Return of a falcon9 stage fails

[burkhard]

(12-11-2018 10:58 AM)EdS2 Wrote:  Agreed, it would be good to spend some quality time with rocket scientists. Fortunately, you don't need to, because there are lots of resources out there.

Harumph.... I'd prefer to spend time with the engineers as these are questions of engineering, not science, but I get your point.

Lots of good links you sent with some pretty detailed answers. Thanks for sending those. Among the more interesting points was that they retain only 10% of the fuel for landing, which perhaps isn't too bad. 48,000 kg seems like a big number, but it does need some perspective.

I like the commercialization of the launch vehicles as it enables varied ideas to compete for the best solution. Maybe SpaceX has the future paradigm here which everyone else will ultimately follow. Or maybe it will get abandoned. Remember in the early days of the "innovative reusable" shuttle when NASA tried to tell people they would launch every couple of weeks and chances of a catastrophic shuttle mission failure were on the order of 1:10,000? Time showed catastrophic failures were more like 1:75, but we were locked into that design for decades. Having multiple players in the mix enables the best ideas to shake out. We'll see what works and there will be lots of learning in the process.

In the interim, I enjoy watching them land (especially that pair in unison some months back... stunning). But even if they don't land successfully, it's good to see them fail spectacularly right under the cameras at a landing site, rather than far out at sea, wherever an unguided parachute might take them. That alone is a good "feature". :-)