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Via plans unveiled by SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk, the first and second stages that would fly back to the launch site under their own power. With Dragon already a spacecraft that has proven it can launch, fly in space and return safely, the ultimate goal is to drive down costs by reusing every element of their launch system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very difficult thing to do. Even for an expendable launch vehicle, where you don\u2019t attempt any recovery, you only get maybe two to three percent of your lift-off weight to orbit. That\u2019s not a lot of room for error,\u201d noted Mr Musk during his first public announcement of his ambitions for the reusable Falcon 9, during a speech to the National Press Club at the beginning of 2012.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow you say \u2018OK, now let\u2019s make it reusable\u2019. You have to strengthen the stages, add a lot of weight, a lot of thermal protection \u2013 a lot of things that add weight to that vehicle \u2013 and still have a useful payload to orbit. You\u2019ve got to add all that\u2019s necessary to bring the stages back to the launch pad to be able to re-fly them and still have useful payload to orbit.<\/p>\n
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SpaceX are keeping parts of the plan to themselves, as can be expected, but a notional video of the modified version of the Falcon 9\/Dragon combination was seen during Mr Musk\u2019s initial announcement.<\/p>\n
![\"Falcon](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Z58.jpg\" "\\"Falcon")
The video shows the vehicle launching towards a nominal First Stage MECO (Main Engine Cut Off) and staging \u2013 as per usual \u2013 prior to the the entire first stage rotating 180 degrees via Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters, and then reigniting three of its nine engines to \u201cboost back\u201d the near-empty stage back to the launch site.<\/p>\nDescending back to the launch pad, the First Stage would fire one engine to decelerate to a pinpoint landing on its specially-made landing legs, in an area depicted in the video as the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) Skid Strip runway complex.<\/p>\n
This element is currently being tested at SpaceX\u2019s McGregor test site in Texas, with three tests of the Grasshopper incrementally challenging the vehicle to safely rise into the air, hover, and then smoothly return to the ground on its landing legs.<\/p>\n
![\"Grasshopper](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Z47.jpg\" "\\"Grasshopper")
The latest test \u2013 which took place on December 17 \u2013 was by far the \u201chighest\u201d leap by the Grasshopper. SpaceX also strapped a life-size dummy to the top of the landing leg structure, providing a visible reference to both the size of the test vehicle and its stability during the test.<\/p>\n\u201cThe 12-story flight marks a significant increase over the height and length of hover of Grasshopper\u2019s previous test flights, which took place earlier this fall. In September, Grasshopper flew to 1.8 meters (6 feet), and in November, it flew to 5.4 meters (17.7 feet\/2 stories) including a brief hover,\u201d noted SpaceX in statement on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cTesting of Grasshopper will continue with successively more sophisticated flights expected over the next several months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Click here for all SpaceX News articles: http:\/\/forum.nasaspaceflight.com\/index.php?topic=21862.0<\/p>\n
However, Falcon 9 is a two stage launch vehicle, meaning SpaceX will have to continue pushing their Grasshopper through testing, to mimic the challenges that will face the First Stage, ahead of evaluating a test plan for the Upper Stage.<\/p>\n
![\"F9r](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Z541.jpg\" "\\"F9r")
Per the notional concept video \u2013 the Upper Stage would be tasked with completing its orbital insertion burn, prior to spacecraft separation, ahead of thrusters rotating the stage 180 degrees, aft forward, ahead of engine restart for another burn to deorbit the Upper Stage.<\/p>\nProtected by what appears to be a version of the PICA-X (a proprietary variant of NASA\u2019s phenolic impregnated carbon ablator (PICA) material) heat shield used by the Dragon spacecraft, the Upper Stage dives back to Earth, protected against the heat and force of re-entry, prior to using what is depicted as four thrusters to decelerate and land on its landing legs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the Upper Stage, after dropping off the satellite or spacecraft, we do a deorbit burn, re-enter \u2013 you need a quite powerful heat shield \u2013 and steer aerodynamically back to the launch pad, landing propulsively on landing legs,\u201d added Mr Musk added during his National Press Club briefing.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Also worth noting,) you don\u2019t need wings to steer aerodynamically, you just need some lift over drag numbers and lift vector.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Dragon](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Z82.jpg\" "\\"Dragon")
Dragon is likely to be the less challenging element of the F9 reusable plan, given it is currently showing no ill signs during its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) role for NASA.<\/p>\nHowever, it currently returns to Earth under parachutes, for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The plan \u2013 even outside of the reusable ambitions \u2013 is for Dragon is to propulsively land on terra firma, via the ingenious use of Dragon\u2019s Draco thrusters \u2013 that initially have a standby role as the Launch Abort System (LAS) motors during ascent.<\/p>\n
The sum total would be \u2013 if successful \u2013 for both the entire launch vehicle, and the Dragon spacecraft, to return to its launch site, ready to be processed for use on a future mission, removing the costly need to build new hardware for each launch.<\/p>\n
The plan is ambitious, it may prove to be a challenge too far, but Mr Musk wants to give it a try.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t sure it could be solved, but relatively recently I\u2019ve come the conclusion it can be solved and SpaceX is going to try and do it,\u201d Mr Musk claimed at the Press Club briefing. \u201cWe could fail, I\u2019m not saying we\u2019re certain of success, but we\u2019re going to try to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Images \u2013 All via SpaceX).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SpaceX\u2019s ambitions of creating a full reusable launch vehicle have taken another step forward via the third \u2013 and most ambitious to date \u2013 test of their Grasshopper test vehicle. The 40 meter leap into the skies at their test facility in Texas \u2013 followed by a stable hover and smooth landing \u2013 was conducted without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30316,"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":[1395,9061,479,9077,316],"class_list":["post-39945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-dragon","tag-f9r","tag-falcon-9","tag-grasshopper","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39945"}],"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=39945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}