SpaceX Grasshopper Flies High

http://www.universetoday.com/101627/spacex-grasshopper-flies-high/

by navneetpandey • 13 years ago

319 202 13 years ago

Its likely that full-fledged Space Travel with reusable rockets will be possible in the coming years

The pace of progress seems to have been faster than even SpaceX anticipated. Within the next year we'll see very significant tests of core components of the system and flight profile (for the first stage at least).

The very next Falcon 9 flight (out of Vandenberg) will use the performance overhead provided by the v1.1 upgrade to do a controlled reentry of the 1st stage and then after it has reached terminal velocity it will slow down to a hover out over some remote part of the ocean, then splash down. This is a good and cheap test of a huge part of the flight profile. Meanwhile, the Grasshopper 2 will be more of a full-up Falcon 9 (v1.1) first stage, with 9 engines and will include retractable landing gear. Instead of testing controlled hovering and precision landing it'll go up to supersonic speeds and potentially up to 90km altitude. Essentially testing the return to launch site flight profile in a more realistic setting with more realistic hardware.

And then if that proves fruitful they will essentially just stick that hardware into the Falcon 9 stack and do a full up orbital launch with a flyback 1st stage. Possibly within the next few years even. If that works it'll be rather amazing, since much of the cost of a launch is in the manufacture of those 9 engines on that first stage. Even if a reusable stage costs 3x as much as a regular stage and halves the payload capacity if they can get just 6 flights out of each one it'll break even, and if the numbers are more favorable they'll drop the floor out of the orbital launch market and then own it, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year in revenue (a feat they are already on their way to doing with their current lineup of rockets). Perhaps more profoundly it'll hasten the day when it will be conceivable to use kickstarter to fund an interplanetary science mission.

luke_s4• 13 years ago

Thanks for the detailed rundown!

If you don't mind me asking - where did you find all this out? I've been looking for a good source of SpaceX news. The official website/g+/facebook/etc just posts short updates whenever a mission occurs. I'm looking for news about what is on the horizon and more detailed analysis.

skorgu2• 13 years ago

And I haven't been this excited (nay, giddy) since I was about 6 and reading Space Colonies For Kids or whatever.

I'm a bit worried about the bimodality of the future but man the good parts are going to be good.

marvin• 13 years ago

Do you have more information on the "water landing" planned for the next Falcon 9 flight? Why won't the SpaceX team attempt to land it on some sort of floating platform?

Seems to me that this would yield an even better test "for free" and even provide the possibility of recovering the first stage for analysis.

jessriedel4• 13 years ago

> The very next Falcon 9 flight (out of Vandenberg) will use the performance overhead provided by the v1.1 upgrade to do a controlled reentry of the 1st stage and then after it has reached terminal velocity it will slow down to a hover out over some remote part of the ocean, then splash down. This is a good and cheap test of a huge part of the flight profile.

Could you explain the first part a bit more, or point me somewhere? How was is the first stage going? Does it need a heat shield?

EDIT: Ha, looks like a lot of people had the same question at the same time.

rplnt3• 13 years ago

I believe same thing was done by NASA in the 70s. So not really big step forward in this particular regard.

edit: Can't find it at the moment. So far I've found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X which did what grasshopper and more almost 20 years back. I still believe I've read something earlier though. Will edit when/if I find it.

EthanHeilman4• 13 years ago

[citation needed]

jerf• 13 years ago

No. It was a stated goal of the Space Shuttle project, but it failed. Had the Space Shuttle been a commercial venture it would have been abandoned decades ago; other than the fact that it generally worked (which, to be clear, is saying something, that's not guaranteed), it was an awful design.

derekp7• 13 years ago

Are you referring to that neat trick they pulled a half dozen times, where they landed a rocket on its tail in an airless environment with 1/6 gravity? That was still pretty impressive on a bunch of other levels.

nkoren3• 13 years ago

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).

smackfu5• 13 years ago

Yeah, I was going to mention the DC-X. The video you link below shows what is probably a future grasshopper test, where they take the vehicle off of vertical to show it can really reorient itself.

ChuckMcM2• 13 years ago

Actually not true, but I suspect if you've been researching this you've discovered that. NASA has of course researched vertical landing techniques from the beginning, both with manned missions (Apollo) and robotic. However, it was "on the list" prior to the great de-funding and generally sat in the 'to be looked at' drawer from then on.

The DC-X program, and others like it were spawned by private industry who were betting on a huge 'single stage to orbit' (or SSTO) model for satellite launches that would be needed for the Reagan 'Star Wars' missile defense program. They died when Star Wars died and NASA briefly assumed control of DC-X when its private backers pulled out but was stretched too thin to give it any real push.

That said, Elon and others will tell you that the current crop of rockets would not be possible without the work that NASA did and has shared. SpaceX also has benefited from computer systems that are 10,000X more powerful than the ones that NASA had available for their use, and materials that are 1/3 to 1/2 the weight and yet stronger than their NASA counterparts. Sensors that are 100x more sensitive and 1/1000th the cost. A six degree of freedom inertial unit was $125,000 in 1970 and resolved differences of .1G. A 9 degree of freedom unit from Sparkfun Electronics [1] is now $125, and reliably resolves 1/4096'th of a G. So I don't doubt that the same engineers at NASA could build what SpaceX is building today, today, but I assure you they didn't have the tools to build it back in the 70's or even in the 90's.

[1] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10736

DigitalJack• 13 years ago

Haven't heard much from Armadillo Aerospace in a while. Are they still active?

adventured• 13 years ago

Yeah they're still active.

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?ne...

smackfu5• 13 years ago

They've always seemed more like a hobby company than the competitors. Their small scale has really seemed to slow them down, like lots of manufacturing and sourcing issues that a bigger company can just throw money at.

Florin_Andrei11• 13 years ago

Even smaller than Armadillo - I really like Copenhagen Suborbitals. They are basically your friendly hackers next door, looking to launch a person into space.

http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/

omegant• 13 years ago

Are that engines reusable in a short time? or must they go through a mayor refurbishment after each flight?

deletes3• 13 years ago

Basically it is just refuel. The entire rocket is reusable. Musk mentioned in some interview it would take a couple of days.

hughes• 13 years ago

Impressively, he actually said "single digit hours" between flights for the lower stages. See "turnaround time": http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/rockets/elon-m...

Florin_Andrei11• 13 years ago

"Like re-fueling your car" - he uses that analogy a lot. It's probably not exactly like that, but it gives an idea what the real goal is.

octatone2• 13 years ago

Can't watch this in Germany of course.

unwind• 13 years ago

Of course, because ... no? Why? It works great in Sweden, for instance so it can't be "side of the Atlantic" that decides. Some DRM/rights issue?

dredge• 13 years ago

The video has a music soundtrack ("Ring of Fire") which gets it blocked in Germany.

Wikipedia have an article about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_YouTube_videos_in_G...

btipling• 13 years ago

Likely because of the soundtrack used. The music added is Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash which limits distribution of the video to certain countries and probably to non-mobile devices. Adding music you don't own the copyright to is probably not a good idea for achieving maximum viewership and distribution. In this case the music is distracting and doesn't add any value, although I like the song.

lavezza• 13 years ago

http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/se7_JpbtPwA&rel=1

Version with different music. Heard it works in other countries.

shmerl• 13 years ago

VPN? Regional limitations is a ridiculous idiocy in the age of the Internet.

olex2• 13 years ago

ProxTube to the rescue.

MartinMcGirk3• 13 years ago

I can't even begin to describe how psyched I get when I see demos like this. The advances that SpaceX and their competitors are making in terms of making access to space cheaper are what will eventually lead to the human species settling on other planets.

It also reminds me that when it comes to science, and who knows, maybe other things as well, it's not just public sector vs private sector. SpaceX wouldn't be driving us forward like this if NASA hadn't put in a whole heap of groundwork first, but similarly NASA have other goals to worry about besides keeping costs down. It's that combination of NASA's huge ambition and private enterprise's drive to make efficiency savings that will eventually get us colonizing places that aren't the Earth.

I hope it happens in my life time,

Florin_Andrei11• 13 years ago

It's like the Internet.

First, you need a massive government program to get the technology from the pie in the sky stage to something usable - a multi-decade, arduous process that produces no short-term profits, if any. Once that's done, it's time for the private sector to step in.

qu4z-2• 13 years ago

Something something Eternal September of Rocketry.

savrajsingh2• 13 years ago

Can someone share some details on how the rocket is stabilized? There are a few different ways to do it -- how does this one work?

JshWright13• 13 years ago

I assume it's some sort of gimbal control/vectoring of the thrust (since I don't see any 'extra' exhaust further up the rocket)

savrajsingh2• 13 years ago

Yeah I think that's what it is unless told otherwise. Quite impressive stuff!

rst3• 13 years ago

It gimbals the engine for pitch and yaw, and uses cold-gas thrusters for roll (around the vertical axis).

jessriedel4• 13 years ago

For those of you who haven't seen it, here is SpaceX's fantastic animation of their ultimate goal for Falcon 9 (complete with soundtrack by Muse):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWFFiubtC3c

This will give you an idea of how grasshopper fits into the full flight plan.

deepblueocean• 13 years ago

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?

cdash4• 13 years ago

There is an estimated 40% reduction in payload to become reusable but since the fuel is only less than 1% of the cost in launching the rocket it is pretty acceptable.

EthanHeilman4• 13 years ago

Fuel is very inexpensive (~2% the cost of a rocket launch), rockets are very expensive. If you can trade off fuel for not having to build a new rocket you drop the cost to orbit by orders of magnitude.

Additionally you can build more expensive rockets that are more efficient since rocket creation becomes a capital rather than a reoccurring cost.

Lambdanaut• 13 years ago

Basically, yes. Fuel costs make up a marginal part of the rocket's cost. One reason the Space Shuttle was such a massive failure was because it was supposed to be "re-usable", yet it really wasn't. It threw away most of its volume every time it launched, yet it still had to carry more fuel into space for the soft landing. It had downsides from both sides of the equation.

stuff4ben• 13 years ago

I thought the same thing. One of the Youtube commentswas pretty insightful in that it mentioned that when you do a parachute landing into the ocean, it's landing in salt water. Therefore the craft has to be taken apart inspected, cleaned, and put back together. So I'm assuming they've done the cost benefits and figured it's cheaper this way.

I wonder if a combination parachute/thruster landing would be more feasible though? Sort of like the Mars Science Lab without the sky-crane.

InclinedPlane18• 13 years ago

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 launch costs by a factor of 10 in the short term and perhaps as much as 100 if they get really good at it (although that's likely several generations of hardware down the line, at best). With that sort of thing on offer a reduction in payload is easily justifiable.

Imagine if somebody replaced your car with a version that had twice the carrying capacity, but would only run for one tank of gas. It wouldn't be a worthwhile trade would it?

jordan0day• 13 years ago

I imagine there's a lot less fuel required to land than is required to take off. That is, on launch, the rocket is probably (eventually) reaching speeds of several thousand miles per hour.

Upon landing, the atmosphere does most of the slowing-down for you, so you only need enough fuel to reduce the speed from terminal velocity (not sure what this would be for a rocket, probably several hundred miles an hour, at least) to 0. So, I'm sure it's not an insubstantial amount of fuel, but maybe less than you'd think?

cbhl• 13 years ago

"With an advanced rocket you can do maybe two to three percent of your lift-off mass to orbit, typically. And then reusability subtracts two to three percent. So then you've got nothing toward or negative and that's also not helpful. So, the trick is to try to shift that from two to three percent in the expendable configuration, to make the rocket mass efficiency, engines efficiency, and so forth so much better so that it moves to around three and half to four percent in the expendable configuration and then try to get clever about the reusablility elements and try to drop that to around the the one and a half to two percent level so that you have a net payload of about two percent."

http://youtu.be/vDwzmJpI4io?t=27m

(Watch from 27m for about 50 seconds.)

mtgx• 13 years ago

Fuel cost is only 2-3% of the mission's cost, according to Elon Musk.

Florin_Andrei11• 13 years ago

As Elon Musk put it, it's the difference between filling up your car at the end of a trip, and then going on another trip immediately, versus having to build a whole new car almost from scratch at the end of each trip.

bdonlan• 13 years ago

According to http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/rockets/elon-m... :

> "The payload penalty for full and fast reusability versus an expendable version is roughly 40 percent," Musk says. "[But] propellant cost is less than 0.4 percent of the total flight cost. Even taking into account the payload reduction for reusability, the improvement is therefore theoretically over a hundred times."

marcamillion• 13 years ago

I am not that much of a space buff....but for some reason...when I see this video and the one posted by the OP - I get SOOO excited.

Perhaps it is the innovation of never seeing a rocket do a full-blown take-off and then land vertically and then seeing what the long-term result will be - which is orders of magnitude better and more efficient than how it is today....that just gets me excited.

But I am truly glad to be alive today and glad Elon Musk is who he is....and doing what he is doing.

In 40 years, if he continues on his current trajectory, my kids will find it weird that space travel was "novel" in my generation.

That's VERY exciting.

navneetpandey• 13 years ago

thats what got me excited, when I watched Elon Musk talking about this project on TEd, since then I am following this project of SpaceX.

Florin_Andrei11• 13 years ago

Absolutely. This is literally "rocket science" - the cutting edge of space transportation research.

lutze3• 13 years ago

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.

rst3• 13 years ago

The video actually shows two stages and the Dragon capsule, which is payload. As to the use of staging, there are several reasons:

1) During the late stages of the boost, the one second stage engine is pushing only its single engine, fuel and tankage. You're no longer dragging around the nine engines of the first stage and their tanks. That weight saving means you get a lot more delta-V for each unit of expended fuel.

2) The engines themselves are also different. Rocket nozzles designed for optimal performance at sea level aren't optimal for high-altitude or vacuum conditions; those optimal for vacuum won't work at sea level (their exit pressure is so low that the exhaust has trouble pushing air out of the way). And compromise designs aren't optimal in either environment.

3) In the proposed SpaceX reuse architecture, they don't need to protect that long, thin first-stage tank from re-entry at orbital velocity. It's not clear how they could.

gamegoblin• 13 years ago

"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 rockets are quite common, but rockets with as many as five separate stages have been successfully launched. By jettisoning stages when they run out of propellant, the mass of the remaining rocket is decreased. This staging allows the thrust of the remaining stages to more easily accelerate the rocket to its final speed and height."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multistage_rocket

InclinedPlane18• 13 years ago

It would be more convenient and cost effective to do so, if we could. But we lack the technology.

The rocket equation is a harsh mistress, it demands exponential amounts of fuel the faster you want to accelerate a given stage (specifically, as a ratio to the exhaust velocity of the rocket). Given that orbital velocity is quite high (about 8.5 km/s) relative to the exhaust velocity of the best chemical propellants (about 3 km/s for LOX/Kerosene) this results in impractical mass fractions to contend with (17:1 to get to orbit, and that's with no payload). But you can cheat. If you use staging and drop away the dead weight of empty fuel tanks and no longer needed engines from lower stages then you can make an end run around the rocket equation. You make a rocket that can accelerate a payload up to a certain velocity, then you make an even bigger rocket which can deliver the entire other rocket as a payload to a different velocity, and so on, until the sum total of all the velocities is the necessary total speed you require to get to orbit.

We're actually fairly close to being able to make single-stage-to-orbit (or SSTO) launchers workable, but it's a difficult problem. We can just about make a single stage with a high enough mass fraction to do it, but then there is almost no payload remaining. And the only way to make a vehicle with such a tiny payload cost effective would be to make it reusable, but enabling reusability would add additional weight which would destroy any payload whatsoever and probably prevent it from even reaching orbit, catch-22. Potentially we could use advanced engines, rocket fuels, and lightweight materials (like carbon fiber) to build a reusable SSTO which would have a reasonable payload, but such designs are hugely untested and very risky. So for now the best hope for reusability seems to be to incrementally advance the design of existing multi-stage rockets.

elteto6• 13 years ago

A single stage rocket is desirable from a technological point of view since it sheds a lot of complexity: you don't have to deal with multiple engines, separation mechanisms, structural considerations, etc. However, multi-stage rockets can deliver more real payload to orbit, since they maximize the amount of fuel that is spent on taking the actual payload up there.

Single-stage rockets need to carry a lot of dead mass (empty tanks and engines) all the time, and that is a lot of wasted fuel. A multi-stage rocket can dispose the big first stage engines once it's cleared out most of the Earth's gravitational pull and use smaller engines to continue.

Another important consideration is that rocket engines don't run optimally during the whole burn. The first stages are optimized for atmospheric conditions, whereas later stages are optimized for vacuum conditions. Therefore having one big engine propel you up all the way incurs in an even grater loss of fuel due to the inefficiency at high altitudes. You could probably have a rocket engine capable of having a variable geometry to compensate for this but AFAIK is almost impossible to do it.

See the following for more details:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staging_(rocketry)#Advantages [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_engine_nozzle

JshWright13• 13 years ago

Weird bit of trivia... The pad the the rockets are landing on is a helipad (green perimeter lights). I suppose that makes sense for the video, since there isn't, AFAIK, an FAA spec for rocketpad lighting...

varjag• 13 years ago

Takes off and lands vertically, same thing really :)

dspeyer• 13 years ago

How does the first stage not get damaged by the backblast from the second stage seperating?

JshWright13• 13 years ago

SpaceX uses pneumatic 'pushers' to separate the stage. After a few seconds the two stages are far enough apart that igniting the second stage won't cause any real damage to the first stage.

Check out the video on this page for a good view of what that process looks like: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149741-spacex-falcon-9-la...

smackfu5• 13 years ago

That aerial shot they have in the video is pretty neat... I wonder if they are using a UAV for that, or just some ballsy helicopter pilot?

cdash4• 13 years ago

Hexacopter so yes a UAV.

baggers• 13 years ago

".from SpaceX’s hexacopter." They have all the nicest toys!

JshWright13• 13 years ago

Even buying something off the shelf, that's not an absurdly expensive 'toy' (<$2k, certainly... so, not 'cheap' but certainly well within the 'hobby' range for a lot of folks). The camera is a few hundred more, but it's amazing how cheap HD-capable cameras have gotten recently.

If you build it yourself, you could put together a video platform like that for under $1k (including the gyro stabilized camera gimbal).

Florin_Andrei11• 13 years ago

I'm building a quadcopter with my kids. With parts sourced from China - http://hobbyking.com/ - it's ridiculously cheap.

I'm sure SpaceX's hex is big, powerful, and carries all sorts of nice toys, including having enough lift to carry an HD camera and stabilizer - but still, it's not that complicated to make one. I could probably make an HD-camera-carrying hex myself if someone was willing to sponsor the parts - including stabilization for the camera, onboard controller for extra smooth flight, etc. And I'm not a rocket scientist. :)

You want a hex for this sort of job because you can lose one rotor without crash-landing your sensitive HD gear. With a quad, you lose a rotor, the whole vehicle crashes.

dwiel• 13 years ago

It was "SpaceX’s hexacopter."

ubersync• 13 years ago

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.

danielweber3• 13 years ago

Did they have another cowboy? It makes me think it's the same test from a few months ago.

BaconJuice2• 13 years ago

The test few months ago was a 40 feet climb I think

JshWright13• 13 years ago

Most of the Grasshopper tests have had a cowboy on the landing gear frame.

chad_oliver• 13 years ago

Yeah, you can see him in the first few frames.

stigi• 13 years ago

"Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights."

Here's a short link to bypass: http://www.ssyoutube.com/watch?v=sWFFiubtC3c

InclinedPlane18• 13 years ago

SpaceX uploaded a version without music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUvbh-Z8Abk

rays• 13 years ago

Poor bird gets killed in the video as it tries to fly away as the rocket takes off

deletes3• 13 years ago

The bird is way closer to the camera than the rocket. Check the video again when the bird starts to land it is approximately the size of half the width of the rocket. That would make the bird be positioned halfway between the camera and the rocket and well clear of the blast.

droz• 13 years ago

Anyone have experience working at, or with, SpaceX that can shed some light on what it's like to work there?

slackpad2• 13 years ago

I've been on the Flight Software team at SpaceX for a little over three years. It feels a lot like a startup. The team is still relatively small and people are pretty passionate about what they are working on. The project variety is wide as well. Personally, I've gotten to work on low-level drivers and OS stuff, application code that runs on the vehicles and ground systems, Dragon's fault-tolerant platform, internal web-based tools, and operations in Mission Control during the Dragon missions. Can't really give details about any of this stuff but I do love working here.

There was an AMA with several of the software teams a little while back:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1853ap/we_are_spacex_s...

There are several openings right now for software engineers, including people with web experience (people usually don't think we're looking for those skills):

https://jobs.github.com/positions/bd54ba2a-a930-11e2-9c0e-5c...

elteto6• 13 years ago

Hey! Can you spare some career advice for an aspiring aero engineer that wants to work on the software side of the rocket? If you could share what you would consider is a good path to follow to get to where you are right now, I would really appreciate it. I am a programmer at heart but even that could not pull me away from my love of space ;) so I decided to study aerospace engineering first.

luke_s4• 13 years ago

Would you guys consider remote work? I would love to work for SpaceX but I can't really justify uprooting my family and moving to the other side of the world for it :-\

robomartin• 13 years ago

A flying Segway! How cool is that?

_mulder_• 13 years ago

So what's the big water tower for in the background?

jlgreco3• 13 years ago

Probably water. ;)

Maybe for fire-fighting? Seems a little close for that though, if something went wrong it could be in the middle of it. I can't think of anything else though.

Edit: Maybe it feeds some sort of un-manned fire suppression system? That would be pretty smart.

luke_s4• 13 years ago

Probably stores water for their deluge system for rocket engine testing. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_engine_test_facility

"The rocket exhaust is directed into a flame bucket or trench. The flame trench is designed to redirect the hot exhaust to a safe direction and is protected by a water deluge system that both cools the exhaust and also reduces the sound pressure level (loudness). The sound pressure level of large rocket engines has been measured at greater than 200 decibels — one of the loudest man-made sounds on earth."

ParahSailin2• 13 years ago

The saddest part is that I would have been willing to capitalize SpaceX voluntarily, as an investor. Instead, Elon Musk steals from me through NASA.

lutusp• 13 years ago

On the bright side, SpaceX is so economical compared to NASA's past methods, that if it succeeds, we will all benefit. So what might be characterized as theft at one point in time, might eventually be seen as a great investment.

Only time will tell.

ParahSailin2• 13 years ago

For all Elon Musk's libertarian rhetoric, he sure disregards it whenever expedient.

russell• 13 years ago

I watched the videos (no sound - at work) and it seems like from the discussion that they are thinking of returning to the launch site. I looked at the Saturn V data and the first stage came down 350 miles down range and the second stage 2300 or so miles down range. Are the SpaceX launches going to have little downrange component for the first stage?

schiffern8• 13 years ago

Yep, Elon Musk has publicly mentioned that it will light up the engine to boost back to the launch site.

>So, I think, there's a number of improvements across the board, in structures, avionics, engines and then, as I said, this version [the Falcon 9 1.1] is really designed to be able to have the first stage come back - boost back – to launch site, deploy landing gear and actually land propulsively.[1]

With a flyback stage the optimal separation altitude and velocity drops, and the second stage gets even larger to compensate. But yes, the engine will cancel the downrange component of velocity and reverse it. Since the stage is empty the fuel requirements are actually quite modest.

[1] http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/crs-2-post-landing-teleco...

lutorm4• 13 years ago

This is probably a good place to point out: The SpaceX flight software team is looking for skilled software engineers! There are openings from anything from front-end RoR stuff to flight software and simulations infrastructure. If you want to help making stuff like this video run, check out some of these:

https://jobs.github.com/positions/bd54ba2a-a930-11e2-9c0e-5c...

http://www.spacex.com/careers.php?jvi=oarEWfwV,Job

http://www.spacex.com/careers.php?jvi=odfMWfwU,Job

Game_Ender2• 13 years ago

What are the upsides to living in LA?

lutorm4• 13 years ago

Depends on where you live now, I guess. Let's just say living in LA is not the reason I work here... though it isn't nearly as bad as I had feared.

SpaceX Grasshopper Flies High

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