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Space ISS Transportation

SpaceX Rocket Launch Succeeds, But Landing Test Doesn't 213

New submitter 0x2A writes: A Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX successfully launched a Dragon cargo ship toward the International Space Station early Saturday— and then returned to Earth, apparently impacting its target ocean platform during a landing test in the Atlantic.

"Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard. Close, but no cigar this time. Bodes well for the future tho," Elon Musk tweeted shortly after the launch. He added that they didn't get good video of the landing attempt, so they'll be piecing it together using telemetry and debris. "Ship itself is fine. Some of the support equipment on the deck will need to be replaced."
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SpaceX Rocket Launch Succeeds, But Landing Test Doesn't

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  • For the first manned landings

    • Re:Volunteers needed (Score:5, Informative)

      by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @10:08AM (#48780927)

      There will never be manned landings of the first stage. Or the second. For the simple reason that there is no reason to man them in the first place. As for the crew capsule - well by then they will have had lots of practice landing the first two stages, not to mention the much more similar unmanned cargo capsules which are a much easier control challenge than the booster stages - compare balancing a vertical broom in your palm to balancing a baseball. It might get a bit more exciting if the crew were allowed to wander around during landing, chaotically modifying the mass distribution, but I suspect most everyone would rather be strapped firmly in place anyway.

  • Minor setback (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dereck1701 ( 1922824 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @09:44AM (#48780823)

    The fact that it made it to the platform itself is a major milestone, correcting whatever caused it to land hard (rough seas, hardware/software issue, ran out of fuel at the last second) would seem to be childs play compared to what was required to get to that point. Reentering craft usually have landing ellipsis of dozens if not hundreds of square miles and this thing landed on a 300'x170' platform. I look forward to the next (hopefully successful) test.

    • Re:Minor setback (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zibodiz ( 2160038 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @09:58AM (#48780885) Homepage
      Exactly. The fact that it landed well enough that they're reporting the "ship itself is fine" means that it was a success. It doesn't take much to damage a rocket/module/anything that flies into space beyond use. They probably just landed on top of a toolbox or something.
      • Re:Minor setback (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ssam ( 2723487 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @10:11AM (#48780939)

        I assume that meant the boat was undamaged, not the rocket.

        • by Kjella ( 173770 )

          Yeah, I'm assuming what this means is that it touched down too hard, one or more of the legs bent/broke and the rocket tumbled over. Or all legs didn't get on the platform and it tipped over. Hopefully next time there's a daytime landing, telemetry and debris will presumably give SpaceX what they need watching it would be way cooler.

        • It will be interesting to see how "bad" this landing was... Was it a total, catastrophic loss, or did it just break a leg on landing and fall over onto the barge platform? The engines are the most expensive part of the "stack", and there are nine of them on the F9 booster stage. If they can salvage six or seven of these Merlin engines from this booster, even that will be a major victory.

          Given the rate of innovation and development we've seen from SpaceX in the last few years, I suspect we'll see them nail t

      • Exactly. The fact that it landed well enough that they're reporting the "ship itself is fine" means that it was a success. It doesn't take much to damage a rocket/module/anything that flies into space beyond use.

        That they landed "well enough" to report the ship is fine means... well, pretty much nothing. It doesn't take much to damage the rocket, but it does takes a great deal to significantly damage a steel barge. (Think hitting a chunk of granite with a wineglass.)

        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          It tells us at least that the rocket didn't impact it moving at hundreds of meters a second. Sabot-launch a streamlined wineglass out of an high power air cannon at a chunk of granite and yeah, you'll almost certainly break off chunks of it.

          We can say pretty assuredly say that it got to its final landing stage, was slowly lowering itself to the deck... and then "something" went wrong.

          • We can say pretty assuredly say that it got to its final landing stage, was slowly lowering itself to the deck... and then "something" went wrong.

            Well, no - we can't say that. Why? Because we don't know that it was slowly lowering itself to the deck. It impacted at 12/ms, but that low speed could have been the result of a long deceleration burn *or* a last second suicide burn. (And in many ways, the second is often a better strategy.)

            But you'd have to actually know something about the problem rather tha

            • by Rei ( 128717 )

              Grasshopper always did something roughly equivalent to a last second suicide burn, why would Falcon be any different? But that's "slowly lowering itself to the deck". Only for a brief moment, but the key is, getting the velocity down. It clearly had the velocity down. But something went wrong.

        • Re:Minor setback (Score:4, Insightful)

          by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @12:04PM (#48781509)

          No, it tells us they got the Dragon down onto a 300x170 foot platform before things went south.

          Personally, I'm impressed that the Dragon even found the landing barge on the first try....

      • That they made it this far and were most likely able to retrieve a ton of information for their people to improve the next attempt sounds to me as well like they got their money's worth.

      • What they accomplished was absolutely amazing. Anyone who doesn't get how astonishing just getting that close really was doesn't understand the problem.

        There has to be a test range on land somewhere they can try putting one down instead of a pitching platform in the middle of the ocean.

    • I have a semi-related questions – why not add wings and land the first stage like a airplane or done?

      Is the extra weight for the fuel needed to land the first stage really that much less than the extra weight for wings? Even if the wings weighted more, I would think that the simpler design would win over. Of course, I am assuming that balancing a multi-ton pencil on a pillar of flame is hard.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Adds a *lot* of extra drag and parasitic mass on the ascent. Still, the Russians planned to do that with the Baikal flyback booster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikal_%28rocket_booster%29. They may decide to revive it, given the apparent progress SpaceX is making...

      • My guess is that folding wings & landing gear would be heavier and more difficult to produce. Also, it would mean you'd need a landing strip to land at, which would mean it would have to fly over land; probably a harder thing to get clearance for.

      • There are some working on a similar concept (Stratolaunch, Russian Re-entry Rocket Module (RRM), defunct Roton Rocket). To each their own, I would imagine that SpaceX didn't want to try to mix disciplines (rocketry & aircraft) and add moving parts. You can't just put a wing on a rocket and launch it, doing so adds immense drag and difficult to resolve aerodynamic forces so they often have to be stowed/folded into the rocket somehow. The only craft that I believe has successfully added fixed wings is

        • Maybe. While your points are valid, I would be careful about using the Space Shuttle as a key exhibit because it was the result of a stupid compromise.

          The Space Shuttle was designed to land at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, which is much further north than Kennedy. In order to reach that far north the Space Shuttle needed a delta wing and had to come in screaming fast. The civilians at NASA would have preferred a straight wing. While it could not have reach Vandenberg, it was lighter and landing the thing w

          • It also had to land fully-loaded, because the military wanted to be able to bring stuff back from space.

      • by itzly ( 3699663 )

        I am assuming that balancing a multi-ton pencil on a pillar of flame is hard.

        No doubt that it is hard, but the control system does not add a lot of mass or drag, so there's a big reward for figuring it out.

        • Re: A bit off topic (Score:5, Informative)

          by joh ( 27088 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @12:38PM (#48781717)

          Putting wings on something that consists of empty tanks in front and heavy engines in the tail is harder. A rocket stage has totally the wrong center of gravity to fly this way. Try to throw a dart with the heavy tip backwards and you will see why.

      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        It is hard - extremely hard. Stability is only part of the problem, hover offers a lot of other problems that don't crop up when the craft is facing strong and roughly steady G forces. But landing like that gives mass benefits. And small mass benefits on one stage means very large benefits for your payload capacity delivered to space. So if you can pull it off, it's a big win.

      • I don't think the fuel is "extra"... I think it is safety margin fuel that would otherwise be wasted. Remember that this thing has to be able to make it to orbit even with the loss of an engine or two.

    • "Rockets are tricky".
    • This was the first flight with the maneuvering grid fins. The fact that they were able to bring the rocket to the barge with an untested maneuvering technology is quite remarkable. It speaks volumes to their modelling software. I can speculate that because of the untested grid fins, the maneuvering was not quite as precise as needed and the rocket engines had to do a large slew just before landing, which burned up too much fuel. My speculation is that the fuel ran out just before landing.

      The fact that

      • If it was a fuel issue it could explain something. I've never seen a fuel tank camera before (though I am sure they have been flown before) yet at least the video I watched they gave a view of the second stages fuel tank (I believe) for quite a while after ending the burn. I wonder if they were trying to show the NASA guys that they could stage the rocket a little earlier (leaving more fuel in the first stage) due to an ample safety margin (there seemed to be quite a bit of fuel left.)

    • Correcting rough seas doesn't seem to be child's play.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    About 10 minutes and 15 or 20 seconds after the launch, a camera was showing the backs of some solar panels of the Dragon. At that time, it looked like something floated to the upper left, and then floated out of view. The thing was light-colored, and it looked like it was tumbling. Does anyone know what that was? A piece of paper?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Probably just a flake of ice, the rocket/spacecraft are generally covered with it on launch and if you look closely it sheds it throughout the flight.

      • by MouseR ( 3264 )

        My thoughts as well but it's still surprising a chunk of ice would still be on the vehicle after it went supersonic.

        That's a hell of a lot of friction.

    • The primary buffer panel?

    • by Strider- ( 39683 )

      Probably a cover (either foil or tyvek, not sure what they use) that covers over the RCS jets while the rocket launches, then is discarded when the jet is first fired. A similar thing was occasionally seen on shuttle launches. These covers are there to keep crap (both bird, and rainwater etc...) out of the jets while the rocket is sitting on the pad.

  • it made it home (Score:5, Insightful)

    by onepoint ( 301486 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @10:01AM (#48780901) Homepage Journal

    Well, I think it's a milestone. Just getting it to land on the platform, in the dark, without any human help. That speaks a lot of the hard work that people invested. So it gets some damage, big deal.
    I am glad that it was not a total success, otherwise people might get into lazy thinking and not look for bugs. I believe (not sure, cannot cite sources on this), but some airplane was not tested enough because everything happened perfect on testing, it was placed into production (1950's). Over the course of a year or 2, the planes were having issues and a few crashed. And they had to stop production. Some sort of fault in the structure.

    So, in summary, He's done it!!! now to get all the bugs worked out.

    • by thrich81 ( 1357561 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @10:19AM (#48780963)

      Sounds like the aircraft you are describing is the De Havilland Comet, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]

    • Well, I think it's a milestone. Just getting it to land on the platform, in the dark, without any human help.

      What is all that special about landing in the dark? You do realize we have all sorts of cameras that can "see" in the dark, right?

      • What is special about landing in the dark... hmmm.
        a) Depth perception in darkness changes (given they could use some sort of sonar type bounce to get a distance reading)
        b) Blindness of the camera's when the thrusters are activated.
        c) Landing on the water, barges move up and down, that's really impressive, it's only so stable. This is nothing like a carrier landing in any way.

        Well anyway, I am amazed and cheering for them!!!

        • a) Depth perception in darkness changes (given they could use some sort of sonar type bounce to get a distance reading)

          There are all sorts of sensors and readings to use to land in the dark especially when automated. You do realize that planes fly all the time in the dark and in fog, right?

          b) Blindness of the camera's when the thrusters are activated.

          You wouldn't be using only cameras. You would have a host of other sensors to provide all manner of positional information. None of this is new or impressive.

          c) Landing on the water, barges move up and down, that's really impressive, it's only so stable. This is nothing like a carrier landing in any way.

          Sure, that is impressive, but has nothing to do with being in the dark. Such a thing is tricky regardless of the amount of light.

          • >>You do realize that planes fly all the time in the dark and in fog, right?
            Yes, I do and that's with humans at the stick, but the plane can land itself. on a stable platform ( runway ) that has know variables, big space, a performance design that have been tested and tested and updated almost to the point that it's automated, but at the end, a pilot is still required just in case. Landing and takeoffs are still the highest risk points of a flight.

            But this landing, this is a tiny little speck, and i

    • I am glad that it was not a total success, otherwise people might get into lazy thinking and not look for bugs. I believe (not sure, cannot cite sources on this), but some airplane was not tested enough because everything happened perfect on testing, it was placed into production (1950's). Over the course of a year or 2, the planes were having issues and a few crashed. And they had to stop production. Some sort of fault in the structure.

      You're probably thinking of the Comet - the problems were less ones of

  • New meaning to "Hit the deck!" Or "Incoming!" Perhaps they should rename the barge to "Oh fuck!" Seriously, congrats though SpaceX
  • No video? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Immerman ( 2627577 )

    Come on, didn't they learn their lesson trying to reconstruct video to analyze earlier water landings? Here you've got a big frigging barge that they expect to be ground zero for an important rocket crash - I would have expected them to mount a few automatic cameras on nearby buoys so they'd be sure to get multiple videos of the crash to learn as much as possible

    • "...pitch dark and foggy..."

      And a real pity no technology exists to illuminate a scheduled landing to allow clear recording by the cameras that were deployed.

    • by Megane ( 129182 )

      Hey, give 'em a break. They have to launch at exactly the right moment to catch ISS, and today's moment was simply too early to have any sunlight there. The dense fog didn't help either. On the other hand, it didn't land in the water, so they can finally take the SD card out of the GoPro in the rocket!

      I just want to see a picture of rocket bits on the barge, broken or not.

      • The guys at http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex [reddit.com] have been following the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (That 'Drone' really helps with the abbreviation) from a cruise ship that has a webcam pointed in its general direction when it's in port, hopefully we'll get a glimpse of it when it gets back.

        • Yeah guys, it's early in the sequence. They may well have low light / infrared cameras pointing at the thing. They probably don't have cameras hovering around waiting to transmit from the middle of nowhere in realtime. Further, most IR cameras have reduced spatial resolution compared to visual range so they may have decided that the investment in time and money wasn't worth it. The telemetry will show the engineers the important stuff. He's not doing this to make YouTube videos.

    • It is inconceivable that they didn't have cameras all over the barge. The problem is that SpaceX is on track to put all of its competitors out of business and they will seize on any scrap of "evidence" to trot in front of Congress to claim that their rockets are dangerous. The 50% odds of success Musk claimed were probably bogus too but a necessary lie to keep the detractors at bay.

  • One of the first contracts in KSP career mode gets you to save one stage with parachutes, maybe SpaceX should look into something similar..
    • Re:No KSP at SpaceX? (Score:5, Informative)

      by EnglishTim ( 9662 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @10:55AM (#48781127)

      Firstly, I think SpaceX were trying to get away from parachute recoveries. The Shuttle solid booster rockets used to parachute down into the ocean, but the problem with that is that they need completely cleaning out and refurbishing between each flight.

      Secondly, they would need more than parachutes to recover the first stage because it is travelling so fast when it separates (not sure of the exact number, but somewhere between 2 and 4 Kilometers per second). They have to do a retrograde burn to slow down enough to safely re-enter the atmosphere.

    • They already tried that more than once. It did not work well. The impact on landing is too large. You need the retro-rocket burn.

    • I've heard that parachutes are fairly expensive, not horribly reliable (on the Ares-1x test flight 2 out of 3 failed), aren't really reusable and don't really decelerate spacecraft enough for a soft landing. There is a reason why most capsule spacecraft land in the ocean, landing on ground requires retrorockets.

  • The operation was a success but the patient died.

  • by frank249 ( 100528 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @12:30PM (#48781671)

    Elon Musk @elonmusk "Grid fins worked extremely well from hypersonic velocity to subsonic, but ran out of hydraulic fluid right before landing."
    "Upcoming flight already has 50% more hydraulic fluid, so should have plenty of margin for landing attempt next month."

    • The fact that he can make this claim only half a day after the fact (so I assume they had no time to piece together the debris) means that they did recover the most valuable part: the telemetry. Overall, they achieved probably 95% of the required challenges. With around 5 successful retro burns, 1 low-level flame out due to loss of roll control, 2 soft water landings, 1 bullseye impact on a boat and around ten successful low altitude tests with grasshopper, only extremely bad luck can stop them from making
      • Telemetry by its very definition is transmitted to a remote monitoring station... the word literally means "remote measure". They didn't have to "recover" it (like a physical airplane flight data recorder or something).

    • Elon Musk @elonmusk "Grid fins worked extremely well from hypersonic velocity to subsonic, but ran out of hydraulic fluid right before landing."
      "Upcoming flight already has 50% more hydraulic fluid, so should have plenty of margin for landing attempt next month."

      That's odd, does anyone know why it would run out of hydraulic fluid? Usually a hydraulic system is a closed loop, are they constantly dumping hydraulic fluid from this stage?

  • Is SpaceX accomplish something that hasn't been done by NASA? I don't understand all the excitement over landing a rocket when it has already been done so many times before? Am I missing someone?
    • Yes, that's exactly what they're doing. No one has soft-landed the first stage of a rocket after using it to launch something into orbit before. That stage normally burns up on reentry or is debris in the ocean.

    • NASA has used parachutes for rentry. Several new technologies [wikipedia.org] needed to be developed and tested to facilitate successful launch and recovery of both stages of the SpaceX reusable rocket launching system. Following the completion of the third high-altitude controlled-descent test, and the completion of the third low-altitude flight of the second-generation prototype test vehicle (plus eight flights of the first-generation Grasshopper prototype flight test vehicle), SpaceX indicated that they are now able to

  • by DeBaas ( 470886 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @02:38PM (#48782463) Homepage

    Honest question, I'm no rocket scientist so I really don't know: Since they seem to be able to hit the mark, why not just put a big net on the drone ship to 'catch' it rather than try to land it on legs?

  • by macpacheco ( 1764378 ) on Saturday January 10, 2015 @08:00PM (#48783805)

    There were two goals far more important than actually recovering the first stage:
      1 - Having the stage navigate to the landing pad. It would have been a major failure if the rocket landed 2 miles away and were fished out of the water.
      2 - Not destroying the landing barge (its worth far more than the first stage, and it would take a few months to prepare another one).
    Additionally, in less than 24 hrs SpaceX already knows what went wrong, have a fix for it, and intends to try again on the next launch (about 3 weeks from now, end of scheduled for January).
    So, calling it a failure is like saying this glass is 10% empty !
    SpaceX has already managed to have the rocket hover for a second or two meters from water, but back then there were no precision in where the rocket was aiming to splash. The difference is many changes were made to the rocket to steer it.
    SpaceX might have a dozen shots at trying this in 2015 alone.

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