This will be a historic moment if the recovery succeeds, ushering in a new era of space travel due to the massively reduced operating costs of recoverable engines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4
In this video, the copter is actually HOVERING ABOVE the rocket as the rocket descends back down to the launchpad. The only time I've ever seen something like that before was Hollywood (Apollo 13, and then when the footage was re-used in Austin Powers 2).
"Last known state for rocket boost stage is 360 m/s, Mach 1.1, 8.5 km altitude and roll rate close to zero (v important!)"
So it appears it may be a failure, we'll find out soon what went wrong this time. More from Elon regarding what success would be, telemetry wise:
"Rocket boost stage reaching 0 m/s in one piece :) Will know soon. Odds not high." [1]
Regardless, they've demonstrated that the landing-leg module can survive the stresses of liftoff and fully powered flight, particularly at Max Q. This is quite an achievement, and vital for future tests.
Ideally, you'd use something like a Predator or Reaper with long endurance and stabilized optics. At $4MM per drone (new), that's not outside the realm of possibility.
Last known state for rocket boost stage is 360 m/s,
Mach 1.1, 8.5 km altitude and roll rate close to zero
(v important!)
This rocket was only doing 360 m/s, but importantly, wasn't rolling at all -- Their last 'test' failed when the rocket started rolling at a very high rate of speed and they lost engine power.
Musk was then asked:
if anything could go better, what would it be?
Rocket boost stage reaching 0 m/s in one piece :)
Will know soon. Odds not high.
"Data upload from tracking plane shows landing in Atlantic was good! Several boats enroute through heavy seas."
Congrats to the SpaceX team if this is the case. I've been glued to my laptop since the launch. I can finally say we've made a significant breakthrough in aerospace during my lifetime.
The last time a breakthrough of this magnitude occurred was during the Apollo program.
1. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/457307742495993856
UPDATE: Further confirmation.
"Flight computers continued transmitting for 8 seconds after reaching the water. Stopped when booster went horizontal."
It appears that we've witnessed history today ladies and gentlemen.
I was probably unnecessarily optimistic, but I'm so glad they are making this much progress so quickly!
The space shuttle did have recoverable boosters but the refurbishing process offered much less cost savings.
I believe no other rockets provide for booster recovery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_reusable_launch_system_d...
1. The shuttle itself - this needed extensive maintenance work done to it after each flight.
2. The big orange fuel tank - this couldn't be reused
3. The solid rocket boosters on either side - these had to be completely rebuilt after they splashed down in the ocean (it is easier to splash them down in the ocean than the Falcon 9 first stage, as they separate at a lover altitude).
Overall this didn't save much on costs, with the average cost of a flight (inclusive of development costs) being about US$1.5 billion.
Including complete rebuilds for the three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs), they were I gather somewhat needlessly too high performance/sports car types of devices.
In general, the Space Shuttle design was twisted by various unnecessary requirements (e.g. while the Air Force didn't want it, it could originally do a single polar orbit mission, which required extreme heat shield technology to land back at the same location while the earth turned underneath it. This was later mitigated by replacing a lot of those tiles with a ... glass fiber mat???), and to minimize development costs. Solid fuel booster you can't turn off were formerly considered to be unacceptably dangerous for manned missions, but they were the cheapest to develop.
Operating costs? Well, NASA post-Apollo makes the most sense if you view it as a public works project.... Low launch rates, especially post-Challenger after more people realized what an abomination it was, plus a huge fixed work force made it very expensive to operate.