Space Ping.......................
“Hello, SpaceX?”
CC
Firefly has an interesting history.
SpaceX can bring back a Falcon 9 first stage every time but they throw away a second stage with each launch. For small sub 2000kg payloads this put it out of the price range of individual small sats. Entirely due to the cost of losing the second stage. They offer ride share with 100+ payloads but you have to be going to an orbit a lot of other people are going too or take a OTV kick stage like a Sherpa with you and use it to transfer to your own orbit.
SpaceX could fit out a second stage with the hardware to recover it. Elon has said they would in the past use inflatable heat shields and try to catch it like they were catching fairings using guided parafoils and a net on a boat or helicopter mid air grab like the Air Force used to do with film capsules. Problem is for every Kg of mass you use for recover that is one Kg less of payload. That said with drone ship booster recover they have 18,500Kg to LEO taking 5000Kg a very comfortable margin for just a inflatable heat shield which also serves as your hypersonic and supersonic drag device, plus a parafoil with GPS guidance flying to either a as Elon put it “bouncy castle” recover or just snag the parafoil directly with a hook in flight from above like the Air Force did for years and years during the cold war. This still leaves 13,500Kg of payload multiple times what a small sat like this would need but the economics become how much is fuel ,how much referb costs to fly both stages and what are the recovery ops cost for the drone ship and helo or bouncy castle boat. That still would be less than throwing away a whole rocket just to put 1600Kg to LEO. SpaceX said they were only going to focus on Starship development so it’s a what if in an alternative timeline.
Close enough...
If it’s not SpaceX I’m X-iting. Yeah, that’ll catch on.
During a “prove we can do it” shot.....takes me way back to Bill Gates on TV showing how well Windows worked, when, on live TV, he got the Blue Screen of Death....
Next time use SpaceX ...
Dang. There goes my retirement chk. 🚀😊👍
Styling itself as Space X’s little brother, Rocket Lab looks like an interesting company.
Yikes!