The article says it will be tough to get the really fast airline model to work for the Falcon 9 booster.
So, here's an idea. Maybe it is a non-starter, or perhaps the SpaceX crew is already working on it. The idea is refuel the booster on the recovery ship, and then fly it back to base. In order to do this, you will need a much more capable ship, I would imagine. It would need a lot of fuel and oxygen so that the rocket could be refueled quickly.
Perhaps you would want to do a quick check out first before you start prepping the thing for a quick trip back to base. Since the drone ship is really slow, it ought to be faster to fly back than to ship it back, see?
The hopper never did a sideways trip, but it did do some altitude on its test flights. You could do a short "launch trajectory" type burn that would enable the trip back, with the procedures being similar to a land-based recovery.
You shouldn't need nearly as much fuel for a couple hundred mile trip. Plus the speeds would be far less. Perhaps you could calculate the delta v for a ballistic flight that would enable a couple hundred mile trip back to land.
SpaceX beats Falcon 9 recovery records after Starlink launch debut [photos] https://t.co/fT9fedNbqT— Greg Meadows (@BootsandOilBlog) June 5, 2019
No comments:
Post a Comment