SpaceX Grasshopper 250m Test - Ring of Fire

[bananas]

Uploaded on Apr 20, 2013

SpaceX's Grasshopper flies 820 feet, more than tripling its March 7th leap.

Grasshopper is a 10-story Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle that SpaceX has designed to test the technologies needed to return a rocket back to Earth intact. While most rockets are designed to burn up in the atmosphere during reentry, SpaceX's rockets are being designed to return to the launch pad for a vertical landing.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

1. More a demonstration of balance. I wouldn't want to try this in a stiff wind.

[Trajan]

2. VT is the easy part

It's the VL part that is going to doom Grasshopper ...

The McDonnell Douglas DC-X came down with a boom ... I fear the same fate for Grasshopper ... The slow decent of a giant, flammable bomb is dependant on everything going right and nothing going wrong ...

I wish them well ...

[bananas]

3. DC-X fell over because a landing gear didn't deploy

You'd think Musk would learn from this and use 5 or 6 landing gear instead of 4.

At 1:20 you can hear "missing a gear" then it comes to a perfect 3-point landing and falls over:

A prototype reusable rocket designed to take off and land vertically is caught on tape exploding during an unmanned test flight after one of its landing gears failed to deploy, causing it to tip over. The "Clipper Graham" was on its fourth test flight at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico when the accident happened. (1996)

[Trajan]

5. Understood ... one thing went wrong ...

and that was that ....

when we are talking about human beings riding inside, we have to understand: There is no room for error ...

In order to hover, fuel would have to remain available to the vehicle ... unlike a 'Splashdown' landing, where fuel is completely absent from the capsule and unavailable for ignition ... The fuel is present in a VTVL vehicle, and will ignite if spilled in an accident ... it changes the rules for rocket operations ...

I predict the VTVL concept will be discarded after the first mishap ... Hopefully, without loss of life ...

[longship]

7. Ask the Mars Science Laboratory scientists about that!

They did one of the most difficult landings in the solar system automatically with no possibility for human intervention.

It was called the Seven Minutes of Hell.

BTW, it worked flawlessly.

[Trajan]

9. That is an amazing sequence ...

But think about it ... how many missions have had serious problems?

I could not in good conscience look into a mother's eyes and say that a mother's son or daughter is reasonably safe, and that the risk is as low as it should be ...

The risk is greater than with other launch types, and I do not believe the risk is worth it ... The possibility for a mishap is too great, in my view ... there is little tolerance for error when human lives are at stake ...

For the record; I have worked on all Space Shuttles as an Electrical/Electronic Technician in the CA Operations side of the house .. Downey and Palmdale for initial builds and then interval maintenance and test. That doesn't make me an expert, but I do have a familiarity with the hardware ... There is a strong culture for safety among the rank and file workers, whom always want the human beings to come home safe and sound ...

Any notion or concept that would compromise the safety of the crew, unnecessarily, is really not acceptable to those workers .... or myself ....

[longship]

10. Ask Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11.

Or better yet, ask James Lovell, from Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13. The latter is the one which did not make its scheduled landing on the moon due to an explosion in its fuel cells.

Ask those people if it was worth the risk.

And talk to the ground crews who bring these people back safely in spite of the dangers and the failures.

Magellan set sail around the world in the 16th century. He was murdered in the islands somewhere off New Guinea. IIRC, only one ship made the trip all the way. But his name will always be etched in history.

There's always risks. Some of them are worth it because they advance human knowledge and wisdom.

Do not forget the photo from Apollo 8 as it came out from behind the moon and Lovell took that iconic photograph of Earth in the skies of another planetary body.


That single image alone was worth all the risk, the lives, and money spent to get it. It spurned a growth in ecological awareness that since has sadly faded.

We need to send more people into space. Only then, may we appreciate the fragile planet and the incomprehensibly large cosmos we live in.

[ChazInAz]

12. Amen.

[penndragon69]

13. Just like the development phase

of the Mercury redstone system
in the 60's.

[Xipe Totec]

4. It's been done

[Trajan]

6. This fact ignores the other, less successful attempts ..

There have been losses too ...

[longship]

8. We learn from our mistakes.

Some here apparently do not realize that.

Science is an eminently conservative endeavor. It preserves things which work and discards those which do not. At the turn of the twentieth century humans had not yet had powered flight. In less than a decade airplanes were becoming common. By mid century, passengers were flying across the world in comfort and safety.

So it will be in other endeavors, including missions to Mars... and to the stars.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. SpaceX is so damn cool.