SpaceX Reveals Plans For Full Launch System Re-usability

FleaPlus writes "During a talk at the National Press Club, SpaceX's Elon Musk revealed the company's plans for making their Falcon 9 rocket fully reusable. A rendering depicts the first stage, upper stage, and Dragon capsule all separately returning to the Earth's surface and making a controlled, rocket-powered landing. During the next few years SpaceX will be testing VTVL (Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing) maneuvers and re-usability with their Falcon 9-based 'Grasshopper' testbed, with up to 70 test launches per year. Musk stated that if reuse is successful, it would result in a 100x reduction in their already-low launch costs, a key step toward Musk's long-term aim of lowering the price of a ticket to Mars to $500K."

Comments

Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Doc Ruby]

I am glad Americans invested in the Space Shuttle programme that gave, among so many other benefits, the basic R&D into reusable space vehicles and launch systems for them, to SpaceX, the rest of the growing private space industry, and to the world in general.

I look forward to SpaceX and its competitors paying the taxes that will repay that investment, even as they make good profits without having had to take the risks or pay the costs of those decades of R&D on their own.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Doc Ruby]

You do know that the 1980s were 30 years ago, right? In fact, since the Shuttle R&D started in the 1970s (and of course earlier, using prior designs as departure), it's over 30 years. You do realize that all NASA spaceflight is R&D work, right? People at SpaceX surely know that.

How did it match the money poured into it? Even ignoring the tremendous return on investment from NASA budgets, anyone honest at SpaceX would tell you the new private industry owes a vast debt to NASA's programmes. That it can repay naturally in taxes from its profitable operations.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Darth Snowshoe]

Just because you are unfamiliar with the real and significant scientific and engineering advances that were part of the shuttle effort, does not mean they do not exist.

You know, I am continually offended and amazed by the amount and quality of the scorn heaped on NASA by slashdot denizens. NASA did what it did, it's easy to look back thirty years and trash talk about how much better you could have done. The real evidence is that no one exceeded or even came close to NASA's accomplishment with the initial shuttles, for many years afterwards.

Noone was keeping private industry from going into space in, say, 1985 or 1992. 1992 was a great year. How many private shuttle flights were there? How many?

If you think the manned space program is too bureaucratic now, well, your government agrees with you, and that's why its taking the steps it is taking. But history is pretty clear that when the shuttles were first designed and built, they were innovations.

It's a political stance, unburdened by facts, that if only the government oppressor, which consumes all resources and innovative ideas, were somehow to be pushed back, Ayn Rand's nephew would show up and build us a wonderful and lucrative train track to Mars. The truth is, we use government as a means to organize ourselves for several tasks we feel everyone should contribute to, be it defense or education or assurance of clean drinking water. NASA did things then, and continues to do things today, for which there is not an immediate payoff but that we feel there is value in doing. Are we always right? Assuredly not. The evidence is clear though that many of the things which NASA did first, others have followed.
   

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[h4rr4r]

No the shuttle was designed so that it needed the entire US military contractor complex. The Shuttle was purpose designed to spend as much tax payer funds as possible.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Andy Dodd]

You clearly don't know much about the Space Shuttle.

In terms of reusability, it was an utter and complete failure.

Yes it was "reusable", but it turned out more expensive to launch than one-shot non-reusable systems because its reusability approach was completely hosed. For example, half the tiles needed to be replaced after each launch.

That's why the Space Shuttle has been decommissioned in favor of nonreusable systems.

SpaceX's reuasbility research will use nothing from the shuttle except possibly lessons learned on what NOT to do.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[AliasMarlowe]

This 500K$ to Mars thing... Is it so different from "pray this much to get into Heaven"?

Yes. The cost of getting to Mars is empirically measurable, and the target is to get that cost below a specified level.
That makes them as different as fire and ice.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[squidflakes]

You know, I think that if I had to choose, I'd gladly take the Space Nutter religion over it's competitors.

Traditional Religion says that there is a man living in the sky and he sees everything we do.
Space Nutterism put a man in the sky, and has been able to keep them there off and on since the 1970s. Those men were able to see much, and the unmanned cameras we put up along side them have made tremendous contributions to farming, fire fighting, building, and anything else that relies on the weather or accurate maps.

Traditional Religion says that Heaven (and it's equivalents) are beautiful places full of delights and wonders that you'll get to see when you die.
Space Nutterism put cameras on the ground and in space and we now have beautiful, wonderful, delightful pictures of the heavens that anyone can see, just about any time they want.

Traditional Religion says you should live in peace with your fellow man, but you're free to kill them if they disagree on the name of your invisible sky man.
Space Nutterism has pulled together men and women from different nations, religions, and economic classes and caused them all to work together on projects that have made life better for the whole lot of us.

Traditional Religion gives us stories from long ago and states that if you just believe in the invisible sky man hard enough, amazing things could happen to you.
Space Nutterism gives us video, pictures, audio recordings, and the actual artifacts that have been to amazing places and done amazing things.

Traditional Religion says that, through your invisible sky man, all things are possible.
Space Nutterism says that through our own hard work and cleverness, all things are possible.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[slashtivus]

There's only one thing learned from the Shuttle debacle. Namely, don't let NASA build and fly its own launch vehicle.

The shuttle was a bit of a boondoggle, but you are blaming NASA, when in all honesty it had many congress-critters and Air-force fingers involved in its design and deployment. It's rather disingenuous to place all the decision responsibility solely in the hands of NASA.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Ihmhi]

It's not just a government problem here.

Serious R&D can be a money sink, but when you come up with the right thing it can bring in a ton of money - in the long term. That's the problem. Businesses today only give a flying fuck about the next quarter's earnings. Having a loss this quarter to make a huge profit five years down the line is blasphemy in the gospel of modern American business.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[jnaujok]

Seeing that I looked into what it would take to launch a sub-orbital vehicle in 2000, I can tell you right now there were a lot of barriers to commercial space flight before the X-Prize drove the FAA to loosen regulations.

To launch a sub-orbital sounding rocket in 2000, I would have needed a government approved launch site, would have had to acquire something in the neighborhood of a million dollars of permits from the FAA, then paid to have multiple reentry studies done by "accredited research facilites" (read NASA and JPL) to determine the potential damage of a failed launch on down-field areas, at a cost of no less than $500,000 each. It was required under FAA regulations to carry at least one *billion* (yes, billion) dollars of insurance in case of launch failure, and the rocket would require a complete abort system capable of destroying the craft, which would have to be shown as reliable through no less than three successful static tests resulting in the full destruction of the vehicle.

That's just off the top of my head from what I remember. I went and actually got all the information I could find and it was a stack of requirements near two inches thick. And all I was trying to do was break the altitude record for a "model" rocket. But because I had the potential of breaking 100km of altitude, it was no longer considered a "model" and FAA rules applied to it.

So don't say there were no barriers in 1985 or 1992. That's just not true. No start-up could have afforded all the licensing and regulation overhead required to get their first rocket off the ground. The launch market was a locked-in old boys club between the existing military contractors like Lockheed and Boeing so they could continue to control the lucrative pricing structure. Unless you really think it cost Lockheed 10 times as much to build a rocket than it costs SpaceX?

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[mrchaotica]

That's why the Space Shuttle has been decommissioned in favor of nonreusable systems.

I believe you're mistaken: the Space Shuttle has been decommissioned in favor of NOTHING AT ALL.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[ColdWetDog]

Exactly. Most of research is learning 'what not to do'.

Douglas Adams quote:

A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Teancum]

There may be all sorts of electronics, sensors, materials, etc. that wer developed for the shuttle systems that SpaceX may have incorporated into the Falcon and Dragon rockets.

Not much at all. The Falcon rocket is most notable as being the first rocket to be using Ethernet protocols (TCP/IP) as a part of the main communications bus for internal signals within the rocket (I think it uses a fiber optic cable) and much more modern electronics. The original Shuttle guidance computer was basically a 16 bit computer not much more sophisticated than the 8088 CPU that IBM used for the original IBM PC. The controller on each separate Merlin engine is considerably more sophisticated where the R&D for their development comes more from the operations of the M1A1 tank than from anything NASA did (in terms of milspec electronics).

Mind you, this is just the electronics portion that I'm familiar with. Most of the rest of the computers used by the Space Shuttle were standard computers like a MacIntosh laptop or stuff that came from the major aircraft manufacturers that was later engineered for the Shuttle more as an afterthought. The Space Shuttle certainly was not on the bleeding edge of technology for electronics or even sensors.

Advances in materials? Again, it really didn't impact the Falcon or Dragon development. I'll admit that in the 1970's the tile designs were original and brought about new classes of ceramics that were used in many other projects. Still.... how many years ago was that?

The Space Shuttle Main Engine certainly is a jewel of technical achievement.... but it is designed to use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as fuels. The Merlin engine on the Falcon uses rocket-grade kerosene.... which has very different performance characteristics. Again, not much in terms of technical heritage and in fact the Merlin engine owes much more to the F1 engine built for the Saturn V.

Sorry, this argument simply doesn't hold water unless you can provide some much better examples than the ones I've laid out here. Most of the advances in materials and technology which was used in the Falcon and in the Dragon capsule came either from private industry or from military developments (where I suppose you can claim TCP/IP in an extreme fashion). Technology from NASA? Not much.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[FatLittleMonkey]

anyone honest at SpaceX would tell you the new private industry owes a vast debt to NASA's programmes.

Errr, they do. Openly. Like Bigelow acknowledges that their modules are based on Transhab.

What people like you seem to be unable to acknowledge, is that all of that NASA R&D has been available to NASA for the entire time they've failed to develop a shuttle replacement.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Truth is life]

The truth is much more complicated. There were literally dozens of variations of shuttle design, and most (even from the very very beginning of the design program, way back in '67 or so) involved the final orbiter hanging off the side of something. Initially, it was because it is hard to design an airplane which doesn't have an aerodynamic nose (the original booster designs were generally airplane-like). Later, it was because the needed tankage for the hydrogen and oxygen to be used by the orbiter was very bulky and would be too difficult to house in the orbiter itself, so they decided to make it external. Obviously, it's hard to fire your engines sitting on top of something, so that meant it had to be on the side.

This, by the way, means that tmosley is wrong. There were always good engineering reasons to put the Orbiter on the side of the ET, which is why that design was adopted. And if he thinks that private industry would have less reason to cost-cut (especially if there probably wouldn't be much risk until you had already made it golden)...

"we should not be afraid to die"

[OzPeter]

That was a line from the backing song. Interesting choice.
 
On a different topic. It takes X amount of rocket fuel to move a payload to orbit. It takes Y amount of rocket fuel to soft land the components back to Earth. So can anyone give ball park figures for X and Y that would make sense in the context of delivering people to the ISS? It seems to me that scaling up X to include Y in the payload is a losing game.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[camperdave]

Barring aerodynamic effects, it takes as much effort to lift a mass to orbit as to lower it from orbit. (You can consider a launch/landing as a special orbit that intersects the planet's surface.) However, there are certain things to take note of:

• Booster rockets are almost never empty when they are jettisoned. They will all have extra fuel on board. (You want to make sure the boosters run at least the minimum length of time it takes to get the rocket up.)
• Boosters will already have small ullage or kick motors to make them fall away properly, so to get them to flip the booster around is not a big deal
• There are atmospheric effects that you can use to your advantage on the way back down, eg. aerobraking, backgliding, etc.
• Since the various stages are expending fuel, they don't mass as much on landing as they do on launch, so it doesn't take as much effort to land as it did to take off.

Having said that, though, the extra fuel they need to load on to make the landings possible will cut into their payload delivery capacity. Of course, the payload capacity of a Falcon 9 is far more than what's needed to launch a fully loaded Dragon to the ISS, so they have the margin to play with.

This seems unlikely to work

[JoshuaZ]

This requires separate landing systems for each stage of the rocket. This is a lot more added mass. And the worst thing to add to a rocket is more mass. Simple reusable systems like parachutes (as were used by the shuttle's solid rocket boosters) are one thing, but full-out rocket powered landing will weigh a lot more, will require a lot of additional fuel, and will add all sorts of technical requirements.

At this point, it doesn't seem that chemical rockets will become that more efficient barring major breakthroughs, like much lighter alloys, or totally new chemical reactions for the fuel. Neither of these seem very likely right now, and the second seems to be much less likely. The first also won't do that much. At this point, I have to be wondering if we should be spending a lot more resources on researching non-rocket methods of going to space. It seems like we may have a bad example of technological lockin since we've put so much work into chemical rockets.

But there are a lot of other methods out there and we should be looking at them. Nuclear rockets are an obvious example, and they can be built without having any serious radioactivity (you use a conventional fission reactor to heat steam). The basic reactor can be suprisingly light- in the 1950s the US and the USSR both experimented with nuclear powered aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_aircraft and reactor technology has improved a lot since then. Another possibility is a space gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun. They have been successfully used to do suborbital lobs. They are completely reusable. And since they don't require sending most of their own fuel into space they avoid the common problem of needing more fuel to lift fuel (which is why rockets get bigger fast compared to the size of payload). There are more exotic ideas also like launch loops, space elevators, and space fountains but they seem to be much further from practicality at this point. In the case of space elevators, the main technical problem is making enough high quality nanotubes in a supporting resin, and research into that is ongoing because high quality carbon nanotubes will be useful a large number of different much more mundane technologies.

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[tgd]

If you can cut your payload in half, and in return cut your costs to launch that payload in half, you break even on your launches.

If you cut your payload in half to have recoverable rockets, but you cut the cost of the launch by 90%, you can launch five times as much to orbit for the same price.

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[FleaPlus]

This requires separate landing systems for each stage of the rocket. This is a lot more added mass. And the worst thing to add to a rocket is more mass. ... At this point, it doesn't seem that chemical rockets will become that more efficient barring major breakthroughs, like much lighter alloys, or totally new chemical reactions for the fuel. Neither of these seem very likely right now, and the second seems to be much less likely.

Actually, the Merlin engines SpaceX has been using have been getting more efficient, with the new engines providing 50% more thrust and a slightly higher ISP than their earlier engines. This extra capability is presumably what allows them to "spend" mass on things like VTVL landing systems and the required excess propellant.

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[Nethemas the Great]

Fuel is ~$200,000 per launch, the rocket is ~$51,000,000. Even if they failed to recover the launcher 50% of the time... Even if they had to launch twice for every non-recoverable launcher they're still outclassing the non-reusable launcher on cost by two orders of magnitude. SpaceX would be brain dead to not try.

DCX - SSTO

[tekrat]

I peripherally worked on the DC-X program which was a single stage to orbit concept vehicle that would have eventually lead to a larger rocket that was considered as a shuttle replacement.

The problem with the DCX was that it had to reserve fuel for the landing. The whole idea was to take off from something no bigger than a heli-pad (no gantry, and just a few people manning launch control) fly, and land back on the heli-pad.

Worked great until you got to the landing part: Two big issues were during landing, thrust would bounce off the tarmac, and end up setting the rocket on fire, the other problem was the landing gear. On one test flight, one leg failed to deploy, the rocket landed, then tipped over and exploded... which essentially killed the project.

The DCX was conceived during Reagen's "Star Wars" project, and built and flown during the Clinton era.

Unless there's been some breakthrough for the Falcon, I believe Musk is going to run into exactly the same issues.

Personally, I believe Rutan is on a better track, following the X-15 and scaling up. That's the only method for full re-useability.

Re:DCX - SSTO

[joh]

The DC-X failure happened because they were on a shoestring budget, couldn't afford neither redundancy in the pneumatic lines for leg deployment nor someone checking twice (someone forgot to connect a line before launch)...

What do you think would have happened to the Space Shuttle if they had treated the hardware the same way? *Everything* operated like DC-X would fail. There is no room for amateurs in spaceflight, period.

Another Big Announcement

[PopeRatzo]

SpaceX Reveals Plans For Full Launch System Re-usability

And I'm revealing my plans for world domination with an army of supermodels.

SpaceX might want to do a little less revealing of plans and a little more flying in space. I'm getting tired of hearing about what they're gonna do and would like to hear a little more about what they've done besides send up another roman candle.

Re:Another Big Announcement

[Haelyn]

And I'm revealing my plans for world domination with an army of supermodels.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Another Big Announcement

[FatLittleMonkey]

I'm getting tired of hearing about what they're gonna do and would like to hear a little more about what they've done

Between June 2002 to December 2010, they: Designed, built and flew an entirely new rocket engine. And designed, built and flew two completely new launchers based on that new rocket engine. And designed, built, flew and landed and recovered an entirely new pressurised cargo capsule large enough to be modified to carry crew. And they spent about $600 million on all those developments. NASA and its prime contractors literally cannot do that.

Now they are working on man-rating their launcher. And making that launcher reusable. And building an entirely new type of launch abort system for their capsule. And make a crewed version of that capsule. And building an even bigger launcher. And building a new bigger rocket engine. And getting commercial and government customers for their existing launchers. And all for a shoestring contribution from NASA.

In the same period NASA and its prime contractors tried to build two new launchers based on existing hardware, with a new capsule, for several tens of billions of dollars. And failed. So they are now hoping to build one big launcher based on existing hardware, and a capsule, for several more tens of billions of dollars. And if they are very lucky, they will have it ready for manned launch by 2020.

And I'm revealing my plans for world domination with an army of supermodels.

And if you had already taken over several nations with a battalion of regular models, I would take you more seriously.

Re:Another Big Announcement

[PopeRatzo]

The reason they can brag about what they are going to do next is because they can also brag about what they've done.

"What they've done"? Is putting an unmanned vehicle into orbit, with help from NASA, in 2010 such a big deal? Really?

Didn't NASA do that about fifty years ago?

Re:No wear rockets?

[Thagg]

I was with Musk right up until he said 100x cheaper.

If he had said 2x cheaper, that would have been a revolution, 10x cheaper is substantially beyond believability, but 100x cheaper just means that he's lying, and doesn't care that you know it.

Landing the first stage makes some sense -- it's the biggest part, and it's not going all that fast at burnout, and it's not all that far from the launch pad at that point, either. It's light and has a lot of drag, and should slow down quickly.

The second stage though, is really iffy. It appears that they're going to land it at the end of the first orbit. All the weight of the stage is toward the back -- the engines, and the landing struts. But, they're showing the stage re-entering nose-first -- unless they're carrying a lot of balllast (or a *lot* of fuel) the stage will be unstable for reentry -- and stability during reentry is not something you want to be unsure about! Keeping the cryogenic fuel and oxidizer cold in flight-weight tanks during four of five minutes of reentry is going to be a massive challenge -- and if you're going to do it with ablative surfaces then it's really not all that reusable, is it?

Anyway, I admire the man and the company enormously; and wish him all the best. There are surely things I don't know about the program, but I'll enjoy watching!

People seem to forget one thing

[magamiako1]

SpaceX has yet to put a person into space, let alone to the ISS, let alone returning safely, let alone a person on the moon.

All of this talk about how "SUPER CHEAP AND AWESOME IT CAN BE WHILE BEING PRIVATIZED" means NOTHING until they show that they can do it safely and repeatedly with a human being.

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[CaptainLard]

show that they can do it safely and repeatedly with a human being.

Thats exactly what they are doing step by step. You gotta walk before you can run. They've had several successful launches and are working toward their goal very successfully, especially given the difficulty of the task. Haven't you ever produced a schedule for work? Or do you just keep your boss out of the loop for 6 months and just show up one day with the final product?

Re:Slightly worrying

[camperdave]

It sounds reasonable, but it also sounds like someone doesn't want SpaceX to have the enormous PR gain of launching a mission to the ISS when everyone else's pants are down.

For the tests, SpaceX needs two astronauts onboard the ISS who are qualified to operate the DEXTRE/Canadarm2 robotic arm. One is on board, and the other was set to launch on a Soyuz around this time. However, the accident has shifted the launch schedules, so the second astronaut won't make it up in time for SpaceX to make their qualification flight this year.

But maybe you're right. Maybe they blew up a Progress re-supply ship and endangered the lives of not only the ISS crew, but all the ground crew at the launch site (not to mention the millions of dollars that a supply schedule slip brings about), just to make SpaceX look bad.

Reusable Falcons

[mbone]

I was there for the talk, and had a little chat with Mr. Musk beforehand. The first thing to note is that he said that the video (which should go on their web page soon) is incomplete and may be vague about certain things, for proprietary reasons. What follows is my reverse engineering.

This is what the Grasshopper described previously in Slashdot is all about. Mr. Musk didn't use the word Grasshopper at all, so it must have been some sort of code word, but the tests in Texas will clearly be for Falcon reuse engineering.

Now, it makes no sense to return the first stage to the landing pad (as he said). The first stage is on a ballistic trajectory which (for a launch from Cape Canaveral) would have it impact somewhere far out at sea. It makes no sense at all to have the first stage reverse course and fly back to the Cape, as that would take as much delta-V as the original launch. It would make a lot more sense to land that stage in Ascension Island, Africa or Nova Scotia (depending on the inclination of the orbit). The first stage could then brought back by ship or plane.

The second stage actually goes into orbit, and the plan is to deorbit it one rev later. The trouble with that is the Earth rotates and the Earth will have rotated by ~ 20 degrees of longitude. That (again for a launch from the Cape) puts it over Texas, and it could conveniently land at McGregor, Texas, where SpaceX is doing their Grasshopper tests. So, although they haven't said so, I bet that McGregor will be the second stage landing area, and probably the Dragon landing area as well.

WHERE the heck are they going to launch it?

[wisebabo]

Look, the first stage doesn't just go up, it goes (presumably) eastwards to take advantage of the earth's rotation. So, if they launch from Florida the nearest land is, Africa. That means a foreign country and transport back by sea, not good for cost savings. If they launch from say California then you have all the hazards of a launch over land (isn't Vandenberg used primarily for westward ICBM testing and polar launches for this reason?).

Also, the second stage, even though it looks like it might go all the way to orbit doesn't appear to have much cross-range capability (no aerodynamic surfaces). So its choice of landing sites might be severely restricted. Finally, just to nitpick, the system isn't "completely" reusable, the service module looks like it is abandoned in orbit.

By the way, I think Elon Musk should henceforth be given the mantle of "Rocketman"! NOTHING (other than the heat shields) is used to slow down the stages AND CAPSULE other than ROCKETS; not parachutes or lifting bodies or airbags! He's got a LOT of faith that they will function in absolutely split second critical situations. WOW.

Still I say, go for it! If he can make the rockets work, maybe they can launch from that spaceport in New Mexico. (Maybe he'll have to give the FAA a destruct switch on a MANNED spacecraft in order to launch over populated areas). Has engineering gone so far as to really make these things that reliable?

NASA ROI

[sjbe]

Yes, this demonstrates the vast value of government. Throw a few hundred billion in, get a billion dollar rocket out.

I hope you were joking because the ROI on research dollars invested in NASA to the US economy is somewhere between 3X and 14X depending on which study you look at. There are over 1650 spin off technologies. NASA may run an inefficient manned space program but they are a genuine research powerhouse that MORE than pays for itself once you consider it's net effect on the economy. Just because the benefit isn't a direct one doesn't mean it isn't a benefit.