'High Adventures': Elon Musk will try balloons to reuse rockets

Such an idea from anyone else might at least sound like a joke: the use of too many balloons as a way to properly mitigate and position rockets during re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. Elon Musk thought of it no less than trying to create an alternative for his space company, SpaceX, to better reuse projectiles.

"This is going to sound crazy, but ... SpaceX will try to bring the top of a rocket speed into orbit using a bunch of balloons, " he said in a series of tweets that talk about it. The Falcon 9 is made up of two parts, the top of which is used to assist in thrust, while the bottom has engines and landing gear, making return maneuvers much easier.

SpaceX will try to bring rocket upper stage back from orbital velocity using a giant party balloon

- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2018

In fact, it is precisely because the lower segment has this structure that it has been able to successfully return on 23 occasions and be recycled 11 times. As soon as he started talking about it, a lot of people got interested and, of course, also had the people who didn't forgive - and even made fun, remembering the movie "Up - High Adventures".

pic.twitter.com/p3oBNOAn7t

- Erik Kuna (@erikkuna) April 16, 2018

Balloons “have a good shape to withstand stress”

The choice of balloons, according to Musk, would be because they "have a good shape to withstand the tension that a rocket stage resists during its supersonic descent back to Earth." The bladders together would be "great for creating a giant object that holds its shape at all Mach stages and decreases the ballistic coefficient by 2 orders of magnitude."

Note that a similar system was previously used by NASA to try to conduct satellite reentry.

His African-billionaire inventor said SpaceX already brings the Falcon 9 tops back, however, they are intentionally discarded in the Pacific Ocean to not become space junk. With the new idea, it would be possible to redirect them so that they would be very close to Mr. Steven, the company ship responsible for collecting debris at sea.

Note that a similar system was previously used by NASA to attempt to conduct satellites and ships during their reentries. The US space agency also conducted experiments with disk-shaped inflatable shields to land on Mars. If it works, it could save a lot of money and make future Earth orbit flights even cheaper.