SpaceX Sends Dragon To ISS But Falcon 9 Rocket Misses Landing Pad (cnet.com) 133
On Wednesday, SpaceX successfully sent a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station to deliver supplies, but unfortunately it wasn't able to recover the Falcon 9 rocket that launched with it. "The first stage of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle appeared to lose control as it approached Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral," reports CNET. "The live feed from the rocket cut away on the SpaceX webcast, but video from people in the media area at the cape showed the Falcon 9 appearing to regain control before making an unplanned landing in the water rather than ashore at the landing area." From the report: Musk tweeted shortly afterward that cutting the live feed "was a mistake" and shared the full clip of the water landing from the rocket's perspective. The rocket took off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:16 p.m. local time, a little more than 48 hours after SpaceX sent another Falcon 9 to space from the West Coast on Monday. Dragon's flight to low-Earth orbit was supposed to happen Tuesday, but the mission was pushed back a day to replace some food being sent to the space station for experimental mice living there.
SpaceX had planned to land the first stage of the brand-new Block 5 Falcon 9 rocket at a landing zone ashore at Cape Canaveral, but as the rocket descended toward the cape, the live feed from the booster's onboard cameras appeared to show the craft going into some sort of uncontrolled spin. Musk tweeted that the problem was that a "grid fin hydraulic pump stalled, so Falcon landed just out to sea." Musk also tweeted that the pump that failed didn't have a backup because "landing is considered ground safety critical, but not mission critical. Given this event, we will likely add a backup pump & lines."
SpaceX had planned to land the first stage of the brand-new Block 5 Falcon 9 rocket at a landing zone ashore at Cape Canaveral, but as the rocket descended toward the cape, the live feed from the booster's onboard cameras appeared to show the craft going into some sort of uncontrolled spin. Musk tweeted that the problem was that a "grid fin hydraulic pump stalled, so Falcon landed just out to sea." Musk also tweeted that the pump that failed didn't have a backup because "landing is considered ground safety critical, but not mission critical. Given this event, we will likely add a backup pump & lines."
All things considered... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice that a failed landing is news.
They haven't missed a landing for quite some time now.
Re:All things considered... (Score:5, Informative)
The more impressive thing is that it managed to splash down intact, under full control. Due to the stuck hydraulics for the grid fins, it was rolling at a fairly extreme rate. The rocket had already aimed at this spot in the water (it's designed this way) and was actually able to arrest the roll just prior to splash down. After splash down, it remained operational, despite falling onto its side, and successfully safe itself. Apparently it was still in communications and operational while bobbing away in the ocean.
For the uninitiated, the landing profile has the initial trajectory set with the booster aimed for a region away from the landing pad, be it the one on the ground, or the barge. This is in case of exactly a situation such as this, if something goes wrong during the landing process and the booster loses control authority, it will impact somewhere safe. It's only during the final landing burn (aka the hoverslam) that the booster side slips and changes its trajectory to land in the landing zone.
So yeah, the system worked exactly as designed, and is fail safe. All in all a successful failure.
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So yeah, the system worked exactly as designed, and is fail safe. All in all a successful failure.
Well, not exactly as designed since it ended up in the ocean...
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Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
Heh. Failing gracefully is "working as designed". I like it. When Windows throws a Blue Screen of Death, it's working exactly as designed!
Ok, bad example ... but imagine trying to get a pilot to take a plane with that argument.
"I tried to start #2 engine and it caught fire!"
"That's OK, you still have 3 more engines, and a fire suppression system. Plane is working as designed. Enjoy your flight!"
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When Windows gives you a blue screen instead of erasing your hard drive, it's working as designed.
When your plane engine catches fire but the wing which is full of fuel doesn't explode, it's working as designed.
Re: All things considered... (Score:3)
No, it's not. I've worked on aircraft, and I've experienced emergencies both on the ground and in the air. By no stretch of the imagination is an airplane with a burning engine "working as designed". The safety systems may work as designed to put out the fire, and the redundant systems may be working as designed to prevent catastrophic failure, but the plane as a whole is certainly not working as designed. Even a fucking child looking at it would be able to say "nope, that's not supposed to happen", so
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By no stretch of the imagination is an airplane with a burning engine "working as designed". The safety systems may work as designed to put out the fire, and the redundant systems may be working as designed to prevent catastrophic failure, but the plane as a whole is certainly not working as designed.
We're really getting down to semantics here because the system as in "the set of all contingencies and modes of operation" can be working as designed because the failure modes are part of that plan. Somebody obviously considered "what if an engine catches fire" and made that part of the design and if you have an actual fire it either works according to that plan or it doesn't.
The grid fin failed so that's obviously not "working as designed", duh. But there was a design for what should happen in the event of
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
We're really getting down to semantics here because the system as in "the set of all contingencies and modes of operation" can be working as designed because the failure modes are part of that plan.
How is that relevant? Your TV has a designed failure mode too; when its stops working you take it a shop and they swap whatever component failed. Does that mean a TV which isn't displaying a picture is "working as designed"?
Or take a car. If your brakes go out, you have an emergency brake. If the emergency brake fails you can downshift. If you don't have enough space to stop with downshifting, the vehicle is designed to crumple on impact. It also has seatbelts and airbags to protect you from more inju
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Your cars brakes fail and you crash into a tree. If the following happened, the system is working as designed:
- Assuming total failure of the hydraulic braking system, you have a handbrake. In an emergency, you can use that to reduce your speed, but you lose some directional stability
- You can downshift gears to reduce speed. Directional stability remains unaffected but the rate of
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Since we are nit-picking, in a conventional auto, master cylinders are split, with one side braking the front left/right rear wheel, and the other braking the front right/left rear wheel.
So if there's a problem "downwind" of the master cylinder, there's a good chance the car can still be stopped by the main brake system. If all brakes shared the same hydraulic line, then even one leak would drop the pressure, causing the brakes to fail.
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
In this context, individual components may have failed, but the system as a whole is working as designed. It's not even semantics, it's being able to step back and look at the system as a whole rather than focusing on individual components.
And this seems to be the issue right here. That's just wrong. An aircraft with a broken engine is considered unservicable and unfit for flight. Nobody in their right mind would dream of sending it up. You're confusing the fact that the system can compensate for some failed components with the idea that it's operating as designed. It is not. As soon as a single component fails, the system is operating in a degraded state. If it were "operating as designed" there would be no need to fix anything.
You ca
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Listen to the engineers. We're the ones that actually create the designs you're critiquing. (Okay, so I'm not technically an engineer, but I was a stone's throw from getting my certification when life took me in a different direction)
One question: Was the airplane designed to be able to continue to fly after an engine failure?
Yes? Then operating with an engine failure is operating according to design. It's a part of the design that everyone hopes will never be needed, but it IS part of the design.
A very
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
I'm not sure why you think that being an engineer makes you an expert on the English language, but maybe we can take a different approach to clear this up: give me an example of when an aircraft is NOT operating as designed.
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We're not talking about the English language - we're talking about engineering design.
When is an airplane not operating as designed? When a whole lot of people die in a crash caused by equipment failure.
If you design an airplane only to fly when everything is working properly, then the first major component failure will kill everyone on board. If you want it to continue to stay in the air and have some measure of control so that it can hopefully land without killing too many people, then you have to design
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
We're not talking about the English language - we're talking about engineering design.
No, at this point you are definitely arguing about English. I'm well aware of how aircraft are designed, and how they function. I've acknowledged from the very beginning that failsafes and emergency equipment are part of the design. You just don't seem to understand the words we are using.
When is an airplane not operating as designed? When a whole lot of people die in a crash caused by equipment failure.
So are you saying that your only metric is how many people die? If two identical planes suffer the same engine-loss event but one aircraft is at the right altitude to make it survivable while the other one is not ... i
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I think you're confusing "functioning nominally" - i.e. everything is working as intended, with "functioning as designed", which also includes all the myriad ways that things can fail that the engineers have anticipated and made allowances for.
> If two identical planes suffer the same engine-loss event but one aircraft is at the right altitude to make it survivable while the other one is not ... in your world, one of those aircraft functioned perfectly to design, while the other did not?
Well, you seemed
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
There's a reason takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts of a flight, and part of it is that low altitude failure tolerance mostly comes at a much higher cost(by price, weight, efficiency...) and is thus intentionally left out in favor of operating profits.
So, in other words, the intentional failure mode at low altitudes is for the plane to crash and kill everyone? I.e. that's the way it's designed? And when it fails and kills everyone, it was operating as designed?
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Yes. Exactly.
Or more precisely, they decided that a failure at low altitude was outside the design scope, and so if it happens, the aircraft by definition cannot function as designed, because it was not designed function in that scenario. They didn't design it to kill everyone - if they did, then it would be functioning as designed. They just ignored the problem, knowing that was the likely outcome.
That's standard behavior in engineering - everything is a compromise, and perfect safety is impossible. So
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
Yes. Exactly.
Or more precisely, they decided that a failure at low altitude was outside the design scope, and so if it happens, the aircraft by definition cannot function as designed, because it was not designed function in that scenario. They didn't design it to kill everyone - if they did, then it would be functioning as designed. They just ignored the problem, knowing that was the likely outcome.
You say "yes exactly" and then go on to say (simplifying) "well actually no". Which is it?
Take another example - the planes which slammed into the WTC on 9/11. Were they functioning as intended?
My persoective: mechanically they seemed perfectly fine, so I would say yes.
Your perspective: Well they killed a fuckload of people, so you would say no. Except the expected failure mode of slamming into a building is that everyone dies, so you would say yes. Except nobody actually designed them to do that, the
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I did tell you my "killing a lot of people" was a simple answer (and thus likely false in all but the most straightforward scenarios - I figured that was implied)
I apologize if I made the distinction too subtle. Let me try again, perhaps I can phrase it better:
In both your examples, the planes functioned as designed, right up until they were subjected to a situation they were never designed to deal with. Whether that's losing an engine at low altitude, or suddenly colliding with a building - the moment tha
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No, it's not. I've worked on aircraft, and I've experienced emergencies both on the ground and in the air. By no stretch of the imagination is an airplane with a burning engine "working as designed".
Clearly the engine is not working as designed, but that's produced by a different contractor than the airplane itself. If the engine catches on fire and the plane doesn't explode due to the fire spreading to a fuel tank, then the plane is working as designed. Unless you think that safety features happen by accident, you have to acknowledge that they are design features. Keeping the fire from spreading is working as designed.
Even a fucking child looking at it would be able to say "nope, that's not supposed to happen", so I'm flabbergasted why an adult would fail to understand this.
An adult can understand that the world is a lumpy place where bad things happen to g
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
You're arguing that as long as some parts of a system are working, the whole thing is working as designed. That's idiotic. Sure, your brakes failed, your ebrake failed, your gearbox fell out, your airbags failed to deploy, and your seatbelt fell apart ..... but hey, the radio still works! System is working as designed!
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You're arguing that as long as some parts of a system are working, the whole thing is working as designed.
Nope. Not at all. I'm arguing that a plane is designed to fly, and designed to protect the occupants when something goes wrong. Same for any vehicle, hopefully. I know this is complicated, but the world is a complicated place, and you should try to adapt to that fact.
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If all of those things failed, and you're still alive to evaluate if the radio is still working, I'd say the system operated as intended. In the aircraft example, engine fails but aircraft is able to return safely, the system worked as designed because it was designed to be able to "limp home" without killing everybody on board. In this case, the rocket system was designed to fail in a way that didn't imperil the landing site or nearby people. Seems to have worked as designed.
You can design something to
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
You can design something to meet multiple requirements. Requirement 1: Rocket should be able to return to earth and land. Requirement 2: If unplanned events occur, rocket should crash into the ocean instead of the launch pad.
And you would say that a system which only meets some requirements due to mechanical failure is a system which worked as designed?
Cute. You must work in the Chinese automotive industry.
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And you would say that a system which only meets some requirements due to mechanical failure is a system which worked as designed?
That depends on the requirements and the end result. Specifically in the case of the Block 5 Falcons, yes, the system so far has demonstrated it works as designed.
No, the rocket didn't work as INTENDED this time, I will give you that, 100%. If it worked as intended it wouldn't be bobbing in the ocean. However, they have proven that their design works, because they have landed their rocket on a pad before. They've met requirement 1. It was also designed to land in the ocean if it isn't safe to land on the
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
However, they have proven that their design works, because they have landed their rocket on a pad before.
The fact that the design works has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not this particular rocket worked as designed. Just like the fact that their emergency procedures worked has nothing to do with whether or not the rocket worked as designed. The rocket did NOT work as designed. That's why they had to land it in the water. If it had worked as designed it would have landed on the pad, and I wouldn't have ended up wasting thousands of words arguing with people who don't seem to understand that syst
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Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
Sure, that's a lot more reasonable.
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A blue screen isn't a graceful failure. Saving all your work before rebooting would be.
When you're engineering a complex system you know that failures are inevitable, so you design for them. An engine on a plane catching fire (on very rare occasions or in exceptional circumstances) and not hurting anyone is definitely working as designed. Ask a pilot.
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
An engine on a plane catching fire (on very rare occasions or in exceptional circumstances) and not hurting anyone is definitely working as designed. Ask a pilot.
I have one sitting right beside me. Showed him your comment. He laughed.
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No it would be more like a pSeries box detecting a fault in a CPU core and shutting just that core down. It then takes you a couple of days to actually realize what is going on because you are not monitoring for core failures on your CPU's and the only outwardly visible sign of a problem is the overnight backups on TSM are taking longer (it was a TSM server) than normal which they occasionally did anyway due to some researcher dumping several TB of data onto the file server, and this was like a decade ago s
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"not monitoring for core failures on your CPU"
And this is what went wrong.
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Where is its safe initial aim point when doing a return to launch site (RLS) on the west coast? Is the landing site close enough to the coast for this also to be at sea?
The west coast launch a couple of days ago could have done RLS, but was not allowed to because another rocket was readying for launch on another pad, and they didn't want an unexpected booster falling on them. I expect (justified or not) this event will reinforce that worry.
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I expect (justified or not) this event will reinforce that worry.
I don't know about reinforce, as such. There will already be an engineering estimate about failures in landing based on probability of equipment failure. This actual failure will be another data point to help refine that estimate further.
If they can recover the booster they can take it apart and get a good idea of what failed exactly and engineer a solution. I've got to wonder how many boosters have been launched over the decades that have ha
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
They already know what failed, just not sure why yet. And they're already talking about adding a second pump and associated plumbing to avoid the same problem on future missions.
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Launches on the US west coast are from Vandenberg launch complex. It's right on the ocean. No launch can be over populated areas (until it's really high) so launches from Vandenberg have to be pretty close to polar orbits, launching to the south.
Map:
https://www.google.ca/maps/pla... [google.ca]
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was actually able to arrest the roll just prior to splash down.
That should not be surprising. When the fin stuck, the rocket was travelling at considerable airspeed. But "just prior to splashdown", with the hoverslam, the velocity was approaching zero, and so also was the spin force from the fin.
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Another interesting bit was the maneuvers it was doing during the last seconds, tilting heavily before righting itself again. Looks like it was canceling a significant amount of horizontal velocity. Did it intentionally try to get as close to land as possible and cancel the horizontal speed at the last possible moment? Or was it just trying to land wherever it ended up? Certainly impressive how the control systems didn't give up and made the best of a bad situation. And especially with the rocket still spin
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was actually able to arrest the roll just prior to splash down.
That should not be surprising. When the fin stuck, the rocket was travelling at considerable airspeed. But "just prior to splashdown", with the hoverslam, the velocity was approaching zero, and so also was the spin force from the fin.
Yup, as the rocket slows down, the aerodynamic forces on the fins diminish, and the reaction control system (small rockets) can take over.
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I was extremely surprised at this, actually. I'll be dammed if I can figure out how a single engine on a gimbal induces roll on the axis in line with the centerline of the engine.
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I'll be dammed if I can figure out how a single engine on a gimbal induces roll on the axis in line with the centerline of the engine.
Don't take media reports too literally. It would be the cold-gas thrusters controlling the spin.
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A great example of the engineering. It didn't come down hard either so they might be able to recover and reuse the booster with the added cost of pulling it out of the water.
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Not just pulling it out of the water, but more importantly cleaning out all the salt water and replacing the parts that got damaged by it. Salt water is very bad for rocket components.
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That would depend on how long it sat in the water of course. But yes, the will be extra cleaning/inspection for landing in water. The point is it didn't rapidly disassemble itself.
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Re:All things considered... (Score:5, Funny)
Come on, they should be able to get it by now. It's not like this is rocket science.
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Funny story, two of my friends from uni now work in different industries. One is literally a brain surgeon, the other is literally a rocket scientist (guidance systems). The rocket scientist always says "It's not brains surgery"
The brain surgeon always says "It's not rocket science"
I make it a point to only ask them about problems at their work when they are both standing next to each other. Hillarity ensues.
And the next time... (Score:2)
I make it a point to only ask them about problems at their work when they are both standing next to each other. Hillarity ensues.
And before next time you'll ask them such a question, they'll train to be able to say "it's not rocket surgery!" in perfect unison.
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do you know why they throttle down to land instead of just using parachutes or literally anything else? seems like such a waste
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Windbourne (moderating).
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Soyuez lands on dry Earth with parachutes. Multiple Mars landers have landed on Mars with parachutes.
Landing on the Moon does require a reaction engine. Or the Universe's largest pogo stick.
Re: All things considered... (Score:3)
The mars rover which used a parachute weighed 18,000 lbs and the parachute had a 21 meter diameter. Even with those numbers the parachute alone was not enough; it only slowed the descent while the final landing was done with rockets.
The second stage of the proposed BFR will have a maximum weight of just under 3,000,000 lbs. Wanna do the math on how big your parachute needs to be?
Re:All things considered... (Score:5, Insightful)
Soyuz lands on dry earth by using a combination of parachutes and rockets. A series of small solid rocket motors do a "braking burn", igniting one second before landing. And even then, a Soyuz landing is often compared to a road-speed car crash.
AFAIK no Mars lander used solely parachutes. They all used retrorockets (Viking, Curiosity), or airbags (Mars Express), or both (Pathfinder, Opportunity/Spirit). While Mars has less gravity than Earth, it has even less air, so parachutes are mainly used to get subsonic.
Further, note that even an empty Falcon 9 booster (~30 tons) weighs substantially more than a Soyuz descent stage (2-3 tons).
Finally... SpaceX *tried* parachutes first. The first two Falcon 9 launches, back in 2010, had parachutes. It didn't work. Apparently they didn't even survive atmospheric reentry, they were disintegrating before parachutes could be deployed. Fixing that would require retropropulsion for a pre-reentry slowdown burn... and if you've figured that out, and added all the new capabilities required (with all the mass that entails), it makes sense to use that for final landing as well, instead of a separate system. So, three years later, they started those preliminary soft-landing-in-water tests. Took them a year to start getting those to work, then another year to get actual landings to work. And now, it only makes the news when one *doesn't* work. Seems like they made the right call.
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And salt water is not very good for rocket engines you plan on using again.
SpaceX uses Inconel [wikipedia.org] (among other alloys) in their rocket engines, and Inconel in particular is highly resistant to seawater. I'd assume that the engineers at SpaceX were intelligent enough to know that corrosion and pitting are potential problems with metals exposed to seawater, and unlike you to be knowledgeable enough to know that they can get alloys which effectively eliminate this problem given the brief periods of exposure involved.
Seriously, you don't even know that we have alloys that resist damage f
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
do you know why they throttle down to land instead of just using parachutes
Because parachutes large enough to do the job would be ridiculously heavy and would add systems which aren't needed for anything else. They also can't really be steered very well, let alone well enough to land on a barge in the middle of the ocean. SpaceX is trying that now with the payload fairings, and it's not going all that well; It seems to be pretty hard to catch the damn things. They have at least managed a soft splashdown in the ocean now, which is OK since the material they're made of doesn't ru
Re: All things considered... (Score:3)
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It would be a seriously awesome trick to land a rocket on a barge or landing pad under a parachute. You have to pull the chute fairly far up so it has time to slow you down, but that makes you subject to wind and other uncertainties. You could use a steerable, airfoil-style parachute, but you can't steer them unless they're moving forward, so now you've got your rocket coming down to land with forward velocity. Theoretically you could have it pull off a perfect flare like a paraglider doing a no-step landin
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It's also worth noting that SpaceX is trying to land something with Parachutes, the fairings.
They have a crazy fast boat with a massive net that is supposed to slip under the fairings on the way down and still miss every time.
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Yes. The fairings use the airfoil chute approach and apparently can steer themselves. But the fairings are a lot smaller, lighter, and more aerodynamic than the boosters. I'm a bit surprised SpaceX can't get them to hit the net. Paraglider spot landings take a bit of practice, but they're not that hard. Maybe next time the US navy decommissions a carrier SpaceX should pick it up.
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Something that the other replies to your post haven't mentioned is that parachutes are damned hard to control, while a propulsive landing has very good control authority. You can't land the rocket upright when it's floating around like a feather. Have you ever watched a feather drop? It's only good at all for a water landing, and those are right out because sea water is bad for a re-usable spacecraft.
* Reserve fuel is cheap (compared to the cost of the rocket it's spare change), and it needs to have some a
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I read that first, and those aren't good answers and don't address the downside to using fuel
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I'm pretty sure I Didn't suggest a fucking thing
See for yourself (Score:4, Informative)
This really is a case where a picture is worth a thousand words.
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Because the landing wasn't considered mission critical, only landing critical, they don't have redundant systems for the gridfins. The amazing thing here is that it managed a soft landing at all rather than a uncontrolled impact with terrain. Clearly something clever implemented here to stabilize in the event of the failure of a gridfin. In regard to Astronauts - the BFROWICTW will be rated for people, meaning redundancy and abort mechanisms. But regardless of this we are still talking controlled bombs goin
Re: All things considered... (Score:3)
Clearly something clever implemented here to stabilize in the event of the failure of a gridfin
From watching the footage, it looked like at least one of the fins was still functional enough to counteract the spin somewhat, and the thrusters were firing quite a bit as well. Those both seemed to slow the spin but not stop it. The main engine was gimballing like crazy too but I'm not sure that that would have had much effect.
What finally stopped the spin almost completely seemed to be the extension of the landing legs. Which makes sense - same principle as a figure skater stretching out or tucking in
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While the "figure skater" argument is interesting, I had noticed that the spin was almost gone before the legs came out. I think I figured out another reason the spin slowed down.
The stuck grid fin was causing the spin because it was making air go sideways. But once the vertical speed decreased, that effect went away, making it easier to stop the spin. Then you can see the flame of the center engine gimbal around. There may also have been some cold thrust off-camera. Not that the legs didn't help slow it d
Re: All things considered... (Score:2)
But once the vertical speed decreased, that effect went away, making it easier to stop the spin. Then you can see the flame of the center engine gimbal around.
Yeah I noticed that too. Obviously as velocity decreased the amount of force needed to counteract the spin lessened, but there was still plenty of roll left right up until the legs deployed. I did notice the engine gimballing around like crazy too but, AFAIK, there's no way to control roll with just a single centrally mounted engine. You can control pitch and yaw but not roll.
Just like commercial passenger planes... (Score:1)
the Falcon 9 appearing to regain control before making an unplanned landing in the water
Just like with passenger airplanes, a "water landing" is known as a crash.
Well, no, that's 100% wrong. (Score:1, Informative)
Except that's 100% wrong. This is an unmanned spent rocket husk, and if it's got any malfunctions the idea is to keep it away from the population as much as possible. The ocean is pretty unpopulated with people. Try again.
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I'm pretty sure the passengers & crew of US Airways Flight 1549 [wikipedia.org] would disagree.
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From your link: " pilots Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles glided the plane to a ditching in the Hudson River"
The definition of "ditching" from the Wikipedia entry for water landing [wikipedia.org]: The phrase "water landing" is also used as a euphemism for crash-landing into water an aircraft not designed for the purpose, an event formally termed ditching
Re: Just like commercial passenger planes... (Score:2)
It absolutely is a crash. It's just a more or less planned crash. When we crash cars into walls for testing purposes we don't call it "high speed parking", we call it crashing.
The fact that the rocket managed to come down safely in the water and remain intact is nothing short of amazing, but it's not a very good reason to start redefining the English language.
Re: This is a spent rocket shell. Not a plane. Wr (Score:2)
If it fell onto the LAND, that would absolutely be a crash. They were aiming for the water intentionally, it's safer.
Makes sense. This one time I was about to crash into an oncoming truck, so I drove off the road and hit a fence instead. Totally not a crash, because it was safer.
Stop being dumb anytime just because you dislike Musk, this isn't about him.
I like Musk; I've never really had a "role model" a such, but he definitely makes the very short list of people whom I respect immensely. This isn't about him - it's about reality. You're the weirdo that suddenly decided to make it about him.
Just because Musk says silly things when he's high doesn't mean you're smarter than a Billionaire. You're a moron who impersonates APK online because your life is that boring and shallow. Tsk.
I'm certainly not smarter than Musk, but I'm a regular fucking Einstein compared to you, Pete.
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You aren't addressing the facts that A: it's unmanned
So any unmanned vehicle cannot crash?
B: it's a husk of a completed mission being recollected for recycling
Is it supposed to be reusable? It was my understanding that it is. But it certainly is not after landing in saltwater, and it will be damaged beyond repair after falling over. Do they break these down and separate the various materials for recycling? What about the composite and electrical components? As far as I know, the only way these get recycled is if they can use them again.
So no, it's really nothing like a crash or "ditching" as it landed exactly where it was supposed to given that it had lost the stabilizer to maintain vertical landing orientation, which is entirely optional and bonus.
This is exactly what ditching is. It failed to land as hoped for and went into a safe failu
Crash implies harm (Score:2)
Just like with passenger airplanes, a "water landing" is known as a crash.
It didn't though, it landed fairly softly in the water and so is reusable.
A plane water landing is a "crash" because (A) it was never a target for landing (where water landing is the backup landing spot for the booster) and (B) the plane is pretty much unusable after a "water landing", along with great risk to those inside.
With the Falcon9 water landing, there was not much risk to the craft. It's just harder to collect.
Re: (Score:1)
It didn't though, it landed fairly softly in the water and so is reusable.
That's news to me. As far as I understand once they land in saltwater, they are no longer usable. Electronics don't hold up well once exposed to saltwater and the effort to recondition would not be worth the risk or the potentially reduced usability. Corrosion is also a structural issue.
With the Falcon9 water landing, there was not much risk to the craft. It's just harder to collect.
From this link [quora.com]:A Falcon 9 first stage is too fragile to just let fall into the water. Unlike the Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters, which are massive steel tubes, a Falcon 9 is a thin-walled aluminum tube which can't sur
Re:Crash implies harm (Score:4, Informative)
As far as I understand once they land in saltwater, they are no longer usable. Electronics don't hold up well once exposed to saltwater
There are quite a lot of non-electronics though that can still be reused.
From this link: A Falcon 9 first stage is too fragile to just let fall into the water.
That would be a crash but it not what it did in this case, it still did a burn kind of like it was intending to land., touched down lightly and was fetched fairly quickly.
From the ACTUAL ARTICLE linked to in the summary, which you probably should have read before you scoured the internet for other random Falcon9 links:
"Appears to be undamaged & is transmitting data. Recovery ship dispatched," Musk wrote, latter adding: "We may use it for an internal SpaceX mission."
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There are quite a lot of non-electronics though that can still be reused.
There's more than electronics that need to be worried about once it's in salt water.
That would be a crash but it not what it did in this case, it still did a burn kind of like it was intending to land., touched down lightly and was fetched fairly quickly.
I didn't see it's final landing, but it sure looked like it fell over in the water. But the video cut off.
"Appears to be undamaged & is transmitting data. Recovery ship dispatched," Musk wrote, latter adding: "We may use it for an internal SpaceX mission."
I'm pretty neutral on Musk. I admire a lot of what he's done, and even how he does some things. But, he's also a showmen and certainly likes to bend the truth at times. How he can make that determination from a video is beyond me. Nor would I guess he is actually qualified to make that decision. If they are only willing
Re: Crash implies harm (Score:2)
That's news to me. As far as I understand once they land in saltwater, they are no longer usable. Electronics don't hold up well once exposed to saltwater and the effort to recondition would not be worth the risk or the potentially reduced usability. Corrosion is also a structural issue.
It's safe to say that it will need some heavy duty inspection and refurbishment, but SpaceX as of now has stated they plan to fly it again if the inspections turn out OK. So they at least don't seem to think it's impossible. They did however say they would use it for "internal missions" (ie. launching their own stuff), so they seem to be acknowledging that there's some element of risk involved.
Any landing you can walk away from... (Score:4, Informative)
From the article: "Remarkably, it seems SpaceX may still be able to recover the rocket."
What this means is that it was like a plane landing on water so gently that it could be removed and reflown. What is amazing here is that a major system failure didn't result in a terminal velocity crash into the ocean with the total loss of the vehicle. If this had been a crewed mission:
a) The crew would have been safe in orbit.
b) Even if a human were onboard the landing was survivable/soft.
I say well done SpaceX - even when something goes wrong it goes right.
Re: Any landing you can walk away from... (Score:2)
b) Even if a human were onboard the landing was survivable/soft
Maybe. The rocket is 200 feet tall. Assuming passengers are at the top, when it topples that's a 200 foot fall. If you have good restraints it might be survivable, but they probably won't be walking away from it, and fatalities would not be unexpected. I certainly wouldn't want to try it!
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
"SpaceX Sends Dragon To ISS But Falcon 9 Rocket Misses Landing Pad"
Better than the other way around.
Redundant backup pump? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Windbourne (moderating).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Actually, it was a fairly successful "failure", seeing how the first stage recognized that it had an issue and did not attempt to land at the landing site where it could have caused massive destruction, and instead completed a "soft" landing just off-shore, where the first stage could be easily recovered.