Video: First Test of SpaceX Grasshopper VTVL Rocket
@ElonMusk: “First test flight hop of our Grasshopper VTVL rocket!”.
Click on image for video.
@ElonMusk: “First test flight hop of our Grasshopper VTVL rocket!”.
Click on image for video.
The legs don’t look like the ones from the animation that was presented couple of months ago. I like the animation version better.
Two points:
1. This is Grasshopper – not a reusable F9. (Think of it is a technology test-bed prototype)
2. That video was just a concept. If a reusable F9 ever flies, it will have many drastic differences from that video.
HyperJ:
Absolutely right. Read my first post in this thread.
tinker
Yohan:
The landing legs on this test vehicle seem over built and don’t look like they can fold up. They simply want Grasshopper to land upright and not break. Data from many flight will help guide the final design. This vehicle is built to test deep engine throttling, flight control, avionics and software.
tinker
🙂 Tinker this is more better than the first falcon ISS flight!!!
🙂
HOPEEEEEEEEE
Yohan:
There are other things to consider too. They can vector (swivel) the Merlin engine to keep the first stage upright but they’ll probably need some Draco thrusters to compensate for cross wind landings. I’m pretty sure they don’t want to land the stage at an angle other than vertical. The Draco thrusters are light weight and their fuel load would be small as they would only be necessary during final approach.
The final landing legs will have to be as light as possible. They will have to tuck against the stage tank above the Merlin nozzles then fold open to as wide a footprint as possible. Composites come to mind for strength and light weight. I’ll bet the robust landing legs of Grasshopper are heavily instrumented so they can use those data to optimize the final landing leg design.
They could over build Grasshoppers landing legs because they could co-opt the weight of the eight missing Merlin engines the flight stage would have plus the estimated weight of the flight stage landing legs.
Stronger, safer and flying (if at low altitude) now!
tinker
I just don’t understand how VTVL would ever be cheaper than VTHL. Isn’t carrying additional fuel to land always going to be more expensive than landing in a lifting body? Isn’t the cheapest solution to take off vertically and landing horizontally gliding in using parachutes like this vehicle was designed by Lockhead?
http://upload.wikimedia.org…
It’s a long-going debate.
The counter-argument is that making a structure that can carry loads both vertically (launch) and horizontally (landing) weighs a lot too – look how heavy the shuttle was.And by the time you want to touch-down, unlike wings, the weight of the propellant is mostly gone, so the vehicle is even lighter.Wings get in the way during ascent, and also require that you touch-down while moving rapidly, so restrict landing sites to runways.In short, wings are a non-brainer for airplanes, since they spend most of their time in horizontal flight. For a spacecraft, it’s a different matter.
With a capsule using a pusher system, the fuel is duel use, if there is an emergency you use the fuel to escape, or you get to use the fuel for the landing.
I do not see how the lifting body design gets to duel use their escape fuel. Since both systems have the LAS it almost equals out?
Yohan:
Look at it this way. After the Falcon first stage separates from the second stage with almost empty fuel tanks, it’s pretty light. So, the fuel penalty to land on just one Merlin engine (out of the nine) isn’t that much. Even if the landing legs and extra fuel weigh more then wings or a paraglider they still need to use an engine firing to get slow down the first stage before it hits thick air. Instead of two recovery systems, rocket slow down and wings for landing, why not just use one, rocket powered landing. In a word, safer. Guidance for a vertical landing is much simpler too. If SpaceX does this right, about the only really new addition to the Falcon first stage will be the landing legs. everything else in Grasshopper is just a variation on a theme they already have experience with. It’s probably why they’ve left the flight landing legs development till they get the rest right.
tinker
Has it been proven that re-usable rockets are cheaper than disposable rockets after you factor in the cost of inspecting, repairing and risk factors of regrading components?
After the cost analyst of the space shuttle program it was determined that disposable rockets were always going to be cheaper or are we saying size matters now?
Big re-usable rockets are more expensive to maintain than big disposable rockets and small re-usable rockets are cheaper than small disposable rockets?
Tinker
I read in the early 70s that the shuttle was to be launched from a flyback plane. The budget guys canned it, because its development cost was to be over 5.5 billion
I wonder what would have happened had they built a flyback booster shuttle??
lolol I bet shuttle would have been a little cheaper and NASA and congress would still be flying shuttles for another 50 years and progress like this hopper would never be aloud to happen.
I was in college studying design when they did the first columbia test flight.
I walked the design halls a few weeks back.
Gone are the parallel bars
Gone are the ink pens
The students don’t design and draw together anymore 🙁
I felt like RIP VAN Winkle
Now discovery has made its last flight
During the shuttle age
old fashion Architecture as CHANGED!!!!!!
Yet all this time SPACE STAYED THE SAME 🙁
This 2 second HOP IS A GREAT GREAT THING!!!!!and our foolish leaders dont trust spacex lololol
THhe ignorant crooked money grubbing fools LOLOLOL
Whether horizontal or vertical landing is more cost-effective for a reusable booster stage, upper stage, or spacecraft is currently unknown and can really only be resolved by prototype flight testing in which individual stages are flown repeatedly until maintenance and operation costs can be established.
A long, slow powered descent as shown in the animated SpaceX video of a year or so ago would consume an impractical amount of fuel. Vertical landing requires decelerating at the last moment to be practical, and probably a parachute as well, but this adds complexity and challenges with winds.
Horizontal landing requires wings, but for a booster stage heat shielding requirements are minimal and only the empty weight must be supported so the wings can be quite small. Although there have been many studies, the largest HL booster actually built SFAIK was a 5-meter model demonstrator constructed in the 90’s by a company headed by Buzz Aldrin. Whether a winged booster stage would require substantial additional fuel for a rocketback maneuver after staging or could turn back using aero surfaces only is unclear.
Flying medium-scale reusable booster prototypes of both types would, in my opinion, be more cost effective than a ton of studies.
The high cost of Shuttle reprocessing was primarily due not to reusability itself but rather to the failure to test prototypes through the full flight cycle, resulting in a plethora of design problems, many of which led to unanticipated costs. But for human spaceflight, IMHO, reusability is essential because expendable systems are too expensive to ever permit more than a lucky handful to fly in space.
Daniel,
Good post. There’s another factor that’s seldom mentioned, I guess because there’s not data — you can’t really compare the cost differences in the two types until you know reasonably well what their respective life cycles will be. If one type is 20% cheaper to build, fly and turn around, but only lasts half as many flights, then it’s actually the more expensive type.
Also, I think we have to consider the possibility of future redesigns for different engines/motors as the cost and availability of different fuel types changes. Additionally, advances in materials sciences may apply to one type but not the other. I’m thinking more long term here than I think most people tend to, but I think we need to do so. Consider that the Shuttles flew 30 years and one of the the biggest criticisms was that they were not constantly updated in design.
Steve
Steve
“I just don’t understand how VTVL would ever be cheaper than VTHL.”
Apparently trade studies over the last decade or so have pretty much debunked VTHL. The additional mass from extra-fuel+landing-legs is less than the mass from wings/lifting-body+landing-gear.
(And I’m assuming there’s a mass penalty from needing to design a vehicle that can be pushed up from below while vertical (during take-off) but can also withstand being hung from wings horizontally while landing. Particularly because launchers are mostly giant fuel tanks, so there’s an “egg” effect, where they are stronger when compressed down the long axis than when poked in the sides.)
With aircraft, it’s the opposite. You already need wings for cruise. So the extra cost of flaps/landing-gear is much less than the cost of vertical landing engines + fuel. With launchers it’s about getting up and down as quickly as possible.
I see, got it. Thanks.
VTHL requires wings or at least a lifting-body shape. Wings are dead weight except during the landing part of the flight. Designs have to be studied and decisions made about whether horizontal landing or vertical make the most sense for the vehicle being designed. Many people have their favorite approach and are willing to argue about it if you wish to provide them the opportunity.
Folks:
Progress! Innovation! Vision!
That’s what I like to see!
tinker
Tinker that is a very big understatment!!!! Each day I check the net for this. This is history in the making!
lololol the ticket to space!
🙂
Spacex Fan
Tinker
That little Stuttering Elon geek really ticks me off!
He says little while his hopper fires up!!!!!!
🙂
Congrats SpaceX! Can’t wait to see the further videos.
SpaceX is small, yet is working on:
(1) upgraded engines and new Falcon 9
(2) Falcon heavy
(3) Man-rated Dragon
(4) new lauch facilities
(5) operational launches, including ISS resupply
(6) Grasshopper
It really puts NASA to shame, imo.
The race to Space!!!!!!
🙂 kICK ASS SPACEX
GOGOGO!!!!
Sweet!! – all the more so because of its size. As far as the legs go: training wheels. Once the the required span, loads for the folding mechanism etc. are worked out they’ll be far different than either this or the ‘future’ video.
Correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t the best approach VTVL/HL.
First and second stage is VTVL, and the CEV is HL. You get the best of both worlds, complete re-usability, recoverability and safety?
[Deleted by user who needs to learn to read.]
Yohan:
You have just described a reusable Falcon 9 launch vehicle with Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser space plane on top (1st & 2nd stage; vertical landing, Dream Chaser; horizontal landing). That’s a very formidable combination (and, I hear, one that is being considered). After forty years, the Space Transportation System (the original name for the Space Shuttle program) has a baseline design that could become a reality.
tinker
Sweet, I was thinking the same thing. There is also X-37, or others like it we could build that wouldn’t be as difficult as the Shuttle. Keep it somewhat launcher agnostic like the CST-100 is.
It would be nice to say “which one is launching today? A spaceplane or capsule? Spaceplane huh, manned or an unmanned one this time.”
You didn’t hear? Elon’s goal is to be buried on mars. That is why he’s driving his space program so fast!
Yohan:
If Elon wanted to be buried on Mars, there would be no need to hurry. He could take the ‘Scotty’ route (which, incidentally, Spacex helped to facilitate). The rush is so Elon can live on Mars!
tinker
Now what should NASA do with Elons Mars program???
They should buy rides on his rocket to the moon to get him cash to build his Mars rockets lolololol
Elon our nasa guys/gals have business for your cheap rockets.
LOLOLOL
Its so easy
DTARS
Private reaction in Rayburn “It’s a stunt”.
Congress still has ZERO confidence in SpaceX while they burn the house down at NASA mandating programs that do nothing.
Andrew:
That’s ok. Confidence in Congress is about the same, so it cancels out.
tinker
One small 2 second hop for Spacex
One Giant hop for Man Kind
yo
has it been proven??
We are about to learn!
Spacex is doing rocket science the old fashion way
by testing rockets lololol
Folks:
Talk about a low budget PR event! This milestone was tweeted by the CTO of the company. Cost: zero. Time expenditure: 30 seconds. Coverage: global. I’d call that a pretty good use of resources myself.
tinker
BTW: Does anyone notice the resemblance of the fire suppression cannon to the robot of the same purpose in the first Iron Man movie? Both my girlfriend and I laughed when we saw this video. 😀
Brian:
Amazing how much progress can be made when you remove ‘responsibility’ (read: monopoly) away from the bean counters in Washington. There’s a lesson to be learned here.
tinker
“We celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success”… except when they aren’t one of our major campaign funders.
[The quote is from Eric Cantor, Republican House majority leader.]
Anyone know what usutopshpepnbpmodbgnos means?
I saw the following quote from Gwynne recently, “You actually want the engines around the perimeter at the tank, otherwise you’re carrying that load from those engines that aren’t on the skin, you’ve got to carry them out to the skin, cause that’s the primary load path for the launch vehicle.” This was in reference to the new octagonal arrangement of the new Merlin 1D engines on the next version of Falcon 9. This arrangement may also make sense for more directional control on decent. Wish I were an aerospace engineer who knew what he was talking about.
GIDIS:
That would be ‘she’ (Gwynne Shotwell is president of SpaceX, in charge of marketing).
What she was talking about was one of the improvements to the Falcon 9’s next version. Instead of the ‘tic tac toe’ (three rows of three Merlin engines in each row), the new Falcon first stage will have eight engines in a circle around a single engine in the center. All the structural strength of the stages is in the skin of the tank (you can put a brick on top of a paper towel tube placed on it’s end, it will pass the load through the tube wall and not collapse). The new Falcon first stage thrust frame will position that circle of eight Merlin engines as close to the center-line of the tank wall as possible while leaving more room for the center Merlin engine to swivel during powered landing (that’s a guess on my part). The advantage of this arrangement is that it will be lighter because less structure is needed to transfer the launch loads from the engines to that ‘sweet spot’ around the tank skin. I’ve read 40% lighter.
The new Falcon will also be 40% longer to carry the extra propellent for the more powerful Merlin 1D engines.
To put things in perspective, neither the Delta VI or the Atlas V first stages have gone through anywhere near this kind of upgrading in the decade they’ve been around. For Falcon, it’ll be flight 8 or 9 for this major upgrade to fly, possibly for the Falcon Heavy inaugural flight.
tinker
Hi tinker. The ‘he’ was in reference to ‘me’. I should have said more directly that I wish I knew what I was talking about. Anyway, I also wanted to let you know that I enjoy reading your thoughts and insights. Keep it up. The additional swiveling room for the center engine was exactly what I had in mind. There would still be the weight of the structure to transfer the load of the center engine to the skin, but guessing not nearly as much. And, even when that engine carries the full load upon decent, it does not have nearly the mass of the accent vehicle given that the structure above the 1st stage and most of the fuel is gone.
GIDIS:
One special thrust frame for the center engine is going to be lighter then having extra structure to transfer loads from five engines; the center one and the four engines on the ‘corners’. I’ve seen images of the new thrust frame and it looks like a simple cylinder. I don’t know if they plan to have the Merlin’s nozzles stick out the side a bit. It only matters during the first half of the four minute flight of the first stage.
tinker
So, if the grasshopper is designed to land each stage separately with fuel almost empty to lighten the weight, does this mean you cannot use this system for aborts?
Lets say you are 25% into your mission with plenty of fuel, and you had to abort. Can the stages separate in mid-flight with plenty of fuel in its tanks and still land?
Or is this grasshopper concept only good after the rocket completes its orbital launch?
Aren’t most situations that call for an abort due to some catastrophic failure in the first or second stages? I suppose if there was a first stage failure prior to stage separation you might have a chance for getting the second stage to push away and land, but it doesn’t seem too likely. In an abort occurring after stage separation, the first stage would already be on its way back down.
The most important thing in an abort is that the crew capsule gets away safely, and that’s handled by the capsule’s launch escape system, completely independent of the rocket.
Yohan:
Matt makes some good points. About the only way all Falcon stages could be recovered in an abort is if there was a non-catastrophic engine failure of the first stage. If Falcon’s first stage lost, say, three engines (but not the center one) they may choose an abort flight plan. The first stage would carry the second stage and Dragon to a safe altitude then separate and ignite the second stage. Then once the second stage empties, separate the Dragon and trunk and recover both, throwing away the Dragon trunk. The first stage could still land on it’s center engine, maybe hovering to use fuel. According to SpaceX plans, the second stage would use Draco thrusters to land because, empty, it weighs about as much a fully loaded Dragon capsule. All speculation, of course, but possible within the smidgins of loose data SpaceX has doled out to us. 🙂
tinker
If you are aborting, you have more pressing issues on hand than reusability of aborted equipment. Issues like crew survival. No one will care about rest.
MaDeR:
Good point. But the scenario I mention above could work for a Dragon cargo flight abort too. I agree with you that crew comes first but the abort I describe above might be safer for crew. We don’t know until we try. I’ve never considered putting explosives on a crewed vehicle ‘safe’ yet NASA did that for every Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle launch. Range safety, not crew safety was the rule of the day. Maybe we can change that.
tinker
The Dawn of the affordable Space age
What if I was a time traveler and I could race back in our parallel to the first time Wilber and Orvell took their first gliders to Kitty Hawk and tested their glider controls and I took a video of that first glide.
Isn’t that what we are seeing here?
How many people in the world realize that, that kind of history is happening right now?
How lucky we are to be able to witness history through the web and see it for ourselves.
There is nothing impossible here, this is just an engineering problem that has to be tested and perfected. So it will soon fly. A Recoverable falcon 9 will fly off a pad and the first stage will land.
What if it fails to be as cheap as Mr. Musk says and only reduces the costs of a current falcon by a quarter or half. It will still be HISTORIC.
History is fun Mr. C lolol Thanks : )
Future Space contractor
Parallel Lines
Tinker
PS Lololol
Just thought of something lolol
Who is Musk like??
Here some of us have argued who he is must like,
Steve Jobs?
Bill Gates?
Warner Von Braun?
Henry Ford?
Howard Hughes?
The answer is
NOAH
Lololol
What are you building that boat on dry land for, Noah? A flood?
You some kind of KOOK?
How high is the water papa? Three feet high and risen!
Tinker lol
We (some in the space community/Spacex watchers )are the chosen few that realize the importance this event . And you want to argue with me that that your not much for religion? Yeah right! lolol
What were the plans for your Recoverable Heavy Lift ARK again?
DTARS!
Shhhhh!
tinker
Folks:
Here’s an article about Grasshopper’s maiden ‘flight’. Apparently it reached an altitude of six feet.
SpaceX conducts first test of Grasshopper reusable rocket prototype
tinker
There may be enough fuel left in the tanks to land.The Soyuz vents there fuel with explosions to open holes.Makes for a pretty spectacular vapor trail on reentry.They do not run engines dry.The F9 2nd stage has a huge over margin also and can make up any early shut down of the 1st stage.So no weight penalty.They shut off the engines.Antares has a solid 2nd. stage so they have to shut off the first stage at a certain point to get the orbit they want,since the 2nd. burns out.If we ever get to see a launch.Launch from Texas,land in Fl.Williston would probably have the best landing spot.Not a lot of people around there.Big old WW2 base.