![DC-XA first landing](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/DC-XA_first_landing.jpg)
Vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) is a form of
takeoff and landing
Aircraft can have different ways to take off and land. Conventional airplanes accelerate along the ground until sufficient lift is generated for takeoff, and reverse the process to land. Some airplanes can take off at low speed, this being a short ...
for rockets. Multiple VTVL craft have flown. The most widely known and commercially successful VTVL rocket is SpaceX's
Falcon 9
Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX.
The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and payl ...
first stage.
VTVL technologies were developed substantially with small rockets after 2000, in part due to
incentive prize competition
An inducement prize contest (IPC) is a competition that awards a cash prize for the accomplishment of a feat, usually of engineering. IPCs are typically designed to extend the limits of human ability. Some of the most famous IPCs include the Longit ...
s like the
Lunar Lander Challenge
The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (NG-LLC) was a competition funded by NASA's Centennial Challenges program. The competition offered a series of prizes for teams that launch a vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTVL) rocket that achieve ...
. Successful small VTVL rockets were developed by
Masten Space Systems
Masten Space Systems was an aerospace manufacturer startup company in Mojave, California (formerly in Santa Clara, California) that was developing a line of vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) rockets, initially for uncrewed research sub- ...
,
Armadillo Aerospace
Armadillo Aerospace was an aerospace startup company based in Mesquite, Texas. Its initial goal was to build a crewed suborbital spacecraft capable of space tourism, and it had also stated long-term ambitions of orbital spaceflight. The company wa ...
, and others.
Starting in the mid-2010s, VTVL was under intense development as a technology for
reusable rockets large enough to
transport people. In 2013, SpaceX demonstrated vertical landing on a Falcon 9 prototype after climbing 744 meters in the air. Later,
Blue Origin
Blue Origin, LLC is an American private spaceflight, privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Am ...
(
New Shepard
New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle developed by Blue Origin for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and vertical land ...
) and
SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...
(
Falcon 9
Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX.
The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and payl ...
), both demonstrated recovery of launch vehicles after
return to the launch site (RTLS) operations, with Blue Origin's New Shepard booster rocket making the first successful vertical landing on November 23, 2015, following a flight that reached
outer space
Outer space, commonly shortened to space, is the expanse that exists beyond Earth and its atmosphere and between celestial bodies. Outer space is not completely empty—it is a near-perfect vacuum containing a low density of particles, pred ...
, and SpaceX's
Falcon 9 flight 20
Falcon 9 flight 20 (also known as Orbcomm OG2 M2) was a Falcon 9 space launch that occurred on 22 December 2015 at 01:29:00 UTC (21 December, 8:29:00 pm local time). It was the first time that the first stage of an orbital rocket made a succe ...
marking the first landing of a commercial orbital booster roughly a month later, on December 22, 2015. All launches of the Falcon Heavy rocket by SpaceX have included VTVL attempts for the two side boosters on each rocket. SpaceX is also planning a fully reusable rocket named
Starship
A starship, starcraft, or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for interstellar travel, traveling between planetary systems.
The term is mostly found in science fiction. Reference to a "star-ship" appears as early as 188 ...
.
VTVL rockets are not to be confused with aircraft which take off and land vertically which use the air for support and propulsion, such as
helicopters
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...
and jump jets which are
VTOL
A vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is one that can take off and land vertically without relying on a runway. This classification can include a variety of types of aircraft including helicopters as well as thrust-vectoring fixed-win ...
aircraft.
History
* 1961
Bell Rocket Belt
The Bell Rocket Belt is a low-power rocket propulsion device that allows an individual to safely travel or leap over small distances. It is a type of rocket pack.
Overview
Bell Aerosystems began development of a rocket pack which it called the ...
, personal VTVL rocket belt demonstrated.
* VTVL rocket concepts were studied by
Philip Bono
Philip Bono (13 January 1921 – 23 May 1993) was a Douglas Aircraft Company engineer. He was a pioneer of reusable launch system, reusable vertical landing single-stage to orbit launch vehicles. As a visionary designer, he is credited with in ...
of Douglas Aircraft Co. in the 1960s.
*
Apollo Lunar Module
The Apollo Lunar Module (LM ), originally designated the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM), was the lunar lander spacecraft that was flown between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface during the United States' Apollo program. It was the first crewed ...
was a 1960s two-stage VTVL vehicle for landing and taking off from the Moon.
*Australia's
Defence Science and Technology Group
The Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) is part of the Australian Department of Defence dedicated to providing science and technology support to safeguard Australia and its national interests. The agency's name was changed from Defence ...
successfully launches the Hoveroc rocket on 2 May 1981 in a test at Port Wakefield, South Australia. It was capable of "a controlled flight path within a horizontal plane and terminating, if needed, in a controlled descent."
* The Soviet Union did some development work on, but never flew, a vertically landing crewed capsule called
Zarya Zarya may refer to:
*Zorya, personification of dawn in Slavic mythology
* Zarya (antenna), a type of medium-wave broadcasting antenna used in former Soviet Union
*Zarya (ISS module) is a module of the International Space Station.
* ''Zarya'' (magazi ...
in the late 1980s.
* The
McDonnell Douglas DC-X
The DC-X, short for Delta Clipper or Delta Clipper Experimental, was an uncrewed prototype of a reusable single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle built by McDonnell Douglas in conjunction with the United States Department of Defense's Strategic ...
was a 1/3 scale uncrewed prototype SSTO VTVL
launch vehicle
A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pad, launch pads, supported by a missile launch contro ...
that flew several successfully test flights in the 1990s. Its first successful flight was in 1993. In June 1996, the vehicle set an altitude record of , before making a vertical landing.
[Klerkx, Greg: ''Lost in Space: The Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age'', page 104. Secker & Warburg, 2004]
*
Rotary Rocket
Rotary Rocket Company was an aerospace company in the late 1990s. Its founders were among the first to recognize that the end of the Cold War represented a significant shift away from the militarization of space, to a new civilian-led, commercia ...
successfully tested a vertical landing system for their Roton design, based around a rocket tipped helicopter system in 1999, but were unable to raise funds to build a full vehicle.
* June 13, 2005
Blue Origin
Blue Origin, LLC is an American private spaceflight, privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Am ...
VTVL Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicle was announced.
* 2005
Blue Origin Charon a jet engine propelled test vehicle verified the autonomous guidance and control technologies later used in Blue Origins VTVL rockets.
* 2006, 2007
Blue Origin Goddard Blue Origin Goddard is the name of the first development vehicle in Blue Origin's New Shepard program, which flew for the first time on November 13, 2006. Named after rocketry pioneer Robert H. Goddard, the vehicle is a subscale demonstrator and fl ...
a subscale demonstrator for the later New Shephard suborbital vehicle, made 3 successful flights before retirement.
* During 2006–2009,
Armadillo Aerospace
Armadillo Aerospace was an aerospace startup company based in Mesquite, Texas. Its initial goal was to build a crewed suborbital spacecraft capable of space tourism, and it had also stated long-term ambitions of orbital spaceflight. The company wa ...
's Scorpius / Super Mod,
Masten Space Systems
Masten Space Systems was an aerospace manufacturer startup company in Mojave, California (formerly in Santa Clara, California) that was developing a line of vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) rockets, initially for uncrewed research sub- ...
'
Xombie and Unreasonable Rocket's Blue Ball flying VTVL rockets competed in the
Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military techn ...
/ NASA
Lunar Lander Challenge
The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (NG-LLC) was a competition funded by NASA's Centennial Challenges program. The competition offered a series of prizes for teams that launch a vertical takeoff/vertical landing (VTVL) rocket that achieve ...
. Follow-on VTVL designs including Masten's
Xaero and Armadillo's
Stig were aimed at higher-speed flight to higher
suborbital
A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital r ...
altitudes.
*
SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...
announced plans in 2010 to eventually install deployable landing gear on the
Dragon spacecraft
American private space transportation company SpaceX has developed and produced several spacecraft named Dragon. The first family member, now referred to as Dragon 1, flew 23 cargo missions to the ISS between 2010 and 2020 before being retired ...
and use the vehicle's
thrusters to perform a land-based landing.
It was cancelled in 2017.
* In 2010, three VTVL craft were proffered to NASA in response to NASA's
suborbital
A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital r ...
reusable launch vehicle (sRLV) solicitation under NASA's Flight Operations Program: the
Blue Origin
Blue Origin, LLC is an American private spaceflight, privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Am ...
New Shepard
New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle developed by Blue Origin for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and vertical land ...
, the
Masten Xaero, and the
Armadillo
Armadillos (meaning "little armored ones" in Spanish) are New World placental mammals in the order Cingulata. The Chlamyphoridae and Dasypodidae are the only surviving families in the order, which is part of the superorder Xenarthra, along wi ...
Super Mod.
[
]
*
Morpheus
Morpheus ('Fashioner', derived from the grc, μορφή meaning 'form, shape') is a god associated with sleep and dreams. In Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' he is the son of Somnus and appears in dreams in human form. From the Middle Ages, the name b ...
is a 2010s NASA project developing a vertical test bed that demonstrates new green propellant propulsion systems and autonomous landing and hazard detection technology.
*
Mighty Eagle was an early 2010s Robotic Prototype Lander that was being developed by NASA as of August 2012.
![ORBCOMM-2 (23282658734)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/ORBCOMM-2_%2823282658734%29.jpg)
* SpaceX announced in September 2011 that they would attempt to develop
powered descent and recovery of both
Falcon 9
Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX.
The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and payl ...
stages, with a
VTVL Dragon capsule as well.
* 2012: SpaceX's
Grasshopper
Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago.
Grasshopp ...
rocket was a VTVL first-stage
booster
Booster may refer to:
Amusement rides
* Booster (Fabbri ride), a pendulum ride
* Booster (HUSS ride), an evolution of the Breakdance ride
* Booster (KMG ride), a pendulum ride
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters
* Booster, a cha ...
test vehicle developed to validate various low-altitude, low-velocity engineering aspects of its
large-vehicle reusable rocket technology.
The test vehicle made eight successful test flights in 2012–2013. Grasshopper v1.0 made its eighth, and final, test flight on October 7, 2013, flying to an altitude of (0.46 miles) before making its eighth successful VTVL landing.
[The Grasshopper prototype test vehicle has been retired.
]
*2013–2017:
DragonFly
A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threate ...
was a prototype low-altitude
rocket-powered
A rocket-powered aircraft or rocket plane is an aircraft that uses a rocket engine for propulsion, sometimes in addition to airbreathing jet engines. Rocket planes can achieve much higher speeds than similarly sized jet aircraft, but typicall ...
test article for a propulsively-landed version of the
SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...
Dragon
A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...
space capsule
A space capsule is an often-crewed spacecraft that uses a blunt-body reentry capsule to reenter the Earth's atmosphere without wings. Capsules are distinguished from other satellites primarily by the ability to survive reentry and return a payl ...
. They intended to subsequently use the technology on
Dragon 2
Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed and manufactured by American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, primarily for flights to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX has also launched Private spaceflight, private m ...
, their second generation crew-carrying
reusable space capsule, for landing after
returning
In retail, a product return is the process of a customer taking previously purchased merchandise back to the retailer, and in turn receiving a refund in the original form of payment, exchange for another item (identical or different), or a sto ...
from space, as well as a
launch abort system
A launch escape system (LES) or launch abort system (LAS) is a crew-safety system connected to a space capsule that can be used to quickly separate the capsule from its launch vehicle in case of an emergency requiring the abort of the launch, suc ...
. The DragonFly prototype was used for low-altitude propulsive
flight test
Flight testing is a branch of aeronautical engineering that develops specialist equipment required for testing aircraft behaviour and systems. Instrumentation systems are developed using proprietary transducers and data acquisition systems. D ...
ing in 2014 and 2015.
Development was however abandoned by mid-2017.
* 2014: SpaceX's
Falcon 9 Reusable Development Vehicle was approximately 50 feet longer than Grasshopper, and was built on their full-size
Falcon 9 v1.1
Falcon 9 v1.1 was the second version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 orbital launch vehicle. The rocket was developed in 2011–2013, made its maiden launch in September 2013, and its final flight in January 2016. The Falcon 9 rocket was fully designed ...
booster tank, with flight-design
landing legs and gaseous nitrogen
thrusters to control the booster attitude. F9R Dev1 made its first test flight in April 2014, to an altitude of before making a nominal vertical landing.
*On November 23, 2015,
Blue Origin
Blue Origin, LLC is an American private spaceflight, privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Am ...
's
New Shepard
New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle developed by Blue Origin for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and vertical land ...
booster rocket made the first-ever successful vertical landing following an uncrewed suborbital test flight
that reached space. Blue Origin are now preparing to take crew on New Shephard in July 2021.
*On December 21, 2015,
SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...
's 20th
Falcon 9
Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX.
The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and payl ...
first stage made the first-ever successful vertical landing of an orbital-class booster after boosting 11 commercial satellites to
low Earth orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...
on
Falcon 9 Flight 20
Falcon 9 flight 20 (also known as Orbcomm OG2 M2) was a Falcon 9 space launch that occurred on 22 December 2015 at 01:29:00 UTC (21 December, 8:29:00 pm local time). It was the first time that the first stage of an orbital rocket made a succe ...
.
*On April 8, 2016, SpaceX's Falcon 9 made the first successful landing on their
Autonomous spaceport drone ship
An autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) is an ocean-going vessel derived from a deck barge, outfitted with station-keeping engines and a large landing platform and is autonomously controlled when on station for a landing. Construction of ...
as part of the
SpaceX CRS-8
SpaceX CRS-8, also known as SpX-8, was a Commercial Resupply Service mission to the International Space Station (ISS) which was launched on April 8, 2016, at 20:43 UTC. It was the 23rd flight of a Falcon 9 rocket, the tenth flight of a ...
cargo resupply mission to the
International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...
.
*Since 2017,
DLR,
CNES
The (CNES; French: ''Centre national d'études spatiales'') is the French government space agency (administratively, a "public administration with industrial and commercial purpose"). Its headquarters are located in central Paris and it is und ...
and
JAXA
The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orb ...
are developing a reusable VTVL rocket demonstrator called
CALLISTO Callisto most commonly refers to:
*Callisto (mythology), a nymph
*Callisto (moon), a moon of Jupiter
Callisto may also refer to:
Art and entertainment
*''Callisto series'', a sequence of novels by Lin Carter
*''Callisto'', a novel by Torsten Kro ...
(''Cooperative Action Leading to Launcher Innovation in Stage Toss-back Operations).''
*January 2018: Chinese private space company
LinkSpace
LinkSpace ( zh, s=翎客航天, p=Líng-kè Hángtiān , l= LINK Aerospace) or Link Space Aerospace Technology Inc. is a Chinese private space launch company based in Beijing. It is led by CEO Hu Zhenyu, and founded as the first private rocket fi ...
successfully tested its reusable experimental orbital rocket with a successful vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL)
*On February 6, 2018, SpaceX successfully landed two of their first stage boosters during their
demonstration flight of the Falcon Heavy.
*2018:
ISRO
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO; ) is the national space agency of India, headquartered in Bengaluru. It operates under the Department of Space (DOS) which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India, while the Chairman ...
revealed details about the ADMIRE test vehicle for which a test and landing site was being developed. The vehicle will have supersonic retro propulsion, special retractable landing legs which will act as steerable grid fins & will be guided by integrated navigation system that will have a laser altimeter and a
NavIC
The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), with an operational name of NavIC (acronym for 'Navigation with Indian Constellation; also, 'sailor' or 'navigator' in Indian languages), is an autonomous regional satellite navigation s ...
receiver.
*Low-altitude VTVL testing of the large -diameter ''
Starhopper
SpaceX Starship development began in 2012, when Elon Musk, CEO of American aerospace company SpaceX, first publicly described a high-level plan to build a reusable rocket system with substantially greater capabilities than the Falcon 9 and the ...
'', an early test article for the
SpaceX Starship
Starship is a Fully-reusable orbital launch vehicle, fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX, an American aerospace company. With more than twice the thrust of the Saturn V, it is designed to be the most powe ...
, occurred at the
SpaceX South Texas Launch Site
Starbase is a spaceport, production, and development facility for Starship rockets, located at Boca Chica, Texas, United States. It is in construction in the late 2010s and 2020s by SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer.
When conceptualiz ...
near
Brownsville, Texas
Brownsville () is a city in Cameron County in the U.S. state of Texas. It is on the western Gulf Coast in South Texas, adjacent to the border with Matamoros, Mexico. The city covers , and has a population of 186,738 as of the 2020 census. It ...
in July and August 2019 with flights up to ~ were made.
*In August 2020, SpaceX began testing its
Starship prototypes. SN5, SN6, and SN15 all made successful VTVL launch and landings while SN8, SN9, SN10, and SN11 were each destroyed due to landing failure.
*On July 20, 2021,
Blue Origin
Blue Origin, LLC is an American private spaceflight, privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Am ...
's
New Shepard
New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle developed by Blue Origin for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and vertical land ...
rocket made its first-ever successful vertical landing following a crewed suborbital flight. Four passengers were on board in the mission
NS-16
Blue Origin NS-16 was a sub-orbital spaceflight mission operated by Blue Origin which flew on 20 July 2021. The mission was the sixteenth flight of the company's New Shepard integrated launch vehicle and spacecraft, and its first crewed flight ...
, including
Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ''né'' Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former preside ...
.
Vertical landing technology
The technology required to successfully achieve
retropropulsive landings—the vertical landing or "VL" addition to the standard vertical takeoff (VT) technology of the early decades of human spaceflight—has several parts. First, thrust must be less than weight, second the thrust is normally required to be
vectored and requires some degree of
throttling
A throttle is any mechanism by which the power or speed of an engine is controlled.
Throttle or throttling may also refer to:
Fiction
* ''Throttle'' (film), a 2005 thriller
* ''Throttle'' (novella), a 2009 novella by Stephen King and his son Jo ...
. Guidance must be capable of calculating the position and altitude of the vehicle, small deviations from the vertical can cause large deviations of the vehicles horizontal position.
RCS
RCS may refer to:
Organisations
*Racing Club de Strasbourg Alsace
* Radio Corporation of Singapore
*Radcliffe Choral Society
* Rawmarsh Community School
*Red Crescent Society
*Red Cross Society
* Representation of Czechs and Slovaks, a football t ...
systems are usually required to keep the vehicle at the correct angle.
SpaceX also use
grid fin
Grid fins (or lattice fins) are a type of flight control surface used on rockets and bombs, sometimes in place of more conventional control surfaces, such as planar fins. They were developed in the 1950s by a team led by and used since the 197 ...
s for
attitude control
Attitude control is the process of controlling the orientation of an aerospace vehicle with respect to an inertial frame of reference or another entity such as the celestial sphere, certain fields, and nearby objects, etc.
Controlling vehicle ...
during landing of their
Falcon 9
Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX.
The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and payl ...
boosters.
It can also be necessary to be able to ignite engines in a variety of conditions potentially including
vacuum
A vacuum is a space devoid of matter. The word is derived from the Latin adjective ''vacuus'' for "vacant" or "void". An approximation to such vacuum is a region with a gaseous pressure much less than atmospheric pressure. Physicists often dis ...
,
hypersonic
In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that exceeds 5 times the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above.
The precise Mach number at which a craft can be said to be flying at hypersonic speed varies, since in ...
,
supersonic
Supersonic speed is the speed of an object that exceeds the speed of sound ( Mach 1). For objects traveling in dry air of a temperature of 20 °C (68 °F) at sea level, this speed is approximately . Speeds greater than five times ...
,
transonic
Transonic (or transsonic) flow is air flowing around an object at a speed that generates regions of both subsonic and supersonic airflow around that object. The exact range of speeds depends on the object's critical Mach number, but transonic ...
, and
subsonic.
The additional weight of fuel, larger tank,
landing legs and their deployment mechanisms will usually reduce the performance of a soft landing system compared to
expendable vehicles, all other things being equal.
The main benefit of the technology is seen in the potential for substantial reductions in space flight
cost
In production, research, retail, and accounting, a cost is the value of money that has been used up to produce something or deliver a service, and hence is not available for use anymore. In business, the cost may be one of acquisition, in which ...
s as a result of being able to reuse rockets after successful VTVL landings.
Popular culture
![Rocket Ship X comic book](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Rocket_Ship_X_comic_book.jpg)
Vertical landing of
spaceships was the predominant mode of rocket landing envisioned in the pre-
spaceflight
Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly spacecraft into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in or ...
era. Many
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
authors as well as depictions in popular culture showed rockets landing vertically, typically resting after landing on the space vehicle's
fin
A fin is a thin component or appendage attached to a larger body or structure. Fins typically function as foils that produce lift or thrust, or provide the ability to steer or stabilize motion while traveling in water, air, or other fluids. Fin ...
s. This view was sufficiently ingrained in popular culture that in 1993, following a successful low-altitude test flight of a prototype rocket, a writer opined: "The DC-X launched vertically, hovered in mid-air ... The spacecraft stopped mid-air again and, as the engines throttled back, began its successful vertical landing. Just like
Buck Rogers
Buck Rogers is a science fiction adventure hero and feature comic strip created by Philip Francis Nowlan first appearing in daily US newspapers on January 7, 1929, and subsequently appearing in Sunday newspapers, international newspapers, books ...
."
In the 2010s,
SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...
rockets
A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...
have likewise seen the appellation to this popular culture notion of Buck Rogers in a "Quest to Create a ''
'Buck Rogers
''' Reusable Rocket."
The ''
Young Sheldon
''Young Sheldon'' is an American List of coming-of-age stories, coming-of-age sitcom television series created by Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro for CBS. The series, set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is a Spin-off (media), spin-off prequel ...
'' episode, "
A Patch, a Modem, and a Zantac®" features
Sheldon Cooper
Sheldon Lee Cooper, Doctor of Philosophy, Ph.D., Doctor of Science, Sc.D., is a Character (arts), fictional character in the CBS television series ''The Big Bang Theory'' and its spinoff series ''Young Sheldon'', portrayed by actors Jim Parsons ...
developing the equations for VTVL in the 1980s, only to have them rejected by NASA for lack of the technical capability to implement it at that time. Sheldon concludes that he is ahead of his time. A flashforward to 2016 shows the successful SpaceX CRS-8 mission, followed by SpaceX founder Elon Musk looking over Sheldon's old notebook then hiding it in a desk drawer.
See also
*
CORONA
Corona (from the Latin for 'crown') most commonly refers to:
* Stellar corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun or another star
* Corona (beer), a Mexican beer
* Corona, informal term for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the COVID-19 di ...
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Kankoh-maru
The is a proposed vertical takeoff and landing (VTVL), single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO), reusable launch system (rocket-powered spacecraft). According to a document from July 1997, it would have been manufactured by Kawasaki Heavy Industries and M ...
– VTVL
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Chrysler SERV
SERV, short for Single-stage Earth-orbital Reusable Vehicle, was a proposed space launch system designed by Chrysler's Space Division for the Space Shuttle project. SERV was so radically different from the two-stage spaceplanes that almost every ...
References
External links
* Astronautix.com
List of VTVL rocket concepts from the past* Hobbyspace.com
Development of VTVL rockets around the world
{{Types of take-off and landing
Types of take-off and landing
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