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SpaceX Successfully Lands Falcon 9 Rocket On Solid Ground For the Second Time (theverge.com)
SpaceX successfully landed another Falcon 9 rocket after launching the vehicle into space on Sunday evening from Florida. The Verge reports: Shortly after takeoff, the vehicle touched down at SpaceX's Landing Complex 1 -- a ground-based landing site that the company leases at the Cape. It marks the second time SpaceX has pulled off this type of ground landing, and the fifth time SpaceX has recovered one of its rockets post-launch. The feat was accomplished a few minutes before the rocket's second stage successfully put the company's Dragon spacecraft into orbit, where it will rendezvous with the International Space Station later this week. It's also the first time this year SpaceX has attempted to land one of its rockets on land. For the past six launches, each rocket has tried landing on an autonomous drone ship floating in the ocean. That's because drone ship landings require a lot less fuel to execute than ground landings.
What that said the launch was by the numbers and was awesome. I've got friends in FL who heard the sonic boom of the first stage reentering.
Since they were only boosting Dragon to LEO they didn't have to deploy the drone ship. I watched it online last night. I did notice the feed started with only a few minutes before launch which saddened me because I like to listen in on the launch coordinator loop while they're going through all the preflight checks.
Hopefully SpaceX will expose the audio feed so those of us who are nerds about this can listen in for the whole thing.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
"I've got friends in FL who heard the sonic boom of the first stage reentering."
I watched some Periscope recordings from people watching the landing, and they all seemed to be shocked by the loudness of the sonic boom. Some thought the 1st stage booster exploded after landing (because it takes a while for the sound to reach them).
SpaceX claims "this is no worse than the sonic boom from the shuttle landing", but I don't know, I've heard the sonic boom from the shuttle landing at Edwards and it was like someone hitting a drum, not like an explosion.
NASA was lucky to land one shuttle per month, whereas SpaceX has dreams of launching/landing once per week.
Also the people near the Space Coast or Vandenberg might be able to deal with the sonic booms (as space is pretty much their whole industry), but if SpaceX moves launches/landings to Brownsville, Texas, I can imagine they will upset a lot of people in Harlingen, McAllen, and Corpus Christi not used to rocket launches or supersonic aircraft (not to mention our friends across the border in Reynosa).
One of the interesting things in this trip are a couple of Space adapters that will let Boeing's CST-100 Starliner, SpaceX's Crew Dragon
spacecraft, and anyone else that comes along to dock to the station.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7...
No word yet on if Apple will follow this standard or come up with their own.
The rocket launches due East from the Cape. The droneship is in a straight line underneath the flightpath, so the stage flies more or less a parabolic arc to the ship.
To fly back to the Cape, the stage has to brake and bring its velocity to 0, then accelerate to the West to get back to land.
Flying to the drone ship skips the 'brake' part, which saves a lot of fuel.
Attempt to land the Falcon rocket on a white 18-wheeler.
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