Is Elon Musk Planning the First Controlled Re-Entry of a Rocket this Summer?
Posted by Andrew on March 27th, 2013
The folks at NextBigFuture via Rocketeers.co.uk are reporting the rumor mill has SpaceX planning to send their reusable Grasshopper test rocket to a height of 300,000 feet in the near future with an eye towards trying a controlled re-entry of the primary stage sometime this year.
The first high-altitude test flight would see the first stage going to the edge of space (the actual edge, not the make-believe-one whenever the media sees a photo from a high altitude balloon) and returning to the launch pad (ideally) at White Sands Missile Range.
If that proves successful, they plan to bring a first stage back down to earth via a rocket controlled descent into the ocean.
Either mission would be a huge, groundbreaking (only figuratively, hopefully) event in space travel. A successful return of a first stage takes us dramatically closer to the dream of a rocket as reusable as a commercial airplane. This would bring the cost of putting things into orbit low enough to create a boom in aerospace development.
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