I hope so too. I'm rooting for all of SpaceX, Blue Origin, Arianespace, and whoever else is in the market, to push each other to become better.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
SpaceX successfully land rocket vertically
- Thread starter Rosur
- Start date
- Status
I hope so too. I'm rooting for all of SpaceX, Blue Origin, Arianespace, and whoever else is in the market, to push each other to become better.
That's arguable, but even if you're 100% right about the discipline thing, Im still just not that into it. It's cool if you are, no biggie. I'm just real real lukewarm on science if you know what I mean.
E-Cat
Member
No, I don't "know what you mean".
I'm guessing you're not using medicine to treat your medical conditions, cause that would be hypocritical of you, huh?
Of course I use medicine. Since when have you had to cheerlead for science as a requisite for using medicine? Just not interesting to me, I'm real lukewarm on the whole thing, man. You can like scientistz and I'll like different stuff that I think is cooler and the world will still turn, you know? Just real lukewarm.
E-Cat
Member
I guess you're just too street for it, lol.
Your lukewarm position just caught me off guard, is all. Being pro-science, if not a cheerleader, is the default position as far as I'm concerned. Say something to the contrary and, well, I immediately think there's something deeply wrong with your thinking.
Anuson.Phan
Banned
Has Musk explained why he assign his Historic Rockets these generic names like Falcon and Red Dragon?
It's all good I just like cars and girlz instead
Edit: on 2nd thought those names ARE cooler.
How is it any better or worse than Delta, Atlas, Vega etc. Less pretentious, therefore not as cool?
Edit: on 2nd thought those names ARE cooler.
E-Cat
Member
If only it weren't a binary choice...
The rockets are named Falcon after the Millennium Falcon.
The thrusters are named for types of Falcons.
I don't know where the Dragon naming scheme is from.
Wut
E-Cat
Member
I always thought it was after the wizard. lol
He prefers girlz and cars instead.
Still blows my mind. Tell me that's not impressive.
http://www.space.com/28445-spacex-elon-musk-drone-ships-names.html
Frankenstrat
Member
Does dj khaled make the beats? What does he do? Just hang out with the rappers? I'm real confused about what he does.
E-Cat
Member
#idontunderstandthisreference
Frankenstrat
Member
That's one of the great mysteries of the universe, like dark energy!
StoppedInTracks
Member
Not that I doubt you guys but if it is all pros and zero cons why wasn't it achieved by NASA earlier?
E-Cat
Member
Because they thought it was impossible.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Merlin == wizard.
Falcon == millennium falcon (IIRC from the SpaceX book)
Because NASA doesn't have free reign to pursue whatever projects they want.
Cost was never really too much of a concern for NASA when they were doing their designs.
Space travel technology has expanded more in the last 5 years since it went private than the previous 30.
cebri.one
Member
Actually they tried the concept of reusabilty with the shuttle. But fail and they actually made flying to space more expensive.
For a while they were pursuing re-usability through single-stage-to-orbit, i.e. a spaceship that can pretty much function as a plane but goes to space, without any staging. This turned out to be a dead end; the material science just isn't there to build a ship and a fuel tank that is both strong enough and light enough. And before that you had the Shuttle obviously, which ostensibly had re-usable parts but still cost like a billion per launch, because the external tank was ditched, the solid rocket booster were refurbished at a cost equal to building new ones and for the orbiter the main engines were pretty much taken apart and re-assembled before they were re-flown if I understand correctly.
In general SpaceX has been able to save cost because they do a lot in-house and don't have to deal with the pretty inefficient way the NASA manufacturing pipeline is set up. NASA has a ton of suppliers, facilities spread out across different states, which from what I understand is mostly a result of needing to secure funding and being spread out gives more political support from local representatives. But it introduces a lot of inefficiency. Like, a lot of the discussion around the Constellation program and later SLS re-using things from Shuttle wasn't because this is what engineers deemed best. It was because this would preserve jobs in the same places, which in turn preserves political support from the same people.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
News to me. Thanks.
StoppedInTracks
Member
mentallyinept
Banned
God damn this is awesome.
Are they still trying to get one to land out at sea?
Are they still trying to get one to land out at sea?
hellmonkey
Member
If you want/need proof, just read this.
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/664158main_sls_fs_master.pdf
I was surprised to see that much name dropping in a fact sheet about space travel and rockets.
titiklabingapat
Member
Amazing stuff. How much cheaper are they projecting this thing is going to be once it is done in more scale compared to a traditional rocket and/or space shuttle?
edit: just read the bottom of the first page. Even if space launch 'only' gets halved, it's still a really big deal.
edit: just read the bottom of the first page. Even if space launch 'only' gets halved, it's still a really big deal.
hellmonkey
Member
I believe they are aiming at under 10M per launch, at least for the smaller payloads and LEO stuff.
I get the feeling those were experimental for safety reasons. Once it's proven to work, no reason to go through that risk and complication when you can just use a perfectly flat stable spot.
I imagine they can build several landing pads across the country/world and dynamically use whichever is best based on weather.
This is a good article if you want to know more about the politics behind NASA getting stuff funded.
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/4/7977685/mars-nasa-orion-sls
It was a real eye-opener for me the first time I read it and was pretty much the point where I gave up on NASA ever doing anything but planetary exploration via probe. SpaceX is our only hope of getting humans to Mars during my lifetime.
CraigerGamer
Member
My dream of going to space may yet be realized in my lifetime.
Pretty awesome official video with Incubus soundtrack:
"The Falcon has landed." New footage and recap of our recent launch and landing
"The Falcon has landed." New footage and recap of our recent launch and landing
Nice video, so happy for those guys.
Parmadillo Marshmallow
Member
Wow, amazing video. Brought a tear to my eye. I hope this company stays around for the long haul.
mentallyinept
Banned
So they are still trying to do that landing at sea...
I'm guessing the launch profile gives them no other option. Hope it goes well.
Huw_Dawson
Member
The sea landing gives a huge amount of flexibility. Fingers crossed we start seeing consistent results for this rocket. Space getting far cheaper would greatly help NASA, the ESA et al to get more work done.
They need to get sea landings working as return to launch site isn't possible for heavier payloads due to the fuel budget. At the latest, they'll need it for Falcon Heavy since the centre core will be too far out at sea to return to land. Technically, for this flight, a land landing would be feasible due to the light payload, but since this is the last Falcon 1.1 core that won't be used again in the future anyway they might was well experiment.
Also correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't have permission to land at Vandenberg yet.
cebri.one
Member
+1. Higher orbits and bigger payloads need more energy and less is left to attempt the landing. So not every launch will have enough fuel to make it back to the cape.
Yeah, something about an endangered snail?
HellBlazer
Member
No news on when they'll first try to re-use a landed first stage, right?
This first one won't be reflown. It'll be test fired (tomorrow!) to see how well the engines run after coming home, dismantled and thoroughly investigated and then kept for museum display somewhere.
Sunday's rocket won't be reflown either (if it lands on the barge ok) because it's the last Falcon 9 v1.0 and they don't want a mixed fleet of 1.1s and one lone 1.0.
So the first stage that has a hope of being reflown is the SES-9 flight from Canaveral, which is scheduled to fly before the end of the month. That's a heavy GTO comsat so the mission has razor-thin margins for a barge landing.
I doubt NASA will let them use a pre-flown stage for the following mission in February, which is another ISS resupply, so it'll be at least March before they even have time to try. No idea if they have a customer ready to pay a discount for such a "risky" flight, or if they'll just fly it for fun.
The_Inquisitor
Member
I doubt a re-used rocket gets used until 2017 at earliest. They need to "qualify" the re-use concept with a few test runs including ground and live trials. You don't QBS or qualify by similarity using a customer payload.
- Status