SpaceX Lands First Stage Back on Earth (With video)
SpaceX Lands Falcon 9 First Stage on Earth
“SpaceX made space exploration history tonight when it brought a Falcon 9 first stage back to a safe landing on Earth. Minutes after ending its portion of the launch, the first stage reoriented itself, fired its engines, and came in for a pinpoint landing at Cape Canaveral. Meanwhile the Falcon 9’s second stage continued into space eventually deploying its entire 11 satellite ORBCOMM payload successfully.”
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Congratulations, SpaceX !!!! It has been a long hard road but yours is the first rocket to put a payload in orbit and then land intact. No one else was trying to do this when you started and now lots of others are trying or thinking about trying.
John Strickland
Well John, we lived to see it.
I’m sure it seemed like a long hard road to the engineers who worked their butts off, but to me, it seems so recently that I was watching the first attempt to launch Falcon 1 from Kwajalein Atoll, and here we are already.
It seems impressively fast to me.
I’ve been watching and wanting private space since the days of Bob Truax’s garage dreams (heck, since Andy Griffith’s “Salvage 1”), through Conestoga, Rotary Rocket, etc. etc. and SpaceX seems to have the magic touch somehow, doing what others only imagined.
Elon will be the first to recognize those pioneers and the lessons learned.
Gotta love it! Congrats SpaceX!
WAY TO GO SPACE X!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Congratulations SpaceX, OrbComm and the 45th Space Wing – ad astra!
It’s nice to see several people giving credit to the 45th. They have done excellent work for decades, and somehow, that work rarely gets mentioned.
Congratulations to all at Space-X on landing their F9 first stage back at the cape, a real milestone not only proving that it can be done but also should provide a wealth of new data once it has been fully examined.
Fantastic! What a great achievement.
Let’s hope that Elon and the team can turn the booster around in an economic efficient manner. This will, in time, lower the cost to orbit at least one order of magnitude
The Space Age of SpaceX has finally begun in earnest.
Congratulations to Elon Musk and all those who contributed to this amazing advancement in space technology.
I couldn’t be more excited!
Fantastic! Nailed it!
Wait for it to cool off and look it over.
I’m generally irritated by the abundance of excessively epic descriptors applied to space achievements. Everything seems to be “awesome” or “inspiring” or “profound”, if not among the space intellegensia than certainly in the media.
So having expressed that personal bias, let me just say: this is fucking huge.
Absolutely! To all the naysayers out there…you got it wrong and Elon got it right! Congratulations to not only him, but his team of dedicated pros who kept moving forward and met all the goals.
A new booster, 1st stage return and landing from space and 11 payload deployments. Oh, that all new flights should be so successful!
I tend to agree. This SpaceX launch was a tremendous achievement, but the future isn’t about a one-time, “awesome” or “inspiring” event. Don’t get me wrong, and I don’t want to piss on SpaceX’s parade. I’m really impressed. But translating this into future progress will take more work, and we should not forget that. The issues I’m concerned with are increased production, to fill all the orders SpaceX has, without lowering the demonstrated quality of the product, and the time and cost required to cycle the now-landed first stage for another flight.
I’m also jealous of the deployment video. For scientific missions, NASA doesn’t allow anything comparable (usually). It would be a very exciting PIO thing, and quite useful for diagnostic purposes if a deployment didn’t go exactly as.planned.
While I agree, at the very least, SpaceX gave itself a “free” first stage to use for launch pad checkouts (i.e. the former shuttle pad being made ready for Falcon launches). In my book, that is certainly worth the cost of a newly manufactured first stage.
Agree this is a fantastic start, but as I am sure Elon and Space-X will be the first to say they now need to prove they can repeat this feat at will and turn stages round rapidly and efficiently without compromising safety, they will also need to gain a much finer understanding of the life cycle of the first stage so they can accurately tell when a stage has reached the end of its useful life, will it last 2 launches, 20 launches or 200 launches, I suspect the engineers will already be itching to give this stage a thorough going over.to gain more insight into this. I Will say I personally have complete confidence that Space-X will be able to deliver, Just looking at how they handled the last six months, not only did they analyze, find and fix the problem that caused the last loss rapidly they also used the time to put in place a number of upgrades and improvements.
I am not ashamed to say I started crying upon watching the landing video, and the jubilation and celebration by the Space X launch team. Historic moment.
What was great (and I’ve written this elsewhere) is that Space X employees at Hawthorne weren’t shouting “Musk Musk!” or “Space X Space X!” They were shouting “USA, USA!” which is cool. It’s not just for them, but for all of us- and they seemed to know that- instinctively.
Also some thanks are in order for both the Air Force 45th Space Wing and the FAA which each seem to have worked this landing effort quite well.
Well said. I completely agree on all points.
Thanks. I love these guys. Wish I were that young again. The Musk ecosystem must be a frighteningly harsh, extremely demanding, yet ultimately – a simply amazing place to be in.
Then came Bezos with his backhanded comment…
https://twitter.com/JeffBez…
Sad, Jeff! What you did, while an achievement; pales in comparison to today’s flight.
This is great, the more competition the better!
Elon to Jeff: “Can you pronounce ‘crossrange’? I knew you could!”
(laughs maniacally)
Agreed, Chris. This Return Flight Profile was far more challenging than the one Bezos’ team pulled off. While not denigrating their work, the “congratulations” offered say more about Bezos than SpaceX.
SpaceX still needs to bring the Dragon down on land. Although this should certainly be feasible it may not be easy. Bezos doesn’t appear to have any plans for landing his capsule in the water.
Not really, Elon just “One Upped” you, Jeff. Ha.
It’s pitiful, that this Bozo has to equate his big toy rocket with a real one in order to feel relevant. Bezos has spent two years longer and twice as much development money as Musk, and hasn’t orbited a paperclip.
I wouldn’t call it a “big toy rocket”, but it’s certainly not orbital class. So in that respect, it’s “easier” than even Falcon 1 when it comes to the launch phase”.
Now SpaceX can have first stages deliver themselves. Launch from California, land in Florida… or anywhere else someone wants to launch to orbit from.
I wonder whether a first stage could deliver itself to Hawaii…
Not likely, the first stage does not fly high enough or fast enough to travel any significant distance. That is what makes recovery feasible in the first place. Returning the booster back to the cape instead of landing on a barge was impressive enough.
You’re talking about a 1st stage with 120 tons of 2nd stage and payload on it. A naked 1st stage could make it to Hawaii.
True, but delivery by truck is surely safer since the stage is empty when being trucked across the US.
Frankly, VTVL means it can land damn near anywhere, including a more-or-less empty parking lot.
What would be the maximum range of such a first stage with a minimal fairing?
All right, so go far enough there’s more of a problem during re-entry.
If the F9s are reusable enough we might have affordable express services that can get a small package almost anywhere within 2 hours. I’m not sure we’ll get it down to the cost of fuel, though, but, hopefully, it’ll be a lot cheaper to re-launch the just landed bird than it was for the shuttle.
(chuckles)
This will actually make an in-flight abort test of the crew Dragon a LOT cheaper… and, perhaps, repeatable, since the F9 need not be lost during the test. The cost of this kind of test for the CST-100 would be a LOT higher, wouldn’t it?
Finally, how far could this F9 have thrown a Dream Chaser?
I wanna see it land in a cornfield, and then fly itself out again :_>
If SpaceX returns enough first stages, this year(2016), Boeing, in theory, could buy a reused first stage F-9 for an inflight abort with the Starliner. Provided that NASA pays for it.
Not to Hawaii 😉
Sure, but it would break up on re-entry.
The F9 first stage can re-enter from a 3km/s peak velocity, and even then it has to do a braking burn. That sets the maximum range for your ballistic hop, regardless of payload.
Elon sticked the landing, man that was cool!!
For me this is the biggest space related event since the first Hubble rescue.
I guess that makes me old. This was one of the best “space related events” I’ve ever seen, but I was thinking back to the Viking landings in 1976.
They need to put that thing in the Smithsonian.
I didn’t think of that- but you’re right. This is historic in… like… a gazillion ways. Good call. Hope someone in D.C. thinks of it as well.
I just sent an email to Roger Launius suggesting that the Smithsonian request it after its second return. Elon says that he wants to fly it again and I do think that just because it has landed, reusability hasn’t yet been technically proven.
The rocket will have a finite number of flights. At some point, wear and tear will make further use inefficient. Why shouldn’t SpaceX use it until it gets to that point, and _then_ donate it to the Smithsonian?
It’s moot at this point. In a conference call, Elon said that this particular rocket won’t be reflow because it is unique (i.e. historic). They will however have it do a static test to demonstrate that it could have reflown to orbit. It would be cool if they could do that as rapidly as possible. Every flight bears a risk of catastrophic failure by revealing something unexpected (especially with the first reused rocket). If so, they would lose that historic artifact.
It would not surprise me if they did that static test on their new (i.e. former space shuttle) launch pad at KSC. They need to do these sorts of tests at the new pad anyway, and that flown stage is in close proximity…
Elon said that they plan to do a full static test to prove that it could have done a repeat mission. It will be interesting to see if they do so in a rapid manner.
Roger replied pointing out that the Falcon 9 first stage is too large for them to display. I Googled it and found that it is about twice as tall as the SS-20 which they have in the lobby which nearly reaches the ceiling. Bummer!
Umm… turn it sideways, like the Saturn 5 over at the Cape?
Yes, they could do that, but the point of the exhibit is that it is reusable which means legs out, tail down.
Folks if SpaceX can build multiple transporter erector launcher structures and mega size hangars. Then Elon can just build a vertical display case (glass tower) adjacent to the Hawthorne factory. Just think of a lit up vertical Falcon 9 core on night time display at Hawthorne. It will be Elon’s Totem pole.
Putting it in the Smithsonian would kind of defeat the purpose of reusing the booster on another flight.
Now for the hard part… How much expense and effort will be needed to refurbish and recertify the booster for its next flight? Would you fly your payload on the second flight of a “slightly used” rocket?
I would definitely fly a spacecraft on the second flight of such a “used” rocket. Assuming I had one to fly… I would, however, insist on a discounted price. I think that is consistent with SpaceX’s business plan.
It’s already been test flown. Maybe they should charge more for the subsequent payloads.
A good point, but I think this is exactly where we need to go. If I have a spacecraft in need of a launch vehicle, I’d point out “used” in order to get a better price. The launch vehicle provider would, of course, point out “tested and proven” and ask for a higher price. That is actually how functional economies work. I will be very happy when this sort of thing starts happening more often above 200 km.
The Shuttle SRBs had to be completely disassembled and remanufactured from the components before they could be reused. This was largely because of the solid fuel and salt water immersion.
The Falcon is liquid fueled and recovered on land, and was designed for reuse almost from the first. It is my impression that only minor refurbishment is needed between flights.
Time will tell, but the prospects for the Falcon are certainly much more favorable than for the SRBs. I am interested to see how aggressively they push to introduce reused boosters into the market
They landed a first stage rocket, a very large first stage rocket, one with more take off thrust than anything in the American line up. They made substantial improvements in their rocket, learned from their mistakes and succeeded in bringing back the first stage, and they did this at night. Any pilot will tell you how much more difficult landings are at night. What this group of enthusiastic young people did was revolutionary in the annuals of space flight. Finally, something new in rocketry.
One nit: their landing machinery doesn’t care whether it’s day or night, it only needs a stationary radar target.
I’ve been frequently skeptical here about all the SpaceX hype, but that was phenomenal! Just wow! All due respect to SpaceX.
I second that, and also think of those SpaceX employees that spent all their non-sleep hours (basically only 10 hours of sleep per week) working on all the tedious details. Will they be able to get a life outside that building in Hawthorne?
We should all have the opportunity of a lifetime that those people had.
Heh, no thanks. I’ll take time with my kids instead, thank you.
To each, his own.
I hope so. That’s been one of my No. 1 gripes is the overwork. I wouldn’t want to put my employees through that. On the other hand, the excitement they had was incredible. I don’t know if I know the right answer.
I remember reading papers where this was considered impractical if not impossible. Even more impressive that this was a revenue flight.
Perhaps those who said that this was impossible should be named and shamed. Incorrectly predicting roadblocks doesn’t help move things forward.
The government did a study in 2011 entitled:
“Reusable Booster System:: Review and Assessment”which you can download for free:
“Finding 6: Given the uncertainties in the business case and the yet-to-be mitigated technology risks,
it is premature for Air Force Space Command to program significant investments associated with the
development of a RBS capability.”
So, what’s the TR level of recoverable first stages now? TR 7? It hasn’t been reused yet, granted.
Once you get up to that level, TRL’s are fairly tightly linked to the specific hardware. A.recoverable (but not reusable) Falcon 9 first stage is now TRL 7 or 8. Any other recoverable stage, made by anyone else (suborbitals excluded) would still be TRL 5 or 6, at best.
I read that when it was issued. The conclusions are based on the assumptions; it is the latter that SpaceX obviated.
When can we hope for a report on the condition of the first stage? The Sun can’t rise soon enough at the Cape :_>
Ah. The photo here will do for a start:
http://spaceref.com/commerc…
Look at how close it landed to the center of the pad. Spot on!
This is a great achievement for SpaceX. The next step is refurbishing and re-using to prove the concept, but getting a landing is a huge step forward towards the goal of reusable rocket technology that could change the paradigm for not only the commercial launch business but more broadly human space exploration.
It would be interesting to see if there were a way to somehow bring the second stage back home and reuse that, perhaps by giving it an integrated heat shield and parachute recovery – or use the same method as the first stage. But that would add weight which would reduce deliverable payload, and orbital re-entry and recovery is probably more challenging.
As I recall, second stage reuse, dunno.. haven’t heard much from SpaceX in a a while regarding that. The idea was in the original animations, but got “backed off” of.
As far as the refurb/reuse — that’s the ticket, eh? In the short term, I am waiting (impatiently) for what SpaceX discovers, now that they have a booster back — can reuse occur with the hardware as is, or will this become a “further modifications will be necessary?”. There is so much that will be discovered — can the tanks withstand another pressurization for flight, can the center engine, which was re-lit three times (I think) still be used given how long it was used (would love to get a total-seconds-use number to compare to the 6 that were lit once and the other two that were re-lit once). Does the stage suffer another “max-Q” during descent, and how much wear/tear does that impose on the stage (I imagine it would be a bit different, being almost empty vs full)? The Engineers will be undertaking many happy months of analysis, that’s for sure.
In my opinion, it is doubtful they’ll ever reuse a 2nd stage because it’s a much harder problem to solve and because it’s only got one of the 10 engines on a Falcon 9 and a pitiful one out of 28 engines on a Falcon Heavy.
That said, I would not be surprised to see 2nd stage recovery tests to gather data to help in the design of SpaceX’s “next generation” LOX/methane launch vehicle which could be fully reusable.
Actually, they have plans on recovering the second stage by orbiting once and when they near the original launch site, to de-orbit the stage and land much like they do with the first stage. Musk has said before that they are going to do this in stages (pardon the pun) with the first stage being the one they’ll perfect first, and the Dragon 2 manned capsule the second propulsive landing they get down with the final piece of the puzzle being the second stage coming back and making a landing.
That makes sense. If you can do a precision landing and re-use the first stage, why not try for a second stage recovery and lower the cost even further. If the issue of weight and complexity could be resolved, it makes commercial sense to do this, albeit down the track once first stage recovery and Dragon 2 are working smoothly.
I know this is what he said long ago, but recently I believe he has said that they won’t try to reuse the 2nd stage of Falcon 9. Any recovery hardware and/or fuel on the second stage reduces payload capacity by an equal amount. It’s just too big of a payload hit for the size of payloads they’re launching.
Of course they can reuse the 2nd stage. In space. Park it in orbit and use it as a standard component to link to tugs, freighters, exploration vehicles…
The maths doesn’t work.
You need to refuel the on-orbit stage by launching additional propellant on yet another F9. To do that you have to launch another second stage…
See the catch-22?
Why not just plumb the extra propellant tanks directly into the second stage launching the fuel? The result is exactly the same, except you skip the actual docking/refuelling process and associated costs/complexity.
No, I don’t see the problem.
Leave the upper stage from a commercial launch in orbit and send up a 2nd Falcon with fuel and now you have two engines and fuel for both.
Or refuel using lunar resources shipped to Earth orbit.
Or reuse the engines for their material value (recycle).
I’ve said this elsewhere but, IMO, 2015 marks the beginning of a new Space Race – not between competing nation states but between competing corporations. The driving forces are not politics but commerce and the visions of madcap but brilliant Howard Hughes-like minds like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Organisations like SpaceX and Blue Origin are racing eachother to develop commercially viable high-flight-rate launch vehicles to make LEO/GEO access far cheaper and more routine. People say that there is not much money in space but, if it becomes cheaper to do things up there, then that may change.
Basic economics. My high school econ teacher’s example was the price of a butterscotch shake. Lower the price and you’ll sell more. Raise the price and you’ll sell less.
True of some commodities and not others. Butterscotch? yes. Beer? not nearly as much. I think that for some time, the major launch operators have analyzed the satellite market as being inelastic, which suggests that lowering prices would only lower profit. Musk is betting that they are wrong.
Was thinking the same thing of cigarettes. I keep telling my brother he’s spending $200+ a month on smokes. Doesn’t care.
The market studies are almost certainly wrong, it’s just a question of how wrong. Specifically, the studies I’ve seen assume the customers are launching the same sort of satellites. That is, the only assumed change is in launch cost. If you are spending hundreds of millions on the satellite, a few tens of millions reduction in launch cost doesn’t make a huge difference to the overall cost. Even if the launch were free, it wouldn’t suddenly make it affordable to launch two or three times as many satellites.
The elasticity of the launch market comes in when the costs are low enough to allow whole new classes of payloads (would ORBCOMM’s constellation have been commercially viable at more traditional launch costs?) or when the design/development of existing types of spacecraft changes due to lower launch costs (i.e. not spending hundreds of millions per satellite to assure higher reliability and longer lifetime, since lower launch costs make replacement is cheaper.) That wasn’t considered by the market surveys you mention, but how much of an issue this will be remains to be seen.
One could argue that while different launch providers have had different prices over the years, they’ve all been about the same order of magnitude in price because they’ve all been expendable.
With fuel costs being less than 1% of launch costs, reusing the first stage (which is maybe 75% of the total cost of the vehicle) opens up the possibility for truly massive cuts in launch costs.
A “next generation” fully reusable TSTO would be even more so. I would not put it past Musk to make that one of his goals. After all, if he truly wants to go to Mars, lowering launch costs is the first logical step along that path.
Belatedly:
There have been wide variations in prices for launch systems over the decades and the overall size of the market has been extremely price-inelastic. Satellite vendors do typically follow the cheapest price, as expected, but you don’t create more overall demand.
Ie, you can gain market share by lowering your price, but you can’t increase the size of the market.
Many people, myself included, hope that there are demand tiers that we simply haven’t tapped into yet. So if you drop the price enough, at some point, a second level of demand opens up.
We are many decades from making money in space and alas we are not even on the road.
Raw materials available in space coupled with nearly unlimited energy resources from the sun will eventually drive in situ resource exploitation and manufacturing- even heavy manufacturing, while only the light and difficult fabrication will remain in the gravity well- chips, computers and the like.
To achieve this the current throwaway mentality must be abandoned. SpaceX started, but so much more is needed: space tugs, fuel depots, fundamental research to uncover the methods of mining, smelting, and heavy fabrication in lowG.
THAT is humankind’s future in space.
Has Elon Musk just made all other rockets obsolete? I’d say yes – pretty much so. A fantastic achievement.
NASA should be the one taking the risks developing new technology with government backing and private companies playing it safe. We’re living in a strange inverted world!
Not yet; reuse still has to be proven and Falcon-9’s BLEO performance is significantly below those that use cryogenic propellent for their upper stages. That said, this flight has certainly established the level of the bar for core stages not to be ‘obsolete before flown’.
ULA are probably thinking about what this may mean for the Vulcan project as we speak; core recovery may have jumped to having to be an initial operating capability for them.
“Performance” is the wrong metric. Total cost of operation is correct.
For the second stage, wont they need some kind of inflatable heat shield for reentry?
It’s my understanding that F9 second stage recovery has been ruled out due to performance issues (too high a mass penalty from the TPS and landing equipment).
An inflatable heat shield is probably necessary. However, the bigger problem is that for every pound of weight you add to the second stage, you lose about a pound of payload you can put into orbit. So adding equipment to recover the stage cuts deeply into what you are able to launch.
Engine exhaust can be used as a heat shield, but that would require a different design for the second stage.
Is there a graphic of the full flight path? Launch to Landing
http://forum.nasaspacefligh…
This is a good, clear graphic. Green line is the path of the upper stage and payload; purple is the core stage and red are the safety exclusion zones. Especially notice the high ‘lofting’ flight path of the returning first stage that reduces the amount of heat generated during re-entry
That’s awesome, where did you find that one?
I found it using a search; based on the URL, it was originally posted on NASASpaceflight.com.
Something like this?
http://i.imgur.com/D9BdO86.png
It looks like a giant fireball coming in for a soft landing…very other-wordly.
SpaceX has shown what can be done without the bureaucracy, politics, and risk averseness. This could have been done years ago. Anybody remember liquid flyback booster?
Kudos to SpaceX for showing that once you get rid of all of that bs, the smart people can really get things done.
What? It landed at a NASA facility!
Negative. They landed at an Air Force facility.
Negative, they landed at Cape Canaveral.
CCAFS = Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Or were you referring to “Cape Canaveral” the city where the Tiki-Bar & Ron-Jon’s resort is?
Does anybody know what the refurbishment requirements are before flying again and what the turnaround time is to be ready to launch? Just curious about the technical details. Go Space X !
Writer Tim Fernholz, or maybe his editor, has called Musk “the modern prometheus”, a very apt image of the one who has brought fire down from the heavens:
http://qz.com/579752/spacex…
We all know what happened to him.
The vengeful gods in Musk’s case are legacy aerospace corporations. To date, they and their political hirelings have failed to land any solid hits, even when SpaceX was down and vulnerable.
I agree a great achievement, but I wonder how much payload they have to surrender for the return fuel ?
I think they got the extra energy from super cooling the fuels and from stretching the rocket. On the hand I rely on press reports and the postings here and elsewhere by real rocket scientists. I’m just a classics major 🙂
According to previous statements, approximately 30% of payload.
Nice trick. Now let see how much the refurbishment costs; what the turn around time is; and how the reliability of the used vehicle compares to the out of the box article. BTW any idea how long the life cycle is?
Just think, now that the world has seen this finally work it will practically demand that it happens every single time forward. Elon is the only one who can do it for the next xxx years, giving him a huge advantage.
Millennium Falcon good; aluminium Falcon better :_>
Congratulations to SpaceX. This is a great moment for space exploration!