Thought Experiment: Reusable Boosters instead of STS

[MatttheCzar]

This is an idea I've had in my head for a while, and I want to see if it could have been possible.  Basically, the Saturn series tech would be adapted into a new rocket.  The H-1 motor performed favorably in dunk tests, and was resistant to saltwater.  The first stage of the Saturn-R would be composed of H-1s for this reason.  It would be larger than the Saturn 1B, but have the same payload range.  It would launch as normal, and when its tanks deplete, it stages like normal.  Then, it starts to get different.  The tank would be overreinforced for extra sturdiness, and would include large airbrakes.  These open when the stage separates.  It slows the stage down to subsonic velocities, and the tank flips over for a sea landing.  The brakes would slow it down partway, while a large parachute would assist.  What happens next would be the biggest challenge.  Inside the tank, there would be tiny fuel tanks not used in the launch.  The center H-1 would restart, burning all the fuel away for a braking burn.  Now the stage is floating in the water.  The Navy arrives to ferry it back to the KSC.  Any thoughts?

[Shpaget]

Dunking white hot engines into cold ocean?

[Bill Phil]

Sounds like von Braun's plan in Collier's magazine, 1952.

[wumpus]

Best guess is that reality intervened and showed that the Navy simply couldn't get to the engines faster than the saltwater could destroy them.  Lots of things work great as powerpoint slides but have trouble with cold reality.  As far as I know, the only reused rockets that have been to space are the X-15 and Spaceship 1 (has Blue Origin relaunched?  I don't think Spacex has scheduled a launch of a recovered booster).  Plenty others have planned it, but it always seems harder than expected (rocket engines have almost *no* margin.  Dropping them after a launch and marinating them in brine doesn't help).

Weren't some of the early Ariane rockets supposed to be reusable?  Probably not the first, given the acronym, but I remember Europe working on it during roughly the 1980s.  So far, all of the rockets that have be at least re-lit are either solid rockets (where really only a thick steel tube was saved) or they landed on land (or a barge) without getting soaked in seawater (could you land in the Great Lakes or similar deep freshwater?  Good question.  How about Lake Nickaragua? (Lake Okeechobee is south enough and in Florida, but less than 3m deep).

[sojourner]

^Blue Origin has reflown their rocket 2 times now.

 

The Falcon 9 originally was going to use chutes and a wet landing. SpaceX found that reserving some fuel and adding legs weighed less than the chutes would have and provided for pinpoint landings.

 

Coincidentally, the Falcon 9 can lift around 22000kg. About the same as the final configuration of Saturn -1b. So, Your thought experiment is actually in production and flying after a fashion

Edited May 15, 2016 by sojourner

[MatttheCzar]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

Best guess is that reality intervened and showed that the Navy simply couldn't get to the engines faster than the saltwater could destroy them.  Lots of things work great as powerpoint slides but have trouble with cold reality.  As far as I know, the only reused rockets that have been to space are the X-15 and Spaceship 1 (has Blue Origin relaunched?  I don't think Spacex has scheduled a launch of a recovered booster).  Plenty others have planned it, but it always seems harder than expected (rocket engines have almost *no* margin.  Dropping them after a launch and marinating them in brine doesn't help).

Weren't some of the early Ariane rockets supposed to be reusable?  Probably not the first, given the acronym, but I remember Europe working on it during roughly the 1980s.  So far, all of the rockets that have be at least re-lit are either solid rockets (where really only a thick steel tube was saved) or they landed on land (or a barge) without getting soaked in seawater (could you land in the Great Lakes or similar deep freshwater?  Good question.  How about Lake Nickaragua? (Lake Okeechobee is south enough and in Florida, but less than 3m deep).

http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=5948

 

The H-1 was a special case.  As for the great lakes, it would work, but that would need a whole new launchpad in wisconsin, which would probably cost more than the project could save.

[Kryten]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

Weren't some of the early Ariane rockets supposed to be reusable?  

I know they had an attempt at sea recovery for the Ariane 1 first stage from the Giotto launch, I've seen newspaper articles about it. I've found no mention of it after the actual launch, so fairly easy to work out what happened...

Edited May 16, 2016 by Kryten

[YNM]

I don't think the technology readiness allows you to do SpaceX/BO-style stage recovery. Landing the thing requires a program to take all input and spit out reaction just in time, which when you consider they still use magnetic loop RAM... Hmm. Not to mention the lack of ship unless you're willing to lose an aircraft carrier.

Dunking white-hot engine in the water ? Sounds like a perfect way to recast molten metal into fine, abstract art.

Edited May 16, 2016 by YNM

[MatttheCzar]

14 minutes ago, YNM said:

I don't think the technology readiness allows you to do SpaceX/BO-style stage recovery. Landing the thing requires a program to take all input and spit out reaction just in time, which when you consider they still use magnetic loop RAM... Hmm. Not to mention the lack of ship unless you're willing to lose an aircraft carrier.

Simple.  It wouldn't be piloted using a computer.  It would be teleoperated by pilots at the launch site, or at sea.  Alternatively, and this would be quite dangerous, you could put a pilot seat in the rocket and fly it yourself.  Also note that the design only relies on rockets for the last few seconds of its recovery.  Most of the return; the airbrakes deploying and the large chute releasing, would be automatic.

Edited May 16, 2016 by MatttheCzar

[YNM]

13 hours ago, MatttheCzar said:

Simple.  It wouldn't be piloted using a computer.  It would be teleoperated by pilots at the launch site, or at sea.

Still, cameras aren't as good as it is today.

[magnemoe]

14 hours ago, MatttheCzar said:

Simple.  It wouldn't be piloted using a computer.  It would be teleoperated by pilots at the launch site, or at sea.  Alternatively, and this would be quite dangerous, you could put a pilot seat in the rocket and fly it yourself.  Also note that the design only relies on rockets for the last few seconds of its recovery.  Most of the return; the airbrakes deploying and the large chute releasing, would be automatic.

It should work, think its more that space-x thought outside the box even if powered landings are not new, both apollo and all probes landing on moon used it.
Reuse of boosters is not new, many of the old 1950 ideas used it but they all had wings.

[John JACK]

They tried it with Shuttle SRBs:

Quote

Some NASA estimates have placed the projected cost of two new SRBs at $66.4 million and the refurbishment cost of two existing boosters at $34.8 millions but it is not clear that these figures included all the costs associated with development amortization, infrastructure, operations, and payload weight impacts necessary for a truly accurate comparison.

It turned out that disposable booster can be both cheaper and better performing than low-tech reusable. That actually means more like "fishing scrap out of water, taking it apart, scrubbing, unbending, replacing broken parts and assembling again in a mostly new condition". And reusable ones would have better propellant fraction due to lack of parachutes, floating devices and generally lighter construction. Even liquid boosters could be more cost-effective that reusable solids, because greater performance and easier handling too.

[wumpus]

On 5/16/2016 at 9:10 PM, MatttheCzar said:

Simple.  It wouldn't be piloted using a computer.  It would be teleoperated by pilots at the launch site, or at sea.  Alternatively, and this would be quite dangerous, you could put a pilot seat in the rocket and fly it yourself.  Also note that the design only relies on rockets for the last few seconds of its recovery.  Most of the return; the airbrakes deploying and the large chute releasing, would be automatic.

Judging by the shuttle SRB landings, you would simply detach the engines and just parachute them down.  Hopefully with just the engines,  you wouldn't go much below 10 feet (3m).  Trying to recover the rest of the booster would take absolutely enormous parachutes and still hit the water way too hard.  I doubt there much room to do actual "piloting": you mostly release drogue parachutes followed by your "real" parachutes and hope for the best.

Also this engine was clearly a stopgap design for the F-1.  It didn't begin to have power to take men to the moon.  If it could indeed survive its initial use it could be used for post-lunar missions (where computers existed) but in the early 1960s each launch of such things would need a pilot to dock to the next launch, it just didn't have the power to get the job done.  Technology ahead of its time isn't much more useful than technology behind its time (when it's steam engine time you get steam engines, not gas turbines).

The worst cost of a failure to really try this was in the Delta program.  While the Apollo program couldn't use such and engine, it was right about the exact thrust used by Delta.  I'm guessing a whole lot of "not invented here" and bureaucratic rules making real cooperation between government programs a felony (not an exaggeration: without these laws there are plenty of ways to commit fraud within a single or small conspiracy of contractors).  I wonder how much more could be done with a cheap, reusable Delta rocket.

Edited May 18, 2016 by wumpus
F-1 not V-1

[p1t1o]

You will start to run into problems with the parachutes. The Space shuttle SRBs are about the largest thing that has ever been parachute-dropped, and their parachutes are the largest, and heaviest in the world (talking tons here - just the drogue chute on one of those things weights ~500kg and the three main chutes are ~1000kg apiece) and even with the biggest, heaviest parachutes in the world the SRBs would slam into the water with quite terrific force, they might have been reusable, but they did not survive each landing undamaged.

If you want to drop larger things by parachute, as the cost in terms of weight and complexity start to skyrocket, the size of payload you are able to safely drop only creeps up incrementally. At some point it just becomes easier to build the stages sturdy enough to survive freefall outright, but now you have a stoopidly heavy rocket.

[JebKeb]

On 15/05/2016 at 7:16 AM, Shpaget said:

Dunking white hot engines into cold ocean?

I think this thought of thing would be an OK way to get to orbit, but spaceplanes should still be developed.

[Steel]

4 hours ago, JebKeb said:

I think this thought of thing would be an OK way to get to orbit, but spaceplanes should still be developed.

The issue you run into there is that they are far less efficient and harder to design than reusable rocket stages

[JebKeb]

9 hours ago, Steel said:

The issue you run into there is that they are far less efficient and harder to design than reusable rocket stages

Far less efficient? Yay, I still get to have fun rockets!

[WinkAllKerb'']

8 hours ago, JebKeb said:

Far less efficient? Yay, I still get to have fun rockets!

experiment stuff or play random, look at the result, seem fun ... a bit unusual but fun ... 'sigh'

8 hours ago, JebKeb said:

Far less efficient? Yay, I still get to have fun rockets!

 

Edited May 18, 2016 by WinkAllKerb''