So Close

[Husker]

SpaceX are getting so close with the second stage rocket landing on the drone barge. A sticky throttle valve caused the latest crash but the landing still looks awesome and to think it's all automated. You can even see the thrusters trying to stabilize the rocket. I cannot wait to see a successful landing.

Anyone else been watching their progress with this???

http://www.kitguru.net/channel/science/ ... explosion/

[LBlackmoor]

That is some cool stuff. Have to keep and eye on that from now on...

[Delwyn]

I watched this video a number of times after SpaceX posted it the day after it happened. On about the 3rd or 4th viewing I started laughing so incredibly hard....near the end when the rocket is seemingly about to settle onto the platform and then begins to list a bit to the left, you see one of the lateral thrusters begin to fire and stay on...obviously in a futile attempt to bring it back to vertical...as the rocket continues to tip to the side, suddenly the thruster gives out and one on the other side fires briefly, which culminates in it finally falling to the sea and exploding.

I just saw that sequence and was thinking that the rocket was probably following this thought process....

"Hold it up....hold it up.....come on, stay up....stay up....awwww...hell with it...go down!@!!"

I just found it hysterically funny!

[Hevach]

Elon Musk is basically blowing hundreds of millions of dollars to play a real life game of Kerbal Space Program. I'm not sure if I find that disturbing or hilarious.

They are incredibly close, and the savings potential is pretty immense. It does tank the system's launch weight somewhat, but it cuts lauch costs by an order of magnitude. Parachuting the boosters into the ocean and recovering them (what NASA did with the STS and will do with the SLS and what SpaceX has been doing with the Falcons they're not crashing into robot boats) means stripping them down and refurbishing them, which very nearly costs as much as just buying a new one for SpaceX, and for NASA technically cost more, but the recovery costs were budgeted under the Navy and Coast Guard so they didn't have to pay the full price.

The number of organizations that could afford to participate in LEO space travel with a launch cost of $6-10 million instead of $60-100 million is just incredible. I mean, that's within the budget reach of a lot of major universities that historically have been stuck doing data processing drudge work for NASA missions instead of launching their own.

[Delwyn]

I agree Hevach, the possibilities for space flight over the next 10-30 years is pretty exciting.

The Falcon 9 already has surplus thrust to launch most of the payloads they aim for, so it's one of the reasons they are able to work to make this capability a reality. Plus, they're near to bringing out an updated Merlin engine which is slightly more efficient than the current model. This means being able to launch the same payloads using less fuel, which only increases their potential capability to recover the first stage via return and landing.

I also look forward to their first test flights of the manned Dragon capsule, which shouldn't be too far in the future (next year I think?)