... as opposed to a straight up/straight down elevator poking its nose a bit out of the atmosphere for a look around.
Why mock what Blue Origin accomplished? What they succesfully undertook was a major technical challenge. The Falcon landing was a bit more impressive for a few reasons but I think it should stand on it own, for what they really did - there is no need to claim they landed an orbital vehicle, and there is no need to talk in such a manner that makes Blue Origin's Shepherd landing less of an achievement.
What would you have them call it?
Sub-orbital, because that's what it is. I've noticed that in many articles they are separating the Falcon landing from the Shepherd landing using the word "orbital" as the thing that makes them different.
Competition? Musk is launching to orbit. This goes straight up to 100 km and back down. This is cool, no doubt about it, but they aren't comparable problems.
But when you look at the magnitude of the task, what SpaceX accomplished was drastically more difficult than what Blue Origin did. At the top of its trajectory, New Shepard reaches zero velocity via nothing more than gravity, and left alone it would come down somewhere in the general vicinity of the launch site all by itself. The problem is mostly controlling the descent and the touchdown. The Falcon first stage is much more massive, well downrange (I don't know the number either) and traveling eastward away from the launch site at roughly the speed of a rifle bullet. It has to be maneuvered, make a burn that kills that speed and starts it moving westward on a trajectory back to Florida. IIRC, two more burns are required to control the reentry and descent, and then as was discussed above, there's the issue of keeping the much taller vehicle vertical during touchdown. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem to me that they are all that comparable.
Did anyone else have flashbacks to playing Lunar Lander as a kid? :nerd:
After playing the game on multiple platforms over the years, i'm still no good at it. Thank heaven for computer control.
Could you imagine the pressure on the Apollo Eleven crew, when they took over control at the last minute, finding a favorable landing site, fuel constraints, and never performing the maneuver before outside Earth"s gravity, that had to be a white knuckle moment.
Could you imagine the pressure on the Apollo Eleven crew, when they took over control at the last minute, finding a favorable landing site, fuel constraints, and never performing the maneuver before outside Earth"s gravity, that had to be a white knuckle moment.
Armstrong is better than any fictional character in any universe.
The Apollo 11 landing just cut the fuel margins a bit tighter than planned. If you want a real white-knuckle situation involving Armstrong, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_8 and scroll down to the section labelled "Emergency".
If the fuel had run too low during the Apollo 11 landing, they could've aborted and used the ascent engine to get back to the Command Module. In Gemini 8, the capsule was spinning with a stuck thruster and he had to resort to the last-ditch backup, the re-entry maneuvering thrusters, to regain control. That worked, but meant they had already expended 3/4 of their re-entry maneuvering fuel before they even started re-entry. I think by comparison, the need to move the Apollo 11 touchdown a bit was probably pretty mild.
So much for watching the eight o'clock news this morning, news broadcasts should be news, and not a variety show. Have to look online to see if there was a launch.
Comments
Why mock what Blue Origin accomplished? What they succesfully undertook was a major technical challenge. The Falcon landing was a bit more impressive for a few reasons but I think it should stand on it own, for what they really did - there is no need to claim they landed an orbital vehicle, and there is no need to talk in such a manner that makes Blue Origin's Shepherd landing less of an achievement. Sub-orbital, because that's what it is. I've noticed that in many articles they are separating the Falcon landing from the Shepherd landing using the word "orbital" as the thing that makes them different.
But when you look at the magnitude of the task, what SpaceX accomplished was drastically more difficult than what Blue Origin did. At the top of its trajectory, New Shepard reaches zero velocity via nothing more than gravity, and left alone it would come down somewhere in the general vicinity of the launch site all by itself. The problem is mostly controlling the descent and the touchdown. The Falcon first stage is much more massive, well downrange (I don't know the number either) and traveling eastward away from the launch site at roughly the speed of a rifle bullet. It has to be maneuvered, make a burn that kills that speed and starts it moving westward on a trajectory back to Florida. IIRC, two more burns are required to control the reentry and descent, and then as was discussed above, there's the issue of keeping the much taller vehicle vertical during touchdown. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem to me that they are all that comparable.
After playing the game on multiple platforms over the years, i'm still no good at it. Thank heaven for computer control.
Could you imagine the pressure on the Apollo Eleven crew, when they took over control at the last minute, finding a favorable landing site, fuel constraints, and never performing the maneuver before outside Earth"s gravity, that had to be a white knuckle moment.
Armstrong is better than any fictional character in any universe.
IOW, "Neil before Zod!"
If the fuel had run too low during the Apollo 11 landing, they could've aborted and used the ascent engine to get back to the Command Module. In Gemini 8, the capsule was spinning with a stuck thruster and he had to resort to the last-ditch backup, the re-entry maneuvering thrusters, to regain control. That worked, but meant they had already expended 3/4 of their re-entry maneuvering fuel before they even started re-entry. I think by comparison, the need to move the Apollo 11 touchdown a bit was probably pretty mild.
http://www.wftv.com/news/local/panicked-residents-call-911-after-rockets-sonic-boom-shakes-homes-across-central-fla/406301852
erco? Did you know all of your robots were watching?
https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/08/13/falcon-9-jcsat-16-mission-status-center/
http://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/spacex/2016/08/14/spacex-falcon9-launches-satellite-sticks-ocean-landing-cape-canaveral-air-force-station-florida-jcsat16/88607884/