I Landed a (Model) Rocket Like SpaceX. It Took 7 Years | Hacker News Reader

I Landed a (Model) Rocket Like SpaceX. It Took 7 Years

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40 pointssigna118 comments

This is extremely impressive. The landing is a bit bouncy but that's probably quite hard to correct for because not to bounce would require the landing speed to be next to nothing and with a model rocket that is going to be that much harder than what SpaceX has to do. So in a way this is not 'like SpaceX' but even more complicated.

Keep in mind that this rocket can't turn off the engine either! It has to be very careful about the throttle so that it touches down exactly when the engine burns out. Add to that the variation in burn times between engines and it gets to be really impressive.

Linking to the primary source, Joe Barnard’s YouTube channel, BPSspace: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3lR2GLgT0. He’s got many videos on this. Would recommend, it’s been very cool to follow his progress over the years.

Often the smaller you get with systems like this the faster or twitchier the control loop has to be.

This can be an obstacle for smaller robots, where dynamic behavior can be actually harder than larger robots. Bandwidth requirements are different.

I find that the guy in the video kinda looks a bit like he could be Musk's son. Funny stuff..

Amazing launch. Very impressive. The project has a great future. These missiles can be used for urgent delivery of goods, for example.

No it has no future at all. It's not a technology that is generally important. Now the man himself may have a good career, if he ever decides to stop being a youtuber. But right now he's just a youtuber and that is his revenue stream.

The benefit is mostly the technologies developed. This is a demonstration of a fine control over thrust direction - in time and position, ability to work with crude control with thrust size, flexibility of the rocket, variability of motor thrust - at least. Given these achievements, one can put more ambitious goals ahead, like controlled multistage flight, and transfer all these results into bigger - likely liquid engine based - rockets.

Kudos to Joe, hard goal, impressive results, hopes for getting closer to the stars.

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