Finally, the ballute is getting the attention it deserves. We're talking
about that and how Rocket Lab is going to use one. Coming up.
Hey guys, Tory here from Overlook Horizon. If you're new to the channel, we fly high
altitude weather balloons to the edge of space and back and along the way we talk
about space and science and technology so if that's something you're interested in
please consider subscribing. Today we're talking about Rocket Lab and how they're
going to use a ballute to make their Electron rocket reusable. Now, before we get into
what that **** is a ballute, first, let's get you up to speed on who Rocket Lab is and what
do they do. Rocket Lab is a small satellite launch
provider. They make a relatively small launch vehicle and their main business
is launching ity bity tiny satellites into orbit at a low cost. Traditionally
some of the more well-known launch providers like SpaceX and United Launch
Alliance, they focus on big satellites so those smaller cubesats and microsats
and all the little tiny satellites can kind of take a backseat to those. They
can still hitch a ride and head to orbit along a Falcon 9 rocket but they may not
be the main payload of that mission so that means that the orbit that they get
dropped off into is kind of at the mercy of what the larger payload is trying to
get to. Rocket Lab has been around since 2006 but they really started gaining in
popularity since about 2017 when their Electron rocket started doing flights.
Now originally the Electron rocket was not intended to be reusable and this is
purely because Rocket Lab wanted to focus and stay as a small launch vehicle.
Their CEO, Peter Beck, has stated in the past that in order to make the first
stage of the Electron rocket reusable they would have to upgrade the
Electron into a medium launch vehicle just to accommodate all the extra
thermal protection and reentry systems needed to bring the Electron rocket's
first stage back to Earth and for them that is something they did not want to
focus on because they wanted to remain a small launch vehicle focused on
launching small satellites. Most of Rocket Lab's launches happens from what
they call Launch Complex one which is in New Zealand. Now, Rocket Lab is a US-based
company out of California but all of their operations to date have
been pretty much in New Zealand. They do now have a second launch pad being built
on Wallops Island here in Virginia and that will be Launch Complex two.
That should be operational by the end of this year. At this point Rocket
Lab now has seven Electron flights under their belts and in all of those flights
they've collected a ton of data not just during launch but also during the
re-entry phase for that first stage and it's finally at this point that the CEO
of Rocket Lab, Peter Beck, has said that he is ready to eat his hat. "So this is a
Rocket Lab cap. This is a cap that I'm about to eat because I've said publicly
a few times the various things that Rocket Lab would never do so
unfortunately I find myself in the position of eating my hat." Because they
are now going to move Electron into the reusable category. Now, most of us
probably already know that the king of reusability is SpaceX. They land their
Falcon 9 rocket either on a drone ship in the middle of the ocean or sometimes
they return it back to the launch site to land at LZ-1 or LZ-2. Blue Origin
can also land the first stage of their rocket, New Shepard. Both SpaceX and Blue
Origin land their rockets propulsively meaning they use the engines to do so.
But Rocket Lab is taking a little different approach. Rocket Lab is going to
rely on parachutes and a helicopter. This is similar to the approach that United
Launch Alliance has announced that they're going to use for their upcoming
Vulcan rockets. The way this works is that the Rocket Lab Electron rocket will
launch from one of their launch complexes. Out at sea they'll have a ship
with a helicopter. At launch time, they'll launch the rocket and the helicopter
will lift off. The early phases of launch are pretty much unchanged. It's after
that first stage separates where things start to get interesting. The Electron
rocket will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere engine bell first and there
is an incredible amount of energy that needs to be dissipated both in speed and
in heat. Once it has successfully re-entered the Earth's atmosphere -- TADA --
That's where we see the ballute. If you don't know what a ballute is, a ballute is
pretty much a portmanteau of balloon and parachute. If you don't know what a
portmanteau is, it's pretty much two words that they took and just smashed
together to make up a new word. The benefits of a ballute is that it can be deployed at
really high speeds. Now, generally a ballute like the one that
we see in the Rocket Lab animation would have intake valves to inflate the
ballute using the outside air. Ballutes can also be inflated by a gas like
helium using onboard tanks, but I don't think that's what they're going to do here.
After they've used the ballute to slow themselves down
from these ultra-high speeds they'll then deploy a regular or conventional
type of parafoil parachutes to help steer the rocket and direct it down
towards the ocean, but before it lands in the ocean that's where our helicopter
comes in. The helicopter will swoop in with some kind of skyhook and it appears
that their connection point is gonna be somewhere between the ballute and the
parafoil. The helicopter will snag that line grab
onto the rocket and fly it back to that recovery ship where the helicopter took
off from. Now, this is a really ambitious plan for Rocket Lab and it's gonna
happen in a number of stages. The first thing that they have to do is get
through "The Wall". Essentially that means that they have to first work on getting
the rocket through the atmosphere in one piece. Once they can successfully do that
then they can focus on the actual helicopter recovery piece. So over the
next couple of flights for Rocket Lab you'll see them working on that re-entry
portion. Stuff like this is super exciting especially in the small set
industry because the intent of this is to make the Electron rocket rapidly
reusable. In theory, the Electron rocket could launch very rapidly after being
recovered especially because they have a lot of electrical components that are
battery-powered like their turbo pumps. This could also lead to a reduction in
launch costs if that launch vehicle is more easily reused. So this is a pretty
exciting time. Now we've got SpaceX and Blue Origin and now Rocket Lab that are
going to be focused on reusability and hopefully soon we'll see United Launch
Alliance enter this arena as well. So, Question of the Day - how long do you
think it's going to be until we see a Rocket Lab recovery? Are we talking a
year? Two years? Five years? Let me know what you guys think in the comments down
below. Also let me know if I missed anything. This news is still pretty fresh
so I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything that's going on. As
always thanks to our Patreon supporters for helping make videos like this
possible. If this is something that you're interested in and you like this
kind of content please consider liking the video or subscribing to the channel
so you can get more of this kind of stuff. Thanks everybody for watching and
we'll see you in the next video.