
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Testing Technology To Make Rockets Reusable - jakobmarovt
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/09/elon-musk-spacex-reusable-rockets/
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trothamel
Here's the video of the most recent SpaceX Grasshopper flight:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2Ivr6JF1K-8)

(via:
[http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30708.msg10...](http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30708.msg1024337#msg1024337)
. May not be available in some areas due to music licensing.)

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gregpilling
That was pretty cool. Why was I the 314th person to watch it. Surely there
must be more interest in rockets like the Sci-fi books always described? In
most books, the rockets came down like the Grasshopper.

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vegardx
There's a good reason for it, and usually is a sign that the video is
immensely popular. You can find out why on Youtube it self:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI>

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eksith
It doesn't have an aerospike engine. The first leg of the journey is always
the hardest at sea level so if they can use less fuel there, it will be easier
on the rest of the trip. Aerospikes are more efficient at lower altitudes and
offer a greater throttle range (since each burner can be independently
controlled).

Whether this is a multi stage or single stage, an aerospike is something they
need to look into. It's been overlooked by the majority of manufacturers and
enthusiasts, which is a shame because, even though the engineering may be
difficult, there is still a lot of research behind it as well.

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InclinedPlane
Aerospikes are oversold. NASA and LockMart tried to prove the technology with
X-33/VentureStar and it proved to be far, far less promising than it looked
initially.

Also, the idea that we need some new technological silver bullet to advance
spaceflight has been a pernicious impulse in the spaceflight community since
its inception, and it very much has not helped. We don't in fact need any
breakthrough technology, just incremental improvement stacked on incremental
improvement and so forth. It's amazing how far you can get with just that.
What's more amazing is how little it's been tried so far!

SpaceX's vehicles are fundamentally almost a 1960s era design. A simple
2-stage LOX/Kerosene vertical launcher. And yet by doing nothing more than
applying existing technology (rather than trailblazing new technology) they've
built the lowest cost launcher on the planet. And now they're iterating the
design to improve it even more. Iterating the engines and building history's
highest thrust-to-weight ratio large cryogenic engine (the Merlin-1D).
Iterating the vehicle design by changing the first stage engine layout and
stretching the fuel tanks (to get the Falcon 9 v1.1 which will have >40% more
capacity than the v1). Iterating vehicle designs which use Falcon 9 components
modularly to create the Falcon Heavy (which will have a payload capacity to
LEO of over 50 tonnes). Iterating pressurized capsule design to create an
unmanned cargo vehicle (Dragon Cargo) and taking the lessons from that to
build a manned capsule (DragonRider). And iteratively testing ideas to allow
reusability of the Falcon 9 launcher (grasshopper, etc.)

We don't need anything more than perseverance and pragmatism to revolutionize
access to orbit, and thankfully some companies are doing that.

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stcredzero
_> We don't need anything more than perseverance and pragmatism to
revolutionize access to orbit, and thankfully some companies are doing that._

Jerry Pournelle and many, many others had been saying that for decades. Just
keep on building rockets, do it a lot, with the principle that "practice makes
perfect" in mind. Instead, governments were just paying contractors to mostly
do the same thing for cost-plus, with only relatively slow progress over time
to show for it.

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InclinedPlane
In the US at least we put all our eggs in one basket (the Shuttle) and ended
up foregoing about 2 decades of development in conventional launch vehicles
(until the Challenger accident forced some sanity). Also, a lot of the big
aerospace companies (such as Boeing) have surprisingly shallow experience with
orbital rocketry (although it's improved a bit with the EELV generation). Very
few folks at those companies actually had hands on experience with building or
flying rockets, and even less experience with testing (as a rule most launch
vehicles fly straight down the middle of the flight envelope as much as
possible, so even in a vehicle like the Shuttle with 130+ flights that's
nowhere comparable to having the same level of understanding or confidence in
the vehicle if it had flown that many flights while exploring the envelope).

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stretchwithme
When government does something, it tends to put all its eggs in one basket.

And the way lobbyists run our government makes the problem even worse, as
there's more pressure to keep spending regardless of results.

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deadairspace
This impressive video from Armadillo is three years old. I wonder what they
are up to now.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0qlIoSSkQ>

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InclinedPlane
Right now there are several companies working on reusable launchers. SpaceX,
of course, who already has a proven expendable orbital launcher. But also Blue
Origin, Armadillo, XCOR, and Virgin Galactic. None of those companies have an
orbital launch vehicle but each is working on building the foundations for
reusability in the form of pioneering various control mechanisms (vertical
landing being one) as well as engineering various component parts (from
engines up to propellant tanks and so forth). Some of them are looking more at
the sub-orbital space tourism market to provide early returns and some of them
are certainly more dedicated and more well funded than others. Overall it'll
be exciting to see what comes of it all.

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jnw2
If Virgin Galactic can get the costs down enough, the really exciting thing
about what they are proposing to do is turning 18 hour airplane flights into
less than two hour suborbital flights. Even if you don't care about space for
the sake of space, it's obvious that that would be a huge improvement in
transportation between various points on Earth.

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quotemstr
Yes, but if you can afford a suborbital flight, you can probably afford to
spend those 18 hours in international first class, where you'll have access to
a bed, unlimited champagne, caviar, and whatever else you want. Why cut that
party short?

