Rocket Lab to attempt recovery and reuse of Electron 1st stage
Capitalism in space: Faced with stiff competition from both other smallsat rocket companies as well as the big players like SpaceX, Rocket Lab has announced that they are going to try to recover the first stages of their Electron rocket for later reuse.
Their plan is to use the atmosphere and parachutes to slow the stage down as it returns to Earth, and then have a helicopter snag it and land it on a ship.
They had looked into the idea of vertically landing it, like SpaceX does with its Falcon 9, but found it would make their rocket to big and expensive.
This plan is not as radical as it sounds. The Air Force did something similar for almost a decade in the 1960s to recover film from its surveillance satellites.
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Capitalism in space: Faced with stiff competition from both other smallsat rocket companies as well as the big players like SpaceX, Rocket Lab has announced that they are going to try to recover the first stages of their Electron rocket for later reuse.
Their plan is to use the atmosphere and parachutes to slow the stage down as it returns to Earth, and then have a helicopter snag it and land it on a ship.
They had looked into the idea of vertically landing it, like SpaceX does with its Falcon 9, but found it would make their rocket to big and expensive.
This plan is not as radical as it sounds. The Air Force did something similar for almost a decade in the 1960s to recover film from its surveillance satellites.
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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Robert wrote: “This plan is not as radical as it sounds. The Air Force did something similar for almost a decade in the 1960s to recover film from its surveillance satellites.”
Catching things in midair is not so new. It has even been tried since the 1960s, including Genesis, which brought back a sample from space (the parachute failed, so it was not caught by the helicopter). However, the 1960s film canisters were somewhat smaller and lighter than Electron. I’m not quite sure how Rocket Lab plans to set the delicate rocket onto their boat, but I’m sure they have an idea that they want to try out.
It could be that setting a rocket down on a rocking, rolling, rising, falling boat may look to the pilot a little bit like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJIZTL2ZyEw (2 minutes, helicopter landing in rough seas)
From the article: “While the midair helicopter recovery may seem like the most crazy and difficult part, it’s not what worries Beck.”
What worries Beck is getting back through the atmosphere. He should be worried, because this is exactly the problem that made engineers believe, for the first half-century of spaceflight, that first stages were not recoverable. Rocket Lab is going to put their Electron rocket through more stresses than SpaceX does. The smaller size and mass of the rocket is what makes recovery possible. As Beck notes, there is a lot of kinetic energy to dissipate, energy that usually uses heat shields in order to protect the craft that is returning from space. Beck calls this “the wall.”
Blue Origin also has chosen to reuse suborbital rockets, which no one had bothered to do before, and for similar reasons. So there are three companies, each with their own solutions to what had once been impossible.
For some engineers, the impossible is only a challenge.
Edward-
good stuff.
related:
“The Last Bucket Catch”
National Reconnaissance Center 2016
https://youtu.be/Sdsn4snbzjo
5:21
“From 1958 to 1986, the U.S. Air Force’s 6594th Test Group and 6593rd Test Squadron operated from Hickam Air Force Base retrieving film capsules in support of the Corona program and other follow-on early imagery reconnaissance satellite programs…”
Edward, it’s about time someone invented a stabilized landing deck on an articulated hydraulic mounting.
I suggested that in response to one of Musk’s tweets back before they had a successful landing and it was pointed out that costs a lot of money and has its own engineering challenges. The next launch they stuck the landing.