True story about this you will likely find interesting. Right after SpaceX started crashing rockets into barges and hadn’t perfected it yet, I met a young engineer who was part of NASA’s research program for supersonic retropropulsion. He said,… /1
2/ “At NASA, we had a big program planned to study this. We were going to start with lots of computer simulations. Then we would put a thruster on a high speed rail car and shoot the plume into the direction of travel. Then we’d drop rockets off high altitude balloons…
3/ “But then @elonmusk just went and tried it, and it WORKED! So NASA canceled our entire program!”😂😂😂The beauty is that SpaceX didn’t even have to land on the barge for this result. Just hitting the barge with the booster proved that supersonic retropropulsion worked.
Actually, they proved it on F9 F6 out of Vandenberg. @lrocket gave me a banger quote about watching that reentry that is in my forthcoming book on the development of Falcon 9 and reuse.
I’m thrilled to announce the sequel to Liftoff, titled REENTRY, will be published on September 24. This book picks up the story where Liftoff left off, taking readers on a wild ride aboard the Falcon 9, Dragon, Heavy, and so much more.Publisher page: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/759707/reentry-by-eric-berger/I packed a lot in here: the origins of the Falcon 9, its development, the early launches and fruitless recoveries, two devastating failures, the remarkable road to reuse, flying the first Dragons, crewed flights, Falcon Heavy, the rivalries, and more.The story is again told primarily through the employees at SpaceX, the big names are all there of course, but also lesser known but critical players like Roger Carlson, Catriona Chambers, Robert Rose, Ricky Lim, and many more.There are technical details and wild stories. Most of all, I want to provide a sense of what Elon Musk and his team slogged through to reach the point where they are today, at the pinnacle of global spaceflight. It was never easy. Nor inevitable.Thanks to @johnkraus for the great cover photo. If you compare it to the US cover of Liftoff there are some wonderful symmetries with the rocket and text going up on Liftoff, and then returning on REENTRY.The new book is 50 percent longer than Liftoff because there was so much story to tell. I’m deeply indebted to the many dozens of SpaceXers who spoke to me, in addition to those from NASA, FAA, and elsewhere. I did my best. I hope you like it.
May as well go for a trilogy
I have seen some of the pre-production chapters, and, like Liftoff, I learned a lot of details that I didn't know from reading the book. The story is so big, even those of us in the middle of it don't know it all
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1748235987828765100QuoteMay as well go for a trilogy
I hope you wrote something about the designs for full reuse on Falcon…
Alas, I must say I did not. There were about 10 million different loose ends I could have written about. As it is, the book is already quite long, more than 110,000 words.
Will REENTRY have a section will lots of photos like LIFTOFF did?
Yes, if I can get off my butt and get the requisite permission forms signed off on. I know y'all want to see early Falcon 9's accidentally being crashed into buildings during transport.
@mastenspace Xombie in-air relight.
This moment is in Reentry.
#HappyBirthday to ASE Life Member Susan Helms, who flew to space five times between 1993 and 2001 (STS-54, STS-64, STS-78, STS-101, and STS-102), including as part of trips and expeditions to the @Space_Station (Expedition 2)!
General Helms also made the call to lease SLC-40 to SpaceX nearly two decades ago. She did this despite furious lobbying against it. I detail this in REENTRY.
Quote from: Blackstar on 04/29/2023 12:35 pmI'm sure he'll be totally objective.In my experience, he is. There’s a weird online Twitter cult of Berger haters who’ve been repeating just a whole ton of libelous attacks on him (I think because he has made some predictions about SLS which turned out to be right?), and I think it has succeeded in making even normal people like yourself think there’s something bad there, but there just isn’t. My respect always goes down for people whenever they make unfounded side remarks about how somehow Berger is dishonest. Do better, Blackstar, I know you’re one of the good ones.
I'm sure he'll be totally objective.
12 years ago the @SpaceX Dragon D1 became the first commercial cargo vehicle to visit @Space_Station, where my crewmates and I captured it with the Canada robotic arm in May 2012; Expedition 30.
I have a full chapter in Reentry devoted to this mission. It's a hell of a tale, culminating in Pettit grabbing this Dragon by its tail.
I just received Berger's Reentry and am delighted to see our DQ binger immortalized in these annals of aerospace advancement. August 2014. McGregor, TX. Final ice cream before the final flight of the F9R test vehicle. F9R was flying with three engines that day, a test run for the vertical landing of a Falcon 9 class booster.Mastering rocket reentry and reuse are essential for colonizing Mars... and lowering launch costs on Earth. Only SpaceX was pursuing this path, and incumbents dismissed it as folly. But the SpaceX engineers were determined.As we drove out to the launch site, I joked about the big bada boom to come. Not sure why. We watched it climb from a tent out in the fields. We watched it arch over in a visceral swan song... the aching arc of a doom loop... a failure to launch made manifest.💥 clip: youtu.be/bvim4rsNHkQ?si…Elon was deep in thought. We tried to cheer him up with a quote about learning from life's failures. Elon replied: “Given the options, I prefer to learn from success.”My last shot is @ElonMusk out on the battlefield.... with the fires still burning.Book lands Sept 24 (with a bunch of my photos): amazon.com/Reentry-SpaceX…
I recently received final copies of Reentry and they look stunning! One of my favorite sections of the narrative is the scene inside the room where NASA made the final selection for commercial crew, which seems newly relevant today. Releases Sept. 24. (I know).
Saturday, #Starlink 8-3 took to the skies. 🛰️ This morning, Starlink 10-7 also lifted off.For those of you keeping score at home, that brings us to 57 launches in 2024!@SpaceForceDoD | @USSF_SSC #PremierGatewaytoSpace #SpaceX 🚀
SpaceX had to push pretty hard to make these launch cadence increases happen at the Cape and KSC in Florida. They were helped by some Air Force officials who were willing to risk their careers to accept changes like automatic flight termination. Much more in Reentry!
NASA just decided that SpaceX needs to rescue Boeing’s astronauts.Written before the Starliner debacle, Berger’s forthcoming book Reentry tells the backstory with plenty of foreshadowing, starting with Boeing’s attempt to be the sole crewed spacecraft provider:“Boeing had a solution, telling NASA it needed the entire Commercial Crew budget to succeed. Because a lot of decision makers believed that only Boeing could safely fly astronauts, the company’s gambit very nearly worked.” (p.270)After “a cascade of pro-Boeing opinions swept around the table, a building and unbreakable wave of consensus” (272), NASA’s human exploration lead Gerstenmeier took a month to decide, eventually asking for more budget to support two competing efforts. Ultimately, Boeing would receive twice as much funding as SpaceX, but SpaceX was in the game, as the new kid on the block.“It had been a very near thing. NASA officials had already written a justification for selecting Boeing, solely for the Commercial Crew contract. It was ready to go and had to be hastily rewritten to include SpaceX. This delayed the announcement to September 16.” (274)“Former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman helped write the proposal and provide and astronaut’s perspective. But their small team was no match for Boeing’s proposal-writing machine. It was intimidating knowing that 200 people were working on Boeing’s proposal, when Dragon’s team could fit in a small conference room.” (275) With Reisman in photo 2 above from 2012, after pulling an all-nighter at SpaceX: flic.kr/p/c5sY3N“BOEING HAS AN ASTRONAUT PROBLEM” (291)“When the SpaceX engineers could be corralled, they were eager to hear feedback from the NASA astronauts , excited to work with them, and attentive to their suggestions. By contrast, Boeing engineers seemed indifferent to hearing from the four commercial crew astronauts.” (293)“There was an arrogance with them that you certainly didn’t see at SpaceX.” (astronaut Hurley, p.294)“Boeing also underperformed. Not only were its engineers overconfident, but the company’s management also was not putting skin in the game. Hurley did not see any urgency from Boeing’s teams. Rather, they appeared to be working part-time on Starliner. ‘It was all about managing dollars and cents from Boeing’s perspective,’ Hurley said.” (295)“During the summer of 2018 as Boeing worked toward a pad abort test in White Sands, New Mexico (Boeing never flew an in-flight abort test)… a significant problem occurred due to a propellant leak. Ultimately, this would delay the company’s pad abort test by more than a year, but at the time, Boeing neglected to tell the Commercial Crew astronauts about the issue.” (295)“That summer NASA was closing in on making crew assignments for the first flights. Hurley told the chief of the astronaut office he would not fly on Starliner.” (296)He went on to fly the first SpaceX Dragon to bring crew to the ISS (we were there for the launch, photo 3). “‘It was the second space age,’ Hurley said. ‘And it started in 2020.’” (313) My video from Mission Control captured the excitement of capture: youtube.com/watch?v=bwqdEK…“SpaceX emerged triumphant over another major domestic competitor, Boeing, as well. The company that supposedly went for substance over pizzazz, ended up with neither in the Commercial Crew race.” (340)Just prior to their first human flight, there were several “shocking discoveries, especially so close to the flight. Neither NASA nor Boeing had good answers for why they had been found as astronauts were about to strap into Starliner. Questions emerged about the company’s commitment to the program. Because it operates on a fixed-price contract [and despite being 2x higher than SpaceX’s], Boeing has reported losses of nearly $1 billion on Starliner.” (342)After being stranded in space, Suni will fly with SpaceX, as she originally hoped (photo 1 above).And during this same time, there was a Boeing – Lockheed joint venture competing for launch, ULA: “The U.S. rocket wars were over. SpaceX had won. Since then, SpaceX has kept beating the dead horse. Over one stretch, from the end of 2022 into the first half of 2023, SpaceX launched more than fifty rockets between ULA flights. It has become difficult to remember that these two companies were once rivals, or that ULA’s employees would drive up to the SpaceX fence, jeering.” (339)Reentry book pre-order: amazon.com/Reentry-SpaceX… cc @ElonMusk
Reentry recounts that Doug Hurley said he wouldn’t fly on Starliner:
