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8 comments:
This is the equivalent of spitting out of the cockpit of your plane at 10,000 feet and having it land in a 1 inch circle drawn on the ground below. I.e., absolutely amazing.
o lordy... Musk owns it, he fk'n owns space transport... the guy has a touch of elegance he gives to what he does
Wonder how the bird gets stabilized once it's down. It's a pretty tall object for the small footprint of those landing legs, and it would be tough to make the landing accurate enough to snap into an automatic clamp.
OTOH, with the fuel depleted, the cg wouldn't be as high as it looks to be...
Is it just me, or does everyone think that "Elon Musk" sounds like a character from Foundation?
As if the landing itself isn't Heinlein-esque enough, the mission is transporting an inflatable compartment to the ISS. It's almost like every 1950's-vintage "Argosy" story, brought to life.
I'm curious to see how this landing will affect launch economics. I expect SpaceX has published projections, but it'll be interesting to see the numbers after, say, ten launch-recover-refurbish-relaunch cycles.
Not sure I understand the economics of this. Wouldn't the rocket need twice the fuel load to come back to Earth like that? What is the upside in landing a big metal tube after its payload has been put into orbit?
No, it wouldn't need twice the fuel load, because what it's landing (the lower stage shell plus engines) is much lighter than what it launched (the payload plus the fuel to get the payload to orbit). Still, you're correct that it does use more fuel than simply launching a payload to orbit. The cost-effectiveness of that depends on the SI (specific impulse) of the fuel being used, plus the cost of that fuel. They claim the economics work out. We'll see.
The economics of it include the ability to refurbish and reuse engines that cost over a million dollars apiece (the Falcon has nine in its first stage), not to mention fuel pumps and other hardware.
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