SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

Void · 2015-01-18 20:23:03

This might be overkill on the topic, but I like the pictures:
http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/01/16/el … h-landing/

I am genuinely excited about this. It is just fantastic seeing them take baby steps, and I do believe they are likely to get it in a few more tries.

I am also glad to see that at least this time the "Landing Pad" did not apparently get expensively damaged.

Last edited by Void (2015-01-18 20:25:27)

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-01-28 14:38:49

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ca6x4QbpoM

SpaceX Reveals Stunning Video Showing Its Totally Futuristic New Rockets

.

Business Insider
By Kelly Dickerson
2 hours ago

SpaceX_Reveals_Stunning_Video_Showing-a3b62ffb854c3aee0e82ebfedfd0259b
..
View photo
.spacex heavy rocketYouTube/SpaceX Yesterday, SpaceX released an animated video of its new Falcon Heavy rocket that, if all goes according to plan, will eventually be able to launch a manned spacecraft into space and then touch back down on a landing pad.

The idea is to create reusable rockets that can safely return to Earth and land intact. But SpaceX is still in the testing phase of the new landing maneuver. On Jan. 10, SpaceX semi-successfully landed a Falcon 9 rocket on a platform in the ocean after the rocket launched the Dragon spacecraft full of cargo to the International Space Station.

The rocket did touch down on the platform, but the rough landing rendered the rocket unusable for future flights. "Close, but no cigar," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted after the test flight.

The new Falcon Heavy rocket is made of three of these Rocket 9 boosters, and it's capable of lifting a payload of 53 metric tons — or about the equivalent of a 737 jetliner including passengers, crew, luggage and fuel. The rocket was designed from the get-go to ferry humans into space, and Musk hopes it will one day be used for manned missions to the moon or Mars. (The plan is for the manned spacecrafts, like the Dragon, to return to Earth using their own thrusters.)

The rocket has yet to undergo its first test launch, but SpaceX released an animated video of what the launch and landing could look like.

After the Falcon Heavy rocket launches, the boosters jettison from the main spacecraft:

The rockets then reorient themselves and fly back towards Earth:

The idea is for all three rockets to touch down safely so they can be reused in future spacecraft launches:

The Heavy Rocket will take off from a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida sometime this year. SpaceX is negotiating with NASA for another launch complex to use as the landing pad for the three rocket boosters.

The next test run of a single rocket is scheduled for Feb. 8, when SpaceX uses a Falcon 9 rocket to launch a space weather satellite into orbit.

You can watch the full video here:

SpaceNut · 2015-01-28 17:25:04

When is the triple core expected to launch?

Void · 2015-01-29 11:19:25

I looked at the video Tom supplied, it said this:

Published on Jan 27, 2015

When Falcon Heavy lifts off later this year, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. Thrust at liftoff is equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft operating simultaneously.

You provided this on another thread Spacenut.
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articl … ew-408356/

Reaction Engines has passed the first development milestone for a hybrid rocket engine designed to power its single-stage-to-orbit Skylon spacecraft.

So, I am wondering if these two systems actually work, to what degree they would compete, and to what degree they would be symbiotic?

I am thinking symbiosis. At first, the air breather might be able to bring up a fuel and oxidizer tank, to clip onto a upper stage that Falcon Heavy has lofted, and perhaps that could do a Moon mission?

Later, if Skylon works, perhaps using air breathing engines on the Heavy Lifter?

I am thinking about the cost reductions. If SpaceX can reuse the boosters that is one big cost reduction, but if later versions (Much later) could be partially air breathing, then a updated version could lift even larger paylodes I would think.

Last edited by Void (2015-01-29 11:27:09)

Void · 2015-02-07 13:25:11

The article says they will try again.
http://www.space.com/28484-spacex-rocke … llite.html

SpaceX will attempt to land the first stage of its 14-story Falcon 9 rocket after launching the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR for short) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida. Liftoff is set for Sunday, Feb. 8, at 6:10 p.m. EST (2310 GMT) and will be webcast live by NASA TV.

JCO · 2015-02-07 15:29:56

Void wrote:

The article says they will try again.
http://www.space.com/28484-spacex-rocke … llite.html
SpaceX will attempt to land the first stage of its 14-story Falcon 9 rocket after launching the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR for short) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida. Liftoff is set for Sunday, Feb. 8, at 6:10 p.m. EST (2310 GMT) and will be webcast live by NASA TV.

Here is hoping 2 is the charmer.

SpaceNut · 2015-02-15 18:58:11

DSCOVR Launch

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

SpaceX successfully landed a rocket in the ocean
Business Insider
By Jessica Orwig and Kelly Dickerson
17 hours ago
Jon Ross at @zlsadesign and zlsa.github.io Artist's impression of a SpaceX rocket landing.
After three attempts followed by three scrubbed launches, SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday at 6:03 pm ET.
For some, the launch was less exciting than the company's attempt to land a rocket on a barge in the Atlantic. If successful, the landing would have been the first in history, pioneering the way toward a new era or reusable rocket technology.
But SpaceX announced on the day of the scheduled, potentially historic landing, that the ocean waves are rocking the barge too much for a safe attempted landing. Instead, they would attempt a soft landing in the ocean, in which they try to control the rocket enough to land it vertically, though not on the drone ship.
Shortly after launch, SpaceX CEO and founder, Elon Musk, tweeted that the rocket had made it safely into the rocky ocean:
"The drone ship was designed to operate in all but the most extreme weather," SpaceX stated in a recent report . "We are experiencing just such weather in the Atlantic with waves reaching up to three stories in height crashing over the decks."
Musk, retweeted this chart from TWC Space Weather showing just how high the waves have grown in the last few hours:
After Wednesday's launch, SpaceX will have 16 more chances in 2015 to attempt a rocket landing on the barge.
Musk didn't have high hopes for the success of this water-soft landing to retrieve the first stage for re-use, though:
SpaceX has never recovered a rocket for reuse. And they're taking extra precautions by not attempting the landing this time around because the first time around ended in a fiery explosion.
The rocket had trouble on its most recent attempt, because it ran out of hydraulic fluid, sending it careening out of control on its way onto the drone ship:

SpaceNut · 2015-03-09 20:55:22

Upgraded Falcon 9 May Need Additional Certification

An optimized Merlin 1D engine and other enhancements to the Falcon 9 v1.1 will give Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) the ability to lift commercial communications satellites to orbit while continuing to develop the rocket’s reusable core stage.
Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX, says the improvements include a 15% boost in thrust for the rocket’s nine core-stage engines, as well as super-chilled propellant and a 10% increase in the volume of the upper-stage tank, according to Musk’s Twitter feed.
However, if the design changes are significant, they could prevent SpaceX from lifting sensitive civil and military payloads on the retooled Falcon 9 without subjecting it to further scrutiny beyond U.S. Air Force and NASA launch-vehicle certification efforts already underway.

GW Johnson · 2015-04-15 16:06:25

As of today (4-15-15), I see on the internet news a version of the video of the CRS-6 1st stage landing attempt on the barge that includes the explosion. Doesn't matter, what I see in either version of the video is inadequate attitude control as the stage lands.

It is this tilted attitude that leads to the "excess horizontal velocity" blamed for the landing failure in the news releases. Landing on land vs a barge at sea will not fundamentally fix that problem. They have to get better control over the stage attitude as it touches down, no matter upon what.

Attitude control thrusters could easily do that, and they don't really need them until the last several seconds. The grid fins and engine gimballing seem to have controlled the bulk of the descent well enough, in all three attempts so far.

I do notice the legs remain almost swept-up until those last few seconds, for aerodynamics purposes. The legs do not assume landing configuration until the final seconds. Smart.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2015-04-15 16:09:56)

SpaceNut · 2015-04-15 17:17:41

The only thing that Nasa has done that was simular was landing the LM but that was so long ago. This landinmg of the much large in size 1 st stage is so much harder for lots of reasons. They are the first to attempt this feat so I hope they will continue as this will transfer to what a large Mars landing would be like.

GW Johnson · 2015-04-25 11:33:33

Bob Clark has on his blog the criticism that one-engine thrust with the Merlin 1-D's is too high to allow hover. This means it's a one-shot deceleration to touchdown, no recourse. I agree with Bob that that's a design flaw with stage recovery.

They really need the hover capability to give them time to adjust to upsets. They may need attitude thrusters to give them adequate attitude control in those final seconds - attitude non-control appears to be the cause of the last crash.

Longer-term, Merlin 1-D is going to need deeper throttle capability to support hover. Short term, they might possibly use a Merlin 1_C for the center engine. They have some work to do, obviously.

As for NASA and its LM, I doubt there's anyone still alive and still employed there who had anything to do with the LM capability. Even if there were, the "real smarts" wasn't in NASA it was in Grumman, where the thing was built.

Grumman got swallowed up into one or the other of the two giants comprising ULA. I'm just about dead certain nobody is left alive or still employed that had anything to do with the LM. That was 50 years ago.

So Spacex is the authority on vertical rocket landings. Such as they are. Until Blue Origin gets theirs working, maybe.

GW

Excelsior · 2015-04-25 12:15:46

What if they installed the Dragon 2's LAS/Powered decent system on the top of the first stage? Seems to me that would provide some some much needed stability, if it doesn't add too much weight.

GW Johnson · 2015-04-25 15:41:54

Installing the Super Draco's onto a Falcon-9 1st stage would be a bit heavy (or worse), although it just might just actually be partially effective.

I have no idea what Spacex is really up to. They do not hire folks over about age 45. Which I am way, way past. I cannot get them to even talk to me.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2015-04-25 15:43:52)

Mark Friedenbach · 2015-04-26 09:50:24

That's age discrimination, and illegal

GW Johnson · 2015-04-26 14:04:56

Mark Friedenbach wrote:

That's age discrimination, and illegal

Sure it’s illegal! But that law is almost completely unenforced! It’s evil, it’s unethical, it’s actually unprofitable, and a whole lot of other epithets. But it’s management policy at most contracting companies, aided and abetted by the government labs that fund them.

This has been true for 2-3 decades now, at the very least. If you are an engineer over about 40-45 years of age, you WILL NOT be hired by anyone! I have seen this up close and personal for over 20 years myself.

This is also why “we” seem to have lost the ability to do what our 1950’s-1960’s ancestors did. An example would be SLS: a reprise of Saturn 5 based on shuttle technology. It might or might not ever fly, but if it does, it will have taken 20+ years to do what our 1960’s ancestors did in only 6 years back then.

This is precisely because most all of engineering, not just rocketry or aerospace, is about at most 40% science written down for others to follow, at least 50% art (never written down) that was intended to be passed on one-on-one on-the-job from older mentors to the new hires, and at least 10% blind dumb luck. That’s in production work. The art and luck percentages are higher in development work.

The engineering art was never written down because managers never wanted to pay for writing it down, pure and simple. This effect was worse at contracting companies. You can tell, because only the government labs were truly “prolific” at published papers. It makes them seem smarter than they really were. The “real smarts” was in the contractors that they hired, though!

Managerial types never wanted to believe in the engineering art concept, because it meant increased spending. Hiring high-school drop-outs to do what was in the “cookbooks” was the road to increased profit, as long as you do not believe there is such a thing as engineering art. Thus there was no compelling reason to keep older engineers on the staff.

All based on a false belief system. Where have we seen that, recently? There IS recent precedent for this self-deception.

Without older guys, above about age 50-ish, there was no pass-down of engineering art to the next generation of oncoming engineers. The under-50 guys are (and were) just too busy to take this responsibility on. Since engineering art is the majority of engineering knowledge, why should it surprise anyone that none of the companies who built Saturn 5 can repeat that performance?

We have seen this play out in very recent history: Spacex had very fatal problems during the first few flights of their Falcon-1 vehicle out of Kwajalein. They did not resolve this until they temporarily hired a few old farts who actually knew the rare art of flying supersonic vehicles that stage, within the sensible atmosphere. It simply wasn’t about rocket engines, it was about aerodynamics and flight mechanics.

They have bumped into this wall again with landing Falcon-9 first stages. It’s not about the rocketry, it’s about flight mechanics, once again.

Old guys are still widely viewed as “too expensive to have on staff”. Until they consult some of us old farts, they (Spacex) will continue to crash Falcon-9 first stages. Or else they will crash many of them until they re-learn the hard way the “ancient art”. That’s my prediction.

It applies to any part of ULA as well. Including Aerojet Rocketdyne the subcontractor.

GW

SpaceNut · 2015-04-26 16:45:39

Mark Friedenbach wrote:

That's age discrimination, and illegal

I myself have also been turned down as living to far from a work place only an hour away, having to much experience and yes having a last job that had earnings greater than that to which I was willing to work for as well as the age thing.

The aging work force that has put in a career in one company for periods of 20 plus are now reaching retirement age and with that the knowledge is not being passed on to that younger work force.

GW Johnson wrote:

This is precisely because most all of engineering, not just rocketry or aerospace, is about at most 40% science written down for others to follow, at least 50% art (never written down) that was intended to be passed on one-on-one on-the-job from older mentors to the new hires, and at least 10% blind dumb luck. That’s in production work. The art and luck percentages are higher in development work.

Tribal knowledge is what is not written down and is what is lacking from those newly trained to do the work.

GW Johnson wrote:

Old guys are still widely viewed as “too expensive to have on staff”. Until they consult some of us old farts, they (Spacex) will continue to crash Falcon-9 first stages.

The only thing expensive about older workers is the retirement package that has not been given to those newly hired people as compared to the older generation that has it. Sure the older people have progressed up the ladder but that is only natural and given time those at the bottom newly hired will be in that say seat.

Tom Kalbfus · 2015-04-26 17:30:53

If my seventeen year old daughter can't buy a six-pack of beer, is that age discrimination? I think it is, and its quite legal.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2015-04-26 17:31:32)

SpaceNut · 2015-04-26 19:01:14

Sure if you live in another nation its not but we were talking the issues of working and being able to purchase any item is really not what was being referred to....

So how does space x reuseability help drive down cost if we can not retrieve the first stage? I am sure that they will get it right in time...

Here are some specifics for the first stage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_reu … nt_program

The reusable launch system technology is under development for the first stages of the Falcon family of rockets. It is particularly well-suited to the Falcon Heavy where the two outer cores separate from the rocket earlier in the flight, and are therefore moving more slowly at stage separation. If the technology is used on a reusable Falcon 9 rocket, the first-stage separation would occur at a velocity of approximately 2.0 km/s (6,500 km/h; 4,100 mph; Mach 6) rather than the 3.4 km/s (11,000 km/h; 7,000 mph; Mach 10) for an expendable Falcon 9, to provide the residual fuel necessary for the deceleration and turnaround maneuver and the controlled descent and landing. The reusable technology will also be extended to both the first and upper stages of the future launch vehicle for the Mars Colonial Transporter.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … raphic.jpg

If you label launch after refueling on Mars and look at booster burn back as the descent to Mars we have what would be a powered landing with no parachutes or heat shield as a developing method of how to solve the mars landing.

Finally found the altitude of seperation....

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/52 … -to-earth/

A camera on the second stage of the rocket captured live video of the nine SpaceX-built Merlin engines firing on the first stage of the rocket, with the plume of flame and smoke gradually expanding as the air around the vehicle thinned. At about 50 miles in altitude, and traveling at about 10 times the speed of sound some 35 miles off the Florida coast, the first-stage engines cut off as planned. As the first stage dropped away, the single Merlin engine in the second stage fired to propel the Dragon craft the rest of the way into orbit. Another camera view showed the Dragon moving away from the second stage into space with the Earth as a backdrop.

RGClark · 2015-04-28 14:15:24

GW Johnson wrote:

...
This has been true for 2-3 decades now, at the very least. If you are an engineer over about 40-45 years of age, you WILL NOT be hired by anyone! I have seen this up close and personal for over 20 years myself.
This is also why “we” seem to have lost the ability to do what our 1950’s-1960’s ancestors did. An example would be SLS: a reprise of Saturn 5 based on shuttle technology. It might or might not ever fly, but if it does, it will have taken 20+ years to do what our 1960’s ancestors did in only 6 years back then.
This is precisely because most all of engineering, not just rocketry or aerospace, is about at most 40% science written down for others to follow, at least 50% art (never written down) that was intended to be passed on one-on-one on-the-job from older mentors to the new hires, and at least 10% blind dumb luck. That’s in production work. The art and luck percentages are higher in development work.
The engineering art was never written down because managers never wanted to pay for writing it down, pure and simple. This effect was worse at contracting companies. You can tell, because only the government labs were truly “prolific” at published papers. It makes them seem smarter than they really were. The “real smarts” was in the contractors that they hired, though!
Managerial types never wanted to believe in the engineering art concept, because it meant increased spending. Hiring high-school drop-outs to do what was in the “cookbooks” was the road to increased profit, as long as you do not believe there is such a thing as engineering art. Thus there was no compelling reason to keep older engineers on the staff.
All based on a false belief system. Where have we seen that, recently? There IS recent precedent for this self-deception.
Without older guys, above about age 50-ish, there was no pass-down of engineering art to the next generation of oncoming engineers. The under-50 guys are (and were) just too busy to take this responsibility on. Since engineering art is the majority of engineering knowledge, why should it surprise anyone that none of the companies who built Saturn 5 can repeat that performance?
We have seen this play out in very recent history: Spacex had very fatal problems during the first few flights of their Falcon-1 vehicle out of Kwajalein. They did not resolve this until they temporarily hired a few old farts who actually knew the rare art of flying supersonic vehicles that stage, within the sensible atmosphere. It simply wasn’t about rocket engines, it was about aerodynamics and flight mechanics.
They have bumped into this wall again with landing Falcon-9 first stages. It’s not about the rocketry, it’s about flight mechanics, once again.
Old guys are still widely viewed as “too expensive to have on staff”. Until they consult some of us old farts, they (Spacex) will continue to crash Falcon-9 first stages. Or else they will crash many of them until they re-learn the hard way the “ancient art”. That’s my prediction.
It applies to any part of ULA as well. Including Aerojet Rocketdyne the subcontractor.
GW

Thanks for that insider info about engineering. I think I remember SpaceX presenting proudly how young the average age of their engineering staff was. Maybe. But they still need some of the "old guard" to transfer the art to the new generation.

Bob Clark

GW Johnson · 2015-05-11 13:58:31

Amazing they do as well as they do with Falcon-9, since the hard-knocks experience from Falcon-1 is now no longer on the staff. Their next big trial with supersonic staged vehicles will be Falcon-Heavy. Those side cores have to peel away reliably every single time, without ever bumping into the center core. Even in the very thin, air loads can be very tricky. The shape that works is not the min-drag shape during ascent. No free lunches.

Myself, I'd force the issue with little thrusters, combined with the right aerodynamic shape, and the right release sequence. Suspenders and belt, always. Little thrusters like that can be very reliable solid cartridges. On Poseidon and Trident, they were called "third stage eject motors". Short fat cylinders about 6 or 7 inch diameter and 3 inch thick. Weighed a very few pounds. Only an ignition signal was needed to fire them, so you put your safe/arm in electrically. 20 year shelf life.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2015-05-11 14:04:08)

RobertDyck · 2015-12-21 19:11:50

Next launch of SpaceX Falcon 9 at 7:29pm Central Time. That's less than 20 minutes from this post. Live webcast now. And they confirmed they will attempt to land on a concrete pad at Cape Canaveral.
http://www.spacex.com/webcast/

Excelsior · 2015-12-21 19:51:03

Success!

Last edited by Excelsior (2015-12-21 20:06:55)

RobertDyck · 2015-12-21 20:18:12

Woo Hoo!

They had a group of people cheering. It reminded me of an Apple Store when they launch a new product. A lot of hype, with company paid employees cheering and raising excitement. Probably an attempt to bring attention back to SpaceX, instead of Blue Horizon. But the bottom line is they did it! THEY DID IT!!!

louis · 2015-12-22 14:37:47

I have always banged the drum for Space X believing they would get there. Yet again they prove their prowess. This is the most revolutionary development in rocketry in 5 decades. The cost of delivery to orbit is going to tumble. Blue Origin have done well but their achievements are not to be compared with those of Space X.

This means the Mars Mission is now probably a decade closer than it would otherwise be.

We need to recognise Musk has already done a lot of the hard work required to get to Mars. He is probably a lot closer than people realise.

Excelsior · 2015-12-22 16:48:07

A fantastic technical achievement. But sticking the landing is just half the battle. There's a big difference between their Grasshopper test flights and this operational launch, so this is still virgin territory. Now they have to pick that booster apart to make sure its reusable. And then they have to fly it a few times without picking it apart to prove the concept truly viable.

Still, they have already reduced launch costs considerably, and are on the cusp of slashing them in a transformative way. Its a testament of what one can do when you answer to a vision and not to shareholders.

One wonders if they will still make the effort to recover the second stage. While the first stage represents the vast majority of the cost, if you can land a capsule on a pad, you can land the second stage using all the same pieces. If nothing else, that is valuable pressurized volume that you've gotten to orbit. Waste not, want not.

Combined with the inaugural flights of the Falcon Heavy, the Dragon 2 capsule, and the BEAM module all next year, the pieces are falling into place. Poor Bigelow is basically stilling on their hands, waiting for affordable access, and it's right there. We are also due to see some renders of the Mars Colonial Transporter early next year, and after last night I think he will strike while the pad is still hot. It's unclear if that entails just a new launcher, a much larger capsule, or a full transit and surface architecture. There is a lot of ground work to be done.

I'd still want a Lunar Return to Stay before the decade is out. And other than surface hardware, there is very little left that would need to be produced. Providing that service can propel SpaceX's Mars development, just as providing service to the ISS has gotten them this far.

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#76 2015-01-18 20:23:03

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#77 2015-01-28 14:38:49

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#78 2015-01-28 17:25:04

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#79 2015-01-29 11:19:25

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#80 2015-02-07 13:25:11

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#81 2015-02-07 15:29:56

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#82 2015-02-15 18:58:11

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#83 2015-03-09 20:55:22

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#84 2015-04-15 16:06:25

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#85 2015-04-15 17:17:41

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#86 2015-04-25 11:33:33

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#87 2015-04-25 12:15:46

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#88 2015-04-25 15:41:54

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#89 2015-04-26 09:50:24

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#90 2015-04-26 14:04:56

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#91 2015-04-26 16:45:39

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#92 2015-04-26 17:30:53

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#93 2015-04-26 19:01:14

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#94 2015-04-28 14:15:24

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#95 2015-05-11 13:58:31

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#96 2015-12-21 19:11:50

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#97 2015-12-21 19:51:03

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#98 2015-12-21 20:18:12

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#99 2015-12-22 14:37:47

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

#100 2015-12-22 16:48:07

Re: SpaceX Falcon 9R launch

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