Marcus House I know that your mods are in the description But I can't see the one I want. How do you make the space centre look like that also with dedicated space x landing pads?
I assume they will use inflatable heat shield as a drag chute as adding more hard point on the second stage cost a lot. The heat shield may have 2nd stage inflation for even more drag and a bit of buoyancy? Or maybe 2nd stage inflation it self is bouncy house?
@@arshawitoelar7675 he doesn't play it, he just knows it and recognises it as an awesome game. Guys like him have 0 free time to play games lol. All of that responsibility AND a family...
@@doceug3657 Not possible. Vacuum optimized engines, with their ultra low exhaust pressures, are not stable at sea level - you can't light the vaccum optimized engine in the 2nd stage to propulsively land. Besides, the upper stage is quite light when empty (well, it's actually insanely heavy for an upper stage, the same weight as the Saturn 5's 3rd stage, but in absolute terms it's not super heavy when empty), so parachutes are actually a really feasible way to bring it back.
9:20 that heatshield would be very expensive I guess so I would rather find a way to recover it. I have similar design for a reusable II stage except it uses 5m, non-inflatable and non-jettisonable heatshield and it simply lands on parachutes, upside down on that heatshield, somewhere near KSC.
Yes I suspect the parachutes would not have the same issue that mine here had. I fully expect that the heat shield would stay on (or at least be recovered) in real life.
Blue Origin Project Jarvis, seems to be trying similar method to recover their New Glenn second stage. Wonder if a bigger inflatable heat shield would help slowing and be stable on reentry, using parachutes to land.
The 1st stage has a very low cg when empty plus there is an autonomous capture/lock vehicle on the recovery barges that prevents tipping if it is deployed.
You mentioned jettisoning the heat shield in your simulation. I'm worried about what lawyers Florida man will contact after it smashes into his trailer. As you suggested, got to dump that heat shield in the Atlantic. Great sim Marcus !!!
Any mass for a recovery shield and recovery propellant would be subtracted from the payload capacity. Also, the vacuum nozzle is grossly "underthrottled" (maybe overthrottled I sometimes get them mixed up). Anyway, if you tried the suicide burn that the first stage does with the second stage the atmospheric pressure would push the exhaust stream away from the sides of the nozzle and damage the nozzle and possibly the entire second stage. This is why in production Starship will have a mix of sealevel and vacuum raptors.
That means it would have to go in nose first, which means that the parachutes would have to be at the other end. Maybe it’s doable. BUT why not use the remaining fuel for a final burn to buffer the landing and use extending legs like on the main booster stage to land nozzle down?
@@Crazy_Worlds That giant engine probably has too much thrust to do a propulsive landing. Even one of the falcon 9s engines at its lowest settings has too much thrust to hover.
Need to leave second stage rockets in space and reuse as working robot drones. Maybe collecting the space garbage or retrieving the fairings. Maybe combine to build a space-station.
Watching the upper stage recovery gives me a reason to actually want to pay attention to it. . . .Thus far, the first stage landings have always taken the cake, and the payloads have been relatively unimportant to me!! ;-)
I'm wondering if SpaceX has given any thought to in-air capture which had been done way back in the 50s in recovering photo film canisters from spy satellites. If they can get the second stage back (or fairings) to where they're floating down on parachutes they could possibly be captured by aircraft using trailing "sky hooks" and then hoisted into the cargo bay of the plane. That should be much easier than trying to dynamically position a recovery boat.
Just wondering if the engine bell would be prone to major damage when "landing". It also seems a shame to jettison the HIAD and not recover it and refurbish it as well. They probably aren't cheap. It will be interesting to see what SpaceX come up with. It may not make economic sense to recover the second stage if all this extra equipment is necessary to make it happen. Great video. Thanks Marcus.
I think that parachutes are normally deployed somewhat late for capsules and returning spacecraft to improve landing accuracy. It's because a spacecraft floating down very slowly for a long time is very susceptible to wind, which makes it a lot harder to predict the final landing site.
I recover my second stages all the time, since I always deorbit my second stage and using some fuel left slow down 1800 m/sand parachutes it’s easier to land then a first stage
Highly Innovative plan with a deployable heat shield for reentry, and parachute for recovering the stage 2. Great ideas to lower pay load costs. Space x is also the first to consistently recover stage 1 and redeploy them consistently. Space x makes the Hypothetic avd seemingly Impossible possible.
The upper stage can be recovered, if there is enough propellant left to slow it down A LOT. Potentially, it could enter the atmosphere at a very slow pace. Fire at Perigee and drop down.
The ocean has the advantage of being away from structures that could be damaged but for this landing I wonder if a land based approach is a better idea. What about a large net suspended between a handful of relatively tall towers, say 150ft tall or more, located in a relatively remote location but one with access via road? You could let out the net as the stage impacted it to reduce deceleration. Doing this on land means you wouldn't have to worry about salt water contamination, the difficulty in working in the open sea, or transporting the stage back to land.
The problem is that there will be very limited control to pinpoint a landing. Having a fast ship on the ocean that can move underneath as it descends would probably be the easiest.
For the first stage landings it looks like they have a landing precision of a handful of feet. It is an open question as to how much maneuverability they'll have on the second stage landings. For the net/towers idea you could put up a 200 foot diameter net to provide a larger target as well. I wonder if the maneuverability of a boat is helping all that much though given the trouble they've had catching the fairings, that's what got me thinking about the cost/logistics advantages of a ground based approach.
People argue about whether Elon meant an inflatable heat shield or a ballute ... I say why not both? Use a smaller inflatable heat shield than the one in this video in conjunction with a toroidal ballute that deploys out behind the engine. It would harness the best of both world's, with the only major drawback that I can think of being that it would be more complicated. I don't think it would be much heavier at all since both subsystems would be scaled down. It would definitely relieve the storage space issue by not having to pack all the reentry gear into one spot.
I think the CG during reentry would be unstable, the inflatable heat shield is on the wrong end. The engine bell can take the heat so I could be around it .
You know, Marcus, the most expensive part of the 2nd stage is the engine assembly. You have it landing engine down on dry land which will definitely destroy the bell and probably damage the rest of the engine beyond repair. Better try another type of landing or just not on land. I recommend a water landing. The tanks will be empty and the stage should float.
Have a ‘tug boat’ that recovers the 2nd stage from orbit, store it in a parking orbit with the others recovered near the ISS. When Starship gets orbital , a space walk to load the empties into an empty starship and bring them back for your deposit. Cake.
Yet another super video there mate, but I guess by now you're tired of me saying that all the time. I won't be surprised if one of these fine days you post a comment telling us Elon Musk has offered you a job at Space X.
5:21 yes you right its delta v increased because the second stage is lighter but about 6 seconds burn that wrong because the engine now created powerful thrust so if you full thrust the second stage will get a very high G force.
I think that this "natural flip" would be really catastrophic in real life. What I would really like you to try is deployable wings or fins. Heatshield gets deflated and then the whole thing glides its way down and either lands on a runway or stalls and deployes parachutes. Probably the second one. Landing on a runway would require some good wings and possibly an atmospheric engine
Rather than fight the aft cg due to the engine, put the inflatable drag device aft and keep it in place until parachute deployment. Make the chute a parafoil for steering to the bouncy house.
I personally don't think so. The BFR is a super heavy lift rocket with some 150,000kg to leo. Not everyone needs that much to LEO. I can see the Falcon Heavy being put to rest but not the Falcon 9
hopefully Elon will change it's mind until than. the falcon9s could be modified to be propelled by raptors. and having so many sats on 1 rocket, it would give me chills. Just think about the fact that the rockets are still susceptible for explosions. Imagine what woulded mean for a rocket with 20 sats or more to go kaboom.
SpaceX said they couldn't pull this off because the CG is placed in such a way that it wants to travel engine first. Just put the ballonet in the void space around the engine.
Nice, straight forward idea. However, if using parachutes the craft will have to make use of some sort of landing gear. There is now way to catch something like that with a boat without it being blown off target by cross winds.
Similar issue to catching the fairings really. There needs to be some pretty serious tech on the boat that can anticipate the landing location and keep adjusting accordingly. Really this would probably be easier to pinpoint due to its weight. The fairings blow all over the place.
Should be interesting to repack a parachute in a windstorm. I know it's not a parachute but the imagery works. If you already got rid of the covering, what keeps it from flapping in the wind? It must be undamaged to be used again.
You could use the lazcalc functions from KSlib for kOS during the ascent, it allows you to steer the rocket properly instead of having the second stage burning towards 90° east despite the inclination. Just read the documentation which will explain it a lot better than I do. It doesn't make a huge difference but it's a tiny bit more precise and efficient. Also, Kerbal Reusability Expansion has the nice looking Titanium grid fins
Since the beginning of the Apollo missions, I have wondered if each stage could be repurposed as part of a space station, refueling depots, or even attached satellites, instead of discarding them or even returning them to Earth? It seems to me that if this were possible, then whatever extra weight needed to make this feasible, wouldn't be wasted because the discarded stage would have continued use. 26'.6'' X 12' is a lot of space for all sorts of things. From water tanks to fuel, other cargo storage...
I started thinking what would you do with the engine. I would imagine some for moving whatever the module would be attached to or maybe even disconnecting them and returning a number of them at one time by a specialized StarShip. Maybe ferried to the Moon or Mars for future use.
What I do is use an inflatable heat shield on the front, and use that as a floatation device to land in the ocean. I put parachutes right by the engines to allow this.
Question wacked into the comments: Why not just dock like, say, 10 or 20 of these bad boys in an orbital station that can refurb the engines in orbit then land them all at once in a single special purpose lander? Cool video dawg.
I'd snag the second stage parachutes in flight with a big four-prop drone that can be computer-controlled and needs no pilot gear, oxygen or other human-rated flight stuff. I'd follow it down to reduce the tearing sheer on the 'chutes, catch them, and then slowly pull up before hitting the ground. Then I'd have the drone fly to the precise location of the recovery team. Since the flight would be short duration, I'd power it with a reusable electrical pack.
Curious if you think that SpaceX could employ their planned Starship re-entry system on an a Falcon 9 Heavy second stage? These "mini-starships" would be 100% re-usable like the boosters, would not require fairing recovery or maybe even sea retreival? Bonus would be a validation of the technique.
Park it in orbit in a large clump of upper stages and once the mass is big enough build a refuelling space station out of it. Nasa tested this and its viable and possible and extremely economical.
Feel like a chat? Come and visit my Discord!
discord.gg/dAMmbqj
Marcus House I know that your mods are in the description But I can't see the one I want. How do you make the space centre look like that also with dedicated space x landing pads?
Jake, this is the Omegas LandingPad mod.
thanks!
I assume they will use inflatable heat shield as a drag chute as adding more hard point on the second stage cost a lot. The heat shield may have 2nd stage inflation for even more drag and a bit of buoyancy? Or maybe 2nd stage inflation it self is bouncy house?
Marcus I live in Hawthorne and sometimes I pass Spacex it's there in Hawthorne.
I wonder how many guys at SpaceX play Kerbal Space Program.
Elon himself does, I’m pretty sure other do as well
@@spartan8705 Elon just sounds like a more and more fun person as time goes on
Right that is a good question.
@@spartan8705 Really?! Where can I find him saying that or something? This is exciting!
@@arshawitoelar7675 he doesn't play it, he just knows it and recognises it as an awesome game.
Guys like him have 0 free time to play games lol.
All of that responsibility AND a family...
I can't even get a rocket into orbit and you just landed both stages...
and in RSS !!!
Landing is hard i tried to land one of the boosters it tilted and fell off rip
Make a Falcon Heavy replica and download MechJeb 2.0 or whatever version it's on.
Welcome to my world
HaHa n00B! HaHahA
Wow that was cool. Now you have to recover the fairings too haha
LOL... Yea, sadly the fairing recovery isn't possible in KSP as far as I know. They just disappear as soon as they are out of view.
Marcus House Is there a mod that makes that not happen? Or you could try to make it a vessel after it separates so that doesnt happen?
Spacious354 That is what I thought, (attaching probes to the fairings) but maybe it doesn't work
Spacious354 It works!! I tried myself but is hard to control and slow them down. So i added RCS.
The Spot Nice one. Would try it myself but I'm not the best at ksp.
“And then land on a bouncy house”
I wish I could land on a bouncy house at suborbital speeds :(
I'd love to hear some more theories about how exactly the bouncy house thing would work.
Here’s one
fortune.com/2018/04/16/elon-musk-falcon9-bouncy-house/
8:50 "In real life they would just jettison the fuel" - 18 months later we can do the same in KSP now - you'll have to re-do the video hehe
Elon after seeing this: if you guys can’t replicate this, you’re all fired.
SpaceX Engineer: That’s KSP, not real-
Elon: you’re fired.
underrated
Engineer: sells secrets
I am sure Elon plays KSP, too - if no one is watching ^_^
Cave Johnson be like
Elon must see this!!!
Elon _musk_ see this
Ajaja, you said i, man!
no
he had considered this thing. however, he still undecided. adding a heatshield, will mean a lighter payload
I'm interested to hear about any other tactics that may allow the upper stage to be returned. There are a number of viable options out there I'm sure.
I can't tell what's more impressive! Getting to orbit and recovering all of it, or getting the mods to work!
I would mount the chutes on the back side of the stage, and use the heat shield as a kind of rubber boat, with that it can land in the sea.
CG would be high, near the engine bell, if it lands heat shield down, it won't be stable in the water.
Heat shield to get through the atmosphere, then carry on landing it just as they do with 1st stage?
@@doceug3657 Not possible. Vacuum optimized engines, with their ultra low exhaust pressures, are not stable at sea level - you can't light the vaccum optimized engine in the 2nd stage to propulsively land. Besides, the upper stage is quite light when empty (well, it's actually insanely heavy for an upper stage, the same weight as the Saturn 5's 3rd stage, but in absolute terms it's not super heavy when empty), so parachutes are actually a really feasible way to bring it back.
@@anonymousperson2110 saturn 5 3rd stage has a mass around 15 tons compared to f9 second stage 4 tons
@@doceug3657 A detachable skirt on the bell assembly should allow you to do that. No extra mass for a parachute system either.
Using a giant party balloon and landing on a bouncy house sounds like something that should be on a bucket list.
I wonder just how many people at SpaceX use KSP to come up with new crazy ideas... Does Elon Musk "dream" of KSP like we do?? lol
This guy really just flew a falcon 9 to orbit in rss/ro without smart A.S.S or even S.A.S
The Gundam series did this so well!
This raises a questions about masses of these bad boys
I've been doing this in my KSP for 2 years now.
Thanks. been wondering when this will happen. Nice to asee the rendering.
5:52 Lol yeah sure in his dreams even though they catched a FAIRING with a net
9:20 that heatshield would be very expensive I guess so I would rather find a way to recover it.
I have similar design for a reusable II stage except it uses 5m, non-inflatable and non-jettisonable heatshield and it simply lands on parachutes, upside down on that heatshield, somewhere near KSC.
winged Can the heat shield be used as some form of parachute like the Soviet Venera landers on Venus
Yes I suspect the parachutes would not have the same issue that mine here had. I fully expect that the heat shield would stay on (or at least be recovered) in real life.
Lets catch it with a boat.
what about a trailing ballute - like a storm anchor on a boat in the storm - long long rope - drop it into the thicker air and all . . . . .
I don't think SpaceX would jettison any parts of the rocket since their goal is to achieve 100% reusability. Pretty nice video tho!
Yes this is certainly true. I just needed to build something that would work with KSP.
I like trains?
I like turtles
Elon Musk in 2037, "next year, SpaceX will recover and reuse 100% of the fuel used in each launch"
Someone send it to Musk :D *Great vid!*
More like mask
Blue Origin Project Jarvis, seems to be trying similar method to recover their New Glenn second stage. Wonder if a bigger inflatable heat shield would help slowing and be stable on reentry, using parachutes to land.
and then a really big wave came.. and whoops .. we forgot to plan for waves..
The 1st stage has a very low cg when empty plus there is an autonomous capture/lock vehicle on the recovery barges that prevents tipping if it is deployed.
I thought about this in detail, and decided it was easier to change the laws of physics lol.
SpaceX is simply killing this new space race. I’m super excited to see what solutions they come up on the way to the red planet touchdown.
You mentioned jettisoning the heat shield in your simulation. I'm worried about what lawyers Florida man will contact after it smashes into his trailer. As you suggested, got to dump that heat shield in the Atlantic. Great sim Marcus !!!
Any mass for a recovery shield and recovery propellant would be subtracted from the payload capacity. Also, the vacuum nozzle is grossly "underthrottled" (maybe overthrottled I sometimes get them mixed up). Anyway, if you tried the suicide burn that the first stage does with the second stage the atmospheric pressure would push the exhaust stream away from the sides of the nozzle and damage the nozzle and possibly the entire second stage. This is why in production Starship will have a mix of sealevel and vacuum raptors.
i have Kerbal, and getting this kind of footage is a lot of work. watching is cool.
Why not use the inflatable heat shield as the “bouncy” landing pad.
That means it would have to go in nose first, which means that the parachutes would have to be at the other end. Maybe it’s doable. BUT why not use the remaining fuel for a final burn to buffer the landing and use extending legs like on the main booster stage to land nozzle down?
@@Crazy_Worlds That giant engine probably has too much thrust to do a propulsive landing. Even one of the falcon 9s engines at its lowest settings has too much thrust to hover.
Mark B You’re right. It would need to be a hybrid or have a second, smaller, atmosphere rated engine.
One problem that single engine is a vacuum engine it would not be able to slow down after the heat shield is thrown away
Need to leave second stage rockets in space and reuse as working robot drones. Maybe collecting the space garbage or retrieving the fairings. Maybe combine to build a space-station.
Watching this today on 1-10-2023 to imagine the progress it has made during the last 5 years, incredible.
Watching the upper stage recovery gives me a reason to actually want to pay attention to it. . . .Thus far, the first stage landings have always taken the cake, and the payloads have been relatively unimportant to me!! ;-)
I'm wondering if SpaceX has given any thought to in-air capture which had been done way back in the 50s in recovering photo film canisters from spy satellites. If they can get the second stage back (or fairings) to where they're floating down on parachutes they could possibly be captured by aircraft using trailing "sky hooks" and then hoisted into the cargo bay of the plane. That should be much easier than trying to dynamically position a recovery boat.
Just wondering if the engine bell would be prone to major damage when "landing". It also seems a shame to jettison the HIAD and not recover it and refurbish it as well. They probably aren't cheap. It will be interesting to see what SpaceX come up with. It may not make economic sense to recover the second stage if all this extra equipment is necessary to make it happen. Great video. Thanks Marcus.
Sweet...great landing...both of them :)
Have a good'n & be safe.
Thanks mate.
I think that parachutes are normally deployed somewhat late for capsules and returning spacecraft to improve landing accuracy. It's because a spacecraft floating down very slowly for a long time is very susceptible to wind, which makes it a lot harder to predict the final landing site.
If ALL goes as planned, it would be a small miracle - Best of Luck !!
I love the running commentary mate.
nice landing tho! i love reusability mod. I make all of my stages able to land in one piece its one of the things i like to do.
Another awesome video Marcus!
I recover my second stages all the time, since I always deorbit my second stage and using some fuel left slow down 1800 m/sand parachutes it’s easier to land then a first stage
Hey Marcus, nice editing job! I liked the PiP part, very well done.
You should hire Ozzyman to be your color commentator while you handle the play by play calls.
Great vid dude! Interesting stuff to consider @SpaceX haha
Thanks mate. If you happen to have Discord, feel free to pop in for a chat. Link is pinned into my comment at the top of the comment thread.
Marcus House would love to! I can't exactly find the discord server in the comments, mind providing me with a link pls?
Hmm. Should be pinned. Weird.
discord.gg/dAMmbqj
Highly Innovative plan with a deployable heat shield for reentry, and parachute for recovering the stage 2.
Great ideas to lower pay load costs.
Space x is also the first to consistently recover stage 1 and redeploy them consistently.
Space x makes the Hypothetic avd seemingly Impossible possible.
The upper stage can be recovered, if there is enough propellant left to slow it down A LOT. Potentially, it could enter the atmosphere at a very slow pace. Fire at Perigee and drop down.
"Small" 9 ton satellite. XD
That was quite something Marcus and suggest to me that you have spent just a teeny weeny bit of time mastering this skill set 😉
Incredible heat generation and dissipation, from 5 miles / second - will always be a reentry problem.
What does a heat analysis show?
Spacex could adapt a small landing legs with the stage 2 to give a dramatic landing and a complete recovery!
The ocean has the advantage of being away from structures that could be damaged but for this landing I wonder if a land based approach is a better idea. What about a large net suspended between a handful of relatively tall towers, say 150ft tall or more, located in a relatively remote location but one with access via road? You could let out the net as the stage impacted it to reduce deceleration. Doing this on land means you wouldn't have to worry about salt water contamination, the difficulty in working in the open sea, or transporting the stage back to land.
The problem is that there will be very limited control to pinpoint a landing. Having a fast ship on the ocean that can move underneath as it descends would probably be the easiest.
For the first stage landings it looks like they have a landing precision of a handful of feet. It is an open question as to how much maneuverability they'll have on the second stage landings. For the net/towers idea you could put up a 200 foot diameter net to provide a larger target as well. I wonder if the maneuverability of a boat is helping all that much though given the trouble they've had catching the fairings, that's what got me thinking about the cost/logistics advantages of a ground based approach.
People argue about whether Elon meant an inflatable heat shield or a ballute ... I say why not both? Use a smaller inflatable heat shield than the one in this video in conjunction with a toroidal ballute that deploys out behind the engine. It would harness the best of both world's, with the only major drawback that I can think of being that it would be more complicated. I don't think it would be much heavier at all since both subsystems would be scaled down. It would definitely relieve the storage space issue by not having to pack all the reentry gear into one spot.
Yes I think using both could be interesting.
The heat shield and the parachute can be one thing.
I think the CG during reentry would be unstable, the inflatable heat shield is on the wrong end. The engine bell can take the heat so I could be around it .
You know, Marcus, the most expensive part of the 2nd stage is the engine assembly. You have it landing engine down on dry land which will definitely destroy the bell and probably damage the rest of the engine beyond repair. Better try another type of landing or just not on land. I recommend a water landing. The tanks will be empty and the stage should float.
we need elon play ksp live
edit : what if space-x accidently landed at north korea
Have a ‘tug boat’ that recovers the 2nd stage from orbit, store it in a parking orbit with the others recovered near the ISS. When Starship gets orbital , a space walk to load the empties into an empty starship and bring them back for your deposit. Cake.
Yet another super video there mate, but I guess by now you're tired of me saying that all the time. I won't be surprised if one of these fine days you post a comment telling us Elon Musk has offered you a job at Space X.
5:21 yes you right its delta v increased because the second stage is lighter but about 6 seconds burn that wrong because the engine now created powerful thrust so if you full thrust the second stage will get a very high G force.
Nice landing on the bouncy house
True reusability is recovering everything, I imagine the second stage is more valuable than the first.
I think that this "natural flip" would be really catastrophic in real life. What I would really like you to try is deployable wings or fins. Heatshield gets deflated and then the whole thing glides its way down and either lands on a runway or stalls and deployes parachutes. Probably the second one. Landing on a runway would require some good wings and possibly an atmospheric engine
Rather than fight the aft cg due to the engine, put the inflatable drag device aft and keep it in place until parachute deployment. Make the chute a parafoil for steering to the bouncy house.
*Happy Space X sounds*
once the BFR is in place, falcons will be gradually ditched.
True!
I personally don't think so. The BFR is a super heavy lift rocket with some 150,000kg to leo. Not everyone needs that much to LEO. I can see the Falcon Heavy being put to rest but not the Falcon 9
+Andrew. Elon plans to stack multiple payloads inside the fairings and release them in multiple specific orbits.
Planning doesn't mean it will. It will be a sad day when the Falcon 9 touches down for the last time
hopefully Elon will change it's mind until than. the falcon9s could be modified to be propelled by raptors. and having so many sats on 1 rocket, it would give me chills. Just think about the fact that the rockets are still susceptible for explosions. Imagine what woulded mean for a rocket with 20 sats or more to go kaboom.
Wow I'm impressed good job marcus :D
keep up the great videos. much appreciated.
Wow, this was awesome! Thanks!
I can bet that the second stage of the falcon 9 will return inside the hood where the cargo goes.
Simulate in the KSP!
I think bounce house is like the shock absorbing balloons in curiosity mission
Brilliant Marcus thank you for all your work big fan in the UK go SpaceX 🇬🇧👌🏼
Great video. Very informative - and fun to watch. Also a lot to learn from your comments. Thanks. BR, Per (Bornholm, Denmark)
Very nice work as usual !
It's always incredible how SpaceX can land a rocket traveling thousands of mph on a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean.
And wow ! The barge landing video did not cut out. 🤣
SpaceX said they couldn't pull this off because the CG is placed in such a way that it wants to travel engine first. Just put the ballonet in the void space around the engine.
Nice, straight forward idea. However, if using parachutes the craft will have to make use of some sort of landing gear. There is now way to catch something like that with a boat without it being blown off target by cross winds.
Similar issue to catching the fairings really. There needs to be some pretty serious tech on the boat that can anticipate the landing location and keep adjusting accordingly. Really this would probably be easier to pinpoint due to its weight. The fairings blow all over the place.
have you noticed that the link of this video is ending with 4k
if you didn't understand just look at the link of the video
Should be interesting to repack a parachute in a windstorm. I know it's not a parachute but the imagery works. If you already got rid of the covering, what keeps it from flapping in the wind? It must be undamaged to be used again.
Flapper valves on the heat shield would allow it to become a para-glider.
You could use the lazcalc functions from KSlib for kOS during the ascent, it allows you to steer the rocket properly instead of having the second stage burning towards 90° east despite the inclination. Just read the documentation which will explain it a lot better than I do. It doesn't make a huge difference but it's a tiny bit more precise and efficient.
Also, Kerbal Reusability Expansion has the nice looking Titanium grid fins
Well done cobber. Very enjoyable. Watching this vid while making sausage rolls and enjoying coopers sparkling lemonade ( ale ).
cheers. Frank
Since the beginning of the Apollo missions, I have wondered if each stage could be repurposed as part of a space station, refueling depots, or even attached satellites, instead of discarding them or even returning them to Earth? It seems to me that if this were possible, then whatever extra weight needed to make this feasible, wouldn't be wasted because the discarded stage would have continued use. 26'.6'' X 12' is a lot of space for all sorts of things. From water tanks to fuel, other cargo storage...
I started thinking what would you do with the engine. I would imagine some for moving whatever the module would be attached to or maybe even disconnecting them and returning a number of them at one time by a specialized StarShip. Maybe ferried to the Moon or Mars for future use.
What I do is use an inflatable heat shield on the front, and use that as a floatation device to land in the ocean. I put parachutes right by the engines to allow this.
Hmm... Think it would probably tip over after splashdown. I'd need to check that. Interesting Idea.
Marcus House Works for me.
Question wacked into the comments: Why not just dock like, say, 10 or 20 of these bad boys in an orbital station that can refurb the engines in orbit then land them all at once in a single special purpose lander? Cool video dawg.
Many claim they can do better than SpaceX blindfolded but none have tried to land a second stage!!
I'd snag the second stage parachutes in flight with a big four-prop drone that can be computer-controlled and needs no pilot gear, oxygen or other human-rated flight stuff.
I'd follow it down to reduce the tearing sheer on the 'chutes, catch them, and then slowly pull up before hitting the ground.
Then I'd have the drone fly to the precise location of the recovery team.
Since the flight would be short duration, I'd power it with a reusable electrical pack.
Curious if you think that SpaceX could employ their planned Starship re-entry system on an a Falcon 9 Heavy second stage? These "mini-starships" would be 100% re-usable like the boosters, would not require fairing recovery or maybe even sea retreival? Bonus would be a validation of the technique.
That inflatable heat shield could double up as a boat
SpaceX landing an upper stage rocket and landing on a bouncy house using a giant party baloon (1944 Colorized.)
Excellent. Thanks so much Marcus. I really appreciate your video.
Park it in orbit in a large clump of upper stages and once the mass is big enough build a refuelling space station out of it. Nasa tested this and its viable and possible and extremely economical.
at 2:43 y'all flew that beautiful sim in down there bullseye
with a joystick... right?
beautiful Kerbal sim
I'd love to see if Robert Zubrin's idea of a mini-Starship as a Falcon 9 upper stage would work!
Fantastic video! Very, very impressive! Thanks.
That is awesome, you should try catching the fairings as well
You have 42K! COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT
Whoah!
nice video btw, you're doing great with the F9 RSS / RO stuff
Very cool. should be interesting to see if SpaceX pulls this off. :)