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PASabreFan

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He said a while back he was in Florida working on a rocket launch. I assume this is what he's been working on. (And he lives in California, home of SpaceX.)

 

Umm?

 

The video you linked, unless I have it all wrong, which is probable considering my track record, shows a reverse rocket launch ... a rocket landing.  Maybe it was shown in high-tech reverse?

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Why don't they just put wheels on it and land it like an airplane?

 

Couple of reasons off the bat:

 

1. It takes an extremely long runway to bring something going that fast back down to stopped (assuming a catastrophic end of flight is unacceptable); even if you get that distance reduced, you limit where you can land the rocket by needing to taxi down;

 

2. Landing gear (especially rugged enough to handle the speeds & temps this would be exposed to) is relatively speaking extremely heavy.

Edited by Taro T
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The Space Shuttle employed two completely different sets of systems to take off and to land.  Carrying those big ol' glider wings means you have to lift thousands of extra pounds into orbit for the sake of being able to land safely later on.  The extra weight means a corresponding decrease of payload.

 

This system only has one set of hardware to take off and to land.  The only "extra" weight has to do with the extra fuel needed to accomplish that bad-ass landing.  If the weight of the extra fuel is less than the weight of wings and other systems needed to glide to a landing, this system is more efficient than the shuttle.

 

 

 

 

*I used to be a rocket scientist.

Edited by The Big Johnson
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The Space Shuttle employed two completely different sets of systems to take off and to land.  Carrying those big ol' glider wings means you have to lift thousands of extra pounds into orbit for the sake of being able to land safely later on.  The extra weight means a corresponding decrease of payload.

 

This system only has one set of hardware to take off and to land.  The only "extra" weight has to do with the extra fuel needed to accomplish that bad-ass landing.  If the weight of the extra fuel is less than the weight of wings and other systems needed to glide to a landing, this system is more efficient than the shuttle.

 

*I used to be a rocket scientist.

Nice. You could author Rocket Science for Dummies!

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The Space Shuttle employed two completely different sets of systems to take off and to land.  Carrying those big ol' glider wings means you have to lift thousands of extra pounds into orbit for the sake of being able to land safely later on.  The extra weight means a corresponding decrease of payload.

 

This system only has one set of hardware to take off and to land.  The only "extra" weight has to do with the extra fuel needed to accomplish that bad-ass landing.  If the weight of the extra fuel is less than the weight of wings and other systems needed to glide to a landing, this system is more efficient than the shuttle.

 

 

 

 

*I used to be a rocket scientist.

 

 

Of course the down side to landing with fuel is an explosion. 

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