[HN Gopher] A helicopter will try to catch a rocket booster mid-air
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A helicopter will try to catch a rocket booster mid-air
Author : takiwatanga
Score : 55 points
Date : 2022-04-18 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| trhway wrote:
| Hard to not wonder about success of combining 2 least robust
| technologies. All the luck to them. Who knows where the true
| disruption happens.
| tantalor wrote:
| Wonder no more, this was proven to work over 60 years ago.
|
| > As long ago as 1960, the U.S. Air Force snagged a returning
| capsule from a mission called Discoverer 14
| bpodgursky wrote:
| That was a capsule; look at the size of this relative to the
| aircraft -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discoverer_14#/medi
| a/File:Fair...
|
| A first-stage booster is order(s?) of magnitude larger.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I suspect that this will only be a viable procedure until the
| inevitable accident that causes a helicopter crash, then it will
| be deemed too risky for regular use (unless the helicopter can be
| unmanned)
| trothamel wrote:
| Something very similar (capturing space capsules) was done
| regularly from the 1960s to the 1980s, so it's not like there
| isn't precedent for this.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| But that was in military context, with higher risk tolerance
| to loss of human life. (for getting intel, way more dangerous
| methods are applied all the time)
| gameswithgo wrote:
| samwillis wrote:
| While you are probably technically right, I think you are over
| estimating the risks involved. The booster will be under a
| parachute, travelling relatively slowly, and there will clearly
| be many safety precautions and features involved. They will
| certainly have a stringent check list before proceeding with
| the attempt as well as some sort of fail safe cutting of the
| lies if something goes wrong.
|
| I would expect the chance of a serious accident to be very low.
|
| Also keep in mind these sort of mid air captures were well
| practiced by the US during the Cold War to capture returning
| photographic film from spy satellites. Although that was with
| airplanes not helicopters. A variation of it is actually shown
| at the end of James Bond Thunderball where he and the girl are
| rescued from a life raft via a balloon and capturing plane.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Low as it may be, it seems like an unreasonable risk, given
| the recent advancements in pilotless (and remotely piloted)
| aircraft.
| Someone wrote:
| I can't find its empty weight online easily, but this booster
| is quite a bit heavier than these film canisters were. I
| would be concerned about the impact catching it would have on
| the helicopter.
|
| I guess the hook they use for catching it must be hanging
| from a somewhat line that deforms on impact, becoming longer
| while absorbing lots of energy. You don't want this behaving
| like a heavy bungee jumper under your helicopter.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Helicopters bring more risks than airplanes. Helicopters with
| external attachments are notoriously risky (for aviation
| standards). Helicopters with external attachments that bring
| momentum independently of the main vessel are the kind of
| thing that looks way too risky.
|
| An airplane would probably cope much better. And even then,
| the fact that the military do something is not a good reason
| to expect it to be viable for civilian use. Military
| applications tend to accept much more risks.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >An airplane would probably cope much better.
|
| LOL. Yeah sure, so the plan is to have something traveling
| at 800kph somehow intercept a falling rocket stage,
| catching it in a web or whatever and start dragging it
| along and somehow land safely afterwards?
|
| Thanks man, you made my day :D
| mulmen wrote:
| The first mid-air recovery of CORONA spy satellite film
| canisters by a C-119 Flying Boxcar fixed-wing aircraft
| was performed in 1960. This is a well understood
| capability.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discoverer_14
| tapland wrote:
| Yes. It's not a new thing.
|
| The Wikipedia article even has pictures for you
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-air_retrieval
|
| https://xkcd.com/1053/
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| C-130s (like the planes that were used for retrieving
| objects dropped from satellites) are fine flying at
| 200kph, no need to max out their speed.
| refulgentis wrote:
| To their point, I'm not sure how well a carefully
| controlled slow descent and catch interplays with an
| object that can never be in place, in fact, it needs to
| be at 200 kph. Sounds much less safe.
| mulmen wrote:
| It works great. This story isn't notable for the recovery
| method. It is notable because of what is being recovered
| (a reusable rocket booster).
| Someone wrote:
| The variation is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-
| air_recovery...
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Which also plays a major role in Metal Gear Solid V (and
| MGS: Peacewalker)
| ortusdux wrote:
| I have friends in forestry, and their industry routinely uses
| helicopters, despite the risk, for a much lower ROI. Below are
| some videos of a christmas tree farm and a remote logging
| operation. I can't imagine that what rocket lab is attempting
| will be anything short of 10-100x safer.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08K_aEajzNA
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kin7cxnyM1M
| ISL wrote:
| Power-line work on live transmission lines always seems
| incredibly bonkers.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPNK7bc2qvM
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YmFHAFYwmY
|
| Let's fly a massive chainsaw beside a powerline. That'll be
| safe:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfz1YrpMbBg
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I could be wrong, but I though SpaceX catches its entire rocket
| (all stages) now with rafts/boats, doesn't it? What does this add
| over that already-implemented system?
|
| Wouldn't blimps be a far better tech to keep the net aloft?
| mulmen wrote:
| > I could be wrong, but I though SpaceX catches its entire
| rocket (all stages) now with rafts/boats, doesn't it?
|
| Only some Falcon 9 launches recover the first stage. For
| performance reasons sometimes the booster burns all fuel and
| crashes into the ocean. The second stage has never been
| recovered and no attempt has ever been made. Early concepts may
| have mentioned it but I don't believe the capability even
| exists on current Falcon 9s.
|
| Starship is an entirely different rocket which has never been
| launched from a booster nor recovered from orbit. That is the
| eventual goal but SpaceX is far from achieving it for anything
| approaching "all" launches.
| [deleted]
| robotresearcher wrote:
| For some mission profiles, SpaceX boosters land right back
| where they took off. Neat as can be.
|
| Here's a photo capturing launch and landing at Cape Canaveral
| in the same view.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Zones_1_and_2#/media/F...
| zardo wrote:
| Well, they return to a landing pad within a few hundred yards
| of where they took off. A difference worth pointing out
| because the plan for their next generation rocket is to
| actually return directly to the launch site.
| headcanon wrote:
| This is a different company (Rocket Labs) so they wouldn't get
| to reuse SpaceX's capture methods. This method appears like it
| would allow them to use commodity helicopters instead of having
| to develop and build their own drone ship tech, which has the
| additional hassle of having to maintain a boat and have a dock
| they can use to haul the rocket. I'm guessing this is for their
| "Small Launch" offering so the heli option makes sense at that
| weight.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Peter Beck gives great interviews on YouTube. About this, he
| said that helicopters are much, much cheaper compared to doing
| anything with boats. Rocket Lab's rocket is small enough that a
| helicopter can handle it, SpaceX's first stage is just too big.
|
| Blimps don't really exist, there's 25 of them in the world. You
| can't just go out and get a blimp and operate it the way you
| can a helicopter.
| grayrest wrote:
| > I though SpaceX catches its entire rocket (all stages) now
| with rafts/boats, doesn't it?
|
| SpaceX doesn't catch anything at the moment.
|
| The first stage lands itself either at the launch site or on
| the autonomous barge at sea.
|
| The fairings for the second stage get pulled out of the ocean
| by ship after they splash down. They used to try to catch these
| and that's what you're thinking of but they weren't that
| successful at it. I believe they redesigned the fairings to be
| okay spending a short amount of time in salt water and they
| seem to be having a pretty good success rate for this.
|
| The second stage of the Falcon burns up in the atmosphere.
| Their Starship project is attempting to fix this.
|
| The advantage of this approach for Rocket Lab is that they'll
| be able to re-use the first stage. At the moment SpaceX is the
| only one doing that and it's why they have such a commanding
| position in the market. I haven't seen an explanation for why
| (I'm sure it's out there, I just haven't seen it) but my guess
| is that the Electron is a much smaller rocket than the Falcon
| and they can't spare the lift capacity to propulsively land the
| vehicle.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "The second stage of the Falcon burns up in the atmosphere.
| Their Starship project is attempting to fix this."
|
| Just in case: Starship is a whole new rocket, not just an
| evolutionary upgrade of extant Falcon 9 to full reusability.
| AngryData wrote:
| Also there should be a weight/fuel reduction for not having
| to hold enough fuel to land itself and every bit counts.
| Along with not having to worry about igniting/firing your
| rocket engines a second time in a flight which is reduced
| complexity and also allows for solid booster recovery.
| raphaelj wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| Reusable SpaceX rockets have 30% small payload compared to
| non-reusable ones, as they have to carry extra fuel for
| landing.
|
| Catching the rocket instead of landing it could be
| significantly more efficient as you wouldn't have to carry
| much more weight except for the parachute.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Blimps and dirigibles are the solution for sure. Love those
| things on principle.
| rst wrote:
| It means the rocket doesn't have to reserve fuel for a landing
| burn, and has more leeway in how it positions itself after re-
| entry, since the helicopter can move at least a bit to
| intercept. (NB SpaceX Falcon 9 boosters are too large to be
| snagged in midair by any extant helicopter -- and conversely,
| RocketLab has already announced that they'll be attempting
| SpaceX-style propulsive landing for their upcoming, much larger
| Neutron rocket.)
| _moof wrote:
| They don't recover stage two. That's a much different problem
| from recovering stage one, which has a ballistic trajectory;
| stage two goes into orbit.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Maybe they're afraid of Blue Origin? BO has a patent that
| covers "Sea landing of space launch vehicles and associated
| systems and methods"[0].
|
| Of course, BO sued SpaceX and lost, so I'm not sure that they
| could win against Rocket Labs.
|
| [0]https://patents.google.com/patent/US8678321B2/en
| frederikvs wrote:
| SpaceX's first stage lands itself, either on a droneship or on
| a landing pad near the launch site. The payload fairings splash
| down in the ocean, and get fished up for reuse. The second
| stage is not recovered.
|
| Rocket lab just has a different approach to the same problem.
| mbostleman wrote:
| Not with me in it.
| sslayer wrote:
| Has nobody thought to slap a set of retractable wings on them,
| and turn them into remote controlled gliders?
| gameswithgo wrote:
| imtringued wrote:
| That's completely over-engineered. You just need inflatable
| floats and then the helicopter can pick the booster up within
| minutes to prevent salt water corrosion.
| Someone wrote:
| "The first stage burns out after the first 70 km". There's very
| little atmosphere there, so it would effectively free fall for
| a while first, and then would have to start gliding.
|
| You can't rapidly get from a fast free fall (almost vertical)
| to gliding (almost horizontal), or your wings will break of.
| That means you either need something to rapidly (but not too
| rapidly) decrease vertical speed, or you need lots of height to
| make a slow turn (this thing will be falling at thousands of
| km/hour before it reaches denser atmosphere). I guess "lots of
| height" is a bit more than 70km for realistically strong wings.
|
| So, you need something to decrease vertical speed. A parachute
| is the best solution we have for that. If you have that, why
| add wings, too?
|
| If you launch to orbit, there is a gliding solution that will
| work: wait for atmospheric drag to slowly bring the booster
| down to denser atmosphere, but these boosters don't get into
| orbit, and even if they did, it would take way too long.
| avmich wrote:
| > I guess "lots of height" is a bit more than 70km for
| realistically strong wings.
|
| A drop test of Dream Chaser prototype was done a few years
| ago from a helicopter, definitely not 70 km of altitude. The
| prototype successfully landed onto a landing strip.
| Someone wrote:
| I maybe mistaken, but I don't see how that's relevant.
| Dream chaser is designed to return from orbit. These
| boosters won't reach anything like orbit, and will have
| insufficient horizontal speed to start gliding.
|
| Also, if you want to glide these boosters to earth, the
| challenge is to get them into more dense atmosphere with a
| low vertical speed. Once you're there, it's 'easy'.
|
| A test dropping them from a helicopter doesn't test the
| ability to do that at all; it tests the ability to land
| after you've done that.
| graupel wrote:
| Many years ago I was at Dugway Proving Ground when NASA was
| supposed to catch the Genesis Space Probe under parachute with
| "hollywood stunt pilots" flying A-Star helicopters with long
| probes mounted on the front, to hook the parachute in mid-air.
|
| It all would have worked out swimmingly if the parachute on the
| Genesis would have opened, but an installation error caused it
| not to and for the probe to smash into the ground, leaving some
| very confused and disappointed helicopter pilots, among others.
|
| Space is hard.
| aasarava wrote:
| Hey, I was there, too! It was a long way to go to end up
| watching the catch attempt on monitors in a hangar.
|
| If I remember correctly, the problem was that the deceleration
| sensors were drawn upside down.
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