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posted by
Dopefish
on Friday February 21 2014, @05:00PM
from the rocket-kits-are-awesome-these-days dept.
from the rocket-kits-are-awesome-these-days dept.
WildWombat writes:
"nasaspaceflight.com reports that the next Falcon 9 flight will attempt a soft splashdown off the coast of Florida to test its newly installed landing legs. If successful, this will be a major step along the path to a reusable rocket.
The flight, CRS-3, is an ISS resupply mission scheduled for March 16th. The pace of SpaceX technology development is truly impressive."
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Next Falcon 9 to Attempt Soft Splashdown
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Begathon, n.:
A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so
you won't have to watch commercials.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kanisae on Friday February 21 2014, @09:58PM
Elon keeps talking about going to Mars, so I would see this as a direct ancestor to the descent stages used for a Mars landing. I mean, if you can land your rocket on a planet with 1 bar atmosphere and a 1G of surface gravity that gets you a good way to doing it on Mars with less atmosphere and less gravity.
I would say you are correct in that this is a cost cutting measure at the moment. Liquid H2 / kerosene and LOX account for only a small part of the actual cost of a launch. Anything to get multiple uses out of the ascent stages will show a dramatic decrease in the per launch costs.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Kell on Saturday February 22 2014, @02:30AM
"If you can land your rocket on a planet with 1 bar atmosphere and a 1G of surface gravity that gets you a good way to doing it on Mars with less atmosphere and less gravity."
Except you have to lug all that landing system mass to Mars, which is terribly expensive. That's why (almost) everything landing on another planet has used parachutes and passive landing devices. It's lightweight and it's cheap.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.