white boys by turning NASA into a "Moslem outreach" agency ..... and damned if the pimply-faced engineering crowd didn't go private and do The Forbidden on their own, anyway.
OBAMA <cue Larry Olivier voice, in character as The Mahdi>:
"I forbade it! .... I FORBADE IT!!!"
</off movie reference>
“and the methane-burning engine will be needed because methane fuel is available on Mars”
NASA says that there isn’t any methane on Mars.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-285
It just suddenly disappeared! Completely unexpected!
Currently Falcon Heavy is scheduled to lift off sometime in May 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches
I guess “pull my finger” won’t catch on over on Mars. Too bad. ;’D Thanks Jack!
The space industry has been charging $10K/lb to lift anything into orbit. SpaceX has gotten that down to about $1,500/lb. Isn’t that a big accomplishment?
If he can refurbish these boosters at a reasonable cost then the cost/lb. will drop even further. Musk has talked in the past about a figure of $500/lb. or even lower.
I think it is just NASA trying to discourage anyone from going to Mars. Every other probe or lander has detected it up until now. If they find large amounts of water on Mars then they can go the LH2/LOX route for fueling the return rockets.
ULA sells the low-end Atlas V for about $165 million. The 401 (no solids) puts 9797 kg into a 28 degree inclination LEO. That works out to be about $7600 per pound (not "$10K"). The Falcon 9 costs $61.2 M and can put 13,150 kg into the same orbit. That works out to about $2116 lb. Yes, less cost -- by about a factor of 3.5, not almost 10. I agree that's an accomplishment, as I said in my original post.
If he can refurbish these boosters at a reasonable cost then the cost/lb. will drop even further.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. It all depends on; 1) accounting for the loss of performance by making the first stage recoverable; 2) the cost of retrieval, refurbishment and preparation for relaunch; 3) the life cycle costs of a reusable first stage; 4) the reliability of that reused stage, including any additional launch insurance costs for a less reliable reused stage. None of these factors are known (or even forseeable) now -- get back to me when he has an operational system.
Musk has talked in the past about a figure of $500/lb. or even lower.
I'm sure he has said this -- he famous for saying incredibly silly things.
How much fuel is wasted turning it around and stopping it’s forward momentum.
You think it would be more economical to let it coast 3/4 of the way around and land it in California.
Bezos appears the real deal on space biz, Musk seems just a govt program kinda guy - to me as a barely informed observer.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezo's private space company Blue Origin has completed a 'historic'
test flight, after sending a craft to space before successfully landing it on Earth.
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