SpaceX Falcon Heavy Hi All: On Friday, SpaceX achieved its first successful Falcon 9 landing on a drone recovery ship at sea. This was a crucial breakthrough as the company has now shown to the world that it can land its rockets on both land and a floating platform in the ocean. During the NASA SpaceX Post launch and recovery Press Conference, Elon stated it expects as much as one-quarter of its launches to incorporate sea based recovery in the future. Ocean landings aren't as complicated as that. SpaceX's drone ship can position itself in an ideal place to "catch" the vehicle on its more natural path back to Earth. That decreases the distance the rocket needs to travel, as well as the amount of fuel needed to maneuver the Falcon 9 for landing. The whole point of landing a recoverable rocket is that it saves tens of millions of dollars on each launch. Elon stated that the Falcon 9 costs $60 million yet can be refueled for another launch for $200,000 to $300,000. In addition, the recoverable rocket bodies were designed to be relaunched upwards of 100 times with the possibility of 1,000 times in the future. Elon mentioned that SpaceXs Falcon Heavy scheduled for launch later this year will have a thrust of 5 million lbf, just short of the Shuttle and Saturn 5s 7.5 million lbf thrust. The spec shows 4.69 million lbf which in turn would make it the most powerful rocket currently in use anywhere in the world. Why all of this now? While many may be watching NASCAR Sprint Cup, The Masters, or maybe even the Cubs schooling the Diamond Backs this afternoon, I was watching a replay of the NASA Space-X post launch and recovery Press Conference on the NASA channel. Programming is titled NASA X. I was never really impressed with Elon's speaking capabilities during the S, X and even some of the most recent 3 presentations. During this Press Conference however, he was on message and speaking intelligently about the technicalities of space flight and SpaceXs successful Falcon 9 launch and recovery. Elon Musk discussing the SpaceX Falcon 9 success on NASA TV. The Press Conference is being replayed so if you want to give up some Sunday Sports, you may find it worth 30-minutes of your time. Wayne
