https://youtu.be/7pUAydjne5M?t=510
Take the time to watch this video. I watched the live feed and it was truly awesome.
Wow!!!
:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:
We watched the launch live on Spring Break (poor visibility - pretty hazy, plus not as much trail as with many of the launch vehicles as when I was working at KSC back in the day). My C/LT son was giving us better commentary from his phone.
Good to see progress. Cadets out there, you'll be the guys to take up this torch and help keep pushing forward!
V/R
Spam
Now the bigger challenge. Can they do it twice in a row?
The difficult part about this reusable rocket is getting any payload to a higher altitude usable for payload deployments. The first stage of the falcon-9 will only take the rocket to a suborbital trajectory, it doesn't have enough thrust by itself to get to an orbit. It's a difficult engineering challenge to make a first stage which can do that by itself if you want the second stage to land under its own power. And considering it will be carrying more than just the second stage (ISS resupplies, etc.), there's a ways to go before this is more feasible. I'm excited to see it happen though. It'll certainly take a lot more time before it's more useful.
Quote from: HGjunkie on April 12, 2016, 02:35:27 AM
The difficult part about this reusable rocket is getting any payload to a higher altitude usable for payload deployments. The first stage of the falcon-9 will only take the rocket to a suborbital trajectory, it doesn't have enough thrust by itself to get to an orbit. It's a difficult engineering challenge to make a first stage which can do that by itself if you want the second stage to land under its own power. And considering it will be carrying more than just the second stage (ISS resupplies, etc.), there's a ways to go before this is more feasible. I'm excited to see it happen though. It'll certainly take a lot more time before it's more useful.
The upcoming Falcon Heavy addresses this - three Falcon 9 first stages are strapped together to boost a second stage and payload into orbit.
Quote from: NC Hokie on April 12, 2016, 01:34:58 PM
Quote from: HGjunkie on April 12, 2016, 02:35:27 AM
The difficult part about this reusable rocket is getting any payload to a higher altitude usable for payload deployments. The first stage of the falcon-9 will only take the rocket to a suborbital trajectory, it doesn't have enough thrust by itself to get to an orbit. It's a difficult engineering challenge to make a first stage which can do that by itself if you want the second stage to land under its own power. And considering it will be carrying more than just the second stage (ISS resupplies, etc.), there's a ways to go before this is more feasible. I'm excited to see it happen though. It'll certainly take a lot more time before it's more useful.
The upcoming Falcon Heavy addresses this - three Falcon 9 first stages are strapped together to boost a second stage and payload into orbit.
It's still sketchy on how the rockets address the math. My initial thought is while it will be going incredibly fast at burnout, the losses due to drag and gravity still won't let the first stage by itself get the rocket to orbit. If they don't use all the fuel in the second stage for the landing, and leave only a small amount, then it may work. Of course, the more payload you have the lower it'll go in general. To put this in perspective, the staging of a falcon heavy could make a mars mission doable. That's with the upper stage(s). Even then, it's small compared to the space launch system.
Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy use a disposable second stage, so it can go as far as it needs to go. Also, Falcon Heavy will lift off with all three boost cores running, throttle the center core down until the outer ones burnout and fall away, then throttle up the center core again to gain additional altitude before separating the second stage for orbital insertion.
I watched the SES-9 mission (with RTLS landing) live in December and my fiancée couldn't understand why I was jumping around and shouting when they landed.