Jump to content
Washington Football Team Logo
Extremeskins
Forum Rules and Guidelines

NewScientist: SpaceX rocket is first to put satellites in orbit and land again

No Excuses

By No Excuses
in The Tailgate

Recommended Posts

No Excuses

No Excuses

Posted
Posted

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28695-spacex-rocket-is-first-to-put-satellites-in-orbit-and-land-again/

 

 

Last night’s launch, carrying satellites for communications company Orbcomm, was the first time an orbital rocket’s booster stage has been brought back to a landing site near its origin. Most rockets are designed for a single use, and dumped in the sea after separating from their payload.

“It’s been a very celebratory atmosphere here at SpaceX. I think people are really overjoyed,” Musk said in a media conference. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield said on Twitter the achievement “opens a brand new door to space travel”.

 

 

 

Really incredible stuff and down the line will be a game changer for space travel.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
mjah

mjah

Posted
Posted

About 30 years ago I checked out a 1950s-era Tintin cartoon compilation book from the local library.  One page of the book illustrated a rocket landing on Earth, intact, on its fins.  Even as a kid I scoffed at the idea that any part of a rocket would land that way after reaching space.  Ridiculous.

 

Ridiculous no longer!

 

Given the dollar value of those 9 first-stage engines -- to say nothing of the stage built around them -- this does indeed change the game.  Amazing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
GoSkins0721

GoSkins0721

Posted
Posted

About 30 years ago I checked out a 1950s-era Tintin cartoon compilation book from the local library.  One page of the book illustrated a rocket landing on Earth, intact, on its fins.  Even as a kid I scoffed at the idea that any part of a rocket would land that way after reaching space.  Ridiculous.

 

Ridiculous no longer!

 

Given the dollar value of those 9 first-stage engines -- to say nothing of the stage built around them -- this does indeed change the game.  Amazing.

 

Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing as I watched that. Actually, I thought it was the liftoff being played in reverse. 

 

Awesome!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Corcaigh

Corcaigh

Posted
Posted

Given the dollar value of those 9 first-stage engines -- to say nothing of the stage built around them -- this does indeed change the game.  Amazing.

 

Incredibly cool.

 

What's known about how much refurb is required before they can be used again?

 

While most of the shuttle was resuable the launch and refurb costs were horrific.

SpaceX Launch Live Webcast and Explanation (12.21.15)

 

 

And a video of the successful landing:

 

 

 

Incredible energy and emotion on that video!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
mjah

mjah

Posted
Posted

What's known about how much refurb is required before they can be used again?

 

While most of the shuttle was resuable the launch and refurb costs were horrific.

 

It probably remains to be seen.  SpaceX is already the least expensive per pound to orbit in the game and they surely will cut out millions of dollars per launch with a reusable first stage.  The true savings will depend on how many times a stage can be reused and how inexpensively/quickly they can turn it around.  

 

There are some numbers out there, but lazily off the top of my head... the first stage must cost $10 million or so per launch if you lose it to the ocean.  Maybe more.  Landing it instead of losing it means that in terms of first-stage physical assets, you're out $0 because you only lost the $200k of consumable propellant.  Use the stage three-plus times and its amortized cost per flight is roughly $3M or less. Refurb and turnaround, especially the first few times when they're doing a massive amount of testing to prove that the engines and stage are still operable, might cost a few million but quickly fall to lower levels as flights continue.  So I think the lowest estimate on savings per flight, assuming most boosters prove reusable a few times, would be on the order of $3-5M per flight. 

 

If turnaround is pretty quick and the first stage's engines/structure don't require extensive rebuilds, then I suppose the upper limit on cost savings would be $10M.  You can't reduce the first stage's physical cost per flight to zero no matter how many times it flies, but quick turnarounds would substantially reduce the fixed cost per flight, which (plus the cost of the upper stages, etc.) currently pushes SpaceX's price to $60M per launch.  So a 15-20% reduction in launch cost seems like a good target figure down the line.

 

That said, I think my numbers are too conservative.  Right now SpaceX can launch at about $2,500/lb to orbit with Falcon 9.  Surely they are aiming for sub-$2,000/lb., which is a 20% reduction at least.  (And I think their big-ass Falcon Heavy rocket is targeting an ideal of perhaps $1,000 to orbit due to the economies of a much larger payload.)

 

Either way, it's a price others can't touch as far as I can tell.  Lockheed Martin/Boeing haven't exactly designed their systems with cheap access to space in mind; NASA isn't going to do their own thing to low Earth orbit anymore as they've set their sights farther out, and certainly wouldn't have done it inexpensively anyway; and Blue Origin can't even orbit yet, despite the copious amounts of free energy Jeff Bezos' outsized ego continuously radiates.  

 

SpaceX is the best player in the commercial game.  Space companies' fortunes can turn on a dime, but I'm not sure who could even catch SpaceX in the near- to mid-term future.  They'd not only have to run as fast as SpaceX, but substantially catch up first -- and do so economically.  Hard to imagine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 6 months later...
China

China

Posted
Posted

SpaceX launch a 'booming' success

 

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Central Florida residents had a bit of a rude awakening early Monday as a cracking sonic boom shook people out of sleep, set off car alarms and caused general panic.

 

But, it turns out we’re not being invaded by Canada.

 

The boom many heard at about 12:50 a.m. was the latest SpaceX launch’s first-stage Falcon 9 booster rocket returning to earth.

 

The launch of a Falcon 9 Dragon spacecraft happened at about 12:45 a.m. Monday from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

 

Minutes later, the booster rocket was screaming back to Earth faster than the speed of sound, which is what caused the sonic boom, NASA officials said.

 

The rocket landed safely back at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

 

Click on the link for the full article

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 5 months later...
  • 5 months later...
China

China

Posted
Posted

Elon Musk Publishes Plans for Colonizing Mars

 

Elon Musk has put his Mars-colonization vision to paper, and you can read it for free.

 

SpaceX's billionaire founder and CEO just published the plan, which he unveiled at a conference in Mexico in September 2016, in the journal New Space. Musk's commentary, titled “Making Humanity a Multi-Planetary Species,” is available for free on New Space's website through July 5.

 

“In my view, publishing this paper provides not only an opportunity for the spacefaring community to read the SpaceX vision in print with all the charts in context, but also serves as a valuable archival reference for future studies and planning,” New Space editor-in-chief (and former NASA “Mars czar”) Scott Hubbard wrote in a statement. [SpaceX's Interplanetary Transport for Mars in Images]

 

Musk's Mars vision centers on a reusable rocket-and-spaceship combo that he's dubbed the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS). Both the booster and the spaceship will be powered by SpaceX's Raptor engine, still in development, which Musk said will be about three times stronger than the Merlin engines that power the company's Falcon 9 rocket.

 

Click on the link for the full article

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 7 months later...
China

China

Posted
Posted

SpaceX has received permission from the US government to launch Elon Musk's car toward Mars

 

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — SpaceX this week is preparing to launch Falcon Heavy, the biggest rocket in the company's history, for the first time.

 

The 230-foot-tall three-booster launcher is scheduled to blast off Tuesday between 1:30 and 4:30 p.m. ET. SpaceX says Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket in the world.

 

SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk, wanted this test launch to happen as early as 2013, though he recently said it could end in an explosion.

 

Instead of putting a standard "mass simulator" or dummy payload atop Falcon Heavy, Musk — who once launched a wheel of cheese into orbit — will put his personal 2008 midnight-cherry-red Tesla Roadster on top of the monster rocket.

 

In an Instagram post over the weekend, Musk also revealed that the car would carry a dummy driver, which Musk is calling "Starman," wearing a SpaceX space suit.

 

"Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring," Musk said in an Instagram post in December, adding that the company "decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel."

 

...

 

The FAA permit mentions a "hyperbolic orbit," the eccentric path Musk hopes his car takes through space. Also known as a Hohmann transfer orbit, it would send the car out to Mars orbit and back toward the sun on a nearly infinite loop.

 

"The payload will be ... playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit," Musk said in December.

 

Click on the link for the full article

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Destino

Destino

Posted
Posted

Can you imagine being so rich that you can just launch your car into space?  I know it was a part of a test but it's not like they forgot the usual test payload and used his car in a pinch.  He sent it up there, complete with a dummy driver and cameras, just for a laugh.  Elon Musk is doing it right.    

 

BEnpAeD.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...