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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."
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.
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.
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make install -not war
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
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.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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.
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.
I believe you're mistaken: the Space Shuttle has been decommissioned in favor of NOTHING AT ALL.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.'
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!