SpaceX blasts back into the rocket trucking business Elon Musk's rocket trucking business, SpaceX, is rolling on the celestial highway again after successfully launching a Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket, then landing the rocket's first stage back on terra firma. The mission marks a second successful return to space (the first being this one) after a satellite launch …
There are rockets launching every month from Kourou, wherever the Russian launches go from and other places. They never get press unless they blow up, and sometimes not even then. The only reason Musk is is because they're landing the rockets, which is new for now.
Once they have the bugs worked out of the software, landing the rockets is a solved problem and landing the rockets won't garner a mention on the news any longer as they'll be just like any other launch as far as the public is concerned.
Yeah... I know. We've had that happen here with the Space Shuttle and other rockets. No mentions unless it's something terrible. Just makes me sad. But it also tells us they are reliable. How many people go running outside to see an airplane?
I do :)
Now, my work is located at the end of taxiway Hotel, and it involves making some quite interesting flying hardware. In my spare time I fly model aircraft, and I like to read aviation themed books. This may not be the norm..
..But doing this, I have seen a formation of six A10s performing low-passes in front of the tower, 747s performing touch and go's in rainy conditions (big wingtip vortices visible), an AN225 landing, and later taking off, a Polikarpov I-16 (Rata) doing it's thing, and a Porsche 918 Spyder racing a Zivko Edge 540 V3 while the camera helicopter performed pirouettes in order to capture everything (just to mention some highlights).
https://youtu.be/arU8_YNPT6k
In the 50's rockets were always going to land tail first - look at Tintin's rocket to the Moon or Destination Moon. Even Apollo toyed with trying to put a rocket down in their 'direct ascent' plans as did the Soviets with the LK-700.
Then we laughed that this was wildly impractical, it was going to be nearly impossible to land something that fragile on its end - hell even Thunderbird 1 landed horizontally! So we ended up with splashdowns, disposable rockets and the LM before deciding that wings were really the way forward.
And now SpaceX is landing these things almost routinely.
But we will only live in the future when someone builds and flies a Space 1999 Eagle.
I like all the references, but you're wrong about Thunderbird 1 (and Thunderbird 3).
They both land tail first back at Tracy Island, and what's even cleverer, they managed to suck in the smoke!
But that's easy when you run the film backwards, a trick AP Films did more often than I would have wished. I guess that it's easier to pull a model than let gravity have it's way when trying to lower it.
I could probably dig out the names of the episodes when both were seen, but then I am a bit of a Gerry Anderson geek!
I was really surprised when I saw the original Falcon take off, hover and landing tests about how much it looked like a AP films sequence!
The Thunderbirds effect/sequence I was most terrified and then later impressed with was in the episode "Terror in New York City", where Thunderbird 2 had to make an emergency landing after being attacked by USN Sentinel (bloody Yanks!) That was some serious special effects and model making, even by today's standards. I remember being horror-struck when I saw it as a very impressionable young child in the 1960's.
I wonder whether the model makers had any qualms about dirtying up on of their frequently used models in order to film the sequence. If any of them read here, I would love to know.
I bow to your superior Century 21 knowledge. I always wondered how they got Thunderbird 1 back under the swimming pool, but reckoned they kept a whacking great crane out the back.
I'm with you on wanting to know more how these amazing programmes were put together. Some of them still look glorious today and they inspired so much cool stuff - how many British engineers and scientists got into their subjects because of Gerry Anderson? How many movies were only made possible by their expertise - 2001, Alien, Empire Strikes Bank? The problem with the current future is that it's not nearly as exciting and sleek as we were promised (although, to be fair, it seems a lot less fragile and less likely to blow up).
Currently I'm trying to resist the pull of a 22" long Eagle model that's available for an eyewatering sum of money. I don't know where I'd put it, or even if I could make and paint it without at least one trip to casualty, but it is *the* Gerry Anderson creation of my childhood - elegant, functional and prone to exploding at inopportune moments...
The first reuse flight is for SES-10. Currently this should launch next month.
Actually it won't prove that landing boosters has value: it is just a prototype that shows you can. The real value preposition comes with the final iteration of the Falcon 9 design (Block 5) later this year. This design is "tweaked" with what has been learnt from the landed prototypes to make them cheap, safe and easy to reuse.
The SpaceX balance sheet will be the proof that landing boosters has value.
The hard part is now reuse, Falcon 9 and Dragon, reuse will be down to how much life they build into the components now. In the past its a shorter life so you engineer it accordingly given your dropping it in the Atlantic.. now its get it back, refurbish and reuse so you can design for a longer service life.
A similar evolution occurred with Jet engines, I will be watching closely the Dragon reuse alter this year, and the re-flight of a Falcon 9 stage, should be interesting to see.
they weren't, but the Jumo 004's that powered Me262's had a very short time operational life before servicing was required, depending on how well the components had been made (and what with) and how the engine had been used by the pilot. Some didn't last ten hours before needing a service, but IIRC a few lasted 30-40 hours of flying before needing servicing.
This is the second launch since the September kaboom. The first was a launch for Iridium from Vandenberg.
It's the first from Canaveral (actually KSC this time), the first from LC 39A, and the first ISS resupply mission since then. Maybe that's what you were thinking of?
Not sure - just watching the post-launch news conference to see if it gets mentioned. At that altitude it's probably something that came off as part of the staging - it's just before the re-entry burn that puts the booster on a different trajectory.
But I'll be looking for the first flight of a reused first stage.
More specifically what SX will charge for it.
Space won't become truly viable till launch prices drop at least 10x. Nothing else is really going to do it.
Let's see how much SX will cut it.
SpaceX are in the unusual position of already being easily the cheapest provider. Whilst they will pass "some" of the savings on to their customers to give them incentive them to fly with "used" rockets, reuse is more likely to do fantastic things to the SpaceX profit margins. Prices will drop when they have competition, but that competition will have a hard struggle as by the time it materializes SpaceX will be flying from 4 launch pads with a "stock" of first stages ready to fly and working with lead times in months instead of years.
On giving the wrong reason for the failure? It failed because of creases in the pressure vessels that caused problems when they deliberately used supercooled helium, not because the helium was too cold. The long term fix is in the design and manufacture of the COPVs, not changing the helium temperature.
No, no, no, you're both wrong, as I have been telling you before.
It failed because it had a Facebook satellite as payload. As long as they don't make that mistake again they'll be fine. My theory is that Facebook have indeed managed to make a working AI, and it always commits suicide as soon as it realises who it'll be working for.
Choosing between a spectacular, televised death or floating up there all alone while listening to the inane babble of a billion airheads - yeah, I wouldn't call that a choice either.
(Earth shattering) KABOOM!
:)
A very old time experience: I couldn't see the launch*, only hear it like I was listening to the radio. The low cloud deck completely blocked the view. A few minutes after launch the long rumble of takeoff reached the house, and then a few minutes later some jerk ran up and kicked the garage door twice: the sonic boom of the first stage dropping in for landing.
Cured the cat's constipation right up.
**Except on TV, webcast, and YouTube, but I'm still holding a grudge against the clouds.
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