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Did we have fully reusable rockets during the Cold War? Even though it's suborbital, Blue Origin's re-use is still a pretty impressive achievement. Spaceplane
by aeternum 5y ago
Did we have fully reusable rockets during the Cold War? Even though it's suborbital, Blue Origin's re-use is still a pretty impressive achievement.
Spaceplanes are also interesting tech. Maybe not the best choice for earth but could prove useful on other planets with different atmospheres.
- gameswithgo 5y agoNo, but nobody had any interest in creating a reusable suborbital rocket. Hobbyists can do that, it just isn't very hard. The reason why what Falcon9 does is hard is the margins are so slim, to be able to get big payloads to high orbits, and still have fuel left to land from that speed and altitude, usually on a boat! What blue origin is doing is vastly simpler.
- Retric 5y agoYes, going back to WWII many aircraft have been reusable rockets. In 1963 the reusable X-15 broke the same 330,000f (100km) barrier at 353,200 ft using a nearly identical approach, 3 aircraft 199 flights, zero crashes. Blue Origin only nominally beat that at 367,490 ft, but was optimized for altitude rather than extreme speeds of the X-15 @ Mach 6.7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15 Blue Origin is an awesome amusement park ride, but not particularly interesting in terms of space exploration. Air launched anti satellite weapons for example are actually the most common approach. The main issue with air launching is scaling problems as you need to support the weight in multiple directions.
- m4rtink 5y agoSadly there were X-15 crashes: "On 15 November 1967, U.S. Air Force test pilot Major Michael J. Adams was killed during X-15 Flight 191 when X-15-3, AF Ser. No. 56-6672, entered a hypersonic spin while descending, then oscillated violently as aerodynamic forces increased after re-entry."