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Space United Kingdom

Parts of the SpaceX Falcon-9 Rocket Found Off the Isles of Scilly (bbc.com) 29

New submitter AppleHoshi writes: The BBC is reporting that a large chunk of the SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket, which exploded shortly after take-off from Cape Canaveral earlier this year, has been found 4,000 miles away, in the sea off the Isles of Scilly. The recovered section is approximately 10m (32ft) by 4m (13ft). It was discovered by a local coastguard patrol, though they didn't recognize it until they scraped off a layer of goose barnacles.
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Parts of the SpaceX Falcon-9 Rocket Found Off the Isles of Scilly

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  • by queazocotal ( 915608 ) on Friday November 27, 2015 @10:32AM (#51013229)

    http://www.spacex.com/sites/al... [spacex.com]
    I don't know if it's clear what launch it's from. Several have gone into the ocean, both from attempts at landing on the barge, and ditching in the ocean.
    This is the top of the first stage. There may be an empty helium tank inside this acting as flotation. The helium tanks are really robust, and have separately survived even really fast impacts.
    http://forum.nasaspaceflight.c... [nasaspaceflight.com]

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Or the bottom of stage 2. It depends on what photo you look at. They said there is an american flag with Falcon 9 near it. Which would match the bottom of stage 2.

  • by VideoPrincess ( 3683567 ) on Friday November 27, 2015 @10:38AM (#51013265)
    The part found is not from the recent explosion, it's from the CRS-4 resupply mission to the International Space Station that launched on 21st September 2014. See the Reddit thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/space... [reddit.com] The part is the interstage separator, a carbon fibre component that sits between the first and second stages. It stays attached to the first stage after the second stage detaches - in the case of CRS-4 it re-entered the atmosphere under controlled flight, and was videoed by NASA to gain information on supersonic retropropulsion: https://www.reddit.com/r/space... [reddit.com]
  • Goose barnacles? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bearhouse ( 1034238 ) on Friday November 27, 2015 @10:40AM (#51013283)

    Wikipedia to the rescue:

    In the days before it was realised that birds migrate, it was thought that barnacle geese, Branta leucopsis, developed from this crustacean, since they were never seen to nest in temperate Europe,[2] hence the English names "goose barnacle", "barnacle goose" and the scientific name Lepas anserifera (Latin anser = "goose"). The confusion was prompted by the similarities in colour and shape. Because they were often found on driftwood, it was assumed that the barnacles were attached to branches before they fell in the water. The Welsh monk, Giraldus Cambrensis, made this claim in his Topographia Hiberniae.[3]
    Since barnacle geese were thought to be "neither flesh, nor born of flesh", they were allowed to be eaten on days when eating meat was forbidden by Christianity,[2] though it was not universally accepted. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II examined barnacles and noted no evidence of any bird-like embryo in them, and the secretary of Leo of Rozmital wrote a very skeptical account of his reaction to being served the goose at a fast-day dinner in 1456.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • by TheDarkMaster ( 1292526 ) on Friday November 27, 2015 @11:58AM (#51013749)
      The BBC report has an interesting detail: A cook noticed the amount of barnacles stuck in the fragment and asked how much they want for them (90 euros per kilo, I did a quick search). I would research what barnacles liked so much in the rocket frame to join in this quantity and sell for Spanish cuisine :-)
      • A hilarious booper in the original BBC article (since updated) was the statement (repeated in two different places in the text) that the Falcon-9 mission was "...sending a cargo ship to the International Space Station". Poor little Falcon; no wonder it burst a seam.
      • 90 euros per kilo

        Are barnacles some sort of delicacy, or is the price just due to the space rocket association?

        I thought they were just things that clogged up the bottom of boats.

  • Found by HMCG is wrong. Fishermen found it, coastguard towed it in.

Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!

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