SpaceX's Musk: We'll reuse today's Falcon 9 rocket within 2 months SpaceX supremo Elon Musk said his Falcon 9 rocket that made its historic robo-barge landing on Friday will be flying up into space again by June. "We'll bring the rocket back to Port Canaveral on Sunday and fire it 10 times in a row on the ground," he said. "If things look good then it is qualified for reuse and launch. We're …
"And it landed only a couple of metres off centre!"
Proving in a stroke that not only can they land it, but that it can be done in somewhat "less than perfect" conditions.
Agree with the sentiments about capture mechanisms. Anchoring should be more automatic/automated if this is to become routine.
I guess the hardest part about the application of a capture mechanism is going to be the need for safety. {I don't know, but I am assuming that "Of Course I Still Love You" has no human crew at the point of capture.}
That being the case, perhaps Musk can adopt some technology from his "other" company. Tesla have already demonstrated the "self-attaching charger snake" - i.e. that robotic unit for your garage so that you can get out of your Model S at your front door, only for the car to park itself and attach the charger without help...
Now, with a few examples of that, strengthened and suitably scaled up in size, there has to be a way that Tesla could mount a selection of those around the edge of the landing platform in such a way that they can be swung in to place.
In the descent phase, the 1st stage rocket pops out some small flaps at the upper edge [where it separates from the second stage] that act as drags to keep the motor oriented and descending "rockets pointing down". The same mechanism that is used to pop open those flaps might be able to pop out and reveal some anchor points for robotic, self-attaching anchors.
And the cool part would be that all the complex and heavy tech for that could be mounted on the drone recovery ship, thus not adding to the gross take-off-weight of the Falcon...
Important not to loose sight of the achievement, I guess. In 30 years NASA came up with capsule splashdowns and a dead-stick orbiter return. in 30 *lauches* SpaceX are dropping a rocket motor the size of the Statue of Liberty onto a ship in the middle of a force 8-9 gale in the ocean... Impressive
If that's the calmest you have ever seen the ocean, you need to watch more ocean. Sea state looked about F6 to maybe 7, which is pretty damn windy- waves were 2-3M I estimate.
That's pretty hard going.
They don't weld the feet themselves, but weld a cteel shoe over them. It's quite difficult to weld carbon fibre....
"Well "The plans are going to sound crazy, but it should at least be entertaining" would never have been said by a NASA spokesperson!"
Well, we'll enter Mars atmosphere at orbital velocity and the heat shield should help with that. Then well open these huge supersonic rated parachutes and hang under them till we get a bit closer to the ground. At this point we'll cut the 'chutes away and fire some rocket engines to slow down that last bit into a hover. Then well lower the nuclear powered, laser armed, SUV sized tank down to the surface. All this will be under antonymous computer control 'cos, like, it's a bit hard to do remote control with multi-minute radio transit time.
NASA? Bat shit crazy when they need to be :-)
@john brown, have an upvote.
Nasa has achieved some pretty awesome things and developed amazing technology but has always been hamstrung by budget cuts, shifting focus and unclear leadership. They could have had a replacement for the space shuttle years ago, but any research projects for the tech needed for a spaceplane or launch system was always cut short right when actual results where starting to form. Even now the development of a new launch system is way too dependent on politics and lack of vision of the very high ups, instead of on the vision of the engineers who could actually come up with something new.
Well "The plans are going to sound crazy, but it should at least be entertaining" would never have been said by a NASA spokesperson!
Quite, but I suspect that the minute SpaceX starts carrying Real Live Humans™, they're going to be just as deadly serious about it as NASA ever was.
Meanwhile I thoroughly enjoy Musk's candour when discussing the company's prototypes.
As far as I know, the only design decision made for cost reasons was to make all of the engines and fuel tank segments the same. Which is why these rockets are the same thickness all the way up, rather than the saturn 5 with each stage a bit thinner. But I doubt you'd save much weight by changing that, you still need the same size, only the shape changes.
There are quite a few design decisions made for cost reasons. Yes, reusing design elements and modules across stages reduces cost. Another example is that instead of machining material out of the tank walls (time consuming and expensive), friction stir welding is used to add material.
"Pretty sure the trademark does not apply to "throw firey shit out of the back" engines, so it doesn't matter."
Have you ever seen a Merlin running? "Throw fire out the back" is very definitely an attribute, in fact it probably contributes a little to the thrust. It's not nearly so noticeable when they are flying, but when they are used to power something like a dragster the blue flames are rather visible.
Post war, piston engines were built which were both supercharged and turbocharged, in an effort to keep them competitive with the new jet engines. Then people realised that a significant part of the thrust was coming from the exhaust, and replacing the piston engine with a combustion cavity just gave you a jet engine.
The original merlin plane engine had the exhausts pointing straight out to the sides of the aircraft. When these exhausts were replaced by the bent ones that sent the exhaust out at a 45 degree angle backwards, they got about 70 hp of extra thrust.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Merlin#Ejector_exhausts for more details
Dragsters blowing blue flames out the pipes are fueled by nitromethane. Because of the fuel, the engines run really rich and the blue flame is from the excess raw fuel igniting. Yellow or orange would be traditional petrol (gasoline) and again.. running rich.
WWII a/c will put out flames but usually only on takeoff when the "carb" setting would be at "rich". At altitude they were adjusted from "rich" to "lean" for economy.
"Because of the fuel, the engines run really rich"
Strange fact ... it's not because of the fuel that they run rich. It's because they run without a conventional cooling system. The excess fuel that burns off (much loved by kids at night) is actually there to help keep things from melting down/blowing apart.
True, but trademarks are limited to specified puposes. Some of the ways trademark law have been used are very questionable for that reason.
As an example. the Orange mobile phone network trademarked a specific colour of orange. And they were very specific on what use their trademark covered.
A V12 internal combustion engine from before WW2 is a bit difficult to confuse with a 21st Century rocket engine. Saying otherwise would be like using the car trademark to ban mini skirts.
"RR hasn't built Merlin engines since 1950. If you don't use a trademark for a long period, you loose it."
Unused trademarks just want to be free. Whether they can be found or not is a different matter.
Seriously, though, there are so many trademarks with the word "Merlin" in them that I do not think the name alone could possibly be trademarked. To those of us of a certain age, however, any reference to a "Merlin engine" can only mean one thing, and that is what this is all about.
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