Elon Musk's SpaceX Just Stuck a Historic Water Recovery of Falcon 9 Booster Wired
go to original April 9, 2016

SpaceX Falcon 9 Lands on Drone Ship (CBC/The National)

This week in space history, a rocket went to space. No big. But then it came back down and landed on a drone barge in the middle of the ocean.

The rocket was a Falcon 9, built by SpaceX, Elon Musk‘s commercial spaceflight company. On its own, the retropropulsion landing is a major technological accomplishment. But it means even more as a step toward reliably getting humans off of Earth - maybe even permanently. “In order for us to really open up access to space,” Musk said in a press conference shortly after the landing, “we need to achieve full and rapid reusability.”

That’s because space is expensive. A single Falcon 9 costs about $60 million. According to Musk, each Falcon 9 could theoretically be reused for 10 to 20 missions. Filling a Falcon 9 with rocket fuel only costs $200,000 to $300,000, so even counting refurbishments between missions, that means a hundredfold drop in marginal cost per launch.

But reusable rockets don’t come easy - this was the company’s sixth attempt at an aquatic landing. At its peak, the Falcon 9 booster was traveling around 6,000 miles per hour, carrying 120 tons of payload. “That’s quite a javelin throw,” said Musk. Plus, at the top of its trajectory, the rocket is aimed horizontally in relation to the Earth’s surface. While dropping, it has to rotate so its engines are facing down. Then it passes through strong upper atmospheric winds.

And! And! The rocket’s target - that barge, in this case Of Course I Still Love You - is on water, meaning it is pitching, rolling, and moving in the waves. Luckily, it has four powerful, 360-degree rotatable engines underneath to keep it steady. “Today’s landing was holding to accuracy below a meter,” says Musk.

What’s the plan with the rocket now that it’s landed? “We’re a little bit like the dog who caught the bus,” says Musk. “What do we do now?” But long-term, of course SpaceX knows the plan: actually try to reuse the thing.

Read the rest at Wired

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