He sent me an email titled “F*cking awesome!” Which is the first time I recall him ever using that word. Not saying it’s the first time he ever did use it.
The context was this…
SpaceX, the first company ever to launch and soft-land a booster stage, has done so several times now. Today, though, was the first time they ever took a deep breath and re-used a booster.
You may recall that one of the selling points of those NASA shuttle-murdering solid rocket boosters was that they could be recovered (after falling into the very corrosive ocean) and re-used. Being a government entity, NASA was of course lying. They did recover some, but I’m unaware of whether they actually re-used any. And those are just solid rocket boosters, basically metal tubes filled with ammonium perchlorate and aluminum. NASA never even attempted to re-use a real liquid-fuel rocket motor. In fact they say one of the most terrifying moments of the moon landings was waiting to find out if the Lander motor would re-start when it was time to leave again.
So today SpaceX made history (again) by launching and soft-landing a rocket booster they had already launched and soft-landed once before. How much re-building they had to do between the events is something I’d really like to know. But even if they had to do a complete refurbishment, it’s still the first time in history.
F*cking awesome.
Another example of private enterprise under competent management getting the job done.
The space shuttle main engines (SSMEs) burned liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. They were inspected and refurbished after each launch. They were reused many times.
The Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) used separate engines for descending and ascending. The descent engine was fired twice in early missions, but since both engines used hypergolic propellants there was never any concern about their starting or restarting.
All but 4 of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters were recovered and reused. The final set of SRBs that launched STS-135 included parts that flew on 59 previous missions, including STS-1.
🙂 You got me there.
“The Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) used separate engines for descending and ascending. The descent engine was fired twice in early missions, but since both engines used hypergolic propellants there was never any concern about their starting or restarting.”
Still, I was on the edge of my seat during that countdown, imagining the horrendous potential cost of a failure to launch. Can you imagine . . . ?
Did anybody else actually SEE the booster land? All I saw was a black screen followed by a perfectly-planted booster on the landing platform.
Color me slightly dubious.
We’re livin’ in the future. Too bad it ain’t what it was ‘sposed to be. Me cynical? Nah. Still, it appears private enterprise beats guvamint stuff.
It’s the future as envisioned by Robert A. Heinlein or Jerry Pournelle, absent the FTL drives unfortunately:-(.
We’ve even got a pending Scudderite Theocracy blooming, albeit it’s Islamic rather than some bizarre version of Christianity.
So if the boosters can be made good for a few dozen launches it might cut cost of payloads to space to a third of what it costs now. That is getting economically way practical.
Way Cool!