SpaceX Success: Booster Brought Back To Base!
23/12/2015
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Close on the heels of the Blue Origin space company's successful launch and land of a small booster and payload nudged to the edge of space, the SpaceX company has, while launching a payload of eleven small commercial communications satellites, finally succeeded in recovering the very expensive giant powerful first stage booster with a controlled vertical landing.
Their principal achievement is the recovery of the booster stage rocket, as this practice has the potential to cut the cost of space flight by a factor of up to a hundred. Imagine how much air travel would cost if a (similarly priced) airliner were thrown away after each flight! At left are:
I was touched to hear the SpaceX staff cheering the mission on at each successful stage. My favourite Space News website Universe Today, has a nice page with a gallery of images from the mission. And also a good page on the mission in general. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's full geek backgrounder to the mission, (Caution Science and Maths unashamedly included!) (Update 2023: The SpaceX site now only shows missions back to 2019) |
Full-length commentated real-time coverage of Booster flight
Postscript 18/01/2016
The effort by SpaceX to nail this process continues.
They have succeeded on land, but want to have the option of barge landings as well.
I have no doubt they will succeed eventually.
SpaceX fails to stick ocean landing after satellite launch
(Can you even have a landing on the ocean? Should it be called an oceaning? :-)
The effort by SpaceX to nail this process continues.
They have succeeded on land, but want to have the option of barge landings as well.
I have no doubt they will succeed eventually.
SpaceX fails to stick ocean landing after satellite launch
(Can you even have a landing on the ocean? Should it be called an oceaning? :-)