Elon Musk lays out SpaceX’s planned program for developing a reusable first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket.
Elon Musk lays out SpaceX’s planned program for developing a reusable first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket.
The article also gives some additional details about the company’s first effort to control the reentry of the first stage after launch last week.
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Elon Musk lays out SpaceX’s planned program for developing a reusable first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket.
The article also gives some additional details about the company’s first effort to control the reentry of the first stage after launch last week.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
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He says that he’s going to bring back all 3 main segments from the heavy. As I understand their staging sequence, the core will be over mach 12 at separation and way way downrange. How are they going to bring that back? Now, if he says he will land that on a boat, that’ll make more sense.
“How are they going to bring that back?”
As I understand the plan, they will reserve about 10% of first stage fuel in order to expend it on the return trip. Once the upper stages have separated, the first stage will have significantly less mass to slow down, speed up in the reverse direction, and land at/near the launch-site.
Likewise for the other two sections of the Falcon-9 Heavy.
The article informs us that SpaceX has successfully overcome one of the main concerns about getting a first stage back down into the atmosphere, and that it can survive coming back down through the lower, denser atmosphere. Rockets are designed to take stresses from forces pressing on the nosecone. As far as I know, successfully coming back down without a nosecone has not been done before. They have also learned more about the amount of fuel that is necessary to do this. The lack of stability at the end worries me, however, but that should be easier to overcome than returning to the lower atmosphere.