

SpaceX reveals fully reusable, vertically landing rocket design [video] - equark
http://www.spacex.com/assets/video/spacex-rtls-green.mp4

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bfe
The "Uprising" lyrics are an inspired poke at the traditional space industry:
"endless red tape to keep the truth confined... it's time the fat cats had a
heart attack, you know that their time's coming to an end..."

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jarin
This also happens to be a much cooler music video than the original.

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justinph
How is carrying all that fuel used in landing up to space more efficient than,
say, a parachute?

I'm assuming someone at Space X did at least some back of the napkin math, but
color me skeptical.

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billpaetzke
They want their craft to be able to land on any surface. Two of their chief
product values are modularity and versatility.

I toured SpaceX HQ just yesterday and saw this video (or some of it). The
employee presenting said that landing on Mars w/ a parachute is not a good
option. Powered landing makes their craft able to land on any surface.

This is a paraphrase; and I am not a rocket scientist, so don't quote me on
this.

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bfe
This is certainly part of it. The powered landing will give them precision
control to touch down right on the launchpad instead of having to pick up the
assets at sea, saving lots of time and money. But it also allows for a module
to land on the Moon or Mars. Mars has an atmosphere, but only with about 1%
the density of Earth's, so for vessels with this scale of mass, parachutes
aren't much use, besides the issue once again of being able to position your
landing spot precisely. Supposedly at every design step where it's applicable
Elon has opted to make everything as ready for Mars as possible.

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billpaetzke
_Supposedly at every design step where it's applicable Elon has opted to make
everything as ready for Mars as possible._

Absolutely correct. I got that vibe from all employees I listened to
yesterday. The underlying motivation of the company is: to go to and colonize
Mars. Everything they do before then is to gain credibility, survive, and fund
R&D toward reaching their ultimate goal.

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JulianMorrison
There's something more than slightly Heinlein about that company. I love it.

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astine
Elon wants to be the Man who sold the Moon. Or Mars, as the case may be. Don't
blame him. I want to be that man too.

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cynest
I was thinking Long Range Foundation, but that works too.

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w33ble
I thought the whole reason NASA's shuttles jettisoned their rockets and large
fuel tank was because getting that added weight in to space was prohibitive.
How is it that they propose to get not only the entire rocket in to space but
also enough fuel to provide a soft landing on re-entry of all 3 pieces? I
realize rocket tech has come a long way since the Shuttle's design, but is it
really that much further along?

I really do hope they can pull it off though!

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brianobush
Not an expert on this subject, but the landing phase requires much less fuel
than take-off. You only need to slow the craft and during the final approach
use fine grain thrusters to maintain control.

I do hope this is feasible.

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Someone
It requires less fuel because air friction works with you during deceleration,
not against you, and because, by the time you do the landing, the craft weighs
a lot less, not because you only need to slow down.

I think the video left out a lot of the dull part of aero breaking, making it
look as if all breaking was done on rocket power.

I do not see how this would be cheaper and safer than just using a disposable
run-of-the-mill steel pipe as main engine (yes, that is exaggerating), but
they must have done the math.

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nextparadigms
In a recent interview, Elon Musk was saying how we wouldn't have airplane
travel the way we have today if the airplanes wouldn't be reusable.

He was saying that to point out that this is how reusable rockets should
revolutionize space travel, in a way just as big.

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jfruh
Hmm, well, but it's interesting that the US went down that road and built an
unreliable "reusable" spacecraft that had a high failure rate and had be
largely reconditioned at high expense after every flight. Meanwhile, the
Russians are using an incrementally improved capsule design from the '60s
that's simpler, cheaper, and safer.

I'm not saying that a true reusable speacecraft wouldn't be revolutionary. And
maybe it's possible with '10s tech in a way that it wasn't in the '70s. But
picking "reusable" as a goal in and of itself, rather than using metrics like
reliability or cost per pound to orbit, seems like a dodgy business.

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Retric
When it comes to spacecraft Fuel is cheap manpower is expensive.

The Americans built the first ever reusable spacecraft but they never really
stuck with one design. Just about every shuttle was slightly different which
resulted in slightly improved performance, reduced safety, and dramatically
increased costs. They then kept using them well past the designed lifetime
which once again radically increased the costs. All while flying them a
minimum number of times each year.

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Joakal
How cheap is the fuel? Say, a space shuttle? I've heard a launch costs $450
million, but it doesn't say if it was fuel alone.

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mkn
In U.S. dollars in the year 2000, it came to about $16 of fuel per pound of
payload launched. We had a homework assignment to figure out that number in
our propulsion class at the University of Washington.

Shocking. The rest of that $10k per pound is amortized launcher costs and
operations. (If you include the initial R&D, it goes up to something like $50k
per pound.)

The shuttle was a truly immoral launch vehicle.

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tocomment
That's incredible. You should do a blog post about that. It's really
fascinating and I don't think is been published anywhere.

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equark
The video gives the idea, but full details here:

[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/09/29/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/09/29/national/a161633D91.DTL&type=science)

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rodh257
I love this quote "Now we need to make sure that those simulations and reality
agree, because generally when they don't reality wins."

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uriel
Reminds me of one of my favorite Feynman quotes:

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for nature cannot be fooled." — Richard P. Feynman, minority report
on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident ( <http://quotes.cat-v.org/science> )

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zdw
How did they manage to flip the second craft from it's reentry position
(nosecone down) back around for landing?

Wouldn't carrying the extra fuel to slow the craft on reentry make this cost
prohibitive, thus why most craft use parachutes or similar passive slowing
devices?

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palish

      > How did they manage to flip the second craft from it's reentry position [...]?
    

Apologies, I think I don't understand...

The video is a concept video, not a real-life recording.. it's CG. But you're
asking about real-world physics. And everyone else is talking about it too, as
if the video actually happened, even though it's just a CG animation.

I'm just really confused; sorry. Heh. I know I'm missing something obvious
here -- figured I'd ask what it was, even though I look silly. :)

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keeperofdakeys
The video wouldn't have much point unless it was showing the design of how the
rockets will actually work. Sure, the actual design and details of the rocket
may be different in real life, but the basic idea of having the components
soft-land back at HQ would be real.

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melvinram
Wow, this seems almost as important to space travel practicality as the
assembly line was for cars. To think where we (as people) were 100 years ago
and to contemplate where we might be in the next 100 years... exciting times
we live in.

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kefs
Youtube link...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p176UpWQOs4>

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SkyMarshal
Very awesome. Quite an amazing feat if they can vertically land a rocket on
such a small target like that. Dig the Muse soundtrack too.

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Maakuth
To quote Steve Ballmer: "I've got four words for you: I LOVE THIS COMPANY!"

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harrylove
Unfortunate music choices aside, the video was well done and clearly
demonstrated the concept without narration or text.

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guscost
I'm hoping that the _materials_ are finally here to usher in the next
generation of space vehicles, because this idea wasn't nearly as plausible
back in the 60's.

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lutorm
From SpaceX page:

"SpaceX CEO & CTO Elon Musk will discuss the future of human spaceflight in
advance of his company’s planned flight later this year to the International
Space Station, the first private mission to ISS for NASA, at a National Press
Club luncheon today at 1pm EST."

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iwwr
I thought it was impossible (or highly impractical, mass-wise) to build a
single-stage orbital rocket. Are there additional boosters this rocket is
using?

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JulianMorrison
It's not single stage. It's 2 stage and a capsule, just like regular Falcon 9.

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vannevar
I suspect this announcement has a lot to do with positioning SpaceX to compete
with Bezos' Blue Origin on upcoming contracts. Blue Origin has been working in
stealth mode exclusively on a reusable design, while SpaceX has focused on a
conventional launch vehicle that they can market right now. Musk & Co. have
had admirable success, but reusable systems are a whole different ballgame,
and very little of their current hardware is likely to be applicable in that
context.

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vrode
How would we react if one of the commercial missions goes wrong?

There must be a certain difference of standards, when a public organization
kills people for science, and when a private company kills people for profit.

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kolinko
Actually, private companies were killing people for profits since always. The
whole concept of corporations was iirc created because private people didn't
want to be accountable for ships that sank and killed the sailors.

Even now, private companies killing people is nothing unusual. Think oil rigs,
or airplanes. Sure - a spaceship exploding and killing the crew is quite
spectacular, but when you build a company like SpaceX, you build it with the
knowledge that something like this _will_ happen.

With every manned flight, you have the procedures in place for the
catastrophic failure, and when it happens, you execute "Plan Red". Nobody is
running around screaming. At least I'd like to think so :)

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listic
Are they going to land on a single torch? How?

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powertower
What did I just watch?

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rjd
A reusable rocket concept with some magically fuel supply that seems to defy
physics ;)

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aptwebapps
There's nothing magical about the fuel supply. In the past, people didn't try
to bring rockets back down and land them on their tails because of the
technical challenges, not because of fuel concerns.

It takes a lot less fuel to land than to take off for two reasons: wind
resistance helps instead of hinders and so much fuel has already been burnt
that there is a lot less weight to slow down than there was to accelerate on
the way up.

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JulianMorrison
Coming down, the empty fuel tank is basically an aluminium balloon.

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bluedanieru
Where are they hiding all the fuel?

Also, this isn't a design. It's a video. I have some video about a UN mission
to colonize Alpha Centauri that went slightly awry (the mission that is, not
the video).

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thwarted
Can you put that on youtube or something? Sounds interesting.

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wlievens
I'm pretty sure he's referring to _Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri_ , a classic
awesome 90's video game
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri>

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eslachance
I'm not sure I follow how this is supposed to be progress. This looks like
NASA did _before_ the had real shuttles, and (though I'm not an aeronautical
engineer) it seems really strange to me that they think launching and bringing
down, not one, but _3_ different parts of a space vehicle safely and exactly
where they want it... Sounds far fetched to me.

Virgin Galactic seems to have a much better design and plan - plus, they
actually have a working spacecraft, spaceport, and they're selling tickets for
the first flights in 2013 right now. SpaceX is a CG animation of a rehashed
30-year old design. Wanna know who my money's on?

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mbenjaminsmith
I'll bite.

VG is putting tourists into sub-LEO. SpaceX is building rockets that can reach
any orbit, carry many tons of payload and even send manned missions to the
Moon or Mars.

When Musk started SpaceX he decided to use tried and true designs and instead
focus on refining those designs for performance, safety and cost. He did so by
moving the entire manufacturing chain in-house. Many would argue that he has
achieved his goal.

Rockets (which usually have to be multi-stage) are more cost effective and
more capable than the Shuttles. The Shuttles are too fuel hungry and too
inflexible (in the configuration they settled on) to fly to the Moon or Mars
(or even move beyond LEO). They are not "space planes", capable of zooming
around space at will, they are Earth gliders with rockets attached.

I haven't read his rationale for the self-landing rocket stages, but I would
guess it's about recovery costs. It's not cheap to track down and fish rockets
stages out of the ocean. They also have to be completely rebuilt after their
plunge into salt water. Heat damage is likely an issue as well. If keeping
that amount of reserve fuel would not limit the rocket's main mission, it
would undoubtedly save a lot of money in recovery and restoration costs.

It's progress because the Shuttle missions were a step in the wrong direction
if the ultimate goal is to make space accessible. Well designed rockets can be
more capable, just as safe (if not more so) and can operate at a fraction of
the Shuttle program's cost.

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MikeCapone
"I haven't read his rationale for the self-landing rocket stages, but I would
guess it's about recovery costs."

At the press club he mentioned that a $50m rocket might have 200k of fuel
costs in it, so if you can reuse most of it, you are way ahead on cost.

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Detrus
Well, the space shuttle's booster rockets were similarly reusable, don't see
why this couldn't work in theory, except for the no parachutes trick. It's
probably to make the video more dramatic.

I wonder what kind of maintenance cost those boosters had. They didn't have
the same needs as the shuttle, it wasn't catastrophic if they broke on re-
entry, but one did blow up during launch. It's probably important that the
crew re-entry vehicle is small and so is easier to maintain than the shuttle
was.

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RandallBrown
It's no parachute so that it can land on the moon or mars where there is no
atmosphere, or very little atmosphere compared to earth.

I'm sure that the first few tries will use parachutes too because I'm not sure
rocket science is far enough along at this point to do it without.

