Andras Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 articleBooster and middle stages both soft land under thrust after delivering a cargo pod to orbit. The pod then soft lands under thrust after completing its mission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icefire Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 I still don\'t see the point in a fully powered landing on Earth, with its thick atmosphere you would think having a parachute as well as retro rockets would be more efficient, like the Soyuz landings. Only softer... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
your mom Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 wow very nice but at the ending why wouldn\'t they just use a parachute it would seem less expensive with the boosters and fuel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sneakeypete Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Hopefully someone in engineering has done some calculations for this... ;PStill, its the sort of technology that will be needed if we ever want to go to mars. We always hear lots about getting to mars, but as yet i\'ve not seen any proposal of how to return to earth. In the end your going to need to be able to land a rocket upright at the least (and then refuel it on planet) or even land a rocket that\'s fully capable of escaping the martian atmosphere, to get home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RulerOfNothing Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Still, its the sort of technology that will be needed if we ever want to go to mars. We always hear lots about getting to mars, but as yet i\'ve not seen any proposal of how to return to earth. In the end your going to need to be able to land a rocket upright at the least (and then refuel it on planet) or even land a rocket that\'s fully capable of escaping the martian atmosphere, to get home.I don\'t suppose you\'ve heard the proposals to send people to Mars on a one-way trip first and possibly figure out how to get them back here later? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sneakeypete Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 I haven\'t heard any space agency say that, just some small groups. Can\'t see anyone ever getting funding for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiberion Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 Hey thats pretty cool. There\'s no reason why that absolutely cannot work, its just a matter of the numbers for fuel vs weight coming out in the end.They\'re probably saving 20 million every time they save a 2nd stage. And I am sure they\'ll have parachute backups (since they\'re doing it with parachutes now anyway) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sluissa Posted September 30, 2011 Share Posted September 30, 2011 You know, it\'s cool and all. Nice idea. I hope SpaceX works out, but every time I read about them, every time I see anything related to them, I just get this... feeling... the same kind of feeling you get when you\'re talking to a used car saleman. You know the one. The one that tells you. 'That shudder is normal.' Or 'That\'ll go away at the next oil change, and I\'ll throw that in for free if you buy it.'I know SpaceX is a commercial company... but every one of their written or spoken pieces of media is just so full of bias and marketing speak and just feels so wrong for they\'re doing. They\'re planning to shoot people into space on the tip of a can full of explosives. What they\'re doing is inherantly dangerous, and will likely be for a long time. They\'ve lost numerous rockets in the past to launch failures. The payloads of those were (as far as I know) unable to be recovered. And yet they go about it with the attitude of:'Oh... yeah... sure... we\'re ready to put people on it NOW. It\'s just that old fuddy duddy... the U.S. Government (Who, by the way, buys rocket equipment... from... *GASP*... Soviet-... err... Russians... Buy from U.S. companies... we\'re one of them!) That old stick in the mud... they say we need seatbelts or something... Did the space shuttle even have seatbelts? I don\'t think so... anyway... yeah, once we get that minor thing worked out, we\'ll be launching people left and right... up and down.' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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