TOUCHDOWN - Reusable Rockets

"What a reusable rocket means for the future of spaceflight" PBS NewsHour 12/22/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A SpaceX rocket made a historic landing Monday night.  After taking off from Cape Canaveral, the rocket booster landed gently back on Earth, suggesting a possible future for reusable rockets.  Science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the significance.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  It’s been a long time since a rocket’s descent has been big news, but, last night, there was a historic landing.  After SpaceX, a private company founded by Elon Musk, launched a rocket on Monday from Cape Canaveral in Florida, it stuck the landing, you might say.  The rocket booster landed gently on Earth, a feat cheered at SpaceX headquarters, and that suggested we may be able to create reusable rockets to explore further.

Our science correspondent, Miles O’Brien, joins me now.

Welcome, Miles.

So, how big a deal is this?

MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour):  Judy, this is the Holy Grail for space.

Ever since the space age began, those of us who cared about exploring beyond have thought, wouldn’t it be nice if we could reuse the craft?  We have been throwing them away virtually the whole time.  The space shuttle was an attempt to make it reusable.  Didn’t work out so well.

And so the idea that you could take the first stage of a rocket, kind of the money end of the rocket, if you will, and have it land intact gently to be fueled up, gassed up and launched again is truly a great moment.  So, yes, big deal.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Why was it so hard to do before now?

MILES O’BRIEN:  Well, part of it is, we didn’t try for a long time.  During the heady days of the space race, we were too busy trying to beat the Soviets to the surface of the moon, and so we were very happy just to throw things away, rather than try to figure this out.

There is a penalty.  You have to have extra fuel on obviously to bring it down safely.  Then we got kind of off on a tangent with the space shuttle, thinking that would be reusable, and that didn’t work out so well.  So we sort of didn’t think about it.

Then we went in the wrong direction.  And now with entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos looking at this idea in a more bottom-line manner than NASA would, dare I say, we might get some progress.