Apparently, I’m seeing in comments and tweets that Masten just demonstrated an in-air shutdown and restart of the engine (I assume it was deliberate?). XCOR does this routinely, but they have wings. If Masten’s engine doesn’t restart, they have a very hard landing.
[Update a few minutes later]
According to Clark, this is the vehicle that did the maneuver.
I assume there will be film at eleven.
[Update mid afternoon]
Here’s the first video.
I wonder what the cost of a crater would have been? Very cool.
Craters are pretty much free, what would it cost to duplicate the vehicle? A different question entirely.
Sorry. I was being [not so] cute. My question really was what is the estimated cost of the vehicle? I do note that Paul out cuted me.
I honestly don’t have a good number on replacement cost of the vehicle, especially if you count labor. But definitely more than a new Porsche. Probably a bit less than a new Ferrari.
As it is though, that was the last planned test we had for Xombie. We’ll probably find other tests down the road that we want to run, but we accomplished everything we wanted with Xombie, and it’s still around to tell the tale.
Man, that was cool.
~Jon
So, it it had failed, it would have been a major emotional bummer, but not a technical setback?
Assume zero relative velocity to ground, pointing straight down. Did you calculate what the minimum altitude for a restart would be? Xombie is a great name, BTW.
Yeah. We had an extra set of tanks, and all the components needed to build a second Xombie if we needed it. Or we would’ve just kept on with our current path, building Brutus.
BTW, here’s the first of the videos: http://www.youtube.com/mastenspace#p/a/u/0/01FcUEjwDkk
~Jon
Ken,
Not sure, but probably over 250 feet. We had to shut down on the way up to have enough time to relight it and decellerate.
~Jon
Excellent.
Is the amount of flying cruft on landing normal?
Wow Jonathan, that was very nice. Thanks!
That’s an alcohol-LOX engine?
Yes, isopropyl.
Al,
Yes that is normal concrete spalling from the heat of the exhaust.
Very cool video. For a few billion I’m sure NASA could come up with a view graph presentation on how they’d get this done in just a few decades.
So when do you add a chair and charge for this ride? Engine restart and all?
That is awesome.
Very cool. Even though it’s recorded I still got a jolt of ‘it’s out–will it restart?’
Hey guys,
Here’s the second video: http://www.youtube.com/mastenspace#p/a/u/0/1h_MggtPdjo
Mike Massee’s is even better, but we had a power outage for two hours in Mojave. So we’ll have to wait till later for the upload.
~Jon
Impressive and congratulations to the Masten team.
Awesome, congratulations!
Second the observations of several above: Major cool!
Regards,
Ric
Wow! Cool beans dude!
Thanks guys! It may be a while before our next big milestone, but “there’s more where that came from”…
~Jon
Fabulous. And the video is brilliant.
Looking at this video I can imagine, scaled up with range finders and the right on board software an untrained pilot could operate a vehicle similar to this on lunar excursions. Give them a land, hover or ascend toggle for vertical movement and a joystick for horizontal movement. Any idiot would be able to fly the thing.
I volunteer to be the first idiot!
Me too, me too!!
Fantastic job, guys.
Perhaps a silly question, but is there a mechanical/engineering difference between a restart after a few seconds, and a restart after a few minutes?
It did seem to catch itself quite nicely. A pleasant example of “build a little, test a little.”