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Masten and Armadillo Perform First VTVL Restarts
FleaPlus writes "Recently Masten Aerospace, winner of NASA's 2009 Lunar Lander Challenge, demonstrated using its Xombie vehicle the first-ever mid-flight restart of a VTVL (vertical-takeoff vertical-landing) rocket, a critical capability for the emerging suborbital/microgravity science and passenger markets (video from ground). Not to be outdone, John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace (winner of the 2008 Lunar Lander Challenge) flew its Mod rocket to 2,000 feet (610m), deployed a drogue parachute, and then restarted the engine to land (multi-view video showing John Carmack at the controls)."
I would venture to say that this is definitely a win for private-sector aerospace. (:
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
And now we know why he's doing this.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Considering John Carmacks history of sucessfull rocket launcher designs we shouldn't really be suprised they managed a sucessfull rocket jump.
This is incredibly impressive.. the craft is very unstable when the drogue chute deploys but Carmack's software is smart enough to level out just with thrust vectoring (*not* easy to do, especially when you are subject to the varying conditions of our atmosphere).
John's new 3d engine looks sweet. Incredible detail! Are there plans for a rail gun?
Very impressive, but these are just jump-jets for now - sort of rocket helicopters. Going from what we saw to something that can get to orbit, deposit a payload, and return to earth undamaged is going to take a lot more work. Good luck to both teams.
Bruce Perens.
Yep, the fuel requirements alone just for getting into orbit are pretty steep. Adding in the requirements of refiring the motor and bringing the whole shebang to earth without a bang makes me think we're going to see even huger fuel cans flying up with even smaller payloads.
Then again, with the ability to start the motor while in freefall, I wonder if they plan to launch these things by dropping them from a high-altitude jet first? Getting them up high before they even fire would save some on fuel.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Seventh and eighth, sctually.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
So how long before a corporation launches a factory into (relatively) permanent orbit, for manufacturing in microgravity and near-vacuum? Will factories like that be able to dump their products back into the ocean for collection by delivery ships?
I want to see if aerogels can be made in orbit not just cheaply, but with their internal structure oriented so they can be regular windows. They're such good insulators, and have such small mass per surface area that they could probably be dropped from orbit into the ocean without any extra packaging. Or as packaging containing other, more fragile stuff made in orbit and then the aerogel reused for its own applications once it's collected at the surface.
--
make install -not war
Apogee code word--did you get it?
I like the Motorola GMRS radios, too.
Kriston
I'm reminded of the Lander game while watching these videos. They should try testing this thing out on non-flat terrain with limited fuel :)
A simple one-shot kill weapon where you only have to aim and shoot to kill - in an instant of time, it reduces it to a 2D problem.
I am waiting for the grenades. That's where it is at baby, 4D - you got to bounce AND time them.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
MADE IN LEO
I might pay extra for that... but only if the product was worth it.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The instability was due to the dynamics of the drogue parachute, which was intended to ensure that the vehicle didn't turn upside down due to air drag before the engine lit. It did that but the length of the parachute harness ended up being such that the vehicle moved unsteadily at that descent rate.
That's a minor problem and easy to fix, with a different length harness or other aerodynamics.
With a vehicle which was aerodynamically stable going down base first, it wouldn't be a problem either. That particular test craft (and Masten's similar one) will probably turn and fall nose-first if they fall any significant distance. These are low altitude test rockets, not the final high speed high altitude models, so some problems appear with these models that will be engineered out of the final models.
You fix those short-term problems with the most cheap and reliable band-aid you can, since you're planning on a different airframe as the long term fix. The parachute was the band-aid. Not a perfect band-aid, but an acceptable one.
No, the landing stage DID an in-flight restart. That's what I just said.
First DPS burn was the Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI) burn.
Second DPS burn was the landing burn.
After landing was staging, and then the APS burn.
The DPS operation is what is being described.
Quoth TFA: "VTVL launch vehicles conserve fuel by shutting down their engines during the coast and re-entry phase of a flight."
The LM did a burn to DOI and then did another burn to land.
TFA says nothing about using the same engine for takeoff and landing, TFA claims this was the first restart period.
It's nice and easy seeing physics works in games and simulations but RL is just so damn sweet. 1up for John and team :)
I read it as "Marston in Armadillo Performs..." Guess I've been playing Red Dead Redemption just a tiny bit too much.
In this particular case, I don't think the drogue parachute was really necessary for vehicle control before re-light, but it might be something more critical if Armadillo goes for a much higher altitude attempt. What they were testing was the overall flight profile, which for higher altitude flights will certainly involve a parachute of some kind for multiple reasons.
If anything, the drogue chute in this case actually added instability to the vehicle and to me proved the test all that more in terms of the ability to recover from an unstable situation and bring it back on course to a clean landing. In some ways, I was more impressed with the Armadillo test than the Masten one, but they were both quite impressive.
It is also kind of fun to see two companies like this compete with each other for what are aviation firsts too!
I remember playing that on the Apple ][ a long long time ago. And I did it with only a side-view too.
so what's so hard about that?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I'm sure the Drogue chute also made sure that the vehicle did not take a nose down attitude, which would have been very hard to recover from! Their freefall time was much longer than the Maston flights!
Did anybody else besides me wonder what got knocked off the Maston rocket on the semi-hard landing? Just prior to the end of the Video you can see a circular piece of metal falling through the scene and making a Kaaching sound on hitting the landing pad!
Yes, I'll admit that may have been a concern, but it wasn't really all that much longer of a free fall time than what Maston did. It is hard to say "what if the chute had never been there in the first place" as it was there, but as I said.... it was a part of the overall flight profile.
Other reasons to include a parachute include safety, saving some reaction mass (aka propellant) during the descent phase of the profile on much higher flights, and as has been stated to also help with attitude control when the engines are off. It also helps to settle the fuel at the bottom of the tank after significant free-fall time.... something that wasn't an issue at all for this particular test.
It is the overall flight profile that is the interesting part, and the fact that Armadillo is even using a parachute at all. They certainly could (and indeed did show) that they can recover from huge instability in their flight characteristics. The 3 or so seconds that the vehicles was falling was hardly enough time to get a nose down attitude and from watching the video it appears as though the parachute actually increased the instability of the vehicle by adding torque and an oscillation factor that needs to be reviewed with a better parachute.
That can be fixed and there are other things for Armadillo to be worrying about, so the real point of the test is to simply show that a parachute can be deployed at all and what a more complex launch profile might involve for much, much longer flights. They aren't going to be following the flight profiles of their Lunar Landing Challenge flights as they are dealing with trying to get out of the Earth's gravity, not the Moon's.