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Blue Origin rocket makes historic vertical landing
Watch as the Blue Origin rocket makes the first vertical landing. (www.youtube.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
An updated version of an old technique, the Lunar Excursion Module, that was manually controlled by the pilot for landing versus computer control today. First done in July 1969 by LEM pilots Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, then replicated by five other NASA crews over the following years. Well done gentlemen!!
This was, in a way, much more difficult and complicated than the lunar landing due to the atmosphere that interacted with the exhaust plume in very powerful and non-intuitive ways.
Great achievement by BO. I just don't understand why neither BO or SX don't consider using chutes to slow the 1st stage booster instead of relying totally on an engine restart/thruster system. Maybe they have considered it and it's too complex.
SpaceX tried a number of times to recover boosters using aero drag and parachutes. The boosters broke up or were damaged beyond the ability to deploy the parachutes during the initial uncontrolled atmospheric entry.
Waow ! It looks like in the cartoon of Hergé in the 50's. ;-)
Seems to me a rocket that lands under power that needs an asbestos surface to avoid burning a hole halfway to hell is of limited use. A device that comes down with a high altitude burn and an airfoil for lift makes more sense.
Never mind. I just described the space shuttle.
Never mind. I just described the space shuttle.
The space shuttle required a complicated system of solid and liquid rockets, and assembly process that took a couple of months to turn around. In addition to the complicated reassembly and time, it cost a lot of money to operate. Think of the reduced area of operation required to land thus rocket, versus gliding an airplane with its ceramic tiles, through a precise glide slope across the sky. This rocket is like an elevator to orbit. The control system demonstrated can probable be applied to rockets of greater size. Thus making this scalable for better economy. The STS has always been limited in scaling up.