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It's not clear to me why you need to spend so much fuel hopping around on Mars or the moon.
by dencodev 6y ago
It's not clear to me why you need to spend so much fuel hopping around on Mars or the moon.
- thinkcontext 6y agoThey are testing on a path to be able to land from orbit. Starting with short hops by prototypes that get iteratively improved is the same methodology that allowed them to be able to land their currently operating Falcon 9. They are the only one to ever achieve this. It's a big deal because everyone else builds a $100M rocket and then throws it away because it can't land. Reusable rockets have the potential to make açcess to space much cheaper.
- dencodev 6y agoSo the idea isn't to literally hop? They ultimately want to land it the same way the F9 rockets land now, and this is just a test?
- dwaltrip 6y agoYep, basically. The biggest difference is that this is the second stage. With this new rocket, both the first stage and second stage will be fully reusable. The Falcon 9 second stage is thrown away each launch.
- badwolf 6y agoBingo. They did similar tests with a Falcon 9 test article called "Grasshopper" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4