DailyDirt: More Economical Ways Into Space

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Mon, Dec 29th 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The affordability of putting things into space is very gradually getting better all the time, and someday cheap launches will enable some pretty cool stuff. Rockets are still expensive (and dangerous), but there's more competition than ever before -- and the prices are coming down. Here are just a few links on cheaper ways to get off our planet.

The trajectory that most people think of for getting to Mars is the Hohmann transfer approach -- where you aim your rocket at where the planet is going to be and you have limited windows of time for optimal launching. A ballistic capture approach could be cheaper by aiming a rocket in front of Mars and waiting for the planet to catch up (avoiding the Hohmann method's retrorockets to slow down upon approach). It's a slower trip, but it could be practical for unmanned payloads and re-supply missions to the red planet someday. [url]
SpaceX is almost ready to test its reusable rockets. The plan is to launch a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to get an unmanned Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, then the rocket will safely (and softly) land on a floating platform so that it can be cheaply refurbished for another mission. [url]
The EU is trying to compete with lower cost launch systems with a next generation of Ariane rockets. A proposed Ariane 6 will have more flexible capabilities, including heavier payload capacity, and do so for (up to) 50% less in the costs. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: ariane 6, ballistic capture, hohmann transfer, international space station, iss, mars, re-usable rockets, retrorockets, rockets, space, space exploration
Companies: spacex

2 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 29 Dec 2014 @ 6:33pm

the SpaceX reusable rocket test is delayed til Jan 6, 2015.... we'll see how that actually works out next year.
http://space.io9.com/spacex-barge-landing-attempt-delayed-until-january-1673019850
[ link to this | view in thread ]
shadycrzy (profile), 30 Dec 2014 @ 11:08am

Fuel is too expensive. I don't think we'll see an opening up of space until we've developed our first space elevator. It's a massive one time investment that replaces the need for chemical combustion based rockets but it all but eliminates the fuel costs and it vastly improves the safety.
[ link to this | view in thread ]