SpaceX Grasshopper Launch Filmed From Drone Helicopter

garymortimer writes "SpaceX's Grasshopper flew 325 m (1066 feet) – higher than Manhattan's Chrysler Building – before smoothly landing back on the pad. For the first time in this test, Grasshopper made use of its full navigation sensor suite with the F9-R closed loop control flight algorithms to accomplish a precision landing. Most rockets are equipped with sensors to determine position, but these sensors are generally not accurate enough to accomplish the type of precision landing necessary with Grasshopper."

Comments

a few VTOVL predecessors

[Trepidity]

If you're interested in this kind of thing, there are a few videos of tests of similar vehicles from the 1990s, in both the U.S. and Japan. But they never got funding to produce production versions.

Links:

McDonnell Douglas DC-X

Japan Space Agency RVT

The DC-X still holds the record for the highest flight by a VTOVL rocket, though Space-X plans to challenge that record in a future test.

Re: a few VTOVL predecessors

[kellymcdonald78]

Spacecraft 2 (Virgin Galatic's production craft) is not an orbital vehicle (not even close). The problem with wings is that except for the last few min of flight, they are dead weight that needs to be carried all the way to orbit and back. The result is a very inefficient vehicle (the Shuttle stack for example was capable of launching about the same payload as the Saturn V, the problem is, most of that payload was taken up by the shuttle itself. When you're dealing with payload margins of a few percent, the difference between using an engine you already need and some lightweight landing legs vs much heavier wings is substantial.

Re:a few VTOVL predecessors

[ender06]

There is a huge advantage to a VTOL rocket. Obviously the goal here is reusability, but imagine being able to land your rocket back at the very same launch pad it launched from. Do a quick inspection, refuel, launch again. Won't be that simple, but that's the idea. They are actively interested in VTOL, that's the goal of Grasshopper.

The reason this is so much more attractive than a lifting body is that you're taking a lot less extra weight with you every time. The space shuttle was extremely heavy empty, a fair chunk of launch thrust was just launching the shuttle itself, not payloads or the people. So, in short, landing legs and some extra control hardware weigh a lot less than aerobodies and control surfaces. You want to be spending your fuel and thrust on the payload, not the weight of the rocket itself.

Re:a few VTOVL predecessors

[Sla$hPot]

VTOL rockets can be used on all planets with an earth like gravity or less, ie. Mars and most moons + asteroids in our solar system.
Gliding is the exception. Only useful on Earth because of the relatively thick atmosphere and it's many landing strips.
DC-X was and still is the way to go, just like the grasshopper is. Hybrids may be useful too.
Projects like Skylon (if it happens) will be a great way to bring astronauts to and from LEO without the inherent single failure issues that comes with VTOL's.
But VTOL's is a necessity when you wan't to do interplanetary exploration.

Re: a few VTOVL predecessors

[rossdee]

"Don't forget about the landing fuel you have to tote with you along your whole trip. That is not trivial weight."

Which is why a VTOL rocket works better in lower gravity.

It would be useful on a planet with say 1/6th the gravity of earth.

Alternatively maybe we can get Congress to lower the force of gravity. (There is probably more chance that would get passed through the house than say Immigration Reform, gun control, or a balanced budget.)

Re: a few VTOVL predecessors

[FatLittleMonkey]

Don't forget about the landing fuel you have to tote with you along your whole trip. That is not trivial weight.

Actually it is trivial. The rocket is landing almost empty, the extra fuel to get down is vastly less than the amount to go up.

There were industry studies in the '90s and early 2000s that showed fairly conclusively that the added mass of fuel (especially as rockets are never burned dry) is about the same as all the added mass and complexity from a soft-landing parachute system. (Hard landing parachutes are lighter, but not suitable for a reusable system.) Remember, most of your mass is engines and their controllers, pumps, tanks, etc, which you have to carry anyway. And with first stages (which is what Grasshopper is), you can add more fuel without affecting your payload mass. (Reusable upper stages will eat into payload mass.)

[The extra mass required for a horizontal landing, otoh, massively outweighs the small amount extra fuel required for VTOL. They aren't even in the same universe.]

Space takes time...

[taiwanjohn]

I can't wait to see them recover a first stage from an actual launch. Musk has said they might be ready to try it as early as next year. I wish it could be sooner, but space hardware always takes a long time to develop. The dragon capsule is already reusable, though they haven't reused one yet. So if they can reuse the 1st stage too, that could greatly reduce launch costs even before they achieve full reusability. The 2nd stage is probably the cheapest 'segment' of the stack, so it's less urgent to get them fully reusable right away. (I don't know how much the 2nd stage costs, compared to the 1st, but with only one engine instead of nine, it's got to be a huge difference.)

Between this and the upcoming human-rated Dragon with propulsive landing capability, there's a lot of "coolness" in the pipeline for the next few years. And not just from SpaceX... Lots of other "NewSpace" companies are doing cool stuff too, like Masten, XCor, Blue Origin, etc.. It's nice to see so much progress in so many areas.

Re:Space takes time...

[Jarik C-Bol]

"If anyone tells you not to re-invent the wheel, ignore them. The first wheel probably fell apart after about 50 feet. Now wheels last for thousands of miles, at incredible are made from space age materials, and are only related to the original wheel in that they are mostly round. Re-invent the wheel all you want." - Some AC years ago.

Re:Reusable lauching craft

[Rockoon]

My biggest concern here is that the complexity may be the downfall.

I think the main issue is that bringing things down over anything but ocean can have very negative consequences when a failure occurs.

Re:How does it "navigate"?

[wjcofkc]

If you look very closely at the video in high-res at full screen, you can clearly see the stability rockets firing at different times in different positions at different intensities as needed to keep the rocket stable. There is a brief moment in the video where the Grasshopper appears to lean ever so slightly at an angle and drift a bit, it's the best point to see the different thrusters firing with different intensities to stabilize it.

I know this is not the first vertical take off and landing rocket tested over the years, but this thing is pretty incredible, and any entity can make it economically and commercially practical, it's SpaceX.

Elon does it again

[wjcofkc]

Elon Musk, with his money, and business genius, in combination with overall nerdiness, is bent on dragging us kicking and screaming into the long overdue sci-fi future we have all been been impatiently waiting for and desperately dreaming of. The rapid progress his technology companies are achieving is nothing short of breathtaking. He pushes limits so far, and so hard, that those nearly impossible limits have been powerless to push back. I for one have no problem with this. I believe Elon Musk will take his place among the most important and well recognized figures in history. We should all feel very lucky to have him.

Re:Elon does it again

[Teancum]

Really? Can you name any organization that has accomplished what SpaceX has done other than people who have the motto "Waste anything but time"?

Yes, in the 1960's that motto was plastered on posters and put in giant letters inside manufacturing plants for building the Apollo rockets that went to the Moon. That was nearly the same philosophy that the Russian space program had at the same time (although admittedly a smaller budget). To date, very few organization have put anything into orbit that wasn't a national government... usually of a very large country that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. In fact, for manned flight it is only sitting members of that exclusive club and SpaceX might be able to join that elite few very soon.

If you are suggesting that Boeing and Lockheed-Martin (or their predecessor companies) built stuff and sent it into orbit, it sure as heck wasn't on their dime nor were their engineers even the only people building those rockets.

Re:Reusable lauching craft

[bill_mcgonigle]

My biggest concern here is that the complexity may be the downfall. Historically, the cost of the increase in complexity of reusable rocket designs outpaced the value of returning the hardware.

But then they tried the Shuttle to reduce costs below that of rockets (hey, it looked good on papers with politically dictated calculations). Consider the complexity of *that* solution, especially the make-work landings at Edwards!

SpaceX has no motivation other than to deliver rocketry services to its internal and external customers at the most cost-effective price. It would be extraordinary if they hadn't considered the lifecycle costs.

Re:Get off the planet!

[fritsd]

Drones are also honeybees... Just sayin'...

Re:Title/summary mismatch

[Teancum]

The video was filmed by a "helicopter drone". Essentially a slightly larger RC helicopter that had a camera mounted underneath.

Actually that helicopter didn't even need to be all that big, considering the miniaturization of cameras. It is stuff that you can literally just purchase over the internet for a relatively modest amount of money. In other words, something a full-time engineer with a little money to burn could easily afford if they cared and have a hobby on the side. That wasn't even really the story here other than the fact it took footage of something else really remarkable.

The advantage of a drone in this case is that a manned helicopter would be prohibited from the range for safety reasons, so the drone was the only way to get something in that camera angle and proximity. SpaceX has several other cameras from many other angles that were taking footage of the launch... all that would be necessary if there was a serious mishap.

As a matter of fact, Elon Musk has started to grumble to his engineers complaining that they haven't destroyed the Grasshopper yet. He doesn't want them to purposely crater the machine, but he does want them to push the envelope a bit as disasters really are a great way to learn about the performance limits of machines like this.

This particular test only got to 325 feet (the highest one so far), but they want to incrementally move higher and higher... eventually going to several thousand feet. Unfortunately for the SpaceX engineers, those tests will need to happen some place other than central Texas as high altitude tests will interfere with aircraft traffic and could crater into Waco, Texas as an outside potential. They are eventually going to move these tests to New Mexico... at least that seems to be the current plan that I've seen and based upon launch permit applications SpaceX has already made to the FAA.

I've heard it suggested that this technology may even be tested in an upcoming Falcon 9 launch, where an attempt to at least slow down and attempt recovery of the first stage after launch will be made.

Re:Little or no wind?

[r2kordmaa]

If you look at the video more closely as the grasshopper hovers you can see it leans just enough into wind. There is no such thing as "no wind" at 300m, ever, nowhere in the world.