from the if-at-first-you-don't-suceed... dept.
Elon Musk's latest SpaceX idea involves a party balloon and bounce house:
Elon Musk took to Twitter Sunday night to announce a new recovery method for an upper-stage SpaceX rocket. A balloon — a "giant party balloon" to quote him directly — will ferry part of a rocket to a bounce house. Seriously.
[...] This isn't the first time a balloon has been used to return a rocket. Legendary programmer John Carmack's rocket company attempted to use a ballute in 2012 to return a rocket body and nose cone. It didn't work as planned and, according to officials at the time, the rocket made a "hard landing" around the Spaceport America property in New Mexico.
SpaceX has yet to recover the entire Falcon 9 fairing despite adding a parachute and positioning a boat to catch it.
The TESS launch has been delayed to Wednesday.
Also at Engadget and Space.com.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 17 2018, @07:52PM (4 children)
TFA does not mention what gas the balloon is inflated with.
Is it helium?
Helium is needed for science and important uses. It is a limited resource. We fill party balloons with it.
"A naked American man stole my balloons." -- boy at zoo in An American Warewolf in London
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday April 17 2018, @08:35PM (3 children)
Helium is not really a limited resource. That's why it's still cheap enough for party balloons.
This doesn't need any special gas. It works with the drag from the baloon, not with the buoyancy. The size of a baloon big enough to have a significant impact via buoyancy would be huge, and very fragile, hard to unfold, and highly likely to tear at the supersonic speeds.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday April 18 2018, @05:34PM (1 child)
Helium is, indeed, a limited resource on Earth. Most of the Helium we get (I believe essentially all) is a side effect of natural gas production. When that stops, no more Helium. I'm not sure that it's recovered during fracking, but it ought to be.
IIUC, essentially all the Helium on Earth is the result of radioactive decay. (Anything that emits alpha particles is emitting Helium, as Helium is just an alpha particle that's slowed down and acquired an electron or so.) But that's a very slow process.) Stars make Helium by fusing Hydrogen, but that's not something we're up to yet.
So we should be banking and conserving Helium, because when it's released it's gone. It's average molecular velocity at stratosphere temperatures is above escape velocity. And it doesn't form molecular compounds to slow it down.
All that said, there's more Helium available at the moment than we currently use, and we're currently acquiring it faster than we are using it. (But since we aren't saving it, this is of doubtful consequence. If we start needing a bunch for, say, superconducting power lines, we'll need more than is available.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @07:57PM
Giant Cryonic containers for it. The larger the container and the smaller the surface area it can heat through the cheaper you can store it over time thanks to economy of scale.
If we started doing that we could have enough helium to provide for any major industrial use until we are in a position to recover more either on-plant, or off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @05:57PM
I'm confused by the balloon idea, they need to fill the balloon with something, some gas, right?
Anything that they have to take up with them is heavy, so the obvious choice is to just use atmospheric air.
But then, why not just use a parachute? Then you only need to pack the top half of the balloon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @12:43AM (1 child)
The trouble here is that the fairings open the same way as all the old disposable fairings, splitting right down the middle. This leaves asymmetric halves. They won't fly well at all.
The fairings need to instead split the other way, into a top and bottom. These then self-orient due to inherent stability, with the light weight joints following the heavy ends. Add an internal balloon to prevent sinking, add some corrosion resistance, and you're all set. Heat protection can be useful too, but low-density objects don't need it much.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 18 2018, @03:41AM
BFR won't have a disposable fairing AFAIK. Any success in recovering fairings or second stage of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy is icing on the cake for the company, assuming recovering and refurbishing it doesn't cost more than the money spent on the component.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]