SpaceX’s test vertical-landing rocket Grasshopper successfully climbed to 250 meters in its most recent test flight.
The competition heats up: SpaceX’s test vertical-landing rocket Grasshopper successfully climbed to 250 meters in its most recent test flight.
Video below the fold.
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The competition heats up: SpaceX’s test vertical-landing rocket Grasshopper successfully climbed to 250 meters in its most recent test flight.
Video below the fold.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows 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. 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. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally 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.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
So cool. Where is NASA’s version?
1. Replace spindly landing legs with V-2-style fins
2. Add swept wings
3. Paint with red-and-white checkerboard pattern
4. ???
5. PROFIT!
Definitely looks like they may be able to make this idea work. I was particularly impressed with its ability to just hover nearly motionless before descending back to the pad…
Canceled.
Right out of my 50″s movie introduction to space travel. Back in “the old days” we never considered multistage vehicles or splashdowns in the ocean. Back then you could just hop in a rocket, blast off, and go to mars – have lunch – and return all in the same V2 shaped machine. Life was so much simpler when I was 10.
Have they been able to match the DC-X’s performance from back in the 90’s?
That would require them to blow off a panel in flight, then land successfully. “Oh god, oh god, we’re all going to die.”
Link to a video of the DC-X
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o
Isn’t this supposed to be a prototype of a first and second stage rocket recovery plan?
If this works they can use parachutes to slow down a falling first or second stage and then use the lift engines and a little left over fuel to land the rockets intact?