Do you know how much it costs to send one pound of weight into space? Take a guess.
$100?
Not even close
$500?
Nope,
Alright? Maybe $1000?
Still off by a factor of ten
It costs $10,000 to send one pound into space!
Now if you really think about it that is a lot of money and material that gets used just for one launch. After all, you have to launch the entire first stage of the rocket that just gets burnt up in the atmosphere or dropped in the ocean. That is many $10,000 pounds that are only good for one launch.
However, SpaceX is trying to change all that. They are the California based company started by Elon Musk that are responsible for the Dragon capsules that have completed five successful resupply missions for the ISS.
On their latest mission to the ISS they tried something new: they tried to land the first stage of the Falcon rocket on a platform in the ocean so that it could be reused. Unfortunately there is no good video of the landing but Elon Musk's tweet sums up the situation well:
"Didn't get good landing/impact video. Pitch dark and foggy. Will piece it together from telemetry and ...actual pieces."
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| SpaceX Landing Platform just off the Cape Courtesy of BBC.com |
The landing was hard and caused damage to the platform and the ship itself. However, it is important to remember that in space exploration every new attempt is a success because of what is learned from it.
This attempt to land undoubtedly taught SpaceX a lot of what they need to know in order to successfully complete the landing another time. Now improvements can be made and hopefully a future mission to land will be a success.
Working technology to land the first stage of a rocket represents a whole new era in exploration that is marked by much more affordable and sustainable space travel. Right now space travel is a very costly (and worthwhile) venture and a more affordable way of going into space may be able to convince more people (especially more politicians) of the benefits and necessity of space travel.
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