SpaceX Lands Stage 1 on Land!

SpaceX sticks the landing on Stage 1 for their first ever successful vertical landing.
siftbotsays...

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, December 21st, 2015 5:58pm PST - promote requested by eric3579.

Adding video to channels (Engineering) - requested by eric3579.

Asmosays...

I was right there with the feels until they started chanting USA...

(ps. I feel the same way about the Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi, so don't take it personally America ; )

Great accomplishment though, and kinda funny/cool to see the rockstar'ish reception the landing receives. =)

VoodooVsays...

Can someone edumacate me? I get that the point of this seems to be the achievement of reusable rockets. But the fuel required to slow the rocket and stabilize it for landing seems counterproductive. Or has the cost of rocket fuel compared to the cost of building new rockets made it so that they don't care about the extra rocket fuel they burn now?

rich_magnetsays...

In case nobody caught it, this is not the first time a booster stage returns from space to land on its own power, not the first commercial launch booster landing nor even the first time it happened this year. Blue Origin's New Shepherd recently did just that. This lead to a bit of a war of words on twitter which quickly devolved to a "my rocket is bigger than yours" bragging competition. It's rather humorous therefore to hear this band of professional aerospace PR agents say that this is "history by being the first to fly back and land the first stage of our rocket to land" (@1:20).

Nonetheless an impressive mission and I congratulate their whole team for the accomplishment.

oritteroposays...

It is the first to return from an orbital mission, https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/

As impressive as Blue Origin's achievement is, it's only 10% of the energy involved in this one.

rich_magnetsaid:

In case nobody caught it, this is not the first time a booster stage returns from space to land on its own power, not the first commercial launch booster landing nor even the first time it happened this year. Blue Origin's New Shepherd recently did just that. This lead to a bit of a war of words on twitter which quickly devolved to a "my rocket is bigger than yours" bragging competition. It's rather humorous therefore to hear this band of professional aerospace PR agents say that this is "history by being the first to fly back and land the first stage of our rocket to land" (@1:20).

Nonetheless an impressive mission and I congratulate their whole team for the accomplishment.

newtboysays...

I'm just guessing, but I'm fairly sure the fuel is a relatively small part of the cost of any space vehicle. Isn't it just liquid hydrogen and oxygen? They wouldn't be using solid fuel for landing, which these days is often some treated rubber or aluminum oxide, so also fairly cheap...

...cheap that is, when compared to just tossing the pressure tanks, pumps, high pressure-high temperature lines, multiple moveable nozzles, mixing/reaction chambers, computers to run it all, redundant safety features, guidance, frame, skin, etc. that make up the fragile vehicle that can't be dropped by parachute or other passive means and still be reusable.

VoodooVsaid:

Can someone edumacate me? I get that the point of this seems to be the achievement of reusable rockets. But the fuel required to slow the rocket and stabilize it for landing seems counterproductive. Or has the cost of rocket fuel compared to the cost of building new rockets made it so that they don't care about the extra rocket fuel they burn now?

rich_magnetsays...

The booster is not orbital. It's on a ballistic, suborbital flight just as for the Blue Origin booster. The second stage goes to orbit and note that they are not trying to recover that one at all, let alone land it.

In fact, the SpaceX booster does several deceleration burns in space, and so experiences less aerodynamic stress than does the Blue Origin booster, which actually flies faster, according to the article I linked above.

oritteroposaid:

It is the first to return from an orbital mission, https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/

As impressive as Blue Origin's achievement is, it's only 10% of the energy involved in this one.

Ickstersays...

From an article on ArsTechnica:

SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk, has said it costs the company about $60 million to build a Falcon 9 rocket. The propellant itself only costs $200,000. Thus there is the potential to slash the costs of spaceflight by 10, or even 100 times.

VoodooVsaid:

Can someone edumacate me? I get that the point of this seems to be the achievement of reusable rockets. But the fuel required to slow the rocket and stabilize it for landing seems counterproductive. Or has the cost of rocket fuel compared to the cost of building new rockets made it so that they don't care about the extra rocket fuel they burn now?

Ashenkasesays...

While the Blue Origin vertical landing is difficult and an accomplishment in its own right comparing it to Spacex is a little unbalanced:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/24/9793220/blue-origin-vs-spacex-rocket-landing-jeff-bezos-elon-musk

Twice the speed, twice the height, more burns, a more complex flight path and a much larger, thinner vehicle to name a few differences.

You may want to watch this video on what Spacex has planned for the remaining stages of its stack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSF81yjVbJE

To be fair that stack has the Dragon capsule on top and not a satellite delivery bus but the goal to return multi stages is part of the Spacex vision.

"If" Spacex can get the "heavy" version of their vehicle up and running with stage return they will be a force unequalled in launch across the entire industry. That is if they can turn around their stages without compromise to structural integrity.

rich_magnetsaid:

The booster is not orbital. It's on a ballistic, suborbital flight just as for the Blue Origin booster. The second stage goes to orbit and note that they are not trying to recover that one at all, let alone land it.

In fact, the SpaceX booster does several deceleration burns in space, and so experiences less aerodynamic stress than does the Blue Origin booster, which actually flies faster, according to the article I linked above.

VoodooVsays...

Thanks for the responses, gang. I guess I'm just surprised that we're going this route since it seems so inefficient. Kinda like the skycrane for the curiosity rover seems so convoluted and so much could go wrong. Which reminds me, it amuses me that they refer to the earlier explosion as an "anomaly"

Paybacksays...

Sounds better than "That last'un that blow'd up real good."

Well, better for their investors anyway.

VoodooVsaid:

Which reminds me, it amuses me that they refer to the earlier explosion as an "anomaly"

Ashenkasesays...

As was mentioned above, the cost of the fuel is a non-starter. Currently SpaceX uses a Kerosene / Liquid Oxygen fuel mix.

After the anomaly (the space industries way of saying accident) in June SpaceX did a complete vehicle review. They are now using a more advanced technique to cool the LOX which means for a denser LOX liquid in their tanks, which ultimately means they have more oxidizer on board for their flights now.

Coupled with the LOX improvements they have made upgrades to the engines which means 30% greater efficiency. Basically the horsepower per engine has increased.

This means they can get their payloads to orbit plus have more then enough fuel left over in stage 1 to return it to land.

The greatest efficiency comes from returning the stage(s) and then reusing them in future launches (not proven yet). ALL launchers (u.s, soviet, indian, ESA, Japan, etc) ditch ALL of their hardware into the ocean when getting payload to orbit. Bye, bye multi million dollars worth of engines and hardware.

If SpaceX can turn that scenario on its head and reuse those stages and MORE importantly the engines they will cut their costs per launch by a substantial amount. Ultimately that means cheaper per pound cost to get material into orbit.

All of the media uses the word "explosion" when describing the June anomaly which is funny because there was never an ignition of onboard fuels.

The LOX tanks have smaller Helium tanks inside them. The helium is released during launch. The helium rises in the LOX quickly, expands and pressurizes the tank to ensure the LOX is "squeezed" into the pipes in order to keep up with the turbo pumps.

One of the struts holding a helium tank inside the LOX tank failed. The helium tank shot up and blew threw the top of the LOX tank and took a good part of the top of the stack off. The engines actually fired for a few seconds after the anomaly and then sputtered out. The rest of the vehicle at this point is still fairly intact.

Without proper structural integrity the vehicle started to veer off course, dynamic pressures built up and the vehicle was essentially ripped apart by those forces.

At 3:20 the Helium tank rips off its struts. At 3:27 the remainder of the vehicle disintegrates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNymhcTtSQ

SpaceX mentioned that in June, the dragon capsule continued to relay telemetry until it smacked into the ocean. If the Dragon had better software onboard it would have detected the anomaly and recovered with chutes. Elon said that software would be active on Dragons from now on.

VoodooVsaid:

Thanks for the responses, gang. I guess I'm just surprised that we're going this route since it seems so inefficient. Kinda like the skycrane for the curiosity rover seems so convoluted and so much could go wrong. Which reminds me, it amuses me that they refer to the earlier explosion as an "anomaly"

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