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In Daring Plan, Tomorrow SpaceX To Land a Rocket On Floating Platform
HughPickens.com writes "The cost of getting to orbit is exorbitant, because the rocket, with its multimillion-dollar engines, ends up as trash in the ocean after one launching, something Elon Musk likens to throwing away a 747 jet after a single transcontinental flight. That's why tomorrow morning at 620 am his company hopes to upend the economics of space travel in a daring plan by attempting to land the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket intact on a floating platform, 300 feet long and 170 feet wide in the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX has attempted similar maneuvers on three earlier Falcon 9 flights, and on the second and third attempts, the rocket slowed to a hover before splashing into the water. "We've been able to soft-land the rocket booster in the ocean twice so far," says Musk. "Unfortunately, it sort of sat there for several seconds, then tipped over and exploded. It's quite difficult to reuse at that point."
After the booster falls away and the second stage continues pushing the payload to orbit, its engines will reignite to turn it around and guide it to a spot about 200 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida. Musk puts the chances of success at 50 percent or less but over the dozen or so flights scheduled for this year, "I think it's quite likely, 80 to 90 percent likely, that one of those flights will be able to land and refly." SpaceX will offer its own launch webcast on the company's website beginning at 6 a.m. If SpaceX's gamble succeeds, the company plans to reuse the rocket stage on a later flight. "Reusability is the critical breakthrough needed in rocketry to take things to the next level." SpaceX announced the plan in December.
After the booster falls away and the second stage continues pushing the payload to orbit, its engines will reignite to turn it around and guide it to a spot about 200 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida. Musk puts the chances of success at 50 percent or less but over the dozen or so flights scheduled for this year, "I think it's quite likely, 80 to 90 percent likely, that one of those flights will be able to land and refly." SpaceX will offer its own launch webcast on the company's website beginning at 6 a.m. If SpaceX's gamble succeeds, the company plans to reuse the rocket stage on a later flight. "Reusability is the critical breakthrough needed in rocketry to take things to the next level." SpaceX announced the plan in December.
delayed. Rocket launches get delayed often. If you're new to this, get used to it.
Stratolaunch does kind of makes sense from the delay perspective, if we're gonna aim at something like daily orbital launches in the future (although of course in this case, the delay wasn't weather-related). Jets are much more tolerant of bad weather than rockets, so being able to fly above the weather or move away from it is pretty appealing.
Their engines are already reused "sort of". They test fire their engines before launch. One time they evens scrubbed a launch after the engines were lit. They fixed the problem in a few hours and launched after that.
One of the reasons payloads cost multi-billion dollars is because the launchers cause near that amount. Cheaper launchers will lead to cheaper payloads..
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
In all honesty, from looking around me these days ... I conclude that doing actual R&D on the leading edge of stuff is itself daring.
Increasingly, companies want to make a "me too" product or do things based on what focus groups tell them is good.
Hell, even some tech companies seem to be retreating from meaningful R&D and focusing on "leveraging and monetizing their IP portfolio".
Nobody is willing to invest in R&D any more unless it gets them a tax break. And in that case, they'll try to tell you to categorize a ton of unrelated stuff as part of the R&D effort so the accountants can maximize the write off.
So, me, I'll still stick with daring. Saying you figure you have a less than 50% chance of success these days is pretty bold.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Even if they can recover the engine intact how many times can it be reused. Saving a few million on a higher chance of blowing up multi billion payloads is not exactly wise economically.
I have heard they have already put engines through 40 or more simulated launch cycles. These engines were designed to be reliable. To a certain extent, having tested an engine through previous launches might imply more reliability, at least up to a certain point. In any case, if they recover the rocket, they will be able to analyze how the launch has affected the structure and systems.
These rockets do not use hydrogen, and thus do not have the problems of embrittlement that the shuttle engines had. I suspect one of the bigger problems will be coking from using kerosine fuel, but I also suspect that can be mitigated using solvents to clean the fuel systems.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
" I conclude that doing actual R&D on the leading edge of stuff is itself daring."
In the 1960s, companies hired you and they paid YOU to do R&D.
Today, universities are the R&D branch of corporations. Universities soak up public money (most of it funneled into textbook companies and top-heavy administration) and students pay the university,.
Then the students can get some nice debt, and go begging for the few technical jobs left out there.
Mostly random stuff.
Once SpaceX has worked out the kinks and has implemented this as a good way to reduce costs, some patent troll will step forward showing that he patented the very concept of this in 1998. "Elon Musk stole my invention".
The lawsuit will of course be filed in the court of East Texas.
The external solid boosters were sort of reused - the entire rocket needed to be disassembled, and about 5k parts were refurbished and reused. The shuttle engines themselves were pretty much the same thing, they were taken apart and refurbished every mission.
SpaceX wants to only partially disassemble key components of their 1st stage in a way that they could potentially send up the same 1st stage within a week. Some parts will be replaced, most others inspected, but they are not all getting rebuilt/refurbished every single takeoff.
Trying to balance a big pencil on a postage stamp that's moving unpredictably and simultaneously in 4 axises (pitch, roll, yaw, altitude) doesn't seem to have very high odds of success. And the worse the sea is running, the lower the odds.
If it works, though, count me really impressed by what would surely be a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The nice thing about SpaceX's approach is that a Rocket launches, flies and lands like a rocket. The shuttle, spaceplane aproach attempts to build something that is both a rocket and an airplane. The result may be both rocket and plane but it is neither a very good rocket nor a very good plane.
Space shuttle pilots use to refer to the lander as a "flying brick". That was not a compliment!
"We've been able to soft-land the rocket booster in the ocean twice so far," says Musk. "Unfortunately, it sort of sat there for several seconds, then tipped over and exploded. [...]"
"Everyone said I was daft to land a rocket in the ocean, but I did it all the same, just to show them. It sank in the ocean. So I built a second one. That sank in the ocean. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank in the ocean. But the fourth one stayed up!"
I think I'll go for a walk now...
The SRBs were re-used as well as the engines connected to the Shuttle itself.
The external tank is jettisoned too high to recover. It was thought that it could be used in space to construct something but that was never done.
Even if they can recover the engine intact how many times can it be reused. Saving a few million on a higher chance of blowing up multi billion payloads is not exactly wise economically.
Think of it this way: if they can fly the first stage 20 times, that along with some cost optimizations of the upper stage could cut the cost per pound by a factor of ten. Then it would become economical to launch mere multi-hundred million dollar payloads. That would dramatically reduce the economical risk of any single launch, as long as the rocket is not ten times as likely to blow up, but rather only maybe twice as likely.
Of course, anyone who launches a lot of rockets of the same type is likely to become really good at getting that type to orbit in one piece. Just look at the Russians and their now ancient Soyuz rocket.
Keep cutting costs and you might one day have a system where you could launch a ten million dollar payload, which you could easily insure at your local insurance company.
The external tank is jettisoned too high to recover. It was thought that it could be used in space to construct something but that was never done.
As much as this played out in various types of fiction and so forth, the reality is that the tanks wouldn't have been all that useful in orbit. The foam insulation would have off-gassed significantly and dumped all sorts of crap into your orbital environment, and the tanks themselves had nowhere near the shielding required to be used for human habitation (both radiation, and micrometeorite).
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
So, let's look at history for a (possible) answer. The Apollo flights were all "just came out of the VAB" flights. There were 40 of them, including a loong unmanned test series (17 manned flights). Counting Apollo 13, two of them failed. Which gives you 5% failure rate (including 13), or 2.5% failure rate (not).
Shuttle had 135 missions, with two failures. Failure rate ~1.5%.
So, shuttle, which "returned whole and was turned around for this flight" had a better safety record than Apollo, which "just came out of the VAB".
Note that if you substitute Soyuz for Apollo, you get similar results. Yes, Soyuz had two loss-of-crew failures, just like Shuttle, but in fewer than 135 flights....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"