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SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket has made its highest leap yet, almost 20 feet.

SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket has made its highest leap yet, almost 20 feet.

This is only a test vehicle for developing the engineering of a reusable rocket that can land vertically.

Genesis cover

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

3 comments

  • Steve C

    This is duplicating the work of the DC-X. Is it really worth sacrificing payload for the landing fuel needed as opposed to using a parachute? Considering the price per pound of orbited mass, is the upper stage worth the fuel costs to recover it?

  • wade

    this is cool, but Nova is on with a segment on the planet Mars, and i planned an evening alone with the 1955 movie “Conquest of Space”. wow, the rockets in this movie Operate just like ….wait a minute! 1955 ?

  • geoffc

    DC-X and Grasshopper are in no way analougous. Grasshopper is using a Merlin 1D a 145,000 lb thrust engine, on a full size (but not fully fueled) first stage, 150 feet or so tall.

    DC-X was a 39 foot tall 13,000 lb thrust (I recall it having 4 RL-10’s so the Wikipedia entry may really mean 13K X 4).

    These are NOT the same thing.

    This is a literal first stage of a production rocket, testing out how it would behave for vertical powered landing.

    DC-X was nice, but in a different order of magnitude smaller world. Things do not scale linearly in this space.

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