Yeah. This is actually pretty huge. They've been trying for years to be able to prove their technology for recovering the first stage like this. For those who don't follow this kind of stuff, the first stage, after detaching from the second (which goes on to deliver its payload wherever it's going, in this case the ISS), instead of just falling and burning up in the atmosphere, actually has additional fuel which it uses to break out of "burn up speed" and enter a controlled descent, and then land, butt down, using the same rocket motor it launched with, onto a platform. For safeties sake, they place the platform on an unmanned floating barge in the ocean. Just getting the stupid thing to descend and find the platform is an amazing accomplishment (which they've been able to do for a couple years now), but getting it to actually land safely has been a problem. As you might imagine, trying to land a rocket isn't easy, especially in Earth gravity. Now, try to do that on a floating platform.
This is the first time that didn't end in a large ball of fire. And I honestly didn't have high hopes, since the platform looked to be rocking pretty well this time (cause, you know... on the water).
Why this is huge is that the rocket itself is capable of being started, stopped, restarted, etc, as needed (which is useful for a number of reasons). It's also refuelable and reusable. It still remains to be seen how much reusable it is. The Space Shuttle turned out to not be as cost effective as intended because the turn around cost was so huge. In theory, this should be much much cheaper though, plus nearly the entire craft can be recovered and reused between flights. Ironically, it's kinda the opposite of the shuttle at this time. The capsule portion isn't yet reusable (although it does return to Earth and is also designed to land using rocket motors, eventually for use on Mars for land and return), while the launch component is (which is the largest part).
What I love about how SpaceX is approaching this, is that they're doing things in modular steps, each designed to prove a single component, but also designed to operate together later for more advanced operations (like say, going to and returning from Mars). The launch component (Falcon) is designed to operate with a variety of different payloads (in the case of today's launch, the Dragon spacecraft). They also have an inflatable habitat thingie, for more or less pre-fab space station building (or say, long term Mars bound spacecraft building). And the whole refuelable/restartable rockets bit opens up a lot of options even just for near Earth stuff. Pretty darn exciting!
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King Nobby wrote:
More words please