Southern California-based space company, SpaceX, has successfully tested its first reusable rocket's flight up to 12 stories off the ground, according to Science Recorder.
SpaceX released a video Monday showing the flight of Grasshopper rocket, taking off the ground up to 12 stories and landing vertically. The idea is to reduce the cost and time involved in building and traveling into the space by reusing rockets.
"The 12-story flight marks a significant increase over the height and length of hover of Grasshopper's previous test flights, which took place earlier this fall," SpaceX said in statement issued Sunday, reported Science Recorder. "In September, Grasshopper flew to 1.8 meters (6 feet), and in November, it flew to 5.4 meters (17.7 feet/2 stories) including a brief hover."
The most successful test with convincing results was conducted Dec. 17 at the SpaceX's rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas.
The billionaire founder of the company, Elon Musk tweeted along with a picture of Grasshopper rocket: "To provide a little perspective on the size of Grasshopper, we added a 6ft cowboy to the rocket."
Musk said the plan for the Grasshopper RLV is a modified version of Falcon 9 launch vehicle design, reports Science Recorder. The Grasshopper details as per a draft environmental impact assessment by FAA in 2011, according to Universe Today:
The Grasshopper RLV consists of a Falcon 9 Stage 1 tank, a Merlin-1D engine, four steel landing legs, and a steel support structure. Carbon overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), which are filled with either nitrogen or helium, are attached to the support structure. The Merlin-1D engine has a maximum thrust of 122,000 pounds. The overall height of the Grasshopper RLV is 106 feet, and the tank height is 85 feet.
The propellants used in the Grasshopper RLV include a highly refined kerosene fuel, called RP-1, and liquid oxygen (LOX) as the oxidizer.
The Grasshopper is designed in a way that all the vehicle's components will return back to the Earth which will be ready for reuse. Musk is focused to get the perfect flight system ready at the earliest and his team is working around the clock to make it a success.
"This is a very difficult thing to do. Even for an expendable launch vehicle, where you don't attempt any recovery, you only get maybe two to three percent of your lift-off weight to orbit. That's not a lot of room for error," noted Musk during an earlier appearance in November, according to Science Recorder. "I wasn't sure it could be solved, but relatively recently I've come the conclusion it can be solved and SpaceX is going to try and do it. We could fail, I'm not saying we're certain of success, but we're going to try to do it."
The testing will further continue to perfect its flight and SpaceX hopes to have its fully operational launch by 2014.
