Is the Musk Falcon 9 rocket vertically recovered out? American helicopter aerial recovery rockets were successful

As early as the Cold War, the United States through a series of space programs, let the Soviet Union on the way to follow the trend, and finally because the space budget is too high and laid off many space programs, and thus ignited the disintegration of the Soviet Union explosive package. After the end of the Cold War, although the global economic development is getting better and better, in the field of aerospace, it has been in the status quo of high investment and low return, and the reason is nothing more than the high threshold of space launch technology, technical complexity and so on.

Because most of the launch costs of launch vehicles in countries around the world are relatively high, such as ESA's Ariane 5 launch vehicle with a single launch cost of $165 million, with an average launch cost of up to $10,000 per kilogram; although the launch cost of the Long March 3B carrier rocket on the mainland is low, it is only $70 million, and the cost per kilogram of launch is only $5833, but whether it is a launch cost of $10,000 per kilogram or $5833, in fact, it is still a high-cost launch in the space field.

So in order to reduce the cost of launch, the Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX in the United States relies on recycling the most expensive stage rocket in rocket manufacturing costs, and reuses it many times to reduce the launch cost, which ultimately makes it cost only $2700 per kilogram of launch, and the more times the rocket is reused, the lower the launch cost.

The reason is that the Falcon 9 rocket uses a lot of mature technology to reduce launch risks and manufacturing costs, and the first stage rocket that can be fully recovered in the entire Falcon 9 rocket accounts for 60% of the entire manufacturing cost. This makes it cost only $55 million to manufacture after the Falcon 9 rocket stage is recovered. Even for the second launch, the launch cost is only 0 cost of reusing the first stage rocket + the new secondary rocket (5500 * 20%) + fairing (5500 * 10%) + the use of the launch site, miscellaneous expenses (5500 * 10%) + 400,000 US dollars of fuel cost = 22.4 million US dollars, and this launch cost will continue to decrease with the increase in the number of launches. Therefore, SpaceX also relies on the advantage that its rockets can significantly reduce launch costs after recycling and reusing, occupying more and more commercial space launch orders and some military space launch orders.

Although SpaceX's rocket recovery technology has begun to lead the future development of spaceflight and become one of the future space development directions of more and more countries with space launch capabilities, in the eyes of other new space companies, the vertical recovery of the Falcon 9 rocket is obviously still a big deficiency in the way of reducing launch costs. For example, in order to achieve vertical recovery and reuse of its first-stage rocket, the ignition time of the first-stage rocket is 20% earlier than that of the non-recovery, and the first-stage rocket needs to ignite itself to return to the scheduled landing site, so there is still a disadvantage in the efficiency of space launch.

This shortcoming is obviously intolerable in the eyes of the Space Company "Rocket Lab" in California, so at 10:50 a.m. on May 3, 2022, after the company's rockets sent 34 satellites into low-Earth orbit, the four-story first-stage rocket booster returned to Earth through the atmosphere, and after a series of parachute decelerations, it was successfully hooked by the recovery cable released by the helicopter, successfully achieving the first "rocket air recovery" in human history.

Compared with the Falcon 9 rocket, which must sacrifice the launch load to achieve recovery, in this helicopter aerial recovery method, the first stage rocket does not need to shut down and retain fuel in advance, so there is no series of shortcomings on the Falcon 9. So is it said that this aerial recovery rocket technology will soon replace the falcon 9's first-stage vertical recovery technology?

First, it is true that from the perspective of recovery efficiency, although the Falcon 9 relies on its own vertical recovery method of return and this helicopter air recovery is the highest cost of launching the first stage rocket, and it is to achieve the reuse of the first stage rocket multiple times to reduce the launch cost. However, in terms of recovery efficiency, because the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket needs to be shut down in advance and retain fuel to return to the ship, there is a disadvantage in launch efficiency compared to not recovering.

However, there are also many disadvantages in helicopter recovery, such as the maximum take-off weight of the Falcon 9 rocket is 333 tons, of which the weight of the first stage rocket reaches 273 tons, but after the first stage rocket burns and completes the separation between the stages, the self-weight of the first stage rocket carrying part of the return fuel is only less than 50 tons, so although the first stage rocket is equipped with 9 Merlin 1D rocket engines, a Merlin engine with a maximum thrust of 90 tons can achieve its recovery deceleration and smooth landing when returning to recovery. Therefore, the deceleration thrust of the rocket when it returns can ensure that the rocket can slow down normally and land smoothly, so the size and weight of the rocket are basically not limited.

In particular, the maximum take-off weight of the Electron carrier rocket recovered by the verification helicopter in the air is 10.5 tons, and the carrying capacity of low Earth orbit is only 200 kg, although this time an arrow and 34 satellites were successfully launched, but each satellite is a nanosatellite weighing only a few kilograms. And the weight of the electronic number when it was recovered was only 1 ton, which was enough for the S92 helicopter with a maximum load capacity of 4.5 tons. However, if the helicopter is recovered in the air, even the world's strongest carrying capacity of the Mi-26 super heavy transport helicopter has a maximum load of only 20 tons, which is obviously unable to recover the falcon 9 stage rocket in the air nearly 50 tons.

Therefore, aerial recovery seems to have a favorable impact on the launch efficiency of the rocket, but because its recovery platform has limited load capacity, it is only suitable for some small rockets, and such small rockets are actually not very expensive to manufacture, and the difference between recovery and non-recovery is not large, so the recovery significance is not large. Therefore, helicopter aerial recovery rockets will not affect the continued prevalence of recovery methods such as Falcon 9, which rely on their own power, such as the mainland's newly developed Long March 8 carrier rocket, which has initially planned to achieve the first vertical recovery launch test before 2025.