Re:SpaceX returns to flight with Falcon 9 rocket launch
by TrevorJ on Sunday January 15, 2017 @11:21AM
(#13404646)
I mean, from an engineering perspective it's pretty dramatic. The rocket is going two kilometers a second in the wrong direction, it has to null out that speed, hit a moving target in the middle of the ocean and come to a stop. The rocket is too light to hover (the engine can't be throttled low enough, it's too powerful) so the velocity must be zero'd out right at the deck, too early and the rocket starts moving back up, too late and it hits the boat and blows up.
Re:SpaceX returns to flight with Falcon 9 rocket launch
by cyberferret on Sunday January 15, 2017 @05:09AM
(#13403325)
The economy factor is the main point here that many seem to be missing. SpaceX has already more than halved (and in some cases quartered) the cost of sending satellites into orbit. Heck, even NASA is finding it cheaper to contract satellite launched to SpaceX, and several countries who wouldn't previously have been able to afford to send their own hardware into space are now finding it viable.
For all of the marvellous things done in the 60's space program, we are now half a century down the track from that and things were still expensive with a lot of throwaway hardware. The orbiter (shuttle) program never really delivered on the reduced cost it promised. It has really only been in the past decade or so that private industry has taken up the reins and pushed the technology for more cost effective space travel.
But it's not about landing the boosters, it's about what this will enable in the future. If Musk really can reduce the cost to orbit by a factor of 100 it will revolutionise space transport. Imagine a series of moon landings just like in the 60s and 70s, but all using the same launchers and spacecraft? How about manned missions to Mars in reusable ships? It's the first step in a new era. So ok it's not headline grabing next to the moon landings. But compared to that, the Mercury missions don't look all that much of an achievement in hindsight. Yet they were vital groundwork.