Monday, August 29, 2011

Reusable Rockets, Part 5, I think

That's amusing.  I don't even know how many of these posts I have.  No matter.  This is just for kicks.  Not like I am actually going to make money off this, you know.

Anyway, the last post, ( I think), I mentioned that you could use inflatable wings.  But what if you don't want to do that, or if it is impractical?  Now that could be a problem, because the Falcon 9 doesn't have enough capacity to add a lot of hardware.  Hardware weighs a lot and that is penalized very heavily when you are talking about getting to space.  So, that leads me to the next brainstorm.  Yuk, yuk.

You see, SpaceX has come out with the idea of the Falcon 9 Heavy.   So, the idea came to me, why not use its capacity for lift as capacity for all this needed hardware that will make it reusable and that quick turnaround?  You may want to save some fuel too, for maneuvering back toward the launch site.

But, you may protest, wouldn't this mean that you could carry less into orbit?  But of course it would.  On the other hand, with a fast turnaround, you could make the trip more often.  With a reusable and refittable flying rocket, you could have a goal of launching every week for each rocket.  If you had a fleet of these, you could conceivably launch every day!




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