We see what you did there: First-stage booster from Rocket Lab's Return to Sender mission floats back to Earth Rocket Lab has joined SpaceX in a very exclusive club of orbital booster recovery-capable companies after it parachuted an Electron first stage back to Earth. The primary goal of the "Return to Sender" mission was the deployment of 30 satellites to a Sun-synchronous orbit for a range of customers. The payload featured a …
Re: Valve's Gabe Newell is to donate $1 to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at Starship Children's Hospital for each view of the launch webcast. Over $80,000 has been raised at the time of writing, according to Rocket Lab, and those catching up on things via YouTube over the next few hours will also be counted toward the total.
Nice way to increase your view count, I really hope they get a whopping lot of views!
Not sure I'd wannabee a helicopter pilot dashing under a falling rocket. Why not let it fall into something less corrosive than sea water? Aim it at a large hole filled with porridge to soften impact and sufficiently high viscosity to prevent liquid ingress.
What could possibly go wrong?
I've been wondering about this also.... big blades spinning overhead and something huge falling at it and some how the helicopter has to get above the falling rocket.
Google is amazing ;)
Uh no. There WERE pumps, bearings, and actuators, for moving the nozzle, as well as a ton of guidance and abort electronics. All of which basically had to be replaced.
It cost almost as much to re-use a SRB as buying a new one, but it gave you the advantage of inspecting flown hardware.
The parachute required for a Falcon 9 would have been impractically huge. That did not stop someone planning to reuse Saturn V with even bigger parachutes and an enormous helicopter. That helicopter is a bit tricky to control. To go sideways you need to twist the blades one way on the right and the other way on the left. It will take time for that change in twist to travel from the hub to to blade tip. You have to work out what the effect of previous twists will be to decide what twist to apply now so it can reach the correct radius when needed later.
The it might be possible to make the control system different (not sure if this will be easier) by not twisting the blade from the hub but instead putting separate control surfaces on different radii on the trailing edge of each blade. The controls could be powered by compressed air from the jet engines on the blade tips.
If you somehow work out a way to make an enormous helicopter someone will complain about all the fuel it uses while ignoring the much larger carbon emissions of building a new booster from scratch.
Parachutes don't give you a soft enough landing (at least on land) to reuse the rocket.
So either land on water and hope to clean it out before it rusts, or a very-very big net, or try and catch it by helicopter.
SpaceX reckoned that the extra % of fuel it needs to hold back for the landing weighed less than the parachute, was more reliable and meant they didn't have to give it a sponge bath
* Electron has a launch mass of ~12t with the returning first stage weighing less than a tonne.
* F9 has a launch mass of 550t with the returning first stage weighing ~25tonnes.
Let us know when you have a parachute or helicopter capable of catching a booster with an empty mass ~25tonnes.
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