ULA Offers SpaceX Advice on How to Crash Rockets
Images Show Falcon 9 First Stage Crash-Landing on Ship, Space News
“Musk’s series of images also prompted a response from United Launch Alliance president and chief executive Tory Bruno. He noted his company has a number of employees who worked on the DC-X, a 1990s-era project to demonstrate vertical takeoff and landing technology for future reusable launch vehicles. “Let me know if we can help,” Bruno wrote.”
The Delta Clipper Experimental: Flight Testing Archive, NASA
“July 31, 1996 [DC-XA] Landing strut 2 failed to extend; vehicle tipped over and LOX tank exploded; vehicle destroyed.”
So what Bruno is saying is that his company could’ve pursued reusable rockets ages ago, has the IP and the subject matter experts, but didn’t think it was worth pursuing. Glad we got that cleared up.
It’s the socialist dinospace contractor mindset: they don’t lift a finger if the government doesn’t pay them cost-plus to do it.
Worse than that! Remember DC-X was a MD creation, a subscale version of its RLV concept in the X-33 competition. Whereas Boeing had its own competing design, that unfortunately did not make the finalist cut (nor had they bothered with a similar approach of using a subscale model).
When Boeing later acquired MD, and what remained of the DC-X, they had little interest in resurrecting the program. I think they had a bad case of “not-invented-here” syndrome, and I’ve even heard from some techs close to the program, claim that some valuable design and test data were deliberately deleted!! Not sure if those claims were true, but I’ve seen old-aerospace companies behave like the old-school “Big-Three” auto’s …. when faced with young or innovative upstarts that’s outside of their control & corporate philosophy…, they actually become vindictive!
I’m writing an article about this – any chance you can connect me with those you know who were close to the program? My email is [email protected]
Kudos to Musk for transparency. Next time for sure.
Bruno’s twitter is unverified, FYI
The Delta Clipper is not at all the same as the Falcon 9. The Delta Clipper much more greatly resembles the Grasshopper; both were test vehicles, which never exceeded a few thousand feet. The Grasshopper was much, much more successful, though.
To be precise, the maximum altitudes achieved by the two vehicles were:
Grasshopper: 744 m (2,441 ft), Oct. 7, 2013
Delta Clipper (DC-XA): 3,140 m (10,300 ft), June 8, 1996
DC-X was 12m tall, with a dry mass of 9 tonnes. It was an entirely bespoke vehicle and used a novel LH/LOx aerospike engine.
Grasshopper was closer to 32m tall and around 15 tonnes. It was a modified F9v1.0 first stage, conventional kerolox engines, and used hardware that was actually in service in a real launch vehicle. The systems developed went into the next actual-in-service real launch vehicle.
While they were both VTOL test programs, they were totally different beasts. No more alike than to Mastens Xaero lander.
(DC-X would have been better had it been part of a first stage reusability study that MacD intended to turn into a commercial multi-stage reusable launcher. Instead it was one of SDO’s idiotic SSTO wanks. Another good idea lost.)
Good summary and comparison of the two vehicles, except that the DC-X was not powered by an aerospike engine. It had four RL10A-5 engines: these were variants of the RL10 LO2/LH2 engine that had a reduced nozzle expansion ratio, as a result of the design being optimized for flight in atmosphere. The resulting recessed engines gave it something of the appearance of an aerospike, except that it lacked a central spike on the base of the body between the engines.
Thanks (and Jack). I mixed that up, probably with X-33.
The DC-X did not use a aerospike engine. It used Four RL-10A-5 liquid-fueled rocket engines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
Mr. Bruno’s implication seems to be “reuseable doesn’t work, we tried”.
But DC-X was a demonstrator for single stage to orbit, and it was very promising. The cause of the crash was a likely a minor problem to solve but the implication of rapidly reuseable spacecraft was a threat to the company’s bottom line that was accustomed to the cost plus accounting of Apollo “moon shot” like budget priorities so it had to die. There was talk that the use of carbon fiber wound cryogenic tanks was an unsolvable problem so the single stage part was likely out but there’s no reason that alloy tanks and a multi stage configuration similar to what Spacex is attempting now wouldn’t work.
musk to Big B: next time just fix the strut, dude.
Somewhat condescending imo. SpaceX is well beyond what the DC-X program managed to achieve. That said, it was a great shame that that program was discontinued but as previously stated, it was part of an SSTO effort and even Musk doesn’t believe there’s any future in that with our current levels of technology.
Cheers
Musk to ULA: “STFU and get out of my way!”
“Let me know if we can help,”
This seems to be a bit like when my six year old says to me I’ll show you how to do it daddy!
Maybe Mr Bruno should also offer to stand in the middle of the SpaceX logo that’s painted on the barge and guide in the next F9 landing attempt with hand signals. 😉
Lolololol
I just think he was saying hello, and admitting that maybe SpaceX has hit on something after all. Metaphorically. Not hitting the barge.
Strange way of phrasing it then.
Cheers