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SpaceX Plans Drone Ship Landing On January 17th (nbcnews.com)
Rei writes: With the world's first successful low-speed landing of an orbital rocket's first stage complete, SpaceX looks to continue that success by attempting its second landing — this time, on their new drone ship in the Pacific. While SpaceX has announced plans to turn their successfully-landed rocket, reportedly flight-ready, into a a museum piece, the stage they recover next may be SpaceX's first chance to prove the mudslinging of their competitors wrong and show that Russia's worries are well founded. That is, if they can successfully pull it off.
I'm not sure I understand the point of a ship landing. If you want to end up on a ship, it seems like a close-to-ship splashdown and recovery would be much simpler and cheaper to implement.
...has become Musk's secret hideout down in Baja?
Makes me wonder if his wife is going to play Tiffany Case in the remake of Diamonds are Forever...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I got baited into clicking on the mudslinging link in the summary and I saw no such thing. The worst I saw is X's competitors just mentioning the engineering hurdles that X will have to overcome to have a reusable vehicle. How is that mudslinging?
just a bald rock until now? passengers include; some wrinkled old zionic nazi freemasons, some virgins, a few hymenless monkeys & gargoyles,, some slave laborers & a new world begins? phewww
Landing is cool. But how are they going to get the drone ship to fly in the first place? Is it like the Helicarrier in The Avengers?
Wouldn't it be nice if SpaceX were to actually, you know, reuse one of these stages first? Just a thought, but so far the one stage they recovered is going to a museum, but it's totally reusable if we wanted to but we don't want to so...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I promise you that the US Navy has a great interest in drone ships. Among other considerations, a drone ship can easily be built in such a way that waves do over its decks such that it has very low visibility. One idea is to tow such a vessel to withing a hundred miles or so of a potential target and then release it. It could easily get closer without being noticed and could deliver missiles or other aerial drones quite quickly to the troubled area. These drone ships are capable of going a distance by themselves and could be placed on standby for months or even years. I would not be shocked to see one created that could rest on the bottom until pressed into service and then rise and becoming a battle barge.
They've proven that they can land on land, but their track record with their drone ships isn't so great. Landing an aircraft on a ship adds several dimensions of difficulty that you don't encounter on land (moving platform, smaller landing area, higher winds, etc), ask any pilot who has landed on a carrier. I suppose push comes to shove they could simply build a bigger drone ships, perhaps use an oil platform design to limit deck movement, but where possible building land based pads in various locations is probably preferable.
We want to see multiple launches of the recovered chassis. Anything else is just a process to create more. . . museum pieces. Self congratulatory efforts don't mean that much.
I agree. Still, considering how cleanly the last landing went, I think they may have made some substantial improvements in the landing system during their hiatus. I'd give them much better odds than on the previous attempts. Whether they can keep it upright long enough to refuel to fly back to land... well that's a whole different kettle of fish.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I really doubt that their first "intent for reflight" rocket will have its maiden reflight from the drone ship. They're surely going to go over it with a fine-toothed comb on land before relaunch.
The concept of refueling at and relaunching from the drone ship is pretty exciting for the future, mind you. If they really can get the reliability that high and the maintenance that low, it'd enable all sorts of things.
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
Whether they can keep it upright long enough to refuel to fly back to land... well that's a whole different kettle of fish.
Do you actually know that that is the plan? I assumed they'd return the first stages by sea. They need the drone ship because in some configurations and for some missions they can't spare the fuel to fly back to the launch site.
After seeing the successful landing I have little doubt that they can put the rocket in the bullseye, it landed right on the SpaceX logo. But even moderate seas will probably make things difficult. The first stage is quite tall, it wouldn't take much of a nudge to cause it to topple.
Musk himself has stated that is the intent, at least in the past. I don't know if it will ever be a practicality though, it looks to me like they're working towards returning the first stage directly to the launch site where possible, and landing them on a drone ship, securing them and then sailing them back to the harbor nearest the launch site where necessary.
It's been a long time so I can't swear to the veracity, but I'm pretty sure that was the plan - land on the drone ship to refuel for the flight home. Figure - after landing at sea you really only have two options:
- refuel it so it can fly home under it's own power
- try to balance a 12-story pencil on it's end for the duration of a several hundred mile sea voyage to land (or alternately build all the hardware for a massive robotic "tilting gantry" into the barge so that it can be grabbed along its whole length at wherever it happened to land, and laid on its side, all without damaging it) , and then, once you get to land you have to somehow transfer this massive thing to some sort of overland transportation back to the launch facility. Which quite likely involves building your own docks near the launch facility - you're not towing an inflexible 68m long load around many street corners (picture a single trailer about 4.5 semi trailers long and 1.5 wide).
Maybe it's me, but I'd need a *really* compelling reason not to just let the thing try to fly itself back home.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It's bottom-heavy when it comes home with the fuel mostly gone. It's a bunch of heavy engines at the bottom and all empty tanks above that. And they vent the remaining LOX right after they land, so there is nothing in the upper tank. They will come aboard and weld shoes over the landing legs, but they don't expect it to fall over before that.
Bruce Perens.
What's the alternative? Think long and hard on the logisitics of getting a giant "pencil tube" 41m long and 3.6m wide (224 x 12 feet) from a position balanced on end on a platform hundreds of miles away from shore in the open ocean, back to a (logistically) inland landing facility. What sort of infrastructure do you need? And is it worth investing in it if the long term plan is to fly it home anyway?
Besides, all the hard flying has been done already. It's not like you're doing another second-stage to orbit boost, you're just doing a little hop back home.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The drone ship is a ship. It moves - it sails to and from port. There are cranes in port. They've already loaded and offloaded rockets from the barge in the past.
Each "hop" is strain on your rocket, new risk, and using up the lifetime of parts that have limited lifespan. Last I heard they were only hoping for a couple dozen flights out of each rocket.
That said, flying back has been mentioned in the past as part of the plan. But for the first go-around, that's very unlikely. They're going to want to give it a full rundown back onshore.
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
It's not to be "balanced" for the return journey - the plan has always been to weld steel shoes to the deck to hold it in place. And it's very bottom-heavy. It's not at all at risk of falling over.
The way to transport it off the barge is called a crane, it's already been done, and it's not tricky.
The "compelling reason" is because rocket launches are complex procedures in the best of circumstances, that's anything but the best of circumstances, and they don't even know if the thing is flightworthy. And they certainly don't want their first reuse flight to be a failure.
Patience. It'll happen eventually.
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
Oh, and as for the size of the crane you need? This size (right hand side, yellow - the cab is in white for a size comparison). And as for how you transport them? Like this. Same way as they already do.
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
The engines mass definitely helps bring the center of mass closer to the ground but from what I can find that still puts it at about 1/3 of the way from the bottom of the stage. A few degrees of tip shouldn't be a problem but 5 degrees from a off center landing and another 5 degrees from rough seas could very well do it.
Alistair Crowley?
Which one on Downton Abbey is that?
No, the second stage really gets to orbit and is beyond propulsive re-entry. It would need a heat-shield and would have to dissipate a lot of speed through heat and ablation. SpaceX has a really good phenolic heat shield technology which they use on Dragon, it's capable of direct ballistic re-entry from Moon or Mars transfer orbits, and can be re-used after the lower-energy re-entry from LEO. But obviously lifting one and the other necessary components reduces the payload weight to orbit.
Musk continues to talk about re-use being the difference between 100% and 1% of vehicle cost. He doesn't get those economics without second-stage re-use. So, obviously he thinks it's in the future for SpaceX.
Bruce Perens.
I think they want to do a hop-to-shore once the technology is matured enough, but the balanced-pencil analogy isn't really applicable. The vast majority of the rocket's mass is in the engine cluster; the rest of it is mostly a thin, hollow tube with some empty tanks. IIRC, the original plan with the drone ships was that once the rocket landed, crew would arrive and weld brackets over the landing legs to hold the rocket down, then return to shore and offload with a normal crane. Then tip the rocket onto an appropriate truck, and take it to the refurb facility.
This will cost hundreds of astronauts lives.
There is no way they can continuously keep re-using highly explosive rocket boosters over and over and the cost is outrageous compared to a one-time use booster.
Daddy likey!