Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable
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Re: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable
#2This impressive video from Armadillo is three years old. I wonder what they are up to now.
Re: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable
#3This impressive video from Armadillo is three years old. I wonder what they are up to now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0qlIoSSkQ
Right now there are several companies working on reusable launchers. SpaceX, of course, who already has a proven expendable orbital launcher. But also Blue Origin, Armadillo, XCOR, and Virgin Galactic. None of those companies have an orbital launch vehicle but each is working on building the foundations for reusability in the form of pioneering various control mechanisms (vertical landing being one) as well as engineering various component parts (from engines up to propellant tanks and so forth). Some of them are looking more at the sub-orbital space tourism market to provide early returns and some of them are certainly more dedicated and more well funded than others. Overall it'll be exciting to see what comes of it all.
Re: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable
#4It doesn't have an aerospike engine. The first leg of the journey is always the hardest at sea level so if they can use less fuel there, it will be easier on the rest of the trip. Aerospikes are more efficient at lower altitudes and offer a greater throttle range (since each burner can be independently controlled).
Whether this is a multi stage or single stage, an aerospike is something they need to look into. It's been overlooked by the majority of manufacturers and enthusiasts, which is a shame because, even though the engineering may be difficult, there is still a lot of research behind it as well.
Re: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable
#5It doesn't have an aerospike engine. The first leg of the journey is always the hardest at sea level so if they can use less fuel there, it will be easier on the rest of the trip. Aerospikes are more efficient at lower altitudes and offer a greater throttle range (since each burner can be independently controlled). Whether this is a multi stage or single stage, an aerospike is something they need to look into. It's b…
Aerospikes are oversold. NASA and LockMart tried to prove the technology with X-33/VentureStar and it proved to be far, far less promising than it looked initially.
Also, the idea that we need some new technological silver bullet to advance spaceflight has been a pernicious impulse in the spaceflight community since its inception, and it very much has not helped. We don't in fact need any breakthrough technology, just incremental improvement stacked on incremental improvement and so forth. It's amazing how far you can get with just that. What's more amazing is how little it's been tried so far!
SpaceX's vehicles are fundamentally almost a 1960s era design. A simple 2-stage LOX/Kerosene vertical launcher. And yet by doing nothing more than applying existing technology (rather than trailblazing new technology) they've built the lowest cost launcher on the planet. And now they're iterating the design to improve it even more. Iterating the engines and building history's highest thrust-to-weight ratio large cryogenic engine (the Merlin-1D). Iterating the vehicle design by changing the first stage engine layout and stretching the fuel tanks (to get the Falcon 9 v1.1 which will have >40% more capacity than the v1). Iterating vehicle designs which use Falcon 9 components modularly to create the Falcon Heavy (which will have a payload capacity to LEO of over 50 tonnes). Iterating pressurized capsule design to create an unmanned cargo vehicle (Dragon Cargo) and taking the lessons from that to build a manned capsule (DragonRider). And iteratively testing ideas to allow reusability of the Falcon 9 launcher (grasshopper, etc.)
We don't need anything more than perseverance and pragmatism to revolutionize access to orbit, and thankfully some companies are doing that.
Re: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable
#6Here's the video of the most recent SpaceX Grasshopper flight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2...
(via: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30708.msg10... . May not be available in some areas due to music licensing.)
Re: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable
#7Here's the video of the most recent SpaceX Grasshopper flight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2... (via: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30708.msg10... . May not be available in some areas due to music licensing.)
That was pretty cool. Why was I the 314th person to watch it. Surely there must be more interest in rockets like the Sci-fi books always described? In most books, the rockets came down like the Grasshopper.
Re: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable
#8Here's the video of the most recent SpaceX Grasshopper flight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2... (via: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30708.msg10... . May not be available in some areas due to music licensing.)
That was pretty cool. Why was I the 314th person to watch it. Surely there must be more interest in rockets like the Sci-fi books always described? In most books, the rockets came down like the Grasshopper.
I was also the 314th person to watch it so google must be freezing the view count.
Re: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable
#9It doesn't have an aerospike engine. The first leg of the journey is always the hardest at sea level so if they can use less fuel there, it will be easier on the rest of the trip. Aerospikes are more efficient at lower altitudes and offer a greater throttle range (since each burner can be independently controlled). Whether this is a multi stage or single stage, an aerospike is something they need to look into. It's b…
Aerospikes are oversold. NASA and LockMart tried to prove the technology with X-33/VentureStar and it proved to be far, far less promising than it looked initially. Also, the idea that we need some new technological silver bullet to advance spaceflight has been a pernicious impulse in the spaceflight community since its inception, and it very much has not helped. We don't in fact need any breakthrough technology, jus…
> We don't need anything more than perseverance and pragmatism to revolutionize access to orbit, and thankfully some companies are doing that.
Jerry Pournelle and many, many others had been saying that for decades. Just keep on building rockets, do it a lot, with the principle that "practice makes perfect" in mind. Instead, governments were just paying contractors to mostly do the same thing for cost-plus, with only relatively slow progress over time to show for it.
Re: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable
#10Here's the video of the most recent SpaceX Grasshopper flight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2... (via: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30708.msg10... . May not be available in some areas due to music licensing.)
That was pretty cool. Why was I the 314th person to watch it. Surely there must be more interest in rockets like the Sci-fi books always described? In most books, the rockets came down like the Grasshopper.
Don't worry, this video of the same test has 3.2 million views :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4PEXLODw9c