rocket landing

Curious Droid surveys vertical take-off and landing rockets that predate SpaceX and Blue Origin, including the McDonnell Douglas DC-X of the 1990s. It shows that propulsive landing has about 60 years of history.

Joe Barnard of BPS.space shows his model rocket Scout F landing vertically like a SpaceX booster after seven years of attempts. The video documents the successful landing and the build-up to it.

Sped-up onboard camera footage of the Falcon 9 first stage landing on a drone ship during the THAICOM 8 mission on May 27, 2016. It shows the descent from grid fin deployment to touchdown.

SpaceX's official footage of the CRS-6 Falcon 9 first stage landing attempt, in high resolution and slow motion. It shows the descent and touchdown on the drone ship.

SpaceX's own compilation of failed orbital booster landing attempts, set to sound, showing the crashes before landings succeeded.

SpaceX footage of the Grasshopper vehicle's 744 m test hop, filmed from a hexacopter that gets closer than earlier flights. Grasshopper was a vertical takeoff and landing rig built to test returning rockets to the pad.

Footage of DC-X Flight 8 from July 1995 at White Sands, in which the Delta Clipper Experimental reusable rocket turned over into a re-entry profile and re-oriented itself for landing.

Everyday Astronaut's Tim Dodd runs an hour-long, data-driven analysis of what rockets actually emit and how that compares with airliners and other industries. It breaks down exhaust by propellant type, per-passenger and total emissions, and ways launches could be cleaner.

Destin Sandlin tours United Launch Alliance's rocket factory with CEO Tory Bruno, showing friction stir welding, structural rocket skins and large milled parts.

NASA's animated explanation of the Curiosity rover's Mars landing, which relied on a complex automated sequence taking about seven minutes. It features NASA engineers discussing the risks before the 2012 landing.

Scott Manley explains the plumbing of rocket engines, including pressure-fed, gas generator, expander and staged combustion cycles. He shows why more complex designs exist and what they gain.

A four-pane view of Armadillo Aerospace's Mod vehicle on a June 2010 boosted hop. The flight includes engine shutdown, drogue chute deployment, an engine restart and a safe landing.

A two-minute explanation of what a rocket mass heater is, starting from how a conventional wood stove works and why creosote and chimney fires occur. It shows how burning hot and storing the heat in thermal mass makes for an efficient heater.

A clip from Joe Rogan Experience #928 in which Rogan, with Arian Foster, explains why he abandoned his belief in Moon landing conspiracy theories. He describes how doctored training photos fueled doubt before he learned more of the physics.

Scott Manley explains the nuclear salt water rocket, Robert Zubrin's concept of a rocket fueled by a rapid nuclear reaction in uranium salt dissolved in water. He covers its extraordinary performance and the dangers of managing it.

A Veritasium video touring Relativity Space and explaining why 3D printing whole rockets cuts tooling costs, allows rapid iteration, reduces part count and enables new designs. It includes an interview with Scott Manley on aerospace engineering.

SpaceX footage of the Grasshopper reusable rocket prototype flying 325 m before landing on its pad. It was the first test to use the full navigation sensor suite and closed-loop control for a precision landing.

A one-minute clip of an Atlas Agena rocket losing pressure on the pad and collapsing. The Atlas relied on tank pressurization for structural integrity, so a simple failure tore it apart.

Everyday Astronaut explains the basic physics of rocket engines, the main engine cycles and fuel types, then compares SpaceX's methane-fueled full-flow staged combustion Raptor to other engines. It runs nearly 50 minutes with chapter markers.

A very long, detailed look at the A4/V2 rocket turbopump, the steam-turbine-driven twin propellant pump system. It covers the peroxide and permanganate catalysis that drives the turbine. This is part 1 of a series on V2 components.

Tim Dodd's hour-long deep dive on how rocket engines start, from solid motors to liquid engines. It covers thermal conditioning, spin-up, ignition methods, starting in space, and a step-by-step RS-25 startup.

A 1966 NASA safety film teaching workers how to handle toxic rocket propellants such as hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide. It explains the hazards of these corrosive, flammable and toxic chemicals and what to do after contamination.

A short Boeing-supplied clip where the 737 MAX program's chief project engineer explains how the lengthened landing gear of the MAX 10 folds up. It shows the gear model in motion.

SpaceX's livestream of the Falcon Heavy test flight, including the launch, side booster landings and Tesla Roadster payload. It was the first launch of the most powerful operational rocket at the time.

Cockpit footage of an approach to the Megeve altiport in France that ends in a gear-up landing, with the warning horn audible throughout. Everyone aboard survived and the crew had thousands of flight hours.

NASA JPL engineers explain the final minutes of the Curiosity rover's entry, descent and landing on Mars, which combined aerobraking, a parachute and a skycrane. It lays out the tight sequence of events that all had to work automatically.

SpaceX's recap of the Falcon Heavy debut launch, with side booster landings and a Tesla Roadster with Starman sent into orbit.

A Channel 4 Equinox documentary on the NK-33 engines built for the Soviet N1 moon rocket and how they ended up in the USA. It includes rare footage and interviews with veterans of the early Soviet space program.

A filmmaker explains why the Apollo moon landing footage could not have been faked in a studio, based on the video and film technology of the late 1960s. He walks through the limits of cameras, frame rates and effects of the era.

Short Curious Droid video on why NASA could not simply rebuild the Saturn V's Rocketdyne F-1 engine for the SLS boosters. It explains that the engines were hand-tailored and that much of the know-how was never documented, so the blueprints were not enough.

Stuntman Gary Connery jumps from a helicopter at 2,400 feet in a wingsuit and lands without a parachute on a runway of stacked cardboard boxes, the first such landing.

A SpaceX concept animation of a Falcon 9 and Dragon launch with powered vertical return of both stages and the capsule. It was uploaded to YouTube in 2011.

SpaceX engineers present at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference on a multi-physics code that simulates the full-scale Raptor methane engine. It covers GPU-based turbulent combustion modeling with adaptive grids and wavelet compression.

Scott Manley looks at SpinLaunch, which aims to throw launch vehicles out of a spinning launcher at hypersonic speed. He covers its recent Mach 1 test of a one-third scale launcher and the engineering problems that remain.

A man with no flight instruction and only desktop flight simulator experience attempts to take off and land a Cessna 172, with a commercial airline instructor aboard who gives no help. The flight came out of a prop bet.

A five-hour Lex Fridman interview with John Carmack covering Doom, Quake, VR, AGI, programming, games and rockets.

Tom Lehrer's satirical song about Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who went from the Nazi missile program to the US space program. It includes the famous line about not caring where the rockets come down.

Bret Copeland, in an astronaut costume, gives an energetic talk on how the Space Shuttle landed from orbit, including reentry and the unpowered glide. It includes real-time landing footage with HUD and audio.

Defense analyst H I Sutton argues that a new type of Chinese landing barge can only be explained by planning for an amphibious assault, in particular on Taiwan.

Short archival footage of a USMC KC-130F Hercules making unarrested landings and takeoffs on the USS Forrestal in 1963. It is the largest and heaviest aircraft to have landed on a carrier, and the tests were judged successful but too risky for routine use.