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Instead of moving the rocket to meet the platform, would it be feasible to employ some stabilization mechanism so that the barge stays relatively level and the rocket doesn't have to correct as much?
What was the % cost reduction in being able to land the boosters again? I read it somewhere a while back but can't find it. It was pretty significant if I recall. TIA.
According to Elon, reusable rockets will drive the spaceflight costs down 100x. The booster is $60 million, the fuel charge for it is $200k. Other costs are involved in the final price per kg of payload, obviously.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No flame-proof airbags are available on Mars. AFAIK most of SpaceX's design decisions are based around this.
But can't the vehicle carry them to Mars? Kind of like the airbag system for one of the rovers, can't remember which one (Curiosity?) Or even better, how about getting it to land sideways on purpose? I don't see how that would be more difficult than doing it upright.
Now imagine a cylinder made of that material 3-4 times wider than a barrel and 20-30ft high.
That's why you can't land them sideways they'd just crush themselves.
Dumb question: why can't they land (drop) into a large pool filled with some inert liquid?
What inert liquid wouldn't vapourise at least partially under the force of a rocket engine?
Mostly though you can't find a nice friendly pool of inert liquid on Mars or anywhere else but the Earth in our solar system ;).
I saw this on the planned launch schedule a few days ago. The date mentioned there is 22 July 2015. I was surprised they were getting clearance to try so soon since they haven't quite nailed sea landings yet. I guess it could be argued they have seem to have the navigation part down pretty well though, minimizing the odds they will drop this in a neighbourhood.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to Elon, reusable rockets will drive the spaceflight costs down 100x. The booster is $60 million, the fuel charge for it is $200k. Other costs are involved in the final price per kg of payload, obviously.
Obviously the math checks out, but I wonder what fraction of the price involves carrying the booster's landing capability (bigger tanks, landing legs, thrusters, bigger booster, etc) to its apogee. I mean that, compared to a single use disposable booster that doesn't carry all that aloft.
> "Just purely the boat moving, even in a low sea state, it's hard to imagine that vehicle is going to stay vertical," Shotwell said. "That vehicle is big and tall, compared to the itty-bity-greater-than-a-football-field-size ship." Is this a new development? This contradicts both a lot of things I read over the Internet (granted, those were not official SpaceX statements) and the apparently still ongoing plans to bu…
There might be a reason that people don't let me design large mechanical systems...
Instead of moving the rocket to meet the platform, would it be feasible to employ some stabilization mechanism so that the barge stays relatively level and the rocket doesn't have to correct as much?
If the goal is to recover a rocket from LEO, yes. If the goal is to use this as a training mission to land a rocket on another planet, then no.
> "Just purely the boat moving, even in a low sea state, it's hard to imagine that vehicle is going to stay vertical," Shotwell said. "That vehicle is big and tall, compared to the itty-bity-greater-than-a-football-field-size ship." Is this a new development? This contradicts both a lot of things I read over the Internet (granted, those were not official SpaceX statements) and the apparently still ongoing plans to bu…
> the natural instability that occurs when a landing pad floating in the ocean has a very heavy rocket land on top of it has led to a series of near-misses for the technology.
But the two landing failures were due to running out of hydraulic fluid, and to a flight control instability; the landing pad had nothing to do with it.