SpaceX's Falcon 9 Crashes Into Droneship (cbsnews.com) 130
SpaceX failed to successfully land its Falcon 9 on a drone ship at sea on Wednesday. Prior to today's crash, the company was able to conduct three successful experimental landing of its used rocket in a row. SpaceX founder Elon Musk noted that the booster rocket had a RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly, he explained) on droneship. From a CBS News report: It was the California rocket company's fifth unsuccessful drone-ship landing after three straight successes, one in April and two in May. Including a successful landing at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station last December, SpaceX's recovery record now stands at four successes in nine attempts. But the landing attempt was a strictly secondary objective. The mission's primary goal, the launch of two powerful all-electric communications satellites, was a complete success and regardless of the loss of the first stage, company engineers expected to collect valuable data as they continue their push to make such landings routine.
RUD FUD (Score:5, Informative)
I like that....
This is still lots better than what NASA is doing. Stressing the technology. Doing new things.
Going ka boom. Everybody needs an earth shattering kaboom now and again. I just wish they'd have audio on the drone ship.
Re:RUD FUD (Score:5, Informative)
This is still lots better than what NASA is doing. Stressing the technology. Doing new things.
NASA's funding depends on pleasing politicians. So they need to be overly cautious and avoid pushing tech till it breaks, even if we would learn more that way. SpaceX's investors have a longer attention span than voters. In may seem that caution is prudent, but excessive caution can be very expensive in terms of lost opportunities. So far, SpaceX has spent less than 2% of NASA's annual budget.
Pushing the envelope (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA's funding depends on pleasing politicians. So they need to be overly cautious and avoid pushing tech till it breaks, even if we would learn more that way.
I think that philosophy is just timidity at its worst. NASA could go and push the envelope and blow some stuff up. They've done it before. The problem is that they lack an administrator with the cojones to stand in front of congress and explain why blowing up the occasional rocket is a good thing.
SpaceX's investors have a longer attention span than voters.
Voters don't have much say in the funding of NASA. In fact very few of them really give much of a shit about NASA at all and NASA hasn't given them much of a reason to give a shit. SpaceX has a CEO who is also a substantial shareholder (reportedly at least 25%) and controls the company which has a LOT to do with the laser focus and long term outlook.
SpaceX customers (Score:5, Informative)
SpaceX is doing many of these things under contract to NASA *using NASA funding*
SpaceX has had six launches in 2016 so far [wikipedia.org] and only one of them had any relationship to NASA as far as I can tell (a supply mission to the ISS). The rest were private launch contracts. NASA is a customer of SpaceX and has helped them a lot but if you look at the launches SpaceX has scheduled, relatively few of them are NASA funded.
Re:SpaceX customers (Score:4, Informative)
As of May 2012, SpaceX had operated on total funding of approximately $1 billion in its first ten years of operation. Of this, private equity provided about $200M, with Musk investing approximately $100M and other investors having put in about $100M (Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, ...).[54] The remainder has come from progress payments on long-term launch contracts and development contracts. As of April 2012, NASA had put in about $400–500M of this amount, with most of that as progress payments on launch contracts.[55]
NASA does take major risks. One of those risks was paying for SpaceX launches long before SpaceX had a track record.
Re:SpaceX customers (Score:4, Insightful)
NASA isn't stupid. They know if a rocket with their name on the side explodes, politicians will go apeshit and immediately cut funding. If a SpaceX or Orbital ATK rocket explodes (which both had a NASA ISS payload explode), well that the cost of being on the forefront.
And it is the cost of pushing the envelope, so NASA does what it can to get these missions flying on American hardware from American launch sites. Politicians be damned.
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That's an odd use of the word "invested". Typically when you purchase something from a company you don't consider yourself an investor.
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That's no surprise, NASA is probably the largest single non-military space launch customer in the world. And it's probably also the only customer in the US currently interested in putting down money for manned flight hardware.
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Well, it's also kind of difficult when politicians are writing their funding bill with "NASA gets X dollars, as long as they spend it working with company Y, NASA gets A dollars, as long as they spend it doing B." It's having complete morons micromanage NASA.
It is not surprising NASA doesn't do stuff like SpaceX does.
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Yeah, this is NASA's biggest problem. Congress sees NASA as just another porkbarrel project. That's why there are ten different "Space Excellence Centers". That's why solid rockets for the space shuttle were built in Utah, which meant they had to be segmented (and have o-rings that could fail) so they could be shipped by train. That's why launches are in Florida but mission control is in Texas. You would never willingly run an operation like that.
It's not just NASA either - defense contractors have be
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And at that point SpaceX balances the $ income vs. cost (in $ and complexity and risk) of distributing their operations according to a buyers request. It's incredibly common for large purchasers to put specific terms and requirements around doing business with them. This would be no different.
The advantage of NOT being a government line item is they can say no to things that go beyond their acceptible operational risk. In reality large companies and large $ contracts are very rarely ever black and white o
more like opening the envelope (of money) (Score:2)
You make very valid points, but there is an issue that I think you are missing. All of what you say is basically true, except the part where you say voters don't have much of a say in NASA funding. they actually do, even if it is indirect. They elect the politicians that control policy, and theoretically this is a good thing. But our democracy is corrupted by special interests, so the voters don't don't always get what they voted for, while special interest groups get often get exactly what they paid fo
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Nasa can't develop a re-usable rocket program by themselves, they need Congress to give them permission and the money. Except Congress doesn't want reusable, it wants expendable so there are more jobs rebuilding rockets.
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SpaceX made 9 launches plus development and early testing with less than USD 340M? That's quite impressive.
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I think the difference is SpaceX is willing to take some risks on LANDINGS, as has been shown many times (delayed launches, hold down tests, etc) they are far less willing to do risky things on launch. Which is exactly how it should be.
All Electric? Cool! (Score:5, Funny)
...the launch of two powerful all-electric communications satellites
I'm glad we are finally getting past the era of internal combustion and the earlier coal-fired satellites!
Re:All Electric? Cool! (Score:5, Funny)
Gotta push the memes while they're hot. Gluten free water. Asbestos free turkey. Non radioactive microwave oven.
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Got you beat. I saw "Gluten-free low-sodium table salt" at the store.
I believe silicon dioxide is used as an additive to salt - add enough and it would be "low sodium".
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Got you beat. I saw "Gluten-free low-sodium table salt" at the store.
Yes, but even the "low sodium" part is true as these table salts usually substitute potassium chloride for the more common sodium chloride. So they really are both "table salt" and low sodium.
That large concentrations of potassium aren't necessarily good for you either is another matter, but getting more is probably a good idea as most people don't get enough potassium compared to sodium.
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So what's the range? We talking 200 miles or is this the new 300 mile configuration?
I'm not sure, somewhere between 100 and 1200 miles. But it did have the ludicrous speed option.
Re:All Electric? Cool! (Score:5, Informative)
The majority of satellites use chemical rockets for orbit changes and station keeping. When the relatively small amount of propellant is used up, so is the satellite (even if it is otherwise still functional). Using ion propulsion instead could increase the life of satellites, which reduces costs.
Re:All Electric? Cool! (Score:5, Informative)
ion propulsion is NOT "all electric". Still need some particles to ionize.
Re:All Electric? Cool! (Score:4, Informative)
But it is electrically powered rather than by chemical reactions.
So I think it's still a pretty good description.
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at a guess, difficulty getting more plutonium and fear of a launch accident spreading plutonium around.
Re:All Electric? Cool! (Score:5, Informative)
Save the RTGs for the deep-space missions. There's plenty of solar energy in Earth orbit to power satellites (solar flux is nearly 2x what it is on the Earth's surface without an atmosphere to scatter and absorb sunlight, and the high launch costs mean you can afford the expensive high-efficiency panels). Batteries (to power the satellite during the 45 minutes it's in the Earth's shadow) can operate for a decade or more, which is about the time you start thinking of replacing the satellite anyway due to its technology being outdated.
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Deorbiting (diving into the gravity well) is easier. The atmostphere and gravity do most of the work for you whereas climbing to a higher orbit you're doing all the work. As far as I know, anything in LEO will decay and re-enter all on it's own given some time and a lack of boosting to restore orbit. This (running out of fuel) is what defines EOL for sats.
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Who said there was (aside from reentry concerns)? But RTGs only provide electricity, you still need something to provide thrust.
Traditionally thrust has been supplied by internal-combustion chemical rocket engines, but electrically powered ion drives are starting to catch on - they still rely on consumable reaction mass, but accelerate it to much higher speeds than chemical rocket exhaust, and so can get far more delta-V from the same amount of reaction mass.
The other option is magnetic-drive, having the s
Re:All Electric? Cool! (Score:4, Interesting)
My impression is that satellites have been using this as part of their attitude control for quite some time. More specifically, they have gyros that they use to change the attitude. Periodically the gyro gets near the limits of what they can do. When that happens, they reset the gyros back to a neutral setting, and offset that with a matching torque against the Earth's magnetic field so the attitude remains constant.
The gyros can move the satellite faster and more easily than the magnetic torquing system, so that's what's used for normal attitude control.
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That sounds about right, other than resetting with the Earth's magnetic field - I suspect that would require larger currents and longer moment arms than most satellites are designed for, and maneuvering thrusters are used instead.
Because you still need maneuvering thrusters. Gyros let you make "reactionless" changes to orientation, but to correct for the inevitable perturbations in your orbital path, conservation of momentum demands that you push against something outside the satellite itself to change spe
Re:All Electric? Cool! (Score:5, Informative)
Also, chemical propellant is "heavy", meaning it takes much more mass to get an equivalent kick. If you want real words, the Isp (specific impulse) is lower for chemical propellant engines than for ion engines. With all electric satellites, you can carry much less propellant, meaning you can have a satellite of comparable capability in much less mass. In the case of these two satellites, the Boeing BSS-702SP platform they're built on means you can fit two on a "normal" GTO launch. That basically halves your launch costs.
The tradeoffs are that while all electric propulsion is very "fuel efficient", the thrust of ion engines is a very small fraction of that of the more conventional chemical propellant engines, so instead of taking days to settle in to your final orbit, it can take weeks of slow orbit raising. This is a "cost" that may or may not be worth the trade. Also, since the 702SP satellites are launched in pairs, a launch failure could take out two birds with one... rocket. To give a bit of insurance against this, Eutelsat and ABS chose to split two rockets. They'd each fly one satellite per launch, meaning they only risked one of their two each flight in case of a Very Bad Day.
Re:All Electric? Cool! (Score:5, Informative)
Ion propulsion is heavy too. While the ISP is very impressive - ISP isn't everything, except to armchair engineers. T/W matters too, and for electric T/W isn't all that impressive... and unlike chemical engines, there's very little benefit gained as fuel is exausted as the mass of the fuel is such a small fraction of total powerplant mass. There's a reason why electric propulsion has only found niche applications.
At the cost of requiring four to six months (as opposed to four to six days) for the satellite to reach it's station on orbit. (TANSTAAFL.) It's also worth noting that this is only possible because during orbital transfer, the communications systems that are the reason for the satellites existence are turned off - making their substantial power supply available for the electric engines.
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So? That has precisely nothing to do with what I posted.
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Technically earlier satellites do in fact use internal combustion engines, since a rocket motor (including the chemical thrusters used for satellite manoeuvring) is classed as an internal combustion engine. Coal, I'm not so sure about as far as satellites are concerned. However hybrid rocket motors using coal as the solid fuel have been tested in the past. A quick search reveals for example this article [hawkfeather.com], if you scroll down to "Pioneers", we have
"In Germany from 1937-1939, I.G. Farben ran tests using coal an
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But the real future is in wind powered rockets and satellite propulsion systems. Musk is so behind the times.
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As if a wind-up satellite wouldn't suffice.
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Well, it seems to be pretty strong if they can transport it on a truck with just one support at each end [youtube.com].
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I don't know why, but I can provide some guesses:
1. any contact with a loop, or possibly just aerodynamic effects, risks messing up the engines/thruster control calculations and/or knocking the rocket over
2. loop clearance is going to have to be small if it is going to help (eg. if landing leg fails) but large to avoid (1) - maybe there is no right size
3. need to add in the effects of wave motion on loop and whatever structure is holding it up - for a start, the higher up it is the more it will move, relati
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That's a well-known problem, with a playbook of solutions in Departments of Nautical Engineering around the world.
Solution (1) - the semi-submersible route (relatively cheap - go buy a redundant offshore drilling rig. Personally I like Aker-H4s
Re:why no upper body capture loop? (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine adding a ~60m tall gantry with support arm, sturdy enough to withstand repeated rocket detonations at point-blank range (because accidents will still happen), would be a little expensive on what's currently basically a big floating target to shoot massive bullets at. Plus you then have to avoid it during the landing, and have the support arm get in place, adapting to an uncertain rocket position, within a second or so of touchdown before it's too late to do any good.
Then, assuming you solve those problems, you now have a "safety net" that would be financially foolish to not use every time, essentially killing any further advancement in unaided landing stability. Which is counterproductive to their long-term goal of developing the technology to land people on Mars, were there won't be any "safety nets" available. Because *that* is what Musk has repeatedly said is motivating him - launching payloads into orbit is just an economically viable means to that end.
Besides, even here on Earth, being able to land anywhere flat and solid offers far more long-term options than needing a landing gantry.
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The body of the rocket, made of thin aluminium, empty of fuel, will crush like an empty soda can when the catch wires will snap.
They need a system with some long articulated arms ending in huge pillows to catch-it :)
They could ask the Tesla engineers who designed the articulated charging arm.
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I think they need a giant articulated arm ending in a gigantic catcher's mitt.
Barbed feet (Score:3)
Someone is playing Kerbal Space Program (Score:1)
The KSP community has been using the term RUDE (Rapid Unplanned Disassembly Event). Also lithobreaking is used as a term for crashing.
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Elon is on record as loving KSP. Wouldn't be surprised if that's where the term came from.
Googe'ing for the relevant Reddit thread is left as an exercise for the reader.
Re:Someone is playing Kerbal Space Program (Score:5, Informative)
RUD = "Rapid Unplanned Disassembly" has been around a _lot_ longer than ksp.
See google books [google.co.uk] for one example from 1991, but it goes back much further than that.
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Spontaneous Thermal Self Disassembly (STSD) has been used by racers to describe blowing up a motor sense before the 80s (when I first heard it).
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Whoever came up with that term either had a great sense of humor, or no sense of humor at all.
Re:Someone is playing Kerbal Space Program (Score:5, Informative)
"Also lithobreaking is used as a term for crashing."
No, that refers to a type of prison labor. You mean lithobraking.
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Telemetry (Score:5, Informative)
Musk tweeted:
"Looks like thrust was low on 1 of 3 landing engines. High g landings v sensitive to all engines operating at max."
"Upgrades underway to enable rocket to compensate for a thrust shortfall on one of the three landing engines. Probably get there end of year."
Landing video froze at the last moment but it looked like a bulls-eye landing. There was flame climbing up the side of the stage. Telemetry should be helpful in making improvements.
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No, that's why he says that the upgraded engines will have it.
Also it is not just about having the margin it is about having the ability to react fast enough - the landing burns are very short and you only get one chance (and too much thrust will bounce which ain't helpful either).
Re:Telemetry (Score:5, Funny)
Does the engine design have that margin already?
FWIW, the Falcon 9 heavy will have nine of these engines. 8/9 seems easier than 2/3 (and of course 7/9 is easier on the eyes).
Re:Telemetry (Score:5, Informative)
Falcon 9 has 9 of those engines. they only use 1 to 3 of them for landing depending on the launch profile, using all 9 of them would make the rocket go back up instead of landing (technically if they left 1 of them turned on long enough it would make the rocket go back up, part of what makes landing a falcon so challenging compared to the blue origin's rocket)
Falcon heavy will have 9 on each core, with 3 cores, total of 27 of engines, but each core will have to land independently. So for the landing, not much actually changes, other than two of them happening at the same time (and one slightly later if they try to recover the center core, probably only going to be feasible on very heavy launches to LEO)
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The number of engines they use depend on the mission. I believe on the last webcast they said something like 1-3-1 for a GTO mission. So they first start one, then add two more for the 12g deceleration, then turn those two back off and land with just the center engine to have more precision.
The engines can throttle between 45% and 100%, and for a nearly empty rocket a single engine at 45% is already more than 1g. That indeed makes it a lot more challenging than landing the blue origin rockets which are a lo
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F9 Heavy lands as 3 separate F9s. -FYI
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That's for single-engine landings, when they have more than a trivial amount of fuel left and can afford the time to land gently. That really only works for launches to low earth orbit (LEO).
Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) or Super-Synchronous Orbit (SSO) launches are another matter entirely. Those use very nearly all the first stage's fuel, and go extremely fast. The rocket doesn't have enough fuel to "boost back" the way it does for LEO landings, so the droneship needs to be much further out to sea. M
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I wonder how they're going to "compensate" for a thrust shortfall on one engine. They start those three engines pretty much at the last possible moment. Once they've detected a thrust shortfall, that platform is getting pretty close. So what are they going to do? Add two other engines? Can they start them that quickly? They don't have much fuel to work with either.
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Possibly run the other engines up over 100%.
They're used for a few minutes at 100% thrust and in reality they should be able to punch out at least 20% more than that for a few seconds.
If the alternative is 'ka-boom', I'd probably do that.
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That would work if the center engine failed. But if it's one of the outers, will it have enough thrust vectoring to compensate for the imbalance?
Takeoffs More Important (Score:5, Insightful)
More important than a successful landing is a successful second takeoff of the recovered Falcon 9 stage. Without that this is just scrap metal recovery.
So we will need to wait and see.
Re:Takeoffs More Important (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget about turn around time. ...... x time then is it worth it?
That is going to be an issue. Will the second flight of the first stage be as reliable as the first flight and how long and how much to get to the first flight.
If you can reuse the stage but you have a good chance of it not working the second, third,
Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly = Leadership (Score:3, Interesting)
Mr. Musk "get's it". His engineering team is working on the edge of what can be done and failures are going to happen (they're landing a frigging rocket on a ship... backwards). He can either say "we failed" or he can say we had an "RUD". It means the same thing and everyone knows it but it deflects from the technical team somewhat and is gentle signal to the team that their heads aren't on the block (at least yet). It's a good way to lead. Just hope he never uses the world "fail"... because he does have that whole evil genius vibe going.
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Musk is inarguably a superb marketer - he understands his core audience.
I think that's probably his best skill.
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Now if Musk had said: "Upon reentry the first stage suffered a propulsion anomaly that cased a loss of the vehicle." and then dropped the mike and walked off stage... that would be corporate speak.
I want more of these. I want them to understand every shortcoming of their system possible. Every failure means they (hopefully) make it more reliable.
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You need to attend some management seminars or something. Here's my effort:
"Upon reentry the first stage enjoyed a propulsive challenge. Our team leveraged this opportunity to widen the already commanding lead enjoyed by our best-in-class rentry vehicle. We look forward to offering our partners even more amazing solutions in the immediate future!"
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What? No mention of maximizing shareholder value?
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So what? See my sig.
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RUD vs. RSD (Score:2)
RUD = rapid unscheduled disassembly
So, a rocket experiences RUD, while a missile experiences RSD?
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The mission was successful (Score:2)
Falcon 9 Landen, then exploded. That article is too negative. SpaceX managed to deploy 2 satellite into 2 different orbits, successfully!!!!
Consider the facts (Score:4, Insightful)
- SpaceX customers still pay for the entire rocket, there is no discount applied yet
- All other competing rockets do not have this capability and burn up on re-entry
- Every landing attempt provides new and unique data that can be used for continuous improvement
- The primary mission (what they are being paid for) was still accomplished
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Nice straw man. Who but an unemployed conservative living off the hard work of liberals would have time to waste on such nonsense.
Here's the real story:
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/06/13/study-finds-14-15-biggest-moocher-states-republican-controlled.html
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/which-states-rely-most-federal-aid-0
Thus spake the Drone Ship: (Score:2)
"Of Course I Still Love You", Falcon 9. But it got kinda painful there at the end.
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Some posts are hard to read. For everything else, there's too many links.
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Try parking your car up to the hubs in salt water. See how that works.