back to article SpaceX starts nine-day countdown to first flight of the new Falcon

SpaceX is back in the orbital delivery game, with the first launch since its explosive mishap in June. Aiming for Falcon rocket static fire at Cape Canaveral on the 16th and launch about three days later — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2015 It has been a rocky six months for Elon's Musketeers since the June explosion, …

  1. Jim McDonald

    Fingers & toes crossed!

  2. eesiginfo

    Matchless 500 single?

    We all follow this story with interest.

    ... To land a rocket on it's tail is something that was written into science fiction in the fifties.

    We've achieved so much with rocketry of this type, but I wonder whether the basic concept has legs for the next phase.

    I'm not questioning whether it is possible.... only whether it can ever be viable as a 'launch and land' mundane solution, much as is the case with current aviation.

    Even the shuttle pushed the limits.

    But the concept had legs.

    VTOL seems to be the best development route.

    Clearly early days, but..... getting very high, and lobbing the next stage further, seems an enticing prospect.

    Is this just a Matchless with titanium everything?

    We place our bets, and wish them the all the best.

    :)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Matchless 500 single?

      VTOL seems to be the best development route.

      But why not try landing it horizontally?

      1. AndyS

        Re: Matchless 500 single?

        I guess the additional weight & cost of carrying wings is greater than the additional weight & cost of a bit more fuel to land vertically. At least that seems to be the conclusion since there's a few companies trying this now, and no-one developing a winged first stage.

      2. phuzz Silver badge
        Boffin

        Re: Matchless 500 single?

        You can't really land it horizontally because the engines that it uses to slow down are on the bottom and can't tilt very far, so if it came down sideways, there wouldn't be anything to slow it down.

        Unless you mean landing like the Space Shuttle, in which case they'd need wings, and landing gear, and probably some heat shielding (a good thing about coming down engine first, is that rocket engines are ok with high temps). All of that stuff would add a lot to the mass of the booster, so you'd need more fuel to get it up there, which would require more fuel to propel the fuel and so on. You'd basically end up with the shuttle again.

        As for why they use engines to slow down and not parachutes, well, I assume they've done the maths and found that the amount of fuel they need to land is less than the mass of the parachutes they'd need. It doesn't seem intuitive, but they are rocket scientists

        1. Matthew Taylor

          Re: Matchless 500 single?

          "the amount of fuel they need to land is less than the mass of the parachutes they'd need."

          That, and the fact that the Thunderbirds didn't use any "send a rescue boat to get me" parachutes. They landed, back on the pad - like a proper spaceship should.

        2. mosw

          Re: Matchless 500 single?

          "As for why they use engines to slow down and not parachutes"

          I suspect that parachutes would not allow the precision they need. At sea the landing target is very small. Their ultimate objective is to have it and back at the launch site where it can be refueled and reused with the minimum amount of processing or transportation.

        3. Desidero

          Re: Matchless 500 single?

          How about just design it to land on its side and slide into a pile of hay?

          Worked in all the Keystone Cops and Buster Keaton episodes I remember.

      3. Chris G

        Re: Matchless 500 single? Skylon, Musk

        I wonder how far along the Skylon project would be if Elon was putting his money into Skylon?

        1. Dani Eder

          Re: Matchless 500 single? Skylon, Musk

          Not very far. SpaceX gets revenue now for Falcon launches, which pays for further upgrades and development. Skylon brings in no money until the complicated engines and airframe are completed. Since those two parts have to be integrated, you can't start flying with an early version and upgrade over time.

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. jzl

      Raining on the parade

      Amusingly, here's an earlier article talking about exactly that from the same author.

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/20/us_air_force_x37b_space_plane_in_orbit/

    2. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      It's been fixed. Don't forget to email corrections@thereg if you spot any errors. We don't have time to read every comment, so any problems raised here may not be seen, and thus the error will go uncorrected. Which no one wants.

      C.

      1. Mark 85

        I thought I had, and then noticed it was sitting there in my outbox.... I'll go do penance before heading to the pub.

  4. Pisartis

    Competition pushing innovation

    See, if Tim Worstall was still writing here we could have had a long, interesting article demonstrating how New Shepard was pushing SpaceX along, and vice-versa.

    1. Gordon 10
      Flame

      Re: Competition pushing innovation

      Or Lewis who for all his other faults knew enough about things that spurt flame and go bang not to make schoolboy errors.

  5. dotdavid

    Just Read The Instructions

    I had no idea the barges were named after "Culture" Minds. That's pretty cool.

    1. roytrubshaw
      Thumb Up

      Re: Just Read The Instructions

      and don't forget "Of Course I Still Love You".

      (Is it really more than two years? Seems like only yesterday)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good luck, hope nothing blows up.

  7. John 110
    Terminator

    Wait.....what?

    "machine-to-machine communications network"

    1. IglooDude

      Re: Wait.....what?

      aka "M2M" but now more commonly referred to as the "Internet of Things", presumably as distinct from the "Internet of Meatbags" that we all know and love.

      1. John 104

        Re: Wait.....what?

        yes yes, but decrypt the text "machine to machine" or "Internet of Things" and they both come out strangely as SkyNet. Coincidence? I think not!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    2000 and 2100 ET (0100-0200 UTC)

    I think you need a little extra info to indicate it will be on the next day for UTC

    eg: 2000 and 2100 ET (20 December 0100-0200 UTC)

  9. Crisp
    Coat

    Focus!

    Maybe if Elon Musk spent more time on his rockets and less time doing cameos in sitcoms he might actually get around to landing a rocket booster on a barge one day!

    1. F111F
      Angel

      Re: Focus!

      Since Elon is our closest thing to Iron Man in real life...maybe the Clean Sweep initiative is in order?

      1. Dani Eder

        Re: Focus!

        It's the other way around. Robert Downey Jr. based his characterization of Tony Stark on Musk, right down to his halting speech patterns. The cameo Musk did in Ironman 2 was effectively him talking to himself.

  10. DropBear
    Thumb Up

    Kudos to SpaceX for sorting things out the proper way (in six months, as opposed to, uhhhh, six decades give or take as NASA did after each of their "incidents")!

  11. James Hughes 1

    Buzz is that this launch will return 1st stage to landing site, avoiding use of the barge. Should make for good footage. Except it's a night launch.

    1. chris coreline

      not to be a downer but explosions look better at night.... :P

    2. Anonymous John

      It will be floodlit. And engine burns on the way down will be more visible.

  12. Zebo-the-Fat

    As someone else said, "Rocket science is easy, rocket engineering is hard!"

  13. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Major correction

    Bezos launch and landing wasn't at all commercial.

    Nor was it particularly hard. Sounding rockets go straight up and come straight down, so targetting a football field from 60 miles away and a few thousand mph in the wrong direction isn't one of the issues they need to address.

  14. David_42

    Barge landings

    It's unlikely that SpaceX will get permission soon enough to do a land landing, but since the central core of the Falcon Heavy will almost always have to make a barge landing, the practice is good.

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