 |
| Above: The Dreamchaser mini-shuttle, courtesy of Sierra Nevada Corporation. |
Jeff Bezo's Blue Origin company launched it's New Shepherd space craft into space again:
As has become the secretive company's pattern they made no announcements prior to launch, but posted a well put together video following their reusable rockets successful landing:
Jeff Bezo's issued the following statement:
"The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse. This time, New Shepard reached an apogee of 333,582 feet (101.7 kilometers) before both capsule and booster gently returned to Earth for recovery and reuse.
Data from the November mission matched our preflight predictions closely, which made preparations for today’s re-flight relatively straightforward. The team replaced the crew capsule parachutes, replaced the pyro igniters, conducted functional and avionics checkouts, and made several software improvements, including a noteworthy one. Rather than the vehicle translating to land at the exact center of the pad, it now initially targets the center, but then sets down at a position of convenience on the pad, prioritizing vehicle attitude ahead of precise lateral positioning. It’s like a pilot lining up a plane with the centerline of the runway. If the plane is a few feet off center as you get close, you don’t swerve at the last minute to ensure hitting the exact mid-point. You just land a few feet left or right of the centerline. Our Monte Carlo sims of New Shepard landings show this new strategy increases margins, improving the vehicle’s ability to reject disturbances created by low-altitude winds.
Though wings and parachutes have their adherents and their advantages, I’m a huge fan of rocket-powered vertical landing. Why? Because — to achieve our vision of millions of people living and working in space — we will need to build very large rocket boosters. And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well. When you do a vertical landing, you’re solving the classic inverted pendulum problem, and the inverted pendulum problem gets a bit easier as the pendulum gets a bit bigger. Try balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger. Now try it with a broomstick. The broomstick is simpler because its greater moment of inertia makes it easier to balance. We solved the inverted pendulum problem on New Shepard with an engine that dynamically gimbals to balance the vehicle as it descends. And since New Shepard is the smallest booster we will ever build, this carefully choreographed dance atop our plume will just get easier from here. We’re already more than three years into development of our first orbital vehicle. Though it will be the small vehicle in our orbital family, it’s still many times larger than New Shepard. I hope to share details about this first orbital vehicle this year.
Also this year, we’ll start full-engine testing of the BE-4 and launch and land our New Shepard rocket – again and again. If you want to stay up to date with all the interesting work that our team is doing, sign up for email updates at www.blueorigin.com/interested.
Gradatim Ferociter!
Jeff Bezos"
SpaceX has managed to flyback and land their re-usable Falcon 9 first stage booster....
....only to have complete victory snatched from their grasp when a landing leg failed to lock and the booster toppled over, moments after a textbook landing.
Even so, it's a technical success for the company's fly-back-and-re-use technology. And if you're not taking some risks in spaceflight you won't fly far. Proving they're not going to be knocked back for long, the company has successfully tested the landing motors on its Dragon space capsule:
Dreamchaser makes a comeback:
Sierra Nevada corporation seemed to loose out quite badly last year, when their re-usable 'dreamchaser' space shuttle was passed over by NASA to carry crew to the ISS. But 2016 seems to be going their way already: They've been selected by NASA to ferry cargo to and from the ISS, and ESA look set to invest in the development of the Dreamchaser. The ESA director general has also stated that they might launch Dreamchaser into space using their Ariane 5 booster, to carry out microgravity experiments. For a bit more on how the small space shuttle concept works, check out the video below:
Elsewhere in in the Universe
Space resources track 'Monster Blizzard' battering the US and give early warnings
Where are all the Aliens? Dead, says new analysis.
No comments:
Post a Comment