Friday: SpaceX will attempt to land rocket on floating, robotic 'spaceport drone ship' Upstart start-up rocketry firm SpaceX is planning to try out its new upgraded rocket landing legs on its next trip to the International Space Station (ISS) tomorrow. Youtube Video The private space firm has been trying to make the game-changing dream of a precise soft-landing, reusable rocket come true with its Falcon 9 …
Let's hope all goes well on this one.
It should be noted that SpaceX is doing its media relations strategy very well. Someone there deserves a bonus. Remember the Grasshopper? Putting out a press release taking about how they expected to lose a test article 'pushing the envelope' insulated them & stopped the SpaceX fanboys freaking out when they did lose the Grasshopper Mk I.
And now the '50%' figure for successfully landing on the ship? More insulation, and good media relations ground laying.
Or they could just be being totally honest with us but hey, I'm sure no one, in this day & age, believes that...
I still like Elon Musk's twitter comment on the last landing (sea-ing?) test - where he said something like, the rocket wasn't able to remain vertical on entering the sea, so structual integrity was lost - i.e. KABOOM!
If there's one thing that we should know to expect from rocket tests by now, it's KABOOM! Rockets are really good at going bang.
I actually think they are. SpaceX are very up front about the fact that their USP is that they're trying stuff nobody else is thinking about doing. Up front that it's all very early stage (no pun intended) stuff.
For me, the successes they've had so far are remarkable, even given the science and engineering expertise behind it. It's refreshing that SpaceX are not getting carried away with the success they've had (and they obviously have faith in their designs and engineering to be a) trying this stuff and b) telling everyone they're trying it) and are still modest enough to say that, yeah, this may work, it may not, but it'll be cool if it does.
Maybe I'm just incapable of being a cynic when I see people genuinely trying to innovate in the Space industry.
What stops it from just falling over after landing even with the legs? I'm presuming it's pretty tall and it's on a non-static platform. I would have thought it needed something to grab it by the top (or the bottom I guess) just after it lands. Otherwise if there's a bit of a wave, it'll be .. .KABOOM time :(
In one sense, it doesn't matter. If they can land a few rockets on a plaform successfully, they'll soon get permission for landing on dry land. And won't have to worry any more.
Obviously they'd like the rockets to survive, so they can play with them, or even re-launch one.
They could use those harpoons that helicopters do when they land on ships. But it's probably quite hard to recruit a crew to volunteer to sit on the platform and tie it down. If it doesn't blow up first.
They'll have to hope for the right weather. And presumably they can board the platform afterwards, and secure it. Assuming the weather holds out. But the landing legs are 70 feet across. and seeing as the fuel tanks will be empty, and the upper stages are in space, the rocket should be quite bottom heavy.
Because he is.
I'm no cult of personality type, but Elon really is making things happen. Electric cars. Solar panels. Advanced batteries. Spacecraft. None of it is pie in the sky pipe dreams. It's happening and they are each billion dollar everyday industries!
Since the 1950's I have been deliberately and harshly mislead by illustrated encyclopedias, comic books and all manner of other literature, as to the most common, 'proper', and frequently used technique of landing a space ship on earth by means of retro-rockets and a multi-legged arrangement, sporting up-turned dished feet. As and aside, if it hadn't been for the dear old Hawker Siddeley Harrier jump jet I might have given up all together! So, having had to endure many decades of watching lumps of metal plunge earthwards onto barren ground or into the ocean, I find that, personally, I have a lot invested in seeing this contraption 'do it's thing'. Good luck to all involved.
It's refreshing to actually feel excited about something like this.
Whether it's cautious PR or just genuine honesty (I prefer to think it's the latter) the part I really like is the message that '50% chance of success' sends to the next generation of inventors and engineers - that it's OK to try and achieve something even if you don't know it will work. Tomorrow you'll know whether it did and then you'll know what to do next, but nothing happens until you try.
Rocket science is, well, rocket science. The whole point is to make the tube explode in a particular way. I think Musk's crew will figure this out. The prize is billions of dollars worth of free rockets.
I am very excited about what happens from there, especially with Lockheed Martin's talk of a small fusion generator and the NASA Dawn mission to Ceres. These three things have a certain synergy.
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