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| SpaceX Falcon 9 |
Last Friday a bit of a tech miracle occurred. No, it wasn't that iTunes fixed it's music selection algorithms; much to my personal dismay. It was that these guys landed a big ass rocket on a barge that was barely bigger than the rocket. Total Buck Rodgers stuff here folks! See the video below.
They also completed the first half of their eighth (?) supply mission to the international space station (ISS). That should have been impressive enough for a company that was founded in 2002 by a software geek. Albeit a very rich software geek. While he gets a lot of credit there are 4000 human beings making this stuff possible at that company. They have come together in fourteen years to accomplish something we have not seen since the Saturn & Apollo programs in the '60s & '70s, and tiny bit more.
What's the more part? Apollo landed on the moon right? How do you beat that? Okay, maybe this isn't a moon landing but it proves in a technology that is going to make a Mars landing far more likely.
Seriously, this really was amazing. The Falcon 9 rocket stuck the landing on it's drone "ship" in the middle of a pitching sea and what had to be 25 - 30 mph winds after successfully propelling the Dragon and it's 2nd stage booster over half way into orbit. Really, check out the video. It's short. Someone was good enough to clip out the landing bit.
Yes, this was their third attempt at full scale. Third time is a charm I guess? Many other people have taken far more attempts to get revolutionary technologies right.
Yes, others have also attempted this and I am sure these folks relied heavily on that work. Still, they did it.
It opens up an entirely new way of looking at the utility of space flight. Up until Friday everyone accepted that the main booster of a launch vehicle was destined to become burned & twisted bits scattered across the ocean somewhere. Or worse, floating about in orbit if they made it that far. Now it is possible to recover the primary booster section. If that's possible then the getting the second stage back is also possible. If you check out the current 2016 sticker price of a Falcon 9 launch, it's a little north of $61 million. Who knows how much recovery will cut that price, but even if it's 30% that's a crap load of money. If that $61 million comes down to $40 million you've got a program that is well within the reach of large corporations with designs on space. DeBeers comes to mind immediately. There are lots of exotic materials to be had for the price of getting there and back in space.
If you can, take the half hour to watch the full video (37 minute).
What about the implications for a Mars mission? If you watch the whole video you'll hear they did something truly from Buck Rodgers on this. They fired the engines to slow re-entry of the Falcon 9 first stage. I believe they used the main engines at that. If they can do that against the gravitational pull of earth, then Mars is totally possible.
The problem with landing people on Mars is that we are fragile. We don't have the tools on Mars we have on earth, like our atmosphere and lots of water, right? How do you slow a ship down to a human safe speed -vs- a robot safe speed?
Mars does have a thin atmosphere and 1/3 of the gravity of Earth; offsetting factors. But, it's got double the gravity of the moon. Seems to me that engines are going to be part of what's needed to land a large vehicle on Mars. Falcon 9 has proven a large spacecraft can land with rockets alone. This gives engineers a proven method to include in a Mars lander carrying people -vs- just machines.
Well, if you stuck with me until here, thanks! Finally, BRAVO to the entire team at SpaceX! Also a big thank you to Elon Musk for being a true, brave innovator in a world filled with people satisfied with baby steps. We need leadership like this to help us reach our full potential as humans.
Mr. Musk and team join the ranks of DaVinci, Howard Hughes, Tesla, Edison, Watt and others who have delivered technology that has changed the world. Keep it up
