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SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground

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Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground

#101

Post by freehunter »

Cshelton wrote: post #42
harshreality wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to be able to stabilize the rocket's landing in all sorts of conditions if they want to have any hope of landing it on another planet. It's not like interplanetary launches will be able to schedule launches to choose optimal weather conditions for the landing. Maybe, if they're lucky, they'll be able to orbit briefly to avoid bad weather at the landing site, but moderate winds and wind gusts are going to be…

I agree, but I think right now, even more important, is getting the model for private space flight/exploration right. Currently, the majority of SpaceX's revenue is through government contracts. Cost savings through reuse-ability should be the number one focus, not the technology on how to land on another planet through adverse and unpredictable conditions. The ASDS is really cool and all, and could definitely be som…

Well if you're going interplanetary, you could just orbit until the weather conditions on the surface are conducive to landing. It's not like you have to predict the weather eight months ahead of time, you just need to know the rough climate conditions and then orbit until you have a day that lines up.

Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground

#102

Post by danielweber »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #94
daeken wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's refueled in-situ and launched back up with a minimal payload weight. Getting off the surface of Mars back into an orbit with a low weight (basically crew + life support + minimal payload) is pretty straightforward, considering the low gravity and thin atmosphere. From there, you can dock to a much larger tug ship and go back to Earth orbit, refueling on orbit and landing propulsively again.

I didn't spend the time searching google to provide citations, but it is feasible to generate fuel autonomously on the Martian surface and store it for future use. Can we launch a vehicle that will de-orbit, safely land, and then begin processing fuel using nuclear (edit: I removed solar here; solar would not provide enough power for such a facility) for power and the Martian atmosphere and soil as feedstock? Not qui…

I believe solar would work, but it would just take longer.

EDL for a substantial payload to Mars hasn't been done before, but there's no reason to think it's a show-stopper. A lot of the engineering challenges for that are the same as the engineering challenges for returning the first-stage to Earth, like supersonic retrorockets.

Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground

#103

Post by danielweber »

benkuykendall wrote: post #96
harshreality wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to be able to stabilize the rocket's landing in all sorts of conditions if they want to have any hope of landing it on another planet. It's not like interplanetary launches will be able to schedule launches to choose optimal weather conditions for the landing. Maybe, if they're lucky, they'll be able to orbit briefly to avoid bad weather at the landing site, but moderate winds and wind gusts are going to be…

Yeah, weather is an interesting point. I wonder if having numerous back-up landing sites worldwide would give a robust enough system.

It's been less than 10 minutes from launch to land, so they know exactly where they are going to land when launching.

Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground

#104

Post by el_zorro »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #82
daeken wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm aware, there's no plan for rocket refueling on Mars. That makes sense, considering that the stages we normally think of as the 'rocket' will be gone long before our pods get to Mars. We will refuel the pod, which has its own rocket engines on it, and use that to get back up (with a tiny fraction of the original payload) from the surface. Mars' gravity well and atmosphere are a fraction of Earth's, so th…

You could probably put a rocket stage capable of a Mars landing and then takeoff after refueling on top of a stage capable of an Earth landing. I think this is being looked at, as though the gravity well is smaller than Earth's, it is not small enough for a crewed pod ascent like the moon landing. From my understanding this is one of the reasons other than looking for life to want easy to access water, as then you ca…

Mars would almost certainly require a small rocket to get to orbit, but it would be trivially sized compared to what we need on Earth. Even something as small as the Atlas rockets that brought the first Americans to space would probably be overpowered compared to Mars' small gravity well. Throw in atmospheric losses less than a hundredth of that on Earth and suddenly space becomes very accessible.

Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground

#105

Post by ehmmm »

benkuykendall wrote: post #97
Already__Taken wrote: post #2

> next attempt to land Not the next F9 launch. They won't have legs the payload needs all the fuel. Next launch after that is a Dragon test so it isn't that one either. Maybe June we'll see that. Those ULA comments at the end are very odd and contradictory.

According to their events page, 22 July will be the first attempted (to use their phrasing) ``land landing''. http://spacexstats.com/upcoming.php

That is not an official SpaceX website.

This website is not in any way associated with SpaceX.

Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground

#106

Post by branchan »

solve wrote: post #10

Shouldn't be that surprising. Military has been blowing up missiles and detonating bombs on land at military testing sites for decades.

Yes but normally these missile and bombs are all isolated to these remote areas. Imagine the rocket is launched from Florida, it might need to fly over populated areas to reach its 'land' landing area, which is different.

Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground

#107

Post by TeMPOraL »

segacontroller wrote: post #47
[deleted] wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

OK that may be the long term goal, but what is the short term goal? What is the goal of landing this rocket stage on earth? Is it to use this model to land on another planet, or is it to use this model to reduce costs and reuse the first stage of the rocket?

Short term and primary goal? Significantly cut down the costs of access to space. But long term goal is landing and taking off from another worlds, and this project produces important engineering insights that may prove useful for that goal. SpaceX has a habit of hitting multiple targets at once.

Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground

#108

Post by TeMPOraL »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #94
daeken wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's refueled in-situ and launched back up with a minimal payload weight. Getting off the surface of Mars back into an orbit with a low weight (basically crew + life support + minimal payload) is pretty straightforward, considering the low gravity and thin atmosphere. From there, you can dock to a much larger tug ship and go back to Earth orbit, refueling on orbit and landing propulsively again.

I didn't spend the time searching google to provide citations, but it is feasible to generate fuel autonomously on the Martian surface and store it for future use. Can we launch a vehicle that will de-orbit, safely land, and then begin processing fuel using nuclear (edit: I removed solar here; solar would not provide enough power for such a facility) for power and the Martian atmosphere and soil as feedstock? Not qui…

From what I read around the Internet, they're planning on using methane-powered engines since methane gas is apparently present on Mars.

Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground

#109

Post by TeMPOraL »

ohitsdom wrote: post #98
jsolson wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's actually that serious a problem (and I'm not a rocket scientist, so I don't know), it suggests a solution: stabilize the landing bed on the ship relative to the sea. Perhaps have the bed float above the ship electromagnetically such that you can control the field strength applied to any part of the platform dynamically as the ship bucks underneath it. There might be a reason that people don't let me design la…

Elon Musk actually joked/hinted (in a tweet) that they were making modifications to the barge similar to the flying SHIELD helicarrier.

Heh, for some reason I always felt there's a connection between (Marvel's Cinematic Universe) SHIELD and SpaceX.

Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground

#110

Post by NortySpock »

benkuykendall wrote: post #97
Already__Taken wrote: post #2

> next attempt to land Not the next F9 launch. They won't have legs the payload needs all the fuel. Next launch after that is a Dragon test so it isn't that one either. Maybe June we'll see that. Those ULA comments at the end are very odd and contradictory.

According to their events page, 22 July will be the first attempted (to use their phrasing) ``land landing''. http://spacexstats.com/upcoming.php

That's a fan-run site; not an official schedule.
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