SpaceX did it

[Payday]

The rocket weighs about 550 tons at takeoff and the first stage (shown) weighs about 30-40 tons when landing. The landing legs are designed for use on landing only, otherwise they'd have to support 14x more weight.

Just needs more struts and it'll be fine dude. I've done it before.

[Aphrel]

Have they confirmed yet wether its reusable? i mean with the ware and tare from one liftoff. is the materials still good to go for another round? just refuel and go? I wonder how much cheaper this will make space flight. In dollars/ton of cargo that is. atm it cost rediculusly much.

[Shinzou]

Noone will launch a Hubble 2.

One is already under construction..... Much larger than Hubble. Set to launch in 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_...pace_Telescope

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Have they confirmed yet wether its reusable? i mean with the ware and tare from one liftoff. is the materials still good to go for another round? just refuel and go? I wonder how much cheaper this will make space flight. In dollars/ton of cargo that is. atm it cost rediculusly much.

You think it was more wear and tear than the space shuttle's multiple launches?

[Skroe]

whats the point when we signed a dumb treaty saying u cant own celestial bodies... the same idiots that signed that failed to realize earth is just another celestial body to another planet.

The Outer Space Treaty will be abandoned when the time comes. It's a rarely cited, not really important treaty. The most relevant limitation is the ban on space-based nuclear testing (of which there were only a handful of tests prior if I recall correctly).

Congress already took a small step in that direction last year.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-...bill/2262/text

``Sec. 51303. Asteroid resource and space resource rights

``A United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an
asteroid resource or a space resource under this chapter shall be
entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including
to possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space
resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the
international obligations of the United States.''.

I firmly believe the Outer Space Treaty short circuited the Space Age. But I also think that one day, over the next two centuries, future American colonies on the Moon and Mars will become territories, then States. The United States is uniquely positioned as the only country in the world capable of expanding off world. When the means exist to capitalize on that, an obscure treaty from 1967 will be irrelevant.

[Deleted]

whats the point when we signed a dumb treaty saying u cant own celestial bodies... the same idiots that signed that failed to realize earth is just another celestial body to another planet.

Do you realy want to re-open that can of worms, treat it as it is now "international waters"

[Skroe]

Do you realy want to re-open that can of worms, treat it as it is now "international waters"

It's completely worth re-opening.

The United States now has an even larger strategic advantage when it comes to access to space, both from the reusability angle with the Falcon 9 and with the sheer mass angle with the Space Launch System.

It has the first two things you need to build infrastructure off world - the ability to go their economically, and the ability to put big things into space. In the fall when the Falcon Heavy launches (three Falcon 9 boosters strapped together), in principle, the US will gain a partially reusable "middle" option of 54 tons to LEO (only the outer cores are planned to be reusable for most Falcon Heavy launches).

It's important to point out what the competition is doing.

The European Space Agency is working on replacing the Ariane 5 with the Ariane 6 over the next decade. However the Ariane 6 in it's largest configuration (Arianne 64) will be less capable than the Falcon 9 and not planned to be strapped together like the Falcon Heavy. Furthermore it's planned reusability is by Ariane 6 won't come until around 2030 with the Adeline replacement first stage. And it is only proposing a return of the engine core rather than the stack.

United Launch Alliance, who builds the Atlas V/Delta IV for the US Government, is a Lockheed/Boeing joint venture. Their currently rockets are hugely uneconomical in the world of Space X (being 3-7 times more expensive). Their next generation rocket, the Vulcan, is "better" but less capable than the Falcon 9 today, at least five years away and only the engines are being resused via the ability to detach, have an inflatable aeroshell with parachutes and be captured by a helicopter mid air. It's cheapest version is twice as expensive as the Falcon 9 is today.

Russia "says" it is working on resuability technology, but Russia says lots of crap when it comes to Space. Fact is, it slashed it's Space budget from between 2016 and 2026 by 41% and it's new rocket, the Angara, is really just a Russian Atlas V (that is to say, it showed up on the scene 18 years too late) and is uneconomical from every angle compared to SpaceX. Russia has relied on improving Soyuz and Proton rockets and their associated technologies, for the past fifty years (and indeed modern ones are somewhat different than ones from 30 years ago). However Russia has two problems - their product line has moved from being the cheapest option to the middle option, and soon the most expensive option, in the past decade, not only as SpaceX showed up, but also because of Chinese commercial space launching eating its share of the pie. Secondly, rockets (all rockets) have long build times 3 to 5 years depending on the size. Russian rockets the last five years have started to have increasingly severe reliability problems (faulty stages, explosions). The most likely culprit? The experienced rocket building workforce that has been there for 40 years has started to retire en masse in the past decade, particularly as Putin consolidated state-owned industries to make them more globally competitive (in theory). This has lead to a severe loss of institutional knowledge (it should be noted, this isn't exactly unusual, something similar but less severe started to happen the last half decade of the Space Shuttle, it was clear, the maintainer force that knew the vehicles like they were their own cars was aging). Russia's future in space is exceptionally bleak.

And then there is CHina. China has committed to resuability technology at some point in the future, but they aren't rushing. They're really looking to build an Delta IV Heavy (28 tons) class launcher, because right no China can only put relatively medium sized payloads into LEO (about 14 tons). And they don't even have anything approaching the 54 tons of the Falcon Heavy or the 72/105/130 tons of the SLS even planned. Their rockets are cheaper than Russia's, but when it comes to performance-per-kilogram, they're far behind SpaceX.


It's important to note how we got here.

Landing a rocket is extraordinarily ambitious, but it is not a new idea. What happened, specifically, is that in the early 2000s, Elon Musk hired away individuals who were key to NASA's mid 1990s Space Launch Initiative Program (which the X-33 and X-34 were part of). A reusable, landing rocket was envisioned in the early 1990s, at the very start of the SLI and two engines were build, the TR-106 and TR-107 by Northrop Grumman, to make it possible. When the project was terminated in 2000/2001, many of those people and were hired by Elon Musk. The Merlin 1 engine is the direct descendent of the TR-106 and TR-107, and the Falcon 9 and it's reusability a realization of Space Launch Initivative program goals.

What the Falcon 9 does today was envisioned over 20 years ago, but never prusued for cost reasons. The government, and the contractors at the time, didn't want to put the money up. From a government perspective this is somewhat rational. It needs rockets to put sattelites into space about six to eight times per year. It has near unlimited funding. It's direct return on investment would be minimal. It can afford to overpay on expensive single use rockets forever. $250 million is not expensive for a $3-4 trillion a year budget. It was simple never pursuited.

The VERY first thing Elon Musk worked out after launching the Falcon 1 (a 1 engine demonstrator) was the financing and insurance of the Falcon 9. The way he figured it, SpaceX, at the very start, was liquid enough to be able to absorb the loss of three successive Falcon 9 vehicles and their payloads. This allowed for SpaceX to collect data and be experimental in their early launches (as they kept having successes) because no rocket launch was a "bet the company" event.

Getting a rocket to land was a 10 year phased development. Space X started with the Merlin 1C engine, which they fired. They then put that on a simple rocket, the Falcon 1. They then scaled it up to the more capable Falcon 9, which has 9 engines. They then streched the falcon 9 to make it more capable. They then developed the side project, Grasshopper, test landing. THe then upgradee the Merlin 1C with the 1D. They then did a major engineering revamp of the Falcon 9 (turning it into the v1.1). They then integrated landing technologies and started testing by reserving launch mass on flights. They then did another major Falcon 9 revamp (resulting in the current "Full Thrust" or "Falcon 9 v1.2"). And that doesn't even included the phased development of the capsule. In ideally structured program, that allows success to feed into the next success. There is no "bet the company" moments in it. Every step in the way, SpaceX simply gained confidence in it's design, and then extrapolated to the next logical step. How long did this take? A decade of Elon Musks life. Really more. But he made the decision over a decade ago to do it and stick with it.

A lot of companies didn't. SpaceX was surrounded, in those early days, with a lot of would-be commercial firms. Most of them sought to capitalize on existing government investments in space. Retired ICBMs. Abandoned vehicle designs. Abandoned prototypes. Looking back, it is a bit emabarassing. SpaceX was the only one that decided, from the get go, to develop it's own, inhouse technology - sure using the SLI /TR-106/107 work as a direction to go in, but it's not like NASA actually build Merlin1 and SpaceX just put it into production. I mean we can contrast this to Orbital, whose Antares competitor to the Falcon 9 relied on Russian moon program Nk-33 engines it (well actually engine provided Aerojet) bought for $1 million each in the 1990s. The engines Antares used until the last one blew up 18 months ago, on it's fifth launch, were build in the 1960s! Since then Orbital retired the Nk-33 but is replacing them with Russian RD-193, which is a modernized RD-170, a 30 year old design used on Energia.

I think the contrast is clear: SpaceX sought to innovate while it's competitors did not. Engines are the most expensive part of any launch system. Throuugh 3d printing SpaceX is looking to drive the cost of launch down even further by replacing expensive and time intensive machining with rapid fabrication. But it can do this because it designed as simple an engine with that in mind. By contrast Orbital locked itself into a foreign design that it doesn't produce and can't modify. How can orbital ever be competitive dollar for dollar?

And oribtal was among the best of the competition. Arianespace and ULA were happy with their reliable government monopolies. They invested nothing into the future - no new technology, no nothing, for a good decade until SpaceX started to land rockets (really, that late). In a world without SpaceX, ULA would probably fly the Atlas V forever. Russia was no better - it relies upon commercial contracts to subsidize it's space program, and has spent the past decade making a killing, but invested almost nothing in new vehicle development.

Anyone who wants to land, this way, has to start now, and they won't be able to do it for a solid decade. And many of their rockets are fundamentally incompatible with that approach. The Falcon 9 9-engine block allows it very fine control over it's descent velocity. Engines can cut out and others will compensate. They're independently throttle-able and gimbled for thrust vector control. By contrast the Atlas V core stage has two large exhaust skirts, and not nearly the fine control of the Falcon 9 as a result (though they are gimbaled as well).

This is why nobody else is even trying the landing approaching and everyone else is trying some variation of the "detach the engine segment, and have it re-enter". It saves them the development costs of having to build a grasshopper demonstrator. And it saves them the development costs of having to go with a Merlin 1D clone to make landing possible. Vulcan? Two big BE-4 engines. Ariane 6? It's core stage will have one engine (and there are 4 disposable solid rocket boosters in the 64 model comparable to the Falcon 9).

This is a tremendous opportunity. Everyone else sat on their hands, and even now is making bad decisions about future investments. It's absolutely worth opening that can of worms because even if every one of these partners started tomorrow, it would be a decade before they're able to do what SpaceX did yesterday. And a decade from now? SpaceX will be doing a lot more than this.

Frankly, I see ULA getting out of the rocket business in the next five years when it becomes clear that Vulcan will never be economical for them and competitive with Falcon 9. Lockheed and Boeing I bet will just wrap it up and be content with their mega SLS contracts.

[Osmeric]

This is why nobody else is even trying the landing approaching and everyone else is trying some variation of the "detach the engine segment, and have it re-enter".

It's possible (likely?) Blue Origin will be building a launcher capable of reaching orbit. The New Shepard has allowed them to demonstrate vertical landing and stage reuse, although of course that vehicle is operating at a much lower energy than the F9 first stage (but > SpaceX's Grasshopper).

[Skroe]

It's possible (likely?) Blue Origin will be building a launcher capable of reaching orbit. The New Shepard has allowed them to demonstrate vertical landing and stage reuse, although of course that vehicle is operating at a much lower energy than the F9 first stage (but > SpaceX's Grasshopper).

Yeah I always forget about them. They're the exception, absolutely. They will almost certainly make a landing rocket (though they kind of took an engine->grasshopper++ -> Falcon 9 approach, to put it in SpaceX terms, that in my view protracted development and made a lot less sense).

Blue Origin's next rocket is supposed to be two stage to orbit, but I do wonder if they'll tackle single-stage-to-orbit before SpaceX does. The vision from the outset of Blue Origin was been to bring the vision of the DC-X into operational reality, which isn't at all what SpaceX aimed to do. Elon Musk also seems perfectly content with keeping the upper stage of the Faclon 9 cheap and disposable for now.

It just boggles my mind though that ULA, Arianespace and Orbital in particular all refuse to go the re-usability route now, when they're all going to have to do it in a world where the competition is doing it in the same launch mass marketplace they currently exist in.

It's like choosing extinction. And ULA in particular is far less stable in its quickly fading government monopoly compared to a few years ago.

[Purpleisbetter]

the earth is definitely not flat. Eratosthenes measured a curve in the surface of the earth a couple thousand years ago. Since then, of course, we've discovered the earth's curvature is not constant, but varies, such that the actual shape is as follows:

instant classic.

[Logwyn]

All we really need is someone to find a chemical that we really need on earth. And a way that it's economically feasible to farm and get back to earth. And make tons of money. And the Space Race will take off by leaps and bounds.

Besides if the human species is to survive we need to be on multiple planets/moons/etc so one earth shattering event doesn't wipe us out..... Though now they'll be those that say wiping us out wouldn't be a bad thing... But I kinda like living right myself.

[Masark]

And a decade from now? SpaceX will be doing a lot more than this.

If Musk has his way, a decade from now they'll have people headed to Mars.

Blue Origin's next rocket is supposed to be two stage to orbit, but I do wonder if they'll tackle single-stage-to-orbit before SpaceX does.

Likely. SpaceX doesn't seems to have any interest in single-stage with the Raptor, given that they're working on a 2nd stage version of it for the Air Force, and I'm presuming that single-stage would really put a crimp in recovery.

[Deleted]

Never thought I'd ever get to see rockets coming back down to land.

[Barnabas]

Now they need to do a lap or two around the moon. Then land like they did in the gif.

[Kourvith]

Vespene gas depleted.

[Skroe]

If Musk has his way, a decade from now they'll have people headed to Mars.



Likely. SpaceX doesn't seems to have any interest in single-stage with the Raptor, given that they're working on a 2nd stage version of it for the Air Force.

I could see a private SpaceX to Mars inside of a decade, easily. But people? Doubtful. A launch window only approaches every 22 months.
http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/EMa.htm

There are five by the end of 2026. And SpaceX, to be fair, is years behind it's once-projected schedule with the Falcon Heavy and DragonV2 (once known as Dragon Rider). There are good reasons that is the case - they made the business decision to firm up their core business of commercial satellite launch and compete for government launch contracts as a reliable source of income. But as successful as SpaceX is, let's not try to pretend that sending payloads to Mars larger than what NASA has sent there on legacy launchers isn't a massive undertaking.

I do see SpaceX sending people to Mars one day, but not till the mid to late 2030s (which is my timetable for anything Mars).

Based on their previous statements, this is what will have to happen:

(1) Development of the Raptor upperstage engine by 2018.
(2) Flight of the Raptor Upper stage engine by 2020. (the contract so far is not a flight contract, just ground testing).
(3) Redesignging the Falcon 9 core to replace the 9x Merlin-1Ds (probably a newer version by then) with a single Raptor engine on the first stage, by 2024
(4) Flying Falcon 9 "Raptor" + Falcon Heavy 'Raptor" for a few years, through 2028.
(5) Debut of a multi-Raptor engine super heavy lift launch vehicle by 2030. Saturn V sized.
(6) Strap cores together to make the Mars Colonial Transporter by the mid-to-late 2030s.




One of the problems with this is it keeps SpaceX firmly as a space launch company, and it will have to re-prove landing technology for the significantly larger MCT cores. SpaceX will also have to finance development of a Mars Transit Vehicle for people, a hab, a way to land the hab on mars, and a landing / ascent vehcile (although the DragonV2 capsule could provide the technological basis of all of this in a 1/3rd Earth Gravity environment.

It's going to need a LOT of capital to do all these things. And let's not forget also, the best way with current technology to do a Mars Transit Vehicle and power a basic Mars base, is with nuclear fission reactor. Naval Reactors was brought in on Project Prometheus to do just that a decade ago, but it became apparent that it's easily a multi-billion dollar program. And the regulatory hurdles for a private company to put a fission reactor in orbit is daunting.

I'm not saying SpaceX can't or won't pull it off. But I am saying that without a significant compromise in mission architecture, anybody's vision of a Mars mission is in the late 2030s at the earliest. I've written this up for NASA/SLS too. Lots of people in the press and even NASA officials give the early 2030s for a Mars mission. I keep thinking "yeah if you want to kill some Astronauts". No matter who does - NASA or SpaceX, I see a Mars orbit and maybe Phobos "docking" mission, Apollo 8 style, before i see a separate mars landing mission. If you factor in round trip, post mission analysis and pre-next mission prep, we're automatically adding 3-5 years on any time table.

And the thing is, even quick and dirty wouldn't do it. I mean sure NASA if it really wanted to could throw together a few ISS-derived modules with more shielding and a capsule on some EELVs and send them to Mars (at very high risk) for a "quick and dirty" orbit at almost any point. But if we want to Lower risk, as NASA always does, and make such a flight applicable to follow ups, then we have to go through the whole laborious process of new vehicle development and proving the mission design works (as Apollo 8 did).

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Now they need to do a lap or two around the moon. Then land like they did in the gif.

Smaller probe-sized Falcon 9 payloads can do it.

Larger Falcon Heavy module+capsule sized payloads would be able to as well.

The SLS Block I + Orioncapsule is doing that on September 30th 2018.



Everything is being built right now.

So our European friends know, they're building Orion's service module based on the ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle design, which ironically fulfills the ATV's original purpose (it was envisioned 15+ years ago as a bridge to a service module for European capsule)


http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/orion_clean_room_1.jpg
Saved NASA from building it's own.

SLS and Falcon are very different space vehicles for different missions of course. And both are complementary: SLS for big infrastructure, Falcon for logistics and small/medium infrastructure.


Larger Falcons (with Raptor) may, and probably will eventually make SLS obsolete, but the 105t SLS will be flying for a decade before that happens. SpaceX biggest problem is that the Market demand for something Falcon Heavy sized (54 tons) is already relatively light (though stronger than once anticipated) and it's far from clear that there is a market demand for something 70t to 105t to 130t.

This is why in my opinion, SpaceX needs a core justification for space launch at this rate. Airplanes had one - point to point manned travel (but within the "Human sphere") and logistics/commerce. Shrinking the world we live in, that kind of thing. Space won't have that until people are there. But it needs something like that to make the economic case to send people there. I think the solution is space based solar power. The world needs ever more energy, and ever more clean energy. And space based solar has the potential to provide more than any other source short of retaining fossil fuels or dramatically expanding nuclear. It would be cheaper due to economies of scale. And the ongoing need would justify a world of daily Falcon launches.

Right now SpaceX had 14 launches planned in 2016. It should try to get that to 50 in a decade (about once weekly), and then daily a decade after that. If it can manage that, a space economy will develop. I really think connecting space launch need to satiating global energy demands is the best, most practical way to do that. Far more than say, Asteroid mining or resource recovery (in the near term). That kind of launch pace requirement will also justify re-usability. SpaceX presently has 1 line producing 6 cores a year, and is working to increase that to 3 lines producing 10 cores a year each for 30 per year, by early 2017. Going to 50 would require doubling that, and that doesn't take into account any falcon heavy's require 3 cores (or 1/10th the total of a year's production).

Even writing this out, it seems like SpaceX really is aiming for a launch-a-week rate at some point down the road. Maybe SolarCity will be the basis of that for Musk.

[Reeve]

Have they confirmed yet wether its reusable? i mean with the ware and tare from one liftoff. is the materials still good to go for another round? just refuel and go? I wonder how much cheaper this will make space flight. In dollars/ton of cargo that is. atm it cost rediculusly much.

They did a static fire test of the last one they successfully landed and everything was fine. We won't know for this one until they launch it.

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You think it was more wear and tear than the space shuttle's multiple launches?

The Shuttles had to be refurbished very expensively between each launch though. The Falcon won't.

[Afrospinach]

Never thought I'd ever get to see rockets coming back down to land.

They come back down to land every launch!

[Ghâzh]

Have they confirmed yet wether its reusable? i mean with the ware and tare from one liftoff. is the materials still good to go for another round? just refuel and go? I wonder how much cheaper this will make space flight. In dollars/ton of cargo that is. atm it cost rediculusly much.

SpaceX is citing somewhere around 30% cost savings when they can reliably land them safely and re-use the rockets.

[Skroe]

They did a static fire test of the last one they successfully landed and everything was fine. We won't know for this one until they launch it.

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The Shuttles had to be refurbished very expensively between each launch though. The Falcon won't.

Elon Musk tweeted yesterday that based on analysis of the prior landing, first stages can be inspected, filled up with fuel, restacked and launched 10-20 times. If the core is partially dissembled for refurbishment, that number becomes 100 times before a new core is needed.

That's an astounding number, consider SpaceX has 14 missions planned this year (which makes it easily the most flown single-space vehicle in the world in 2016, and probably ever in one year)

[Reeve]

Blue Origin's next rocket is supposed to be two stage to orbit, but I do wonder if they'll tackle single-stage-to-orbit before SpaceX does. The vision from the outset of Blue Origin was been to bring the vision of the DC-X into operational reality, which isn't at all what SpaceX aimed to do. Elon Musk also seems perfectly content with keeping the upper stage of the Faclon 9 cheap and disposable for now.

What's the advantage of single stage to orbit? Wouldn't that just make it more difficult to recover the stage once it's delivered its payload?