SpaceX launch today

[MartG]

Eric Mc said:

What's to control with a parachute?

Where the thing lands. SpaceX's aim is to land the stage within a fairly small area - on land, not at sea, to reduce the costs of recovering and refurbishing the stage. A parachute landing cannot be as accurate as a powered landing, so if using parachutes SpaceX would need to arrange for a huge expanse of land to be designated for landing, then transport the stage from wherever it came down to their facility for refurbishment

[Eric Mc]

The USA has quite a few "huge expanses of land" available so that isn't too much of a problem.

If you can target the re-entry to, say, descend into a landing ellipse target of about 10 miles long by five miles wide, that would be eminently doable and easy enough in places like the California High Desert area or White Sands, New Mexico.

The problem with a vertical landing is that you have to make sure that the landing area is dead flat with no serious obstructions. Also, with a tallish cylindrical shaped rocket stage there will always be the strong possibility of the whole thing toppling over - especially if there is any sort of wind about at the landing site.

A nice swooping horizontal landing on something like a parawing I think would be less risky.

The history of attempts to land rockets or aircraft tail first vertically on earth is not very good.

[CrutyRammers]

No, it's not - but then they have achieved it already (albeit not from a reentry), and have got all of their sums right so far, what with building engines and rockets from scratch.

[Eric Mc]

I actually think they are doing a great job but I will be well impressed if they manage re-entry and vertical landings of lower rocket stages using rocket thrust and retractable legs.

[Eric Mc]

Although their attempt to soft land the booster stage from their recent launch failed, they are still experimenting with their vertical landing studies. I have to say, this is most impressive - as much for the photography as the successful test -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4

[Eric Mc]

Thought so too. But they got some cracking shots.

[GrumpyTwig]

Now that is cool

[CrutyRammers]

Check out the "grasshoper divert" test in the related links. Very clever stuff.

[Eric Mc]

Dream Chaser appears to have had a mishap on its first glide test -

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1310/26dreamchaser...

[MartG]

Eric Mc said:

Dream Chaser appears to have had a mishap on its first glide test -

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1310/26dreamchaser...

Waiting to see the video - apparently Brian Cox and his film crew just happened to be there during the test and filmed it

[Caruso]

MartG said:

Eric Mc said:

Dream Chaser appears to have had a mishap on its first glide test -

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1310/26dreamchaser...

Waiting to see the video - apparently Brian Cox and his film crew just happened to be there during the test and filmed it

Ooh it'll be just like the title sequence from the 6 Million Dollar Man!

[Eric Mc]

I'm sure the company that builds Star Chaser were filming too. They've filmed all aspects of the tests so far. However, I doubt they'll be in a rush to put the footage up on youtube.

[CrutyRammers]

I love the way the word these things:
"A largely successful test that had a non-flight issue on landing"

Still, hardly sounds like a major problem in the scheme of things.

[Eric Mc]

I would have thought that the ability to land without crashing was not really a "non-flight issue".

[MartG]

Eric Mc said:

I would have thought that the ability to land without crashing was not really a "non-flight issue".

Certainly from the perspective of the poor bugger who'll be flying the thing in the future

[Einion Yrth]

MartG said:

Eric Mc said:

I would have thought that the ability to land without crashing was not really a "non-flight issue".

Certainly from the perspective of the poor bugger who'll be flying the thing in the future

No-one will be flying that one, it's the engineering test article and I believe they are intending to replace the landing gear completely for the flight test article.

[Eric Mc]

They certainly will now.

[MartG]

IIRC the landing gear was based on that of the F-5 - which has a bit of history in this area having been used for the old lifting bodies ( M2, HL-10, X-24 ) - so it's surprising it has a problem

[Einion Yrth]

http://www.youtube.com/v/QgdFotAkUEU

Failed gear deployment. Ergo non-flight.

[Eric Mc]

Pity they didn't show the full landing.

Anomaly is a bit of an understatement.

I wonder if they had any sort of emergency blow down system?

Lowering the undercarriage is, to me, part of the "flight" of an aircraft fitted with a retractable undercarriage. If the undercarriage fails to deploy properly, that to me is a flight issue.