Early in SpaceX re-usability journey they tried using parachutes with the F1 and F9 and they didn't get intact hardware back. The stage was breaking up. If you look at the F9 booster landings you will see a re-entry burn being performed before the final landing burn. This appears to be to limit max aerodynamic stress on the vehicle as it re-enters the thicker parts of the Earth's atmosphere.
They talk about the wall in the video. At enough of a remove, it's what others have described here - the heat and other loads on the vehicle falling from space back down to earth. They're enough on their own that with no intervention, they result in the rocket breaking up. He's got a way better description of just how hard it is in the video (worth watching). He also talks in the video about why they aren't doing propulsive control / descent. His observation about catching the rocket with a helicopter - that's EASILY the easiest part of the whole shebang. My own interpretation. Think of falling into the atmosphere from space the same way you think of (or have heard) falling into water from far enough up. If you're far enough above the surface of a body of water and jump into it, it's about the same as jumping onto concrete. Same thing with the atmosphere, jumping into it from space.
Huh. Would be interesting to hear the real underlying reason Sequoia pulled out. Normally VCs are a little more sophisticated than that. The story reads that Lockheed will end up owning Vector due to the secured loan and Sequoia and other investors will get nothing. Normally a VC would try to fob the company off onto another investor if it thought it was going south. They don't usually walk away, torpedoing the company unless they really thought it was a dead loss. OTOH, maybe that's what Sequoia tried to do (sell off assets and/or do some creative financing like a severe down round) and that was the disagreement with the CEO. Sequoia might have been at an impasse with the CEO and said, "fine, good luck raising more money...". As CEO, you always have to remember the Golden rule... ...he who has the Gold, rules.
Tee-ball dogpile aside, while our populist administration certainly isn't the only factor here, we can't ignore the fact that we're helping sow the seeds of Jai-nuh's growing space industry. China's space contractor plans more than 40 launches in 2020 - SpaceNews.com Long March, Soyuz and Falcon rockets topped 2019’s launch leaderboard – Spaceflight Now
Part slow news cycle, part canary: Its not easy to do Space. Smallsat industry faces challenges to growth - SpaceNews.com
Interesting developments for ILS. 1. Khrunichev is working on a 5m fairing for Proton, which is a Good Thing as 5m is obviously the industry standard and will be for some time. 2. ILS is working with Glavkosmos to bring Soyuz onboard, ostensibly using Russian sites and, assuming the corrupt entities within Russia and Kazakhstan can come to some corrupt agreement, Baikonur. That's an interesting development as Arianespace of course launches Soyuz from Kourou. Competition for the same vehicle will definitely drive down prices which is generally good, but as we saw with Proton early in the decade sometimes you get what you pay for... 3. ILS's new prez comes from ULA, so hopefully that experience [of dealing with both B and LM] will be a foundation for her success managing the various Russian/Ukrainian players. Complicating matters, Glavkosmos is basically the service arm of Roscosmos (who are basically the top of the Space food chain in Russia, and are kind of the Russian NASA) are also involved with Soyuz activities at CSG. ILS hires new president, gets approval to market Soyuz - SpaceNews.com
I've seen this ad a few times on spacenews--just wanted to make sure everyone knows they can sleep well tonight. Thanks to Northrop Grumman, launchers have become both affordable and reliable. (TBD on when Omega will actually fly)
What a lame piece of marketing. I would hope that no one in the aerospace industry could be deceived by such nonsense. Though maybe it is targeted at Congresspeople who don’t know anything about anything...
Bit of a bummer for Astra, but their cultural and technical foundation is pretty solid so this isn't really too much of a setback. Their [public] goal is hundreds of launches a year at ~$1M, which is pretty compelling and should fill an important void that's being left by the big launchers. Astra rocket damaged in pre-launch tests - SpaceNews.com
I suppose this is completely inappropriate in context of this thread, but in nobody's-surprised-news, Bigelow has finally shut down. I feel terrible for the folks that work there, but have no sympathy for the kook behind the wheel. Bigelow Aerospace lays off entire workforce - SpaceNews.com
In the race to build the world's tallest water tower, it seems like Blue is winning. At Cape Canaveral, Blue Origin's water tower is one of the tallest in the world
After 20 years, many billions, no orbital launches later, B.O. finally holds the record for world's tallest water tower, 351 feet.... Maybe. Don't know how much it counts, but last year a competitor flew a water tower that could have danced on the head of Jeff's shiny new toy.