Options to consider: 1. recovery of a detachable engine pod ONLY; 2. landing rocket casing in horizontal vice vertical attitude to reduce engine damage; 3. employ retro-rocket packs to fire just prior to impact to drastically slow rocket casing. I am sure you have considered these. Main objective, I think is to “pick-up our toys after we’re done playing”, so not to pollute our environment + reuse resources where possible to reduce costs. Best of luck !
Sarunas Kazlauskas
· 14th April 2020 at 7:21 pm
Hello Christopher,
Thank you for the feedback. We have indeed considered these options. For #2, the booster will likely land upside-down to minimize any damage to the engine bay or air frame.
Cygar
· 15th April 2020 at 8:00 pm
How about using a net like SpaceX’s Mr. Steven uses to capture their fairings? Reusability is such an important development, could you add a donation tab targeted towards that goal in order to focus the sponsorships?
Sarunas Kazlauskas
· 15th April 2020 at 9:05 pm
Since the net-catching operation seems to be tricky even for SpaceX, it’s unlikely we will try that ourselves. A mid-air helicopter catch, like recently shown by Rocket Lab, would also be risky, since we would have one more heavy object (the Space capsule) coming back down above the helicopter at the same time.
A separate donation tab for reusability has a few issues in my personal opinion, but my main point would be that we are not retrofitting an expendable rocket with a reusability upgrade. The whole rocket is designed for it from scratch, so reusability is embedded in everything – from engine design, to airframe structure, electronics, marine fleet, mission planning, training and so forth. So it is not only a matter of a parachute system. It encompasses everything on the rocket and more, thus a designated donation tab would just really be another general donation tab. 🙂
Kind regards,
Sarunas K.
Cygar
· 17th April 2020 at 4:59 pm
Hi Sarunas,
Thank you so much for your extensive answer and we understand your point regarding separate donation tab and will use your normal version, very happy that you accept Bitcoin.
We fully agree that Rocket Labs helicopter catch is very risky/costly and that Mr. Steven has had great difficulty catching a faring. Are you looking at using a similar re-entry booster approach as Falcon 9 on a barge?
Also, we are a bunch of programmers/geeks that are wondering if you have any specific problem/task that we could help out with?
Thanks again for your very important work, hope to come on your tour soon! /Cygar
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5 Comments
Christopher Cochran · 10th April 2020 at 5:51 pm
Options to consider: 1. recovery of a detachable engine pod ONLY; 2. landing rocket casing in horizontal vice vertical attitude to reduce engine damage; 3. employ retro-rocket packs to fire just prior to impact to drastically slow rocket casing. I am sure you have considered these. Main objective, I think is to “pick-up our toys after we’re done playing”, so not to pollute our environment + reuse resources where possible to reduce costs. Best of luck !
Sarunas Kazlauskas · 14th April 2020 at 7:21 pm
Hello Christopher,
Thank you for the feedback. We have indeed considered these options. For #2, the booster will likely land upside-down to minimize any damage to the engine bay or air frame.
Cygar · 15th April 2020 at 8:00 pm
How about using a net like SpaceX’s Mr. Steven uses to capture their fairings? Reusability is such an important development, could you add a donation tab targeted towards that goal in order to focus the sponsorships?
Sarunas Kazlauskas · 15th April 2020 at 9:05 pm
Since the net-catching operation seems to be tricky even for SpaceX, it’s unlikely we will try that ourselves. A mid-air helicopter catch, like recently shown by Rocket Lab, would also be risky, since we would have one more heavy object (the Space capsule) coming back down above the helicopter at the same time.
A separate donation tab for reusability has a few issues in my personal opinion, but my main point would be that we are not retrofitting an expendable rocket with a reusability upgrade. The whole rocket is designed for it from scratch, so reusability is embedded in everything – from engine design, to airframe structure, electronics, marine fleet, mission planning, training and so forth. So it is not only a matter of a parachute system. It encompasses everything on the rocket and more, thus a designated donation tab would just really be another general donation tab. 🙂
Kind regards,
Sarunas K.
Cygar · 17th April 2020 at 4:59 pm
Hi Sarunas,
Thank you so much for your extensive answer and we understand your point regarding separate donation tab and will use your normal version, very happy that you accept Bitcoin.
We fully agree that Rocket Labs helicopter catch is very risky/costly and that Mr. Steven has had great difficulty catching a faring. Are you looking at using a similar re-entry booster approach as Falcon 9 on a barge?
Also, we are a bunch of programmers/geeks that are wondering if you have any specific problem/task that we could help out with?
Thanks again for your very important work, hope to come on your tour soon! /Cygar
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