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Subscribe to RSSSpaceX's Grasshopper prototype rocket lifts off from its test pad in McGregor, Texas, for a test flight, as shown in a company-provided video with Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" playing as the soundtrack.
SpaceX's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, gave attendees at the South by Southwest festival in Texas the first public look at the fourth flight test carried out by his company's reusable self-landing rocket, nicknamed the Grasshopper.
This latest "hop," conducted on Thursday at SpaceX's rocket test facility in McGregor, Texas, sent the Grasshopper twice as high as it ever went previously: In a statement, the company said the 10-story-tall rocket rose 24 stories off the ground (262.8 feet, or 80.1 meters), hovered for 34 seconds and landed safely on its own.
"Grasshopper touched down with its most accurate thus far on the centermost part of the launch pad," SpaceX said. "At touchdown, the thrust-to-weight ratio of the vehicle was greater than one, proving a key landing algorithm for Falcon 9."
Thursday's test builds on test flights conducted last September, November and December. During his keynote address at the annual SXSW gathering in Austin on Saturday, Musk joked that this flight was the "Johnny Cash hover slam," according to an account from NewSpace Journal. Johnny Cash's song about a "burning ring of fire" was playing in the background as the video rolled.
Grasshopper's vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing technology is considered a key part of SpaceX's plan to make its Falcon 9 rockets more reusable. "With Grasshopper, SpaceX engineers are testing the technology that would enable a launched rocket to land intact, rather than burning up upon re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere," the company said.
A Falcon 9 rocket delivered an unmanned SpaceX Dragon capsule safely to the International Space Station last week, and that capsule will soon be filled up with more than a ton of cargo for return to Earth. Eventually, SpaceX plans to refurbish Dragon capsules as well as Falcon boosters for reuse, but the company hasn't gotten to that stage yet. NASA has contracted with the California-based company to make 12 Dragon deliveries over the next several years at a cost of $1.6 billion. The current cargo mission is the second under the terms of the contract.
Looking further ahead, SpaceX aims to adapt its boosters and crew vehicles to send astronauts to Mars. The 41-year-old Musk told the SXSW crowd that he might well end up being one of those astronauts. "I've said I want to die on Mars," CNET quoted him as saying. "Just not on impact."
Update for 7:45 p.m. ET March 9: At about the 1:15 mark in that video, you might notice a dummy cowboy standing on the rocket. That's not the first time a ringer for a wrangler has taken a ride on the Grasshopper.
More about SpaceX and Mars:
- Elon Musk wants 80,000 of us on Mars
- SpaceX aims for fully reusable rockets
- SpaceX chief plans to be spaceflier, too
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Well, THAT was thrilling.
This is a bit old, but I enjoyed it. I still have that image of rockets taking off and landing on a tongue of flame burned in from reading sci-fi in the early '60s. I;m impressed by what SpaceX is doing now that the US space program has been whittled to the bone. Corporate space programs may end up leading the way into deep space.
As was said by the narrator in Fight Club: "When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks."
Say allen, did you mean dummy as in a stand in for a human or did you mean dummy as in a Texan good ole' boy? I am sure Elon could have gotten plenty of volunteers.
I volunteer for the next test and I hate to travel. For that ride, I reckon that I can go 100 miles. I don't have a Stetson, I wonder if a straw hat will do?
Ha, I meant dummy as in mannequin. I suppose the point is that if it were a real good ol' boy, he could survive the trip with a "yee-haw!" You're probably right that Elon would have volunteers lining up for a trip like that, but I reckon the FAA wouldn't take too kindly to that kind of rodeo ride. :-)
I want one....
Looks easy- but balancing a multiton broomstick on a pillow of fire is actually pretty impressive.
Regardless- there's quite a difference between doing this stunt straight up and straight down- and doing it recovering from an exoatmospheric launch, given the far higher velocities involved.
I'm assuming it'll deploy a drogue chute from the top to give it the correct orientation, then simply fall most of the way in.
When it's "only" three miles up or so, the mains would fire again- and it comes home to roost.
"Finding home" would certainly need to be very redundant- if the GPS failed, I'd certainly want a transponder on both ends- in the missile, and on the landing pad.
Having this monster try to land on some skyscraper's helipad because it had the right optical signature would be a bit beyond embarrassing- as in "Where did that city block go?"
This is no toy- but what a hoot.
I would be willing to bet that most of the craft visible in the video was fuel tank. It was probably more stable when it landed because as the fuel burned it would become less top heavy.
Actually kind of impressive when you consider just how difficult it would be to balance the thrust and keep the rocket stable in a hover, much less bring it back down to a soft landing.
Of course, it will be a much more impressive feat to see it launch to orbit, de-orbit and then make a soft landing. I think there will be some issues with having enough fuel for that trick.
Well, if I didn't know they are rocket scientists, my first thought would be to agree with you, stupefied, but they are rocket scientists.
The hover is amazing. Re-usable components are the key to cost effective use of space ... and getting off this rock we were born on.
Congrats to SpaceX! This is impressive incremental progress.
- Privately built pressurized space capsule launched on own rocket making 2nd successful commercial delivery to ISS
- Preparing for launch of Falcon Heavy, largest (operational) rocket payload to LEO, also privately developed
- Successfully demonstrating continued progress on fully reusable launch architecture ... now, they're just showing off, but I like it.
I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk, both for Spacex and Tesla... but it is worth pointing out that this is not a pioneering effort. Blue Origin accomplished this back in 2006:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGWk_rfq_bM
(And on a smaller scale I think Armadillo Aerospace pulled this off once or twice as well.)
Obviously Blue Origin hasn't been to the ISS, but they did also last October successfully complete a crew escape test:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-10/video-blue-origin-tests-its-crew-capsule-launchpad-escape-system
...so it seems like they are serious about competing for CCDev2 money (I think they have only gotten about $23M, which pales in comparison to the money Spacex has been awarded). So there should be some competition in the marketplace, which is a good thing.
(sorry, duplicate post.)
"At touchdown, the thrust-to-weight ratio of the vehicle was greater than one.."
Hmm, it would NOT have touched down.
Seems like you would need a thrust greater than one to overcome the downward momentum...at touchdown...and not bounce.
That would be true if the rocket was at a standstill at the time... but given negative/downward velocity, thrust-to-weight > 1 was required just for soft landing.
It's looking more and more like Elon is our best chance of getting to Mars. I wonder how long it will be before the government starts interfering. They won't pay for it themselves, but will get all indignant when HE starts getting close. They'll try to regulate him out of it. Just my prediction....
Not much sense in sending human beings to Mars except to say that we did. Rovers and probes tell us everything a human could minus the danger. There's no potential for terraformming the planet as it has no magnetosphere, making it impossible to create a sustainable atmosphere. Mars is certainly not our future home, though it may once have been many thousands or millions of years in the past, but those kinds of questions can be more easily and cheaply answered by machines than men, and there's really no need to rush it, urgency can cause just as much tragedy as it can innovation.
Virginia's got it right - no reason for Elon to send anything to Mars, much less humans. Don't forget -they are a commercial company, meaning there has to be some profit. Of course, NASA could hire them to send us or something to Mars, but then that would mean we are paying for it after all. That's kind of what we are doing now, anyways - most of the SpaceX launches are designated to meet NASA contracts and development goals, so are paid for by NASA.
I really don't see the government regulating them out of business. NASA and the government have a vested interest in seeing to it that SpaceX and the others are successful. They need a low-cost taxi service to LEO. Otherwise, they got nothing, so would be regulating themselves out of business.
I agree, but he is not encumbered and restrained by a bunch of self promoting fools & spendthrifts we call elected, its just him & his money.
His money will only get him so far, and even though he's quite rich, it won't get him very far at all if he decides to go after a Mars shot on his own. Has to be a be good business model, or he won't get any investors to pony up.
I can't see how you can launch enough extra fuel to put this rocket back on the ground from the upper atmosphere.
Is it going to free fall at terminal velocity, then ignite the reentry motors at some altitude, to slow the descent? I can't imagine they could carry enough fuel for many minutes of thrust. And there is no way they can let this rocket drop to a few thousand feet before trying to slow it.
Can't wait to see this in a real world test.
Parachutes...?
The Falcon boosters are going at thousands of MPH at staging... too fast for parachutes, so fast the booster would burn up or tear itself up from the speed of reentry..
So the engines will first slow the booster down, then land it.
On the Falcon Heavy, I believe the strap on common core boosters will detach at a lower altitude than the main core (cross-fed). Moreover, after the boosters separate, they will reach apex where they will momentarily be at zero acceleration.
Shortly after point, as the booster begin to descend and accelerate, it seems to me would be a good time for a drogue chute to deploy. I wonder if the atmosphere is to thin for a chute at this altitude??
I do share BP the Grape's concerns with the amount fuel required, and the disadvantages that this additional mass has.
Good for SpaceX. Boeing and friends, spent years and big bucks developing a vertical lift vehicle.
Elon Musk, should stay on Earth and keep up the good work.
I live about 30 miles from McGregor. Central Texas can have very strong winds from the south. So balancing this rocket and getting it to land is impressive.
So, when will we see a test launch of Falcon Heavy?
Launch manifest on the SpaceX site still says 2013, but I think I read elsewhere that the first FH demo flight has moved back to 2014.
http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php
You can see the cowboy at 2 seconds and a silhouette at 5 seconds.
In actual practice, this type of soft landing rocket system would only be used for the last 100 feet or so of descent. Other more standard means of aerodynamic braking would be employed down to this final soft landing phase. Very good show though, Space X! Definitesly shows that you all know what you are doing in the field of rocketry. (The Russians have already employed a variation of this soft landing rocket system in the use of their Soyuz space capsules for quite a long time now, but it doesn't allow for the recovery and reuse of any of their third stage rockets at the same time. BTW, if you really want to get these third stage rockets down in one piece, then you also need to add a reentry shield.) - RC
(I am a child of the '50s & '60s. I have been making these journeys for a very long time now, if only in my mind. I really can't thank you all enough for finally making these things a reality in my lifetime.) - RC
My grandfather started flying Jenny biplanes for the U.S. Army Air Service in 1918 - 1919, having been born in 1898. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1956, having flown in Europe, Africa and the Pacific during WWII. (He also investigated the Roswell Incident of 1947 at Wright Patterson Air Force base, where I personally lived with my grandparents from 1951 to 1953.) My father was an aerospace engineer who helped to design some of the first commercial jet propulsion systems with P&W starting back in 1960 - 1961. He ultimately worked on the first early space shuttle designs back in the early 1970s.
SpaceX, if you really want to dominate the future space launch field, then you will listen very closely to my advice. I have been privately working on these things since the early 1960s when I was practically weaned on space and aerospace periodicals starting in the 4th grade in NPB, FL. (where I was pitcher and first baseman on the Iroquois Little League team that year. Go, Iroquois!) We really need a new space launch system which relies upon air breathing first stage LOX augmented jet engines if we want to maximize our future potential in space. The concept which I have zeroed in on in my mind over the years is a tri-rocket assembly sandwiched in between two reusable primary booster shuttles powered by LOX augmented jet engines (I have a detailed design), which would probably launch from southern Louisiana off of the Gulf of Mexico coast. This configuration allows for the ignition of all three stages upon liftoff, with the second and third stage rocket motors being throttled back once this rocket assembly has cleared the launch tower and achieved optimum air breathing speed. These two primary booster shuttles would be responsible for delivering much for the initial altitude space launch vector needed for achieving Earth orbit, before separating to land in Florida on standard downrange runways. The two outside second stage rockets on the tri-rocket assembly would then throttle up, and continue on down range over the tip of Florida before separating to soft land in the Atlantic Ocean for recovery as scrap metal(?) using their empty tanks for buoyancy (they actually could soft land in the Atlantic Ocean using rocket thrust, and be towed back to land for possible reuse). The middle third stage rocket on this tri-rocket assembly would then throttle up and continue downrange into Earth orbit, to either be recycled in space or left to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere (or maybe even soft landed for reuse using a reentry shield in combination with the rocket landing system which SpaceX has just successfully demonstrated. This approach will allow you to drop very significant oxidizer and structural load in the process. What can I possibly say but totally go for it, SpaceX !!! - Rick Carter
Cool, but the money spent on this stuff is way over priced for what it is.
Each Nasa Shuttle flight cost taxpayers over $1.6 billion... for the most expensive, dangerous, unreliable space vehicle in history...
The entire 12 flight SpaceX contract is for less than a single Nasa shuttle flight.
The SpaceX Falcon heavy will lift TWICE the shuttle payload, for about $100 million....
We should downsize/eliminate bloated, dead wood, pork driven Nasa, and instead directly fund Caltech's JPL for probes, and SpaceX for boosters and manned space flight..
Get 10 times more done, for 1/10th the cost.
Rather than eliminating NASA, they should be relegated to a supervisory and research role, where they can spend their budget (which doesn't need to be spent in search of profit) entirely on commissioning new missions and studying space specifically in areas that private institutions are unlikely to bother.
There's still a role for government-driven space exploration, but thankfully it is a smaller one.
Pretty cool when thinking of the shape of the vehicle; that took some serious engineering to accomplish that. It will be a totally different thing to get that vehicle to do the same thing returning from actual space flight. One thing not mentioned in this article is the existence of any wind velocity during this test. I wonder how the vehicle would fare under even moderate wind speeds, considering it wouldn't take much to tip something of that shape one way or the other when considering its center of gravity, especially when airborne.
I don't understand all the talk about Mars. Sure, it would be cool to visit, but there is no long term potential for Mars. The technology to create biodome like structures is too bulky and expensive to ship there and terraformming the planet is impossible as any atmoshphere created would be blown away by the solar wind due to the lack of a magnetoshpere. The only possible way to terraform would be to reheat the planet's core and get it spinning again, and that seems quite the impossible task. Mars has no future for life, all it can provide for us is a history lesson about it's past potential for life. If man is to find a future home outside of Earth, it'll most likely be found orbiting another star.
Nice post. I agree that Mars isn't the best place to try to make a future home. If the sun is going to expand into a "red giant" at some point and engulf Earth and put Mars perilously close to being a cinder then it would make more sense to shoot for one or a number of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. This could buy us a couple billion more years to figure out "faster than light travel" that we'll need to get to a younger star(who knows how long that will take to develop?). Until then we have a nice moon to practice on right now.
There likely is no future colonization of Mars. Not without technology that would be purely fantastical in scope.
But it occurs to me that the only way to eventually prepare, one day, to reach another planet and develop the technology for extended space flight is to make manned space flights to regions of space less convenient than the moon.
It appears to me that they used Chuck Norris to keep the craft properly balanced.
ahhh, grasshopper, if you can take this contract from my hand in one try..hey, ok, in two tr...hey, give it back..ok in thre...hey, dammit, stop that grasshopper you no can have coffee in morning no more.....
Elon sure is showing the rest of us ONE way to run a space company. Damn, the bar is being set higher every day eh? think about it, N Korea is probably "just peed in pants" when they realized that big fireworks order was being shipped to google headquaters marked "special celebration for grasshopper success over northern K"...ha..hope they went to yellow alert (pun,poor pun, but a pun nonetheless)....glad we got over colored alerts a few years back.......for elons next test, maybe they should BUZZ N. korea a few times...hold em out for a real twenty dollar bill if they want it to stop.....make mr ill, ILL with all that buzzing noise day in and day out.....
You mean like the atmosphere of Venus has been blown away by the solar wind due to the lack of a magnetosphere?
Wow, Elon Musk is building Thunderbird One. What's next?