SpaceX Details Its Plans For Landing Three Falcon Heavy Boosters At Once (arstechnica.com) 101
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As part of the process to gain federal approval for the simultaneous landing of its Falcon Heavy rocket boosters in Florida, SpaceX has prepared an environmental assessment of the construction of two additional landing pads alongside its existing site. The report considers noise and other effects from landing up to three first stages at the same time. After undergoing a preliminary review by the U.S. Air Force, the document has been released for public comment. As part of the document, SpaceX also says it would like to build a Dragon capsule processing facility on the landing zone to support refurbishment of the Dragon 2 spacecraft, designed to carry crew into orbit. The 130-foot-long facility would provide a "temporary" facility for vehicle propellant load and propulsion system servicing. When it originally designed its Landing Zone 1 facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, for the single Falcon 9 first stage booster, the company envisioned the need for one main pad approximately 200 feet across, and four smaller contingency pads, each approximately 150 feet in diameter. The chosen site had enough acreage to accommodate all five pads. Improvements in the rocket's landing navigation guidance system obviated the need for the contingency pads with the Falcon 9, however. So now the company wants to use the additional space to construct two concrete landing pads, each with an approximate diameter of 282 feet surrounded by an approximate 50-foot-wide hard-packed soil "apron." This would give SpaceX three landing pads and the ability to bring back all three Falcon Heavy boosters to land while also retaining the option to land one or two on drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean. In addition to the potential for a dozen Falcon 9 launches and landings each year, the document says SpaceX may eventually make six Falcon Heavy launches a year, potentially returning an additional 18 boosters to the Florida-based site. The new pads and crane sites would be configured to allow parallel processing of landed boosters. With U.S. Air Force Approval, construction could begin as early as this spring.
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GPS navigation, communications infrastructure, weather forecasts that have any chance of working...
SpaceX may intend to do serious exploration and colonization with their profits, but their bread and butter are pretty much based on what they get paid for by people who care about shit here on the ground. There's not a lot of exploration in, say, upgrading the iridium network, which is the next launch on the list. Oh, and the return thing is so we can have more of those things for less money. Pretty down-to-e
Re:Simple question (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not that anyone is dodging an important question. It's that the question is, I'm sorry, naive. The benefits of space research are around you every moment of your life.
The Apollo program, for example, used some of the first integrated circuits. This work progressed to essentially all modern electronic devices.
Re: Simple question (Score:2, Funny)
There are two types of countries. Those that use meters, and those that have been to the moon.
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There are two types of countries. Those that use meters, and those that have been to the moon.
....you know that NASA is using the metric system right?
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The space program was an early customer of integrated circuits, along with military customers, but IC's would have been developed with or without NASA and the DoD, just a little slower perhaps. This is characteristic of such organizations - NASA and DoD have actual applications for advanced technology and have big budgets are willing to spend big bucks to develop and then purchase state of the art technology when there is an advantage to doing so.
But the merits of NASA are not really in the follow-on techn
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Do you have the same issue with professional sports, network television, and shopping malls? Each is a huge money sink, with not much of lasting value to show for them. Go boycott sports bars showing ESPN next to Disney stores, just leave the adults here alone.
Lasting value (Score:2)
Do you have the same issue with professional sports, network television, and shopping malls? Each is a huge money sink, with not much of lasting value to show for them.
Not much of lasting value? Only to the naive who look at it from a very narrow and wrong headed perspective. Each of those examples are multi-billion dollar industries which employ millions of people and provide valuable goods and services to many more millions. If I go to my local shopping mall and buy a wrench which I then use in my workplace and maybe stop at the local sports bar and watch the game on the TV there absolutely is lasting value there. Bank accounts were enriched, work was facilitated, t
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If everyone at shopping malls was there buying wrenches, Sears would be in much better financial shape today. Most of the people at shopping malls are simply there to waste their money on the latest fads and cheap baubles, while eating overpriced garbage. My wife makes me participate several times a year, so I speak from experience.
Just because money changed hands, doesn't mean the goods and services have lasting value.
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Besides socialism only works if we have unlimited resources. There are unlimited resources, but they are in space. All we have to do is go get them.
On a plus side for those people who would "benefit" people who are productive members of society, that have a work ethic, intelligence, and curiosity, will finally have
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Many people have answered with the generic benefits of space exploration. But your question is how does SpaceX's being able to land 3 rockets simultaneously benefit anyone?
Reduced cost. Reduced cost to putting up satellites. That is worth billions and billions of dollars simply on the commercial/capitalist side of things.
But reduced cost also is beneficial to science. Being able to get more Hubble Telescopes up, more weather satellites or anything else you can imagine.
And those are just the immediate tangib
the Air Force Falcons boosters (Score:2)
One bit doesn't make sense (Score:3)
"This would give SpaceX three landing pads and the ability to bring back all three Falcon Heavy boosters to land while also retaining the option to land one or two on drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean."
I can imagine scenarios where you'd want to land zero, one or three boosters on drone ships. I can't imagine any scenario where it makes sense to land two boosters on drone ships. One way would be to have the center booster and one side booster landing at sea - but if one side booster can return to landing site, so can the other (and landing on land is both cheaper and safer if you can do it.) The other way is to land both side boosters at sea but return the center booster to land - but the center booster is always going to be much harder to return to land, as it burns longer and so is higher velocity and further down range when it has finished boosting.
Re:One bit doesn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
Landing two boosters on drone ships could be desirable for a payload that's close to the performance limit of the Falcon Heavy, such that the center core uses all of its fuel and is expended. In such a mission, it's very possible that the side cores wouldn't have the fuel margin to boost all the way back to the launch site. So that launch profile would be close to the maximum performance of Falcon Heavy. Maximum would be expending all three cores and retaining no fuel to recover any of them. There could also be a hypothetical scenario where the center core completes one or more orbits and then returns to the landing site, while the two boosters land downrange on the drone ships.
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With thrust vectoring it's in theory possible to do the staging where you shed 1 booster at a time, with fuel crossfeed to the other 2. The Delta IV can be launched like this, with just one SRB on one side. Whether or not this will be possible with the Falcon Heavy depends on how they build it, and realistically which version of the rocket it is. (since SpaceX keeps making changes)
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Falcon 9 (the non-heavy one) is about to go to its 5th major revision, and there have been major increments to its capability with each one. So, it will probably just take time for a version of F9H to have crossfeed and some additional delta-V. It was possible to get F9H going without the added complexity, so they did.
Someone who needs it. (Score:3)
Re: Someone who needs it. (Score:2)
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(and landing on land is both cheaper and safer if you can do it.)
It might be cheaper, but it's not safer. There's more stuff to hit on land. I think you might be a bit concerned if a Falcon booster tried to land in your backyard.
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Actually, all of the ground landings take place right next to the ocean. The rocket doesn't vector over the land until it's close to the ground, and the landing pad has lots of buffer zone around it.
Consider the financial impact, too. A successful landing is saving 35 Million dollars.
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You've never heard of Ariel, I take it.
nothing anybody cares about there (Score:2)
Point is with a sea landing, you can make it physically impossible for the booster to land in someone's backyard.
This is Florida we're talking about.
Or maybe Texas.
Come on.
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It all comes down to priorities - landing on land is dramatically safer and cheaper *for the rocket*.
As for not landing in someone's backyard, that's an unavoidable risk even while they're going up. And while coming down, Falcon 9 landings are already vectored so that they will land at sea if anything goes wrong, it's only during the last minutes of final approach that they change that vector to hit the launchpad instead.
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It all comes down to priorities - landing on land is dramatically safer and cheaper *for the rocket*.
As you imply in your next paragraph, safer != riskier.
As for not landing in someone's backyard, that's an unavoidable risk even while they're going up. And while coming down, Falcon 9 landings are already vectored so that they will land at sea if anything goes wrong, it's only during the last minutes of final approach that they change that vector to hit the launchpad instead.
So I see two things here. First, the rocket has to go up so that's the same unavoidable risk no matter where you land the booster. And second, you can vector the rocket so it does land in someone's backyard. Admittedly, they would self-destruct the rocket, if it veered from the desired trajectory, so that's not as much a risk as I made it out to be.
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Point is with a sea landing, you can make it physically impossible for the booster to land in someone's backyard.
That's not why they are done. Sea landings are done so they can land at all, since geo transfer orbital launches require so much energy/fuel that returning boosters to launch-site is physically impossible. If they could they would never ever do sea landings at all.
;-)
Landing on land is a 10 times simpler and a lot safer (for the rocket)
Assuming all goes well... (Score:3)
Actually, all of the ground landings take place right next to the ocean.
It's not that hard to conceive of a rocket booster coming back to Earth going off course by a fair distance and "landing" where it shouldn't. Definitely less chance of harm to property if this happens over the ocean than over land. It's not a worry that keeps me up at night or anything but it's certainly among the possible outcomes.
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Actually, all of the ground landings take place right next to the ocean.
It's not that hard to conceive of a rocket booster coming back to Earth going off course by a fair distance and "landing" where it shouldn't. Definitely less chance of harm to property if this happens over the ocean than over land. It's not a worry that keeps me up at night or anything but it's certainly among the possible outcomes.
Have you ever been to Cape Canaveral?
The little pointy bit is an Airforce base, and basically the rest of it is owned by NASA, mostly devoted to a secure zone/wilderness preserve.
Then you have a nice long causeway with a lots of water as a further buffer before you get to anything like privately owned land.
I am pretty sure that SpaceX has some means to destroy the returning booster before it gets close to the ground the 10+ miles off course it would need to be before getting close to private property.
Cape Canaveral real estate (Score:2)
Have you ever been to Cape Canaveral?
Several times. Been on a tour to the VAB as well.
Then you have a nice long causeway with a lots of water as a further buffer before you get to anything like privately owned land.
According to Zillow there are over 100 houses for sale on Cape Canaveral just south of the Air Force Base as I type this. There are thousands of homes just a few miles to the west of the launch sites. A very reasonable safety buffer but not so far away that one could reasonably claim zero chance of something heading the wrong way.
I am pretty sure that SpaceX has some means to destroy the returning booster before it gets close to the ground the 10+ miles off course it would need to be before getting close to private property.
As am I. However the mere fact that such a thing would be necessary indicates that it is possible (however unlikely) for the ro
Re: Assuming all goes well... (Score:2)
Very, very few people who live within fifteen miles of Cape Canaveral lived there before they built a space complex. And many, many more of them have been killed driving to the shopping mall since they built a space complex.
Nobody would live there if absolute safety was the criteria for Vespucci or the Seminole - it's an unreasonable standard for real life.
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Re: Assuming all goes well... (Score:2)
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It's safer for the rocket, a platform that isn't pitching and rolling leads to a higher probability of a successful landing.
Besides, Cape Canaveral isn't anyone's back yard. If things threaten to go haywire, they'll use the self-destruct and rain debris on unpopulated areas long before it can get to inhabited land.
Going off course isn't impossible (Score:2)
Cape Canaveral isn't anyone's back yard.
Cape Canaveral is just a few miles from quite a few people's literal back yards. It's not terrible hard to imagine a returning rocket booster (or parts of one) going off course by a few miles. Not likely I'll admit but not entirely impossible either.
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Which is why it comes down to risk assessment. Nothing will ever be safe - if rockets landing nearby raise your chance of dying this year by 0.1% (of your previous chance of dying this year) then the risk isn't worth concerning yourself over. Eating the occasional greasy cheesburger is more dangerous.
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A particularly high thrust launch which results in the boosters being downrange enough to require drone ship landings, while the core is sacrificed even further down range...
Those kind of launches are planned for with the Falcon 9 already, with the intention of using older, used cores on those missions.
Why not use three drone ships? Because you would need decent weather in all three landing locations - two of which are close together and thus are likely to share conditions, but the one further downrange wo
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3 boosters? That's not being planned.
Re: One bit doesn't make sense (Score:2)
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He was talking about "1 central F9 with 3 external F9's" though, i.e. a core with 3 boosters. That one's not going to happen.
Re:They still haven't landed ONE by want to land 3 (Score:5, Interesting)
But they want to push without fixing the problems they already have.
If you want rapid progress, you have qualified people work on current problems, while other people work on anticipated future problems.
Have you ever watched six-year-olds play soccer? They all cluster around the ball, in a tight little group, with everyone 100% focused on just the immediate problem of kicking the ball. By the time they are eight, they understand that is not a winning strategy.
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Actually, I'm not sure of that. My impression was that the Space Station delivery boosters which go to landing-zone 1 at Canaveral end up in pretty good shape, and some of the ones that land on the barge as well.
The ones that got lots of damage were rockets with so little fuel left from their missions that they had to skip one or two of what otherwise would be re-entry burns. These came down very fast and had frictional heating damage, among other
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Not one single Falcon has landed without mayor damage today. But they want to push without fixing the problems they already have.
Which is normal for rocketry when you're trying anything new. Every program either (a) re-uses proven components or (b) deals with early very high failure rates or both. It took ten years to go from the first firing of the Saturn V's rocket engine (the Rocketdyne F1) to it's firs successful use, and there explosions along the way.
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it was actually more than ten years, von braun was blowing up V2s long before he started working on apollo.
Rocket History (Score:1)
Yes, that would be twenty years before Apollo. The V-2 rockets used alcohol/water and liquid oxygen, and the Rocketdyne F-1 engine used LOX and RP-1 (kerosene, more or less). The gas generator which drove the turbopump for the F-1 engine had almost exactly half the thrust of the V-2 rocket, and that was just the fuel pump. The actual Saturn V rocket of course had five of the F-1 engines. I'm not sure it's particularly meaningful to compare the V-2 program with Apollo, and I don't think it's particularly rea
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Not the way I read it. If you plan to launch every six weeks, you may well end up with one unit on a launch pad being assembled, refurbished or upgraded while another is being launched. Be nice to have a place for that one to land. Remember that these things are BIG (and getting bigger) and that transporting them to a launch site is a non-trivial problem. If you land them at the launch site, you don't have to spend time and a lot of money moving them to the site later. OTOH, I have no idea what the con
Re: They still haven't landed ONE by want to land (Score:2)
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Not one single Falcon has landed without mayor damage today.
But that's still five landings right?
They refuse to acknowledge their problems.
So? They don't have to acknowledge problems to you. And really what use would you be, if they did do that?
sick rentry BURN! (Score:2)
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Did that other AC say SpaceX has to acknowledge problems to him specifically? I don't see it.
The thing is, SpaceX has been real open about what they're doing. As a result, I believe that the AC would have those concerns, if the AC had been paying even a little attention.
Not true: First used one goes back up in a month! (Score:2, Interesting)
Not only have they landed a number of them, but the launch of comsat SES-10, currently expected sometime in February, is being done on the booster that flew ISS resupply mission CRS-8, and was the first successful landing on the droneship at sea. Another used stage is undergoing conversion to be used as one of the boosters on the Falcon Heavy launch that will use these pads.
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This is what I hate from SpaceX. They refuse to acknowledge their problems.
Not one single Falcon has landed without mayor damage today. But they want to push without fixing the problems they already have.
This is what I hate from SpaceX. They refuse to acknowledge their problems.
Not one single Falcon has landed without mayor damage today. But they want to push without fixing the problems they already have.
It takes time for major construction projects, from approval through to actual building and beyond.
They have verified enough to know what they are trying to achieve is possible, so they are pushing forward with the parts they need to get out of the way.
Also, every time one of their boosters have landed they have done a full examination, learnt what they could, and then made or planned modifications to reduce the risk of the same issues occurring again. This is the definition of learning, and if they weren't
Falcon 9 Launch this Saturday in Lompoc (Score:3)
Re:Where do these guys get their money? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe your news sources are not reliable. Musk's previous business efforts have made a ton of profit and he has reinvested his own funds in his more recent efforts. Tesla is a public stock company, so both institutions and individuals are invested in it. SpaceX is privately funded, you can see who the investors are here [crunchbase.com].
The sources of money are no mystery (Score:5, Insightful)
All of Musk's businesses lose money every year
Except that they don't. Tesla has lost money to date but periodically shows a small profit and is approaching breakeven despite investing heavily in new products and technology. So far investors have liked what they have seen. Paypal was hugely profitable. SpaceX is private but there are rumors that it is profitable from credible sources.
Where exactly do they get the funds for all this expansion, or for the Gigafactory or the Tesla 3 tooling and production?
The Gigafactory is a joint venture with several partners, primarily Panasonic. Money for Tesla 3 development and tooling comes from sales of the Model S and X as well as loans and stock sales. (you are aware that the entire point of going public is to raise money to build the company right?) Plus Musk has put a lot of his own personal fortune into the ventures. It's no mystery where all these ventures get their funding. When you've started numerous successful businesses like Elon Musk has it's not terribly hard to get funding.
Re: The sources of money are no mystery (Score:2)
Still profitable (Score:2)
Uh, spacex WAS profitable. At the current moment there is doubt.
It will take more than one rocket blowing up to make it lose money unless you are looking at a very short time scale. There is nothing about the economic big picture of SpaceX today that is meaningfully different than it was a few months ago. Now if they start having a lot of disasters then that might be a different story. But every company that builds rockets loses a few sooner or later.
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In addition, in 2 years, they have added a lot of ppl, but not had a significant increase in launches due to their accidents.
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Are any businesses profitable from the start? It takes some longer than others to become profitable. Amazon ran at a loss for a long time. It's very expensive to build up the infrastructure and knowledge to charge enough for rocket launches to get into the black. So, if you're doing that, you set up a plan with contingencies, go to your proposed investors, and talk to them. If you've got a decent chance of a big business success, and Space-X definitely has, some investors will be happy with large risk
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Big payloads. High orbits. Mars.
A long-standing plan of SpaceX, published back before they launched their first rocket, shows them planning to mount two additional rockets to the sides of a central core to boost available launch capacity. In fact I think they planned on eventually going all the way to 8 auxiliary rockets, though that makes for a lot of potential malfunctions in a single launch.
And they're going to need that capacity to get Mars colonization ships into orbit and fueled up in anything like a
Hey hold my beer! (Score:2)
This definitely seems like a "Hey hold my beer, and watch this!" type of scenario with predictable results... Though you never know with these guys, landing a rocket on end, on a floating platform in the ocean also seemed a bit nuts yet they did it anyway.
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Well, the plan has always been to eventually bundle at least three, and up to nine or more, rockets together to achieve launch capabilities far in excess of a single rocket without dramatically increasing the cost by building huge specialty rockets. And if they go up together, they'll need to come down together (well, anything that doesn't make it all the way to orbit)
There are some serious challenges with the proposal, but mostly with the "going up" part of the equation. If you can land one autonomous ro
Apollo-era tech. (Score:2)
For a forward-looking company, they seem to think that the last 40 years of space travel never even happened.