91–100 of 207 posts
Would have loved to see what happened to the dummy cowboy. The final fews frames are not very clear due to the smoke and dust.
Did they have another cowboy? It makes me think it's the same test from a few months ago.
Poor bird gets killed in the video as it tries to fly away as the rocket takes off
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I don't understand the need for the intermediary stages, couldn't the main rocket just deliver the payload and then land? As it is in that video, it's having to carry engines and fuel for 3 separate stages, for no apparent reason.
"A multistage (or multi-stage) rocket is a rocket that uses two or more stages, each of which contains its own engines and propellant. A tandem or serial stage is mounted on top of another stage; a parallel stage is attached alongside another stage. The result is effectively two or more rockets stacked on top of or attached next to each other. Taken together these are sometimes called a launch vehicle. Two stage rock…
Except the first stage doesn't run out of propellant does it, because it has to LAND again. Hence my puzzlement.
I know why multi-stage rockets are used... I'm asking why this rocket needs them, since they solve a problem it doesn't have by design.
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Almost the entirety of the cost of an orbital launch is in manufacturing and operational costs. Cost of fuel is basically just noise. If you can reduce operational turnaround time and operational complexity, even at a cost of payload, then you'll save so much money it'll be worth it in the long term. SpaceX is aiming for a re-assemble, gas up and go workflow. If they can pull it off it might reduce their per flight l…
To put it in perspective, the fuel used to launch a Space Shuttle cost in the neighborhood of $1 million, while the cost of the entire launch was somewhere around $500 million to $1 billion.
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> highly likely that the rocket will get damaged And because you don't know whether it is damaged or not (sometimes the damage may not be obvious), it's likely that the rocket will have to get a long post-flight inspection to check if it is suitable for another flight. It's something you can almost completely avoid if you land the rocket gently. I read somewhere, that the costs of recovering SRBs of Space Shuttle fro…
Maybe you are thinking of the costs of "re-using" the Space Shuttle. $250 Million to refurb it each time. But we do it for cost savings!
The cost of launching a Shuttle including the amortized development costs ended up being $1.5 billion per launch.
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Almost the entirety of the cost of an orbital launch is in manufacturing and operational costs. Cost of fuel is basically just noise. If you can reduce operational turnaround time and operational complexity, even at a cost of payload, then you'll save so much money it'll be worth it in the long term. SpaceX is aiming for a re-assemble, gas up and go workflow. If they can pull it off it might reduce their per flight l…
To put it in perspective, the fuel used to launch a Space Shuttle cost in the neighborhood of $1 million, while the cost of the entire launch was somewhere around $500 million to $1 billion.
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Nope, aside from the Lunar Excursion Module and its simulators, NASA did nothing like this until the 1990s, with the Delta Clipper. And that wasn't really NASA - it was a BMDO project which later got taken over by NASA. (NASA then crashed the Delta Clipper on their first flight with it, and promptly went back to their preferred innovation strategy: very large contracts which result in absolutely nothing).
>very large contracts which result in absolutely nothing That's a moderately ironic statement, given the fact that SpaceX wouldn't be doing anything remotely close to what they're doing today without the very large contract they got from NASA.
This is how NASA was able to spend over 30 years and $30B trying and failing to develop a new orbital vehicle, where SpaceX was able to do it for under $400M.
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I find this confusing. It's awesome, that's for sure. But it seems like lifting all the fuel needed to do a soft landing is inherently a tradeoff for less payload capacity. What is the benefit, then? Is it just so much cheaper to be able to re-use the first two stages?
Almost the entirety of the cost of an orbital launch is in manufacturing and operational costs. Cost of fuel is basically just noise. If you can reduce operational turnaround time and operational complexity, even at a cost of payload, then you'll save so much money it'll be worth it in the long term. SpaceX is aiming for a re-assemble, gas up and go workflow. If they can pull it off it might reduce their per flight l…