Private space flight has had kind of a bad year between the failure of Orbital Sciences cargo rocket in Virginia
And the tragic loss of SpaceShip 2's pilot Michael Alsbury.
But leave it to our not so secret braincrush Elon Musk
The head of SpaceX to take private space exploration to a whole new level
The new level in this case being the surface of the ocean.
On Friday, December 19th, 2014, SpaceX will launch one of it's Falcon 9 rockets into space
Loaded with more than fifteen hundred kilograms of supplies and experiments for the International Space Station
But after the first few minutes of flight, instead of just crashing back to earth
like it usually does, the rocket's first stage will gently touch down on a platform
floating in the Atlantic Ocean.
At least, that's the plan.
Getting something into orbit is complicated, so the Falcon 9 launch system uses two
main stages. The first stage is the most powerful one
with nine engines burning liquid oxygen and kerosene for up to three minutes.
Then, so that it doesn't have to drag all that extra mass into orbit, it separates
and the second stage takes over with just one engine propelling the cargo into orbit.
Normally, rockets like these are a one-time-use kind of deal
and each one costs about a hundred million dollars.
Since you have to build a new one every time
you wanna get off the planet,
space travel is really, really expensive!
It costs more than twenty thousand dollars for every kilogram of cargo your carry into orbit
so, in 2011 Musk announced his company's goal to build a reusable rocket
that would make space travel less costly.
Eventually the company plans to develop a whole system that is entirely reusable
but it's focusing on the first stage, for now.
The plan for this week's mission is to have some fuel remaining in the tank
in the first stage when it separates.
Then it'll fire three of its nine engines to slow itself down
and a control system will be deployed with special grid fins
to help prevent the rocket from going into a spin
and keep the engines pointed in the right direction.
Once it gets close to the landing platform, four landing legs
will deploy and the central engine will fire, letting it basically
settle into a soft landing, as opposed to usual hard landing where everything gets blown to bits.
This system was first tested over
land in a specially-designed rocket called the Grasshopper.
In 2012 and 2013 the grasshopper made eight hops
reaching altitudes of up to 744 meters
and landing safely on the ground each time.
The concept proved promising but still needed to be tried
on a Falcon 9 during an actual launch
of which it was tested over the ocean three times.
The plan was for the rocket to make a soft landing right on the surface of the ocean
and then tip over so that it would float over the water horizontally
In the first test in September 2013, the rocket went into a spin and the engines failed : (
During the next two tries in April and July of 2014
the system succeeded in slowing the first stage
down before it hit the water but it
turns out that the Atlantic ocean isn't the most friendly place
to land.
During the first test, the rocket was torn apart by rough seas
and the second, it hit the water too hard when it tipped over
and in the words of Elon Musk, went 'KABOOM.'
But this Friday's test flight will be different because the rocket won't be landing in the water -- exactly.
Instead SpaceX has built a landing platform for it
with the totally boss name of
'Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship.'
Keeping this platform in one place is going to be tricky,
so with GPS as its guide, the drone ship will use
four thrusters to make sure that it doesn't move more than three meters --
even during a storm. That's important
because at 91 by 52 meters, the platform
isn't much bigger than the rocket itself.
Since this is the first test of its kind
SpaceX says that there is a high chance of failure.
But you gotta give them credit for even getting this far.
If it works, we will be well on our way
to reusable rockets and a much more accessible space travel.
If not, we'll still be one step closer.
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