SpaceX Successfully Launches and Lands a Used Rocket For the Second Time (theverge.com) 74
SpaceX has successfully launched and landed a recycled Falcon 9 rocket for the second time. "The rocket's first stage -- the 14-story-tall core that houses the fuel and the rocket's main engines -- touched down on one of the company's autonomous drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after taking off from a launchpad at nearby Cape Canaveral, Florida," reports The Verge. From the report: This particular rocket previously flew in January, when it was used to put 10 satellites into orbit for communications company Iridium. The rocket then landed on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. SpaceX retrieved the rocket and spent the next few months refurbishing it in preparation for today's launch. This afternoon, it was used to launch Bulgaria's first communications satellite for TV service provider Bulsatcom. The landing wasn't easy, though. Because the rocket had to push BulgariaSat-1 to such a high orbit, the first stage experienced more force and heat during reentry than any other Falcon 9, according to a tweet from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Musk even warned that there was a "good chance [the] rocket booster doesn't make it back." Shortly after the landing, though, Musk returned to Twitter to add that the rocket booster used "almost all of the emergency crush core," which helps soften the landing.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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And someday it might even be blase.
It'll catch on fire?! Cool!
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You're probably thinking of flambe?
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Was that the gorilla that got shot when the kid ended up in the enclosure?
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ULA's major issue is that both of the parent companies are not terribly interested in competing with themselves.
Impressive! (Score:2)
crush core (Score:5, Funny)
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<DAVE-BARRY>
"Crush Core" would be a great name for a Rock Band.
</DAVE-BARRY>
Re: crush core (Score:2)
Or a music genre.
Re: Sounds like Space X is on a shoestring budget (Score:2)
ambiguous title phrasing (Score:1)
SpaceX Successfully Launches and Lands a Used Rocket For the Second Time
I think it means they have now reflown two first stages, each one having done so once, rather than that they have reused a single first stage two times. In other words "second time" applies to the class of event, not the specific rocket instance. I don't follow it too closely though so maybe someone can confirm that.
It's a little ambiguously phrased.
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I don't. Could you rephrase that in the form a question in English Prime? For science of course.
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I think [...]
See, there's the problem.
This particular rocket previously flew in January
It's a little ambiguously phrased
Yeah, reading is hard. That's from TFS, BTW.
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This particular rocket previously flew in January
Where the fuck is the ambiguity in that?
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It's the same first stage. They also billed it as the first rocket to land on both their Atlantic and Pacific drone ships.
Nice launch (Score:2)
I got a little nervous twice, the first I thought the flight computer was going to scrub the launch at the last second (did anyone see the twitchy countdown numbers at the last 10 seconds? The counter incremented once or twice, it was weird).
The second was due to the LOS of the first stage at the barge, but I was pleasantly surprised when the image returned.
But did you notice... (Score:2)
I am wondering if it was just a trick of a slightly wide-angle lens... but then again... this is still so far ahead of anything that anyone else is doing, it seems churlish to quibble...
Yes: Definitely an only-just landing... (Score:2)
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Yea, I think you might be right. She wasn't centered very well, must have had a hard landing due to a swell or wave.
I kept looking at how far down range the barge was and just couldn't help thinking about how many wasted "pristine" stages are sunk right below it.
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Elon was hedging whether they could get the 1st stage back from this launch and when it did he said it was a hard landing and used up almost all of the emerg crush core. I suspect this one may not get used again or will need a more extensive refurb which may not be worth the cost.
Welp, one more launch for them on this doubleheader weekend. Let's see what happens on Sunday which should be an easier recovery.
This was the most difficult stage landing to date (Score:4, Informative)
She wasn't centered very well, must have had a hard landing due to a swell or wave.
The landing was hard because the stage had an extremely difficult landing profile, the most difficult one so far. It entered the atmosphere at a ridiculously high speed. The speed at the beginning [youtu.be] of the re-entry burn (just before the stage really bites into the atmosphere) was 8600km/hr and 6600km/hr at the end of the burn. Going at 6600km/hr through the upper atmosphere puts you right on the edge of burning up. The final landing burn had to use three engines as opposed to the usual one engine.
In comparison, for the CRS11 landing [youtu.be], the second stage was going at 4500km/hr at the beginning of the re-entry burn, and 3500km/hr at the end of the burn. The landing burn was using only one engine. Because of the slower speed, it was far more easy for the stage to make a nearly perfect landing [youtu.be].
IIRC, on a really dodgy landing like today's the stage actually aims for the side of the ship and not the centre, so that if the landing burn fails, the stage doesn't sink the drone ship. When the landing burn begins, the stage corrects its target towards the centre. If you watch the feed from the ship, you can see from the water disturbance that the stage is over the water on the far side. It must have done a crazy divert to land on the near side [imgur.com] of the ship, which explains the fact that the legs used their crush core shock absorption. It was probably 50/50 that this stage would survive.
Horizontal velocity (Score:2)
As is often the case, video dropped out from the barge during landing, however just before it dropped out there was a big circle of white water on the far/left side of the barge, and when we reacquired signal the booster was landed off-center near/right. This looks to me like they still had a fair bit of horizontal velocity on landing - another indicator that this landing was near to failure. In a few days we'll get the video and know better.
I love it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, remember those assholes that would said this shit was impossible? Remember how when they landed a rocket that those same assholes said it wouldn't be reusable? Remember after they relaunched it the first time those assholes downplayed the amount of money saved and the significance of it? YOU WERE WRONG, ASSHOLES. SCIENCE WINS.
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The trick, is to ignore the assholes. Unlike our own, these don't serve us any use.
Re:I love it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Was it a win for science or a win for engineering?
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Re: I love it. (Score:2)
Engineering is the professional art of applying science to the optimum conversion of the resources of nature to the uses of humankind.
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Was it a win for science or a win for engineering?
Both if you launch science missions.
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touché
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Isn't one just the application of the other?
Actually it's a win for Linux (Score:2)
Falcon 9 runs on Linux kernal. Not sure if it's Ubuntu or Red Hat tho.l [lwn.net]
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Hey, remember those assholes that would said this shit was impossible? Remember how when they landed a rocket that those same assholes said it wouldn't be reusable? Remember after they relaunched it the first time those assholes downplayed the amount of money saved and the significance of it?
Actually, no, I don't remember any of that!
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Which is unsurprising, since pretty much nobody said that. Space fan(atics) remember it, though the 'memory' is created from whole cloth. For some reason they feel a need to be persecuted.
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Anyone who knows anything about it knew it was possible. Von Braun studied landing the Saturn 1. The problem was that it also reduces the throw weight by something like 30% - then and now. If getting a bigger booster is the end goal - and it was, at the time - then flyback boosters don't make any sense.
The fact that you are on here gloating about it means you never understood that in the first place - and calling everybody else assholes because of your own ignorance is exactly what is
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What really makes me laugh is the fact that the world's other launchers, including Ariane and ULA don't have a hope of replicating this for a very very long time. Their rocket engines are highly tuned machines, akin to top fuel dragsters. They are so powerful only a small number of them are used for each rocket, usually two. These engines could never be used to land like the Falcon 9 lands because they are incapable of throttling down to a low enough power output to land. The Falcon 9 uses nine engines. Bec
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Actually, RD-170 and all its derivatives are perfectly capable of being reusable, since they were engineered having reusable boosters in mind. They also can be throttled down to less than 50% of nominal thrust (RD-191 even down to 27%). They only need a capable rocket.
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Hey, remember those assholes that would said this shit was impossible? Remember how when they landed a rocket that those same assholes said it wouldn't be reusable?
To be fair, to really achieve the savings that SpaceX is aiming for, they need to be able to reuse the same rocket many times (so far, they've only demonstrated a single reuse), and they need to be able to reuse it without extensive refurbishment. They're still a long way from achieving those goals.
What they're trying to do is difficult, and there will undoubtedly be a lot of other lessons they'll have to learn and adjustments they'll have to make to achieve it. And it's always possible that they'll fail,
Roomba? (Score:2)
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It's a pity there was no video of it landing. That's the fun part to watch.
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It's a function of the satellite uplink on the barge. The video is digitized, then transmitted via Ku-Band satellite through one or two stabilized antennas onboard. (If you look at pictures of the barges they have two white R2D2 type domes on either side). These antennas are finely balanced machines, allowing their motors to react quite quickly to the motion under them. However, they are also required to prohibit transmission, unless the system believes the satellite is within 0.5 degrees of the antenna's b
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They could have a small(er) floating platform towed behind the recovery ship with a less vibrating uplink, and send video over a fiber between the two.
SpaceX (Score:2)
Re:SpaceX (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.spacex.com/webcast [spacex.com] but the landing isn't quite visible because the feed failed for a few seconds.
Oky (Score:1)
Landing leg crush cores (Score:2)
For interest's sake, the honeycomb crush cores were (first?) used in the Apollo Lunar Module, see page 6 of https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a... [nasa.gov]
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