SpaceX releases spectacular footage of another vertical take-off and landing test of their Falcon 9R rocket.
The competition heats up: SpaceX releases spectacular footage of another vertical take-off and landing test of their Falcon 9R rocket, this time flying over 3,000 feet in the air.
Video below the fold. What I think everyone, including me, has missed so far about both the Grasshopper and the Falcon 9R test flights is that the test vehicle not only was able to land safely using its rockets, both vehicles were quickly turned around and flown again. This certainly lends weight to the feasibility of the company’s plan to make their first stage reusable.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The competition heats up: SpaceX releases spectacular footage of another vertical take-off and landing test of their Falcon 9R rocket, this time flying over 3,000 feet in the air.
Video below the fold. What I think everyone, including me, has missed so far about both the Grasshopper and the Falcon 9R test flights is that the test vehicle not only was able to land safely using its rockets, both vehicles were quickly turned around and flown again. This certainly lends weight to the feasibility of the company’s plan to make their first stage reusable.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Very, very cool!
Just like they used to land rocket ships on other planets in the sci fi movies of my youth.
I thought the Grasshopper was cool but this thing is amazing. It’s a reusable flying building that lands!!! Plus the fact SpaceX has leased Pad 39A for 20 years (unrelated to this project) gives me “some” hope for the future. I love this up and coming little space company, they make me happy.
I’m as impressed by the supporting technologies as I am the flight hardware. When the movie Apollo 13 was filmed, the production crew had to CGI the launch sequence because ‘engineers weren’t concerned with making the rocket look cool’. Now with affordable drones and HD cameras, the launches look cool, and provide unprecedented engineering data. As ‘the competition heats up’, I can see a time when companies will specialize in providing flight video for space launch concerns. This is how economies grow.
FYI, there already are companies specializing in providing flight videos for space launch concerns. I saw one such company give a presentation at a space engineering conference a few years ago, showing the videos they took for SpaceX during its Falcon 1 launches.
The cool part was the craft passing through the different wind streams.
You can see it tilt and come back to center as it rises to its final height.
A larger in radius rocket with a more engines would probably prove even more stable in flight.
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