'Watch SpaceX Blow Up a Falcon 9 Rocket in a Safety Test Sunday' (cnet.com) 69
"SpaceX is setting out to prove a critical safety system will be able to save astronaut lives in the event of a launch emergency during ascent," reports CNET:
The Crew Dragon in-flight abort test...is a required step before NASA will allow astronauts to fly to the International Space Station in the SpaceX capsule as part of the Commercial Crew Program.
[UPDATE: Though they'd originally planned to launch Saturday, SpaceX tweeted early Saturday morning that "due to sustained winds and rough seas in the recovery area" they're now targeting Sunday, January 19, "with a six-hour test window opening at 8:00 a.m. EST, 13:00 UTC." Watch SpaceX's livestream here.]
NASA will also livestream the event... Backup test opportunities are set for Sunday or Monday if Saturday doesn't work out.
Crew Dragon will take a ride on a Falcon 9 rocket, which won't survive the test. The launch will take place at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, which will allow the rocket to break up over the Atlantic Ocean. It could be quite an eye-opening experience. SpaceX shared an animated video showing how the test is expected to go. If all goes well, the Crew Dragon capsule will separate from the rocket, deploy parachutes and float gently down to the water....
SpaceX successfully sent an uncrewed Crew Dragon to the International Space Station in early 2019. The ultimate goal is to make a return trip with NASA astronauts on board. If the in-flight abort test works out, then the first launch of humans from U.S. soil since the end of the space shuttle era should finally happen in 2020.
[UPDATE: Though they'd originally planned to launch Saturday, SpaceX tweeted early Saturday morning that "due to sustained winds and rough seas in the recovery area" they're now targeting Sunday, January 19, "with a six-hour test window opening at 8:00 a.m. EST, 13:00 UTC." Watch SpaceX's livestream here.]
NASA will also livestream the event... Backup test opportunities are set for Sunday or Monday if Saturday doesn't work out.
Crew Dragon will take a ride on a Falcon 9 rocket, which won't survive the test. The launch will take place at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, which will allow the rocket to break up over the Atlantic Ocean. It could be quite an eye-opening experience. SpaceX shared an animated video showing how the test is expected to go. If all goes well, the Crew Dragon capsule will separate from the rocket, deploy parachutes and float gently down to the water....
SpaceX successfully sent an uncrewed Crew Dragon to the International Space Station in early 2019. The ultimate goal is to make a return trip with NASA astronauts on board. If the in-flight abort test works out, then the first launch of humans from U.S. soil since the end of the space shuttle era should finally happen in 2020.
Postponed (Score:5, Informative)
Try Again Sunday
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Yep. Forecast winds and waves are too high for safe recovery of the Crew Dragon capsule.
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Don't worry. The next revision will contain wind and wave modifications to the MX-4500-A stabilizers and the RH-1000 valves. This will ensure future missions will go off like clockwork.
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Strange that the article says that this is a "required step". If I understood correctly, SpaceX chose to do this test even though NASA did not require it.
Boeing, on the other hand, is not going to do the in flight abort test. They are even debating whether or not they need to redo the failed test flight to the ISS. I guess they will just self-certify that everything works, like they do for their airplanes. What could possibly go wrong, right?
Cue the Musk bashers claiming SpaceX is irresponsible, cuts corner
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Skál - a perfect test! The Luddites are going to have to think of something else to bitch about.
YEAAAAAAAAAH (Score:2)
That was fucking awesome. Great job everyone at NASA and SpaceX.
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Was still unnerving to me watching the parachutes folding out during deployment and repeatedly bumping into each other during the drift down. I know that's normal with multi-parachute systems, and unlike Boeing's ground abort test, all of the parachutes actually worked... but... I don't know, I think I'd feel safer with propulsive landing than parachute.
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On the other hand, propulsive landing has a lot more moving parts to fail at a bad time.
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https://www.spacex.com/webcast [spacex.com] says
Teams are currently targeting a T-0 of 10:00 a.m. EST, or 15:00 UTC, two hours into the six-hour test window. A backup opportunity with a six-hour launch window opening at 8:00 a.m. EST, or 13:00 UTC, is available on Monday, January 20.
So no, it's not yet delayed until Monday.
Exciting (Score:3, Informative)
Next stop: Mars (and beyond).
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Note to others reading this thread:
Don't Feed The Troll
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Re:Exciting (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. The first SpaceX crewed landing on Mars is slated for 2024 and a MILLION PEOPLE living in His colony by 2050: https://www.cnet.com/news/elon... [cnet.com]
I guess the troll won't be going with us.
Re:Exciting (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Exciting (Score:5, Informative)
Smart man. Living on Mars will be much preferable to living here on this rock stuck in a gravity well with all these regular people. We will be living like Kings!
Re:Exciting (Score:4, Funny)
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Good. Get your ass to mars!
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For the record, Musk is neither a libertarian nor a Rand fan. Just the opposite, he supports UBI.
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Yeah but the internet will be laggy af.
Re: Exciting (Score:2)
So funny, and so sad.
I wasn't trolling. I misread your headline (pre-caffiene) and made a dumb joke that makes no sense at all if one actually reads it.
I'm an idiot, not a troll.
And I support Musk's push to get humanity to Mars, though I fear the formidable obstacles to moving lots of people there (never mind giving them a life that we've evolved to enjoy living) will outlast our civilization, given that there's no planet B.
My thoughts alone. Nobody has to share 'em.
Re: (Score:2)
1) The comment you responded to was not directed at you.
2) Nobody cares what you wrote.
3) Nobody cares what you support. Or not.
4) Forever alone is what you deserve.
Really? Apparently you cared enough to post a reply and as long as you care he won't be alone although I'm not sure he'll be glad of your company.
Re: Exciting (Score:2)
Some of us have the balls to sign our names to our mistakes.
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I think the original AC was saying I was trolling when I said "Excellent" and first SpaceX crewed landing on Mars is slated for 2024 and a MILLION PEOPLE living in His colony by 2050. All factual.
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, given that there's no planet B.
Would you settle for an infinite number of constantly bifurcating universes? [wikipedia.org]
In some we live, in some we die.
Re:Exciting (Score:4, Insightful)
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Mars is for Elon's coffin only. ALL OTHER WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT MARS. Attempt no landing there.
If Elon wants to make the whole planet his private tomb he'll have to deal with the dark lord of Mars first: https://xkcd.com/1504/ [xkcd.com]
Good use for a stereoscopic VR camera (Score:2)
I hope they put a stereoscopic VR camera in the crew cabin.
Re: Good use for a stereoscopic VR camera (Score:3)
There wouldn't be much to see from inside the crew cabin unless it had a pair of ultra hi-def/high-rate cameras with extreme fisheye lenses, paired with a server that deconvoluted the video, then did "virtual PTZ" (cropping it down to the smaller frame matching the individual viewer's FOV so you could enjoy 3DoF and look around).
And even then, there wouldn't be much to see. From the perspective of an astronaut, the experience would be kind of like being in the elevator for "The Hulk" at Universal Studios...
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Actually we saw the whole test from the Crew Dragon POV, starting right after the escape rocket firing.
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Re:How much does all this contribute (Score:4, Interesting)
> rocket launching contribute in terms of carbon footprint
Almost nobody cares about the small contribution of spaceflight, but the plan for Starship is to make methane fuel from seawater, atmospheric CO2, and solar near the launch sites.
While unnecessary on Earth, they need the system working to make fuel on Mars for the return trip, so perfecting it on Earth makes the most sense.
Falcon 9 will probably be the last kerosene rocket in operation and only for a few more years. The Raptor engine on Starship is full-flow which has been the holy grail of rocket design since the 60's but was too hard to figure out without CFD simulations.
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While unnecessary on Earth, they need the system working to make fuel on Mars for the return trip, so perfecting it on Earth makes the most sense.
Cryogenic refuelling on Mars still sounds complicated and dangerous.
A nuclear-thermal rocket could just suck up water as propellant, and make the transfer between Earth and Mars much faster.
Not quite as fast as a LH2-nuclear, but still much better than methane/LOX.
Re:How much does all this contribute (Score:4, Interesting)
At present? A meaninglessly small fraction of global emissions.
The goal is to get launch rates up to where they actually would be a meaningful (although still small) minority of emissions... were they to use conventional fuel sources. But the intent is to use solar-powered propellant production using the same sort of ISRU that they need to develop for Mars.
IMHO: As far as chilling and compressing the propellants, that's highly likely. Such loads can be variable based on power availability, and for loads which you're not sensitive about time-of-use, nothing beats grid-scale solar and wind for cost effectiveness. This includes air liquefaction for LOX production. It's a harder proposition to make Sabatier methane as cheaply as you can produce it from the ground, however; I'm not sure how the cost trends on that will progress.
Solar-powered propellant plant? (Score:2)
Will the propellant plant on Mars be solar powered? My gut tells me that you'd have to have a really vast array of solar panels to make enough methane to fuel a return to Earth.
But a nuclear-powered propellant plant would get the job done fast.
Re:How much does all this contribute (Score:4, Interesting)
The Falcon 9 first stage holds 146,000 L of RP1. That's about 85% of a 777-300, or around 400 tonnes of CO2.
400 t of CO2 is 86 standard car years. Cattle farming doesn't really emit much CO2 but if you translate the methane into CO2 equivalent, it's approximately 200 cow burp years.
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400 t of CO2 is 86 standard car years.
Or in the same ballpark as a single transatlantic flight. Not all that much, in other words.
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Yes, that would be what "about 85% of a 777-300" in a list of equivalents would mean. Could you translate cow burp years into passenger jet travel time for even further redundancy, please?
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Starship could actually *run* on cow burps. If I remember stoichiometry correctly, it would require just short of 5000 cow burp years for the first stage, and another 1720 for the second stage.
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How much does all the rocket launching contribute in terms of carbon footprint, say, compared to the meat industry or vehicles on the road?
I have two things to say about that.
First, I don't give a damn, we're GOING TO SPACE DAMMIT!
Second, we know how to produce all the fuel we need to get to space in a net carbon neutral way. This involves technologies that are all over 50 years old. This means we can do this right now, there's nothing new to develop. Because we've been doing this for so long we know how to do this in a way that is relatively low in cost. Making this competitive with petroleum fuels only takes someone with the money and gu
Animation (Score:1)
The animation look like Syndromeâ(TM)s plan to launch his Omnidroid in The Incredibles. Would be cool if they had a glider to return the capsule instead of a parachute.
Blow up? (Score:2)
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Well I'm all for blowing up falcons... (Score:2)
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And other similar feathered nuisances. They've been crapping on my lawn for 40 goldang years or more!
Wait a minute, do you shake your fist at clouds while yelling, "Get off my lawn!"
OK Boomer (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate to break it to Elon and all of his Millennial acolytes, but Boomers did all this stuff decades ago and actually landed people on another planet. Maybe by the time they are Boomer age they will have accomplished something similar (but with an app!). Until then, keep launching those satellites!
Re:OK Boomer (Score:4, Informative)
And only used 2% of the entire nation's GDP every year at its peak to do it! Putting an average of 2 astronauts on the moon per year that the project ran (24 astronauts, with a development and operational period from 1961 to 1972).
The goal is not simply to "be able" to do things; it's to be able to do them economically. Without that, its unsustainable. Ala Apollo.
That said, Dragon 2 is an evolutionary dead end. SpaceX has no interest in it apart from to meet NASA contracts; their interest is fully on Starship. But they've learned a lot from this project, and will continue to.
Congrats to all of the hard-working people at SpaceX, and looking forward to the first crew flight! :)
Re: OK Boomer (Score:2)
Apollo's unsustainability was mainly because NASA knew it pushed the bleeding edge of its available technology BEYOND its safe (or even sane) limits, and it was only a matter of time until its luck ran out.
NASA took the 'win' and left the casino while it was still ahead, so the Apollo program could end as a smashing success instead of as a horrific televised snuff film.
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Never did get a sequel, sadly. The Shuttle spinoff was interesting if overproduced, but didn't deliver on the original's ambition. When that wound down we were eventually promised an Apollo reboot, but the various director changes, script rewrites, and studio demands have sunk that project into Budget Hell before it even launched.
Personally I'm glad to see third parties developing the story line independently. The trailers have been entertaining, execution has been pretty good so far, and the plot is certai
Re: OK Boomer (Score:2)
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24 astronauts to the vicinity of the moon, maybe. Only 12 of them landed there.
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I hate to break it to Elon and all of his Millennial acolytes, but Boomers did all this stuff decades ago and actually landed people on another planet. Maybe by the time they are Boomer age they will have accomplished something similar (but with an app!). Until then, keep launching those satellites!
What planet did they land people on again?
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Re: OK Boomer (Score:2)
WOW (Score:2)
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Yeah, that was really fantastic to watch. NASA, SpaceX, and the Slashdot editors nailed it on this one.
Spoilers (Score:5, Informative)
Just successfully completed the test. B1046 was destroyed as planned after separation. Rest in peace, booster. Capsule splashed down under all four parachutes. Press conference scheduled for 11:30 Eastern.
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Technically it wasn't a plan for the first and/or second stages to be destroyed - just a consequence of lack of thrust combined with changes in the aerodynamic profile once Dragon separated.
It was possible (but very unlikely) that the entire rocket could stay intact until it impacted the water. - and it appears that the second stage managed to maintain structural integrity until impact.
Darn clouds (Score:2)
For those interested Everyday Astronaut has a bit of footage of the remnants of the F9 booster coming down (1:29:50). Apparently the explosion didn't completely destroy it, made a nice little flash/cloud when it hit the water. Hopefully SpaceX will release the footage from the Dragon after they get it back and downloaded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Whoops, looks like I was a little off. The booster didn't survive the main explosion, second stage did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And have they recovered the craft yet? (Score:2)
And have they recovered the craft from the seas yet? I've not heard.