Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

louis · 2016-01-08 20:25:27

You've just got to admire Space X's determination to get it right...

http://newsdaily.com/2016/01/spacex-to- … s-on-land/

They still want to master that ocean platform retro-landing.

SpaceNut · 2016-01-08 21:07:23

I would think that a land landing would be cheaper than a water landing as that is an additional expense.

GW Johnson · 2016-01-10 12:45:35

I thought I read in the news that this next Falcon-9 launch is a military satellite out of Vandenburg into a polar orbit. I might be wrong, but that's what I thought I read.

If true, that's southward, with no landmasses at all out in the Pacific. Any land landing would have to be all the way back to Vandenburg. Polar orbits require more launch energy, so there might not be enough propellant to accomplish the mission and fly the stage all the way back.

Besides, landing stages is still quite experimental. Success is the object at this stage of the game, not cost. Cost becomes the objective once the experimentation is done, and the system becomes "proven".

GW

edit update: I went and found the news story. It's Vandenburg, all right. But its a NASA satellite, not military. The thing is called JASON-3.

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-01-10 12:52:18)

Excelsior · 2016-01-10 13:55:53

I looks to me like they could pushing a couple angles here...

1) Reversing course and landing back at the launch pad cuts into their lifting capability, which is fine for some missions, but they want to use as much of their ballistic arc as possible to maximize performance.

2) The only other way to increase performance is launch from a pad closer to the equator and recovering their boosters there would require platforms anyway.

Last edited by Excelsior (2016-01-10 14:19:54)

RobertDyck · 2016-01-10 16:36:44

SpaceX nears next Falcon 9 launch and landing at sea
Florida Today, December 21, 2015

Launch of the Jason-3 mission provides SpaceX with its next opportunity to land and recover the first stage of a Falcon 9 since nailing a Dec. 21 touchdown at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
This time, the booster will try to stick its first landing at sea in the Pacific Ocean, where SpaceX will station one of its platforms dubbed “autonomous spaceport drone ships.”

SpaceNut · 2016-01-10 19:05:40

Well if we need water launching and return to maximie the large perhormance then follow what this company does http://www.sea-launch.com/launch

problem solved.....

SpaceNut · 2016-01-16 20:53:57

SpaceX fires engines on landed Falcon rocket

SpaceX successfully launched and landed its Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Monday, Dec. 21, 2015 for a historic landing 10 minutes later.
The “static fire” test, in which the booster was held down on its Launch Complex 40 pad while its nine main engines fired for seconds, was important to show if the rocket was in good enough condition to be reused. SpaceX believes reusable rockets will dramatically lower launch costs.

GW Johnson · 2016-01-17 13:12:58

As near as I can tell from the live video feed, the satellite launch is going well, and the first stage booster hit the ship but crashed.

It's still about half an hour to second stage relight to circularize, before release.

GW

update 3 PM central standard time:

Perusing a re-run of the video stream from Spacex, it is definitive: the Jason 3 satellite was released successfully into the correct orbit over Madagascar. 2nd burn of 2nd stage was just fine. Release was nearly immediate. I'm not finding much yet in the on-line news feeds except one report on MSNBC. Not much in that was definitive. If there's anything that goes wrong with Jason-3 from here, it ain't Spacex's fault.

No video footage or coverage of the 1st stage booster landing is available yet from Spacex. The PR guys on their video feed re-run that I perused describe a harder-than-expected touchdown, failure of one landing leg, and "booster not upright" on the ship. It may be some hours yet before anything definitive is released.

Update 10:45 PM central standard time:

There is still nothing at all on Spacex's website about the stage landing attempt upon the ship. However, RobertDyck post 13 below found a video posted on Facebook. I looked at it multiple times and saw three things: (1) a bad attitude angle approaching the deck was corrected before touchdown, (2) the touchdown itself appeared to be quite gentle actually, and (3) a landing leg slowly collapsed post-touchdown, toppling the stage, which exploded upon that impact. There was nothing in that video to suggest why that leg collapsed.

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-01-17 22:50:41)

SpaceNut · 2016-01-17 17:03:10

I am wondering if the targetting system used to detect the barge is not seeing it as it appears that the rockets are trying to find it at the last seconds on touch down.....

louis · 2016-01-17 17:14:23

I know what you mean...it's almost as though you want it to pause a little before heading in for the landing. Also - I wonder to they use magnets at all? Would powerful magnets stabilise the landing at all?

SpaceNut wrote:

I am wondering if the targetting system used to detect the barge is not seeing it as it appears that the rockets are trying to find it at the last seconds on touch down.....

Excelsior · 2016-01-17 17:34:25

Their Facebook page is reporting that leg #3 didn't lock into place.

Also, there where 12ft seas.

I wonder if there is a point at sea common enough where they could put a permanent platform, while maximizing any launch.

Last edited by Excelsior (2016-01-17 19:58:06)

Excelsior · 2016-01-17 19:21:26

Last edited by Excelsior (2016-01-17 19:21:38)

RobertDyck · 2016-01-17 21:44:44

SpaceX just posted this on facebook.
Video of soft touchdown and leg buckling
https://www.instagram.com/p/BAqirNbwEc0/

elonmusk wrote:

Falcon lands on droneship, but the lockout collet doesn't latch on one the four legs, causing it to tip over post landing. Root cause may have been ice buildup due to condensation from heavy fog at liftoff.

Excelsior · 2016-04-08 14:56:19

Touchdown!!!!

Last edited by Excelsior (2016-04-08 14:57:24)

louis · 2016-04-08 16:10:59

Brilliant news! Congrats to everyone at Space X for this marvellous achievement. The era of cheap space travel beckons... Can lunar hotels be far behind? I don't think so.

GW Johnson · 2016-04-08 16:57:15

They did it! Even on a barge at sea. Congrats to Spacex on a marvelous achievement.

GW

SpaceNut · 2016-04-08 17:16:15

I am glad that they got this right but from now on they need perfect launches from the recycled first stage and perfect landings each time or we can all say we told you so.....

GW Johnson · 2016-04-08 17:27:52

Spacenut, it's too early to hold them to such a standard. Let them do it a few times, and still fail some of them, before you start judging. By your standard, we would have given up airplanes by the time of the Wright flyer crash that killed Lt. Selfridge. Which was before WW1. Not WW2; the Great War, WW1 ! 1909 I think it was.
GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-04-08 17:28:44)

SpaceNut · 2016-04-08 17:57:46

Yes you are right for cargo but once manned flight does start there can be no rocket failures.....

RobertDyck · 2016-04-08 18:00:22

First flight of the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk: 17 December 17 1903
First flight of 707, the first commercial jumbo jet: 20 December 1957
That's 54 years.

First human in space, Yuri Gagarin: 12 April 1961
First American in space, Allen Shepard: 5 May 1961
Expected commercial tourism: 54 years later, 2015

And I don't mean barn storming. Commercial aviation conducted flight demonstrations at shows in the 19-teens, the first loop-the-loop was done in 1915. This was still canvas fabric stretched over wooden ribs, with wire holding it together. Similar technology to the Wright flyer. "New Shepard" by Blue Origin, and SpaceShipTwo by Virgin Galactic are just barnstorming. We should be way beyond that by now. Again, before the Challenger accident, I talked about a "back of the napkin" design of a passenger module for Shuttle. It would carry over 100 passengers to orbit. That's what we should have by now. What the public expected by about now...

"At Pan Am, the sky is no longer the limit."

RobertDyck · 2016-04-08 18:09:49

Excelsior wrote:

Touchdown!!!!

Woo Hoo!

SpaceNut · 2016-04-08 18:21:45

Even when Space X does get manned flights going to the ISS it would be probably a decade before Nasa or others would want to build a flight liner capable of the Pan AM imageor that of a modified shuttle cargo hold if we still had it flying....What would be the driving factor to want to build such a carrier when sending up the small manned taxi would yield the company a great return on profits.....

Excelsior · 2016-04-08 18:52:53

They did a static test on the last recovered stage within a week. They are probably going to want to fly a couple of these with ballast until they break them before they get paying customers for these, but there is precious little room in the manifest for that. Brownsville can not come online soon enough.

Oddly, they could use this one for the Dragon 2 abort test later this year, but thats flying out of Vandenberg.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-04-09 07:04:30

louis wrote:

Brilliant news! Congrats to everyone at Space X for this marvellous achievement. The era of cheap space travel beckons... Can lunar hotels be far behind? I don't think so.

Why not? If you can pay the cost of rockets over multiple trips instead of just one, then that makes space tourism achievable. Do you think rocket fuel is the primary cost of space travel? The thing that's holding us back is the cost of Space Travel. NASA really hasn't addressed to cost of getting into orbit for several decades! the main stumbling block is we haven't got a vehicle that can reach orbit in a single stage, then land and be used again. SpaceX simply recognizes the fact that single-stage to orbit is not worth pursuing, and has instead pursued multiple reusable stages to orbit instead, We have spent billions on trying to achieve the former, and the former is not really achievable with chemical rockets, and we are unwilling to go nuclear!

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-04-09 07:10:31

SpaceNut wrote:

I am glad that they got this right but from now on they need perfect launches from the recycled first stage and perfect landings each time or we can all say we told you so.....

Even air travel isn't perfect, yet millions of passengers fly each year! What we can do is launch cargo with recycled stages and launch people with new stages, the cargo being what is used to sustain humans in space, that alone will make space travel cheaper. If a recycled stage fails, then the cargo is lost, no big deal, the insurance company reimburses for the loss of the cargo, we get more cargo and we try again. For human travel, we use brand new reusable stages until will build up confidence in them to trust human lives on recycled stages. Does that seem fair to you? The cost of the trip will still be less, because the cost of the stages used to life the humans will be paid off over all the subsequent cargo trips the stages will be used for after they launch humans. The humans don't have to pay for the entire cost of building those stages with their trip into space!

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2016-01-08 20:25:27

Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#2 2016-01-08 21:07:23

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#3 2016-01-10 12:45:35

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#4 2016-01-10 13:55:53

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#5 2016-01-10 16:36:44

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#6 2016-01-10 19:05:40

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#7 2016-01-16 20:53:57

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#8 2016-01-17 13:12:58

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#9 2016-01-17 17:03:10

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#10 2016-01-17 17:14:23

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#11 2016-01-17 17:34:25

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#12 2016-01-17 19:21:26

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#13 2016-01-17 21:44:44

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#14 2016-04-08 14:56:19

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#15 2016-04-08 16:10:59

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#16 2016-04-08 16:57:15

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#17 2016-04-08 17:16:15

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#18 2016-04-08 17:27:52

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#19 2016-04-08 17:57:46

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#20 2016-04-08 18:00:22

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#21 2016-04-08 18:09:49

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#22 2016-04-08 18:21:45

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#23 2016-04-08 18:52:53

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#24 2016-04-09 07:04:30

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

#25 2016-04-09 07:10:31

Re: Space X - If at first you don't succeed...

Board footer