Obliterate The Box: Three Spectacular Feats Of Rocket Science

In my IT Consulting career, I would need to walk into a room and present a new solution to a client—often a new client. We would listen to what they asked for, examine the client’s needs, muster our analysis, and craft our recommendations. At some point, we would need to stand up in front of a frequently skeptical crowd and say something to the effect of – “OK, here’s what we’re going to do.”

Almost a decade ago, when Curiosity landed on Mars, I would play a little thought game with myself. Imagine the design meeting when they proposed the Sky Crane and got to the point where someone says – “OK, here’s what we’re going to do.” At least my proposals as an IT guy had the advantage of likely having been done before.

I thought today I’d present three hypothetical meetings where a new concept is presented that doesn’t just reflect out-of-the-box thinking but obliterates the box—two from SpaceX and one from NASA.

Setting aside my thought game, these teams have solved some difficult and seemingly impossible technology and engineering problems. It always amazes me as a spectator that there are people out there that do these things. Unbelievable.

Landing a Rocket on the Ocean

SpaceX needed to retrieve the Falcon boosters for re-use but were faced with the physical limitations of retaining enough fuel to return to Florida and still get the payload into the orbit required by the customer.

Imagine a scene where someone says, “OK, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll buy a barge and retrofit it as an autonomous spaceport drone ship. We’ll tow it out into the Atlantic Ocean and land the booster on that.” Who does that? SpaceX did, and the solution has proven successful in retrieving reusable boosters.

A Skydiving Starship

The SpaceX Starship needed to bleed energy and speed in order to land. For a fully propulsion drive descent and landing, they would have needed too much fuel.

So, someone says, “OK, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll turn off the engines, have the ship turn on its side, and drop just like a skydiver. When we get slow enough and low enough, we’ll restart the engines, turn it back vertical and land it on its tail. That should work.” They’re still working on it but watching the tests is exciting. Here’s a link to a recent test. I can’t wait to see the next one—I hope they’ll stick the landing again on SN11.

A Crane on Mars

NASA needed to get a rover on Mars. How do you land more than a ton on a distant planet after traveling 293 million miles? The timing had to be perfect—Mars in the right place, the right time of day (sol) in Mars’s rotation to land on the site you’d selected. Add to that the need to have the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter overhead to relay signals and take pictures.  

Once you get there, you need to land. This is where we have the conversation – “OK, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll use aerobraking to slow down. Then we’ll release a parachute, and since that won’t be enough, we’ll use a rocket pack to slow down and hover. Then we’ll lower the rover to the surface on cables, let it go, and then fly away.” And then they solved all the complex engineering and technology problems and did it—not once—but twice. Take a look; it was a fantastic feat. Perseverance Landing

Was there ever a time when you needed to propose a radical new idea or maybe just a new one that nobody thought would work? Feel free to leave a comment.

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