Posted on 12/07/2014 9:58:28 AM PST by Jack Hydrazine
BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. —Never mind rocket launches -- the first rocket landing in Space Coast history is a couple of weeks away, if things work out.
SpaceX is expected to announce this week that the company is bringing in a revolutionary ocean-going landing pad for its next launch.
Looking down the side of the SpaceX rocket, there are landing legs sticking out, and a set of fins – that look a little like tennis racquets – pop out. They’ll guide the rocket as it flies backwards – down, not up – to a perfectly placed landing at the test site.
In a Cape Canaveral hangar is a powerful Falcon 9 rocket, set for launch on Dec. 16. In the Gulf, ready to head for the Cape, is the ocean-going landing pad for the rocket, a converted oil-drilling barge.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk said this week its thrusters are repurposed from deep-sea oil rigs to hold its position within 3 meters even in a storm, providing a steady target for the incoming rocket. So when the rocket launches next month, it’ll release a cargo pod filled with supplies for the space station and then return.
Earlier this year, in another SpaceX experiment, the same kind of rocket can be spotted descending through the clouds off the Cape for a practice landing on the ocean surface. The rocket sank, as expected, but with the new landing platform in place, this one may become the first rocket to land after an orbital launch.
If you can recover a rocket, it means you’re not throwing away millions of dollars’ worth of hardware. Launches would cost a fraction, perhaps a tenth, of what they cost now.
So the revolution of landing a rocket could produce a big increase in the launch business – good for the Space Coast if it happens there. But SpaceX is building a new launch pad in Texas, and many of its future launches will happen there.
You are aware that the Falcon 9 can send payloads to geosynchronous orbit?
It was overkill for most stuff.
/johnny
/johnny
“I just don’t see the point when the shuttle showed for years that a glide is a pretty reliable return strategy.”
That’s what I find so exciting about the direction the space program is taking. Opening up to new ideas from SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, Virgin and others will increase competition for the best cheapest forms of spaceflight.
http://www.sncorp.com/
http://www.orbital.com/
http://www.virgingalactic.com/
http://www.scaled.com/
LOL! Probably, since Elon has the lyin’ king’s blessings. When the lyin’ king visited KSC several years ago, they landed at the SLF and convoyed straight to Elon’s welcoming arms. All the riffraff KSC/CCAFS workers were instructed to remain inside during the convoy transit. Kinda messed up my regularly scheduled smoke break. As for the battery plant, it’ll provide some temp employment for the construction trades for a while then some more for the plant ops until the H cells become viable. Knowing how Elon works, he’ll somehow manage to survive that and maybe convert the plant to produce H cells.
Yeah, it’s a trade; been done over and over for decades.
The shuttle wings were there for cross range capability. Never used.
For just booster recovery, it’s obviously not needed and wing structure weight, drag, and complexity is even more of a problem.
Khrunichev proposed it with the yet-to-fly Baikal system.
With the addition of the hypersonic paddles to Falcon 9 SpaceX is adding just enough aerodynamic controllability to cure some problems that wings would have solved.
So they are on the right track I think from a system efficiency viewpoint; they’ll get there eventually - be able to reliably recover the F9 1st stage.
But the business questions will remain.
And the small detail of what will Range Safety and the population of Cocoa Beach think when they see the missile that just left town headed back towards them.....
Falcon Heavy will be able to do even more!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy
While the initial specifications of the new launcher in April 2011 projected LEO payloads of up to 53,000 kilograms (117,000 lb)[13] and GTO payloads up to 12,000 kilograms (26,000 lb),[14] later reports in 2011 projected higher payloads beyond low Earth orbit, including 19,000 kilograms (42,000 lb) to geostationary transfer orbit,[15] 16,000 kilograms (35,000 lb) to translunar trajectory, and 14,000 kilograms (31,000 lb) on a trans-Martian orbit to Mars.[9][16]
By late 2013, SpaceX had raised the projected GTO payload for Falcon Heavy to up to 21,200 kilograms (46,700 lb).[17]
It is scheduled to be launched for the first time in 2015 with no payload since it is a demo flight.
Falcon Heavy video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTwRxtmQ9IY
And after that?
The Mars Colonial Transporter being lifted by a cluster of nine Raptor engines within a 10 meter diameter airframe with each Raptor generating 1.6 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. This rocket might be called the Falcon X or Falcon 10. It’ll be able to lift 100 to 150 tons of cargo into space and still do it cheaper than the Shuttle.
And after that?
Rumors are the Falon XX which could possibly lift 200 or more tons of cargo into space.
Is the Shuttle (lifts about 25 tons or 50,045 lbs. of cargo) still better than these?
I don’t think Elon really likes politics or politicians based on what I have heard from him. I think he does that to keep on their good side lest he feels their wrath like Microsoft did before Billy started greasing the palms of the Dems in the District of Criminals.
d.c. dysfunctional city. Yeah, from my buddies that are still working down there, he is quite the task master and to me it seems like he knows how to play the game with the politicos. Sure seem to be an inordinate number of Tesla vehicles here in Reno(for the population) and several of the casinos have installed charging station for them.
This just in...
It’s Alive! NASA’s New Horizons Pluto Probe ‘Wakes Up’ for Work
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/its-alive-nasas-new-horizons-pluto-probe-wakes-work-n262996
No to mention it takes a few years or less to build another Falcon rocket, costs less per pound, doesn’t take human resources to fly it, isn’t limited to a cargo bay size and shape (which was a PIA, btw), and doesn’t cost $2 billion per launch. (NASA liked to claim it cost less than $1 billion but they lied and did not include the cost to refurbish the boosters, shuttle, and build new center tanks.)
Let’s not even get into the environmental impact of the toxic chemicals needed to produce and refurbish the Shuttle.
The Shuttle was a dog from its inception and many, many engineers tried to talk them out of it, but a landable vehicle was all the rage with the polidiots in NASA.
Gee, Mr. Wilson!! “Lost In Space” did it on TV, so why CAN’T we do it???
I’m psyched about this, private enterprise or not.
$10,000 per pound to go to orbit. 15% to 30% of that payload revenue is lost so you can land on an ocean platform or land. Few, if any, companies can afford that magnitude hit to the profit margin.
I can’t see where that could possibly make economic sense. Wings or parachutes would seem to continue to make the most sense.
Once the “gee-whiz” factor wears off, you’re stuck paying that premium forever.
Currently SpaceX is charging about $1,500 or so per pound for LEO.
Has it?
Yeppers!
The computers were very crude by today’s standards but they were there.
AFAIK, there was a launch pad for the Saturn V.
NASA has made it adamantly clear last year they are never going back to the Moon.
Its really no comparison between the two except that both could only exist through tax payer dollars.
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