{"id":15823,"date":"2015-12-23T17:18:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T09:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacex-rocket-landing-applauded-but-experts-say-implications-tbd\/"},"modified":"2015-12-23T17:18:48","modified_gmt":"2015-12-23T09:18:48","slug":"spacex-rocket-landing-applauded-but-experts-say-implications-tbd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacex-rocket-landing-applauded-but-experts-say-implications-tbd\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX rocket landing applauded, but experts say implications TBD"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The successful launch and landing by the first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Monday was a significant step toward achieving reusability and, eventually, lowering launch costs, but turning that success into operational reality poses a significant challenge for company founder Elon Musk, space experts said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

From a purely technical perspective, the successful re-entry and powered touchdown of the Falcon 9 stage represented a \u201cground-breaking accomplishment,\u201d said former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ability to examine the stage after it has survived the stresses of flight, to put it through qualification and flight acceptance tests to verify and gain confidence in its condition, is the first step toward economical re-use of the launch vehicle,\u201d he said in an email exchange.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurther, the demonstration of supersonic retrograde propulsion \u2014 restarting an engine in supersonic flight and using it to fly back home \u2014 is important to future attempts to land large, heavy payloads on Mars. This was a marvelous flight test, the first step along an important road.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Logsdon, a noted space historian and founder of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, agreed, adding that the key to reusability, and lower launch costs, will be quick turnarounds and low refurbishment costs. And that will depend on how the boosters are affected by the stresses of launch, re-entry and landing.<\/p>\n

The successful landing \u201ccould be very significant, and the conditional is because we have to see what\u2019s required to refurbish and relaunch this stage,\u201d Logsdon said in an interview. \u201cIt was an important first step. You can\u2019t re-launch until you recover (the hardware). So showing you can recover it is a big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 rocket blasted off Monday evening from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, making SpaceX\u2019s first flight since a catastrophic launch failure last June. The primary goal of the mission was to boost 11 Orbcomm data relay satellites into orbit, which was successfully accomplished within about 20 minutes of liftoff.<\/p>\n

But SpaceX had two other major objectives. First, the company put an upgraded version of its Falcon 9 to the test for the first time, using cryogenic propellant cooling and \u201cdensification\u201d to increase launch thrust. And, of course, the company carried out the first successful landing of a rocket stage used to help boost a payload to orbit.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo credit: Stephen Clark\/Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Musk believes lowering launch costs is critical for the commercial space industry, and that requires recovery, refurbishment and reuse of booster stages. In a post-launch conference call, Musk said the recovered stage will be inspected and used for ground tests but if all goes well, another recovered stage may be re-launched sometime next year.<\/p>\n

The key, Logsdon said, is how much work is required to return a used rocket to launch readiness.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpaceX has to find out how close to launch ready it is upon return, how much processing are they going to have to do before it\u2019s ready to operate in the launch environment again,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s an unknown.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the business case depends on launching frequently. There has to be costs of refurbishment. I remember seeing Elon in a ceremony once, saying his goal is just to have to pay for the fuel for the second flight. \u2026 But it will be a while before he can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his conference call Monday night, Musk said a Falcon 9 currently costs about $60 million to build and launch. But propellants only account for about $200,000 of that total. And that, he said, \u201cmeans that the potential cost reduction over the long term is probably in excess of a factor of 100.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is quite significant,\u201d he said. \u201cI do think it\u2019s a revolutionary moment. No one has ever brought a booster, an orbital-class booster, back intact. \u2026 We achieved recovery of the rocket in a mission that actually deployed 11 satellites. I mean, this is a fundamental step change in technology compared to any other rocket that has ever flown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wayne Hale, a former space shuttle ascent-entry flight director and post-Columbia program manager, called the successful landing \u201ca very impressive technological achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKind of the holy grail is if you can reuse a space vehicle, you then can bring the costs down,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cThe trick is going to be in refurbishing. That\u2019s where we didn\u2019t make the mark in space shuttle, because the refurbishment of the shuttle was so expensive. (The Falcon 9) is a simpler vehicle, we\u2019re really just talking the engines, some structure and the plumbing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But rocket engines are high performance machines with little margin for error and \u201cwhether or not this is a really practical thing to save money depends on how much work goes into refurbishing them,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of the key thing. It could save a lot of money, or wind up like the shuttle and not save anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, he added, \u201clet\u2019s applaud the accomplishment. It was a really spectacular technological accomplishment. Whether or not they can make the business case work depends on the next step.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joan Johnson-Freese, a space policy analyst and professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College, was less circumspect, calling the landing \u201ca very big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWashington is pretty much littered with space transportation studies that say the only way that space is going to open up as a regular development area is through reusability,\u201d she told CBS News. \u201cIt\u2019s taken us 50 years to get there, but I think we\u2019re a step closer now.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her view, the political cost of failure prevents governments from taking on high-risk space projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only entity that can take this kind of risk is probably a private company,\u201d she said. \u201cThe space transportation field, I think, has been moribund because no government has (been able) to take the kind of risk needed to make this kind of really exceptional push forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Credit:
Credit: Blue Origin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos also is developing reusable rockets. His company, Blue Origin, successfully launched and recovered a sub-orbital New Shepard rocket during a test flight last month.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin plans to use the rocket to boost passengers out of the atmosphere for brief forays in weightlessness before the New Shepard crew capsule returns to Earth by parachute. The booster, like the Falcon 9 first stage, is designed to make a tail first, powered descent to touchdown for refurbishment and reuse.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin also plans to build a rocket manufacturing facility near Cape Canaveral and to develop a much more powerful orbital rocket to launch satellites and, eventually, people.<\/p>\n

The presumed \u201cspace race\u201d between the two billionaires has triggered widespread chatter in social media circles even though the rockets currently in operation or development are not in competition.<\/p>\n

After the successful New Shepard test flight, Musk tweeted his congratulations, but went out of his way to point out that Bezos\u2019 rocket was strictly sub-orbital and did not have to endure the same stresses as a Falcon 9 first stage returning from an orbital mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cJeff maybe unaware SpaceX suborbital VTOL (vertical take off and landing) flight began 2013,\u201d Musk tweeted. \u201cOrbital water landing 2014. Orbital land landing next.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the Falcon 9\u2019s successful landing Monday, Bezos tweeted \u201cCongrats @SpaceX on landing Falcon\u2019s suborbital booster stage. Welcome to the club!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Photo credit: SpaceX The successful launch and landing by the first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Monday was a significant step toward achieving reusability and, eventually, lowering launch costs, but turning that success into operational reality poses a significant challenge for company founder Elon Musk, space […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,1695,1045,479,3764,1046,3840,3256],"class_list":["post-15823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-cape-canaveral","tag-elon-musk","tag-falcon-9","tag-falcon-9-upgrade","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-joan-johnson-freese","tag-john-logsdon"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15823"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}