How reusable rockets are paving the way for the next phase of space exploration – Mirror.co.uk

SpaceX has just announced another successful landing of one of its reusable rockets.

The Falcon 9 rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral at 9:38am local time on Sunday morning, and landed back in the same spot nine minutes later.

SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, shared a photo of the rocket touching down on Instagram, with the caption "Baby came back".

This was the third SpaceX rocket to be successfully landed on solid ground, and the first to do so in daylight. Five other successful landings have been made on sea-based platforms.

Meanwhile, Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos ,has successfully launched and landed four of its New Shepard reusable rockets.

But space companies have been sending rockets into space for decades, so why the sudden interest in bringing them back to Earth?

The main argument for developing reusable rockets is cost.

At the moment, sending a rocket to the International Space Station costs over $60 million (48 million) - and each rocket can only be used once.

Bezos has compared this to using a Boeing 747 to fly across the country once and then throwing the plane away.

Musk claims that recycling a rocket over and over and learning to fly it like a plane could reduce the cost of access to space "by as much as a factor of a hundred".

This is because the only cost per launch would be a few replacement parts and about $200,000 for rocket fuel.

For Bezos, developing reusable rockets is about making space tourism a reality.

The idea is to take paying customers on joyrides to the edge of space, where they can experience zero gravity for a few minutes, before returning safely to Earth.

It's a slightly different approach to Richard Branson, whose spaceflight company Virgin Galactic is also developing commercial spacecraft with the aim of providing suborbital flights to space tourists.

Virgin Galactic's space tourism project was dealt a major blow after an in-air explosion killed one of the company's pilots on a test flight in 2014.

However, the company has since unveiled a new spacecraft called SpaceShipTwo, which looks more like an aeroplane than a rocket.

Rather than launching vertically, the spacecraft is carried to its launch altitude by a jet-powered cargo aircraft, before being released to fly on into the upper atmosphere powered by its rocket engine.

It then glides back to Earth and performs a conventional runway landing.

As well as tourism, reducing the cost of space travel could make it possible for scientists to conduct experiments outside the Earth's atsmosphere.

Blue Origin is already working with the University of Central Florida to build experiments for flight aboard the commercial space company's new spacecraft.

Physics Professor Joshua Colwell and his team are working on the Microgravity Experiment on Dust Environments in Astrophysics project, which aims to shed light on the process by which space dust builds up to form planets.

"The UCF team is tackling deep questions about the early solar system and asteroids, questions that simply cant be answered back on Earth," said Dr. Erika Wagner, Blue Origin head of payload programs.

Further afield, reusable rockets can massively reduce the cost of operating in space.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets are already being used to deliver supplies to the International Space Station and launch satellites for paying customers.

Blue Origin also recently unveiled a reusable rocket called New Glenn, which is designed to launch commercial satellites.

Bezos has outlined a madcap plan to save the planet from a global energy crisis by moving heavy industries off the Earth entirely, and building giant factories and solar farms in space.

"Energy is limited here. In at least a few hundred years ... all of our heavy industry will be moved off-planet," Bezos said.

"Our vision is millions of people living and working in space."

Ultimately, the hope is that reusable rockets will make it possible for humans to explore deep space, and colonise other planets.

SpaceX recently unveiled a design for its Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) - a system that involves using reusable rockets to propel spaceships filled with hundreds of passengers to Mars.

Musk claims that each of these rockets will be reused up to 1,000 times. After taking off and delivering the spaceship into orbit, the rocket will return to Earth, where it will land safely.

It will then be fitted with a fuelling tank, before flying back into space to fuel the spaceship for its trip to Mars. The rocket will then land a second time.

By making the rocket reusable instead of discarding it after every launch, Musk said SpaceX hopes to some day make the cost of going to Mars about the same as buying a house.

He envisions 1,000 passenger ships flying en masse to the red planet within the next century, with one million people living on Mars by the mid-2060s.

Musk claims the system could even be used to explore further afield, allowing humans to travel as far as the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto.

"I think Earth will be a good place for a long time, but the probable lifespan of human civilisation will be much greater if we're a multiplanetary species," he said.

"This system really gives you freedom to go anywhere you want in the greater solar system."

poll loading

YES NO

Read more from the original source:

How reusable rockets are paving the way for the next phase of space exploration - Mirror.co.uk