Falcon 9 First Stage Reentry Footage from Chase Plane

[bananas]

Falcon 9 First Stage Reentry Footage from Plane
SpaceX
Published on Aug 14, 2014

Following the successful launch of six ORBCOMM satellites, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage reentered Earth’s atmosphere and soft landed in the Atlantic Ocean. This footage is from a chase plane filming the decent of the first stage back to earth.

Towards the end of the video, the camera operator attempted to zoom in and unfortunately lost sight of the stage and was unable to capture the tip over into the water.

This was the July 14 launch, a month ago.

[Hoppy]

1. Why is this important? (Not scarcasm)

[hunter]

2. This is a reusable first stage booster.

When all the kinks are worked out it will be able to return to earth, landing softly upright on legs for reuse, just like so many science fiction stories.

This test landing was in the ocean, in case something went wrong.

In future tests it will land on the deck of a barge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Falcon_9_booster_post-mission,_controlled-descent,_test_program#Falcon_9_booster_post-mission.2C_controlled-descent_tests

[bananas]

4. Reusable rockets will reduce launch costs tremendously.

Airplane tickets would cost a lot more if the airplane were thrown away after the first flight.
That's what we do with rockets.

Fuel is less than 1% of launch costs, if we can fly the rocket back to the launch pad and refuel it like we do with airplanes, launch costs will go way down.

Musk wants to reduce launch costs enough that thousands of people can go to Mars.
He's working up to that step by step, using commercial satellite launches and ISS resupply missions to develop reusable rockets.

This will also make it much cheaper to launch satellites into earth orbit, reducing the costs for communication satellites, imaging satellites, etc.

[PFunk]

3. Faster turn-around times (see mangled explanation below)

Normally spacecraft have long turn-around times due to having to pick up and transport the craft to an assembly/repair/refueling area miles away from the launch site. That adding on the fact most current spacecraft are one use only. This tends to get very expensive very quickly.

If the craft can take of and land in/near the same place and is reusable (well most of it anyway) then the time it takes to repair and refuel is lessened. Due to having much, if not all of the assembly/repair/refueling/operation area near and/or at the launch site Making it much more cost-effective (i.e. cheaper) to operate i.e launch/retrieve objects to and from orbit.

(Whew. Hope I explained it ok)