Elon Musk's reusable rocket could land in 2015Washington Business Journal
Drew Hansen Digital Producer Dec 30, 2014, 1:59pm EST
SpaceX will attempt to land one of its Falcon 9 rockets upright after it sends a Dragon capsule to the International Space Station on Jan. 6.That "autonomous spaceport drone ship" from Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. we told you about last month is ready for its close-up.
On Jan. 6, when SpaceX launches its next Dragon capsule supply mission to the International Space Station, it will attempt to land its Falcon 9 rocket back on Earth using a 300-by-100-foot barge-like drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Oh, and that'll be an attempted upright landing. No belly flops allowed.
NASA has relied on disposable launch systems for much of its history, with external tanks falling into the ocean during space shuttle liftoffs never to be used again. As space operations have shifted to industry, companies like SpaceX are researching ways to dramatically cut down expenses with reusable systems. Even the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is trying to come up with a solution, awarding three preliminary contracts worth about $4 million apiece to come up with initial designs for a reusable launch vehicle -- none of which went to SpaceX, for the record.
The company is outfitting its Falcon 9 rockets with "hypersonic grid fins" configured in a way to stabilize the vessel during re-entry. SpaceX has had some successful soft landings with the Falcon 9, getting the rockets to hover about the water on re-entry (See the video below).
Musk has suggested there's about a 50 percent chance the Jan. 6 landing will be successful. If all goes well, it would be an exciting achievement.
Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Space Flight Federation, told The Washington Post a reusable rocket "would change the game in space launch. … While this first attempt should be looked at as mission improbable, if it does succeed, it will be historic."
Musk said he plans to continue attempting Falcon 9 landings in 2015. He also sees reusable rockets as the key to advancing space travel. There are no runways on Mars, after all, and we know Musk's big colonization plans for the Red Planet.
"You really have to get good at propulsive landing if you want to go somewhere other than Earth," Musk told an audience at MIT in October, according to The Post.
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