Posted on 04/24/2013 8:12:01 PM PDT by rocky50
Grasshopper is a 10-story Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle that SpaceX has designed to test the technologies needed to return a rocket back to Earth intact. While most rockets are designed to burn up in the atmosphere during reentry, SpaceX's rockets are being designed to return to the launch pad for a vertical landing.
(Excerpt) Read more at uvideo100.com ...
Impressive but too much fuel required to do that from orbit.
No, it was a windy day, the rocket was leaning into the wind.
Demonstrated stability and control with only thrust vectoring (and gyros?) - no aerodynamics. Validating that their control loops respond fast enough, no weird oscillations, they can deal with noisy real-world environments and inputs (not clean simulations in the computer lab) etc. Verifying navigation back to a fixed point (ok, they didn't seem to translate any, just up and down). Verifying sensors, control, and engine throttling for hover and soft landing. This was actually a fairly comprehensive test.
You’re seeing barrel distortion caused by using a wide-angle telephoto lens.
Google “DC-X”...you’ll see that McDonnell Douglas did the same thing back in the 90’s. Hit 3140 meter altitude on it’s best flight.
So is Elon Musk and a credit to African Americans.
Bookmark
Good on the entire team.
These people are the American Spirit.
Ion propulsion is the answer to deep space.
A California based company!
Incredible!
Didn't he develope the Vari-eze ?
Good eye, I believe you are correct, it does not line up.
No, it's not.
Rutan is alive and kicking as far as I know.
I have no idea about Vari-eze.
Yeah, because it makes so much more sense to throw away tens of millions in aerospace hardware to save a few thousand in fuel.
Impressive indeed!
Do what from orbit? It's a first stage it will never make it to orbit.
It also is looking to come to zero velocity, good old friction can do most of the work. Depending on the flight profile chosen it may only be necessary to fire the engines for a few seconds to go from terminal velocity to zero.
Since the company doing this is now supplying the space station they might know a bit more about rockets than you.
I came across Rutan in the early 90's when I aspired to build my own.
never did it, but sure wanted to ... life got too hectic and I allowed my dream to fade.
Great music accompaning the video...
“...What is the big deal about that?”
Guess it’s time for you to go back to BeanTown and have a few more of them Sam Adams...maybe then after you think aboug it you will get it.
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