SpaceX Returns To Flight, And Nails Another Drone Landing (cnn.com)

Applehu Akbar writes: SpaceX successfully launched a 10-satellite Iridium NEXT package, and then landed on a drone ship — this time from Vandenburg AFB in California. The launch had been delayed several days by this week's record rainfall and flooding.
CNN has video of the launch, and points out its obvious significance. "Because rockets are worth tens of millions of dollars, and they have historically been discarded after launch, mastering the landing is key to making space travel more affordable... Saturday's launch marks the seventh time SpaceX has successfully landed a rocket."

Comments

Sweet

[NEDHead]

Can't wait to see three boosters land at once

Re: Great strides

[WindBourne]

Actually, I am pretty sure that I know who the guy is. And yeah, he actually works for ULA (there are always a few assholes at any large company).
That idiot is the same one running around screaming about musk, tesla, solar city and spacex on /.. Sad.

But, you are correct about the far right targeting musk. They are the ones that have been screaming about 'subsidies' for musk, while making up all sorts of BS. For example, the 7.5K subsidy for EVs is actually a tax break for the car buyer, not the car company. And it applies to EV AND Hybrids. But the far right are the same ones that tried to gut SpaceX from CCxDev and instead harmed SNC (another local company here).

Am I the only one...

[Rei]

.... who can't help but cheer at my screen when they nail one of those landings? Now I finally understand how sports fans feel when they watch a game and do the same thing ;)

One thing nobody can deny about them is optimism. ;) Seriously, their IPS numbers are, pardon the pun, out of this world. $200k per booster launch. $500k per tanker launch. I mean, really? Good luck with that. No, seriously, good luck with that; I won't be expecting anything close to that, but please by all means prove me wrong ;) ITS would be a great system to have, I've been playing around with some Venus trajectories with it recently. Looks like it can do a low-energy transit with nearly 300 tonnes of payload from LEO and back again with the same, over 400 if starting at a high orbit - but from an economics perspective the high energy transfers actually make more sense.

I noticed a lot of people were confused about why Musk wanted the trips to be so short and was willing to sacrifice so much payload to do so - many assumed it had to do with radiation or something. But the issue is, when your craft costs so much but your launch costs are cheap, you can't have it spending all of its time drifting in deep space, you need to get it back for a new mission as soon as possible. There's a balancing point, in that if you try to go too fast, you reduce useful payload below the point of making up for it with going faster - but a minimum energy trajectory is just not optimal when the ratio between launch costs and transit vehicle cost is so extreme. I come up with the same thing from Venus as they were getting for Mars, although for the Venus case you end up aerobraking to a highly elliptical orbit rather than to the surface for ISRU refill (you need ISRU, but for the ascent stages, so it's not realistic to do so for the return stage in the nearer term). So for Venus they get no refill like on Mars, but they also don't have to do a powered landing nor do an ascent on return - it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. Both are quite accessible with it.

"hate" is the only unifying principle of the right

[Brannon]

Everything else is negotiable, including the "free market" and "love of their country".