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NASA Space

'Watch SpaceX Blow Up a Falcon 9 Rocket in a Safety Test Sunday' (cnet.com) 69

Posted by EditorDavid from the sky-rockets-in-flight dept.
"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.
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'Watch SpaceX Blow Up a Falcon 9 Rocket in a Safety Test Sunday' More

'Watch SpaceX Blow Up a Falcon 9 Rocket in a Safety Test Sunday'

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  • Postponed (Score:5, Informative)

    by jddj ( 1085169 ) on Saturday January 18, 2020 @08:04AM (#59632538) Journal

    Try Again Sunday

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      Yep. Forecast winds and waves are too high for safe recovery of the Crew Dragon capsule.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by 110010001000 ( 697113 )

        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.

        • 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

      • Skál - a perfect test! The Luddites are going to have to think of something else to bitch about.

    • That was fucking awesome. Great job everyone at NASA and SpaceX.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          On the other hand, propulsive landing has a lot more moving parts to fail at a bad time.

  • Exciting (Score:3, Informative)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Saturday January 18, 2020 @08:11AM (#59632556) Homepage Journal

    Next stop: Mars (and beyond).

  • I hope they put a stereoscopic VR camera in the crew cabin.

    • 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...

  • 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.

  • The engines will cut out and the booster will break up from aerodynamic forces. Whether the remaining fuel and oxidizer ignite is unclear.
    • Follow up in case anybody is reading. It blowed up good. Not through the flight termination system but it clearly something ignited the first stage pretty well. The second stage might have survived that explosion from what I could see.
  • And other similar feathered nuisances. They've been crapping on my lawn for 40 goldang years or more!

    • 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)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 )

    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)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @10:55AM (#59634828) Homepage

      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! :)

      • 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.

        • 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

        • That's certainly an original interpretation; very creative.

      • (24 astronauts, with a development and operational period from 1961 to 1972)

        24 astronauts to the vicinity of the moon, maybe. Only 12 of them landed there.

    • 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?

    • Hate to break it to you but we of the Silent Generation along with a few colleagues from the Greatest Generation did all the theory, design and engineering work on the Vanguard, Gemini, Mercury, and Apollo missions before the boomers started high school.
    • the moon isn't a planet, professor
  • Way to go SpaceX! What a show, what a show!

    • Yeah, that was really fantastic to watch. NASA, SpaceX, and the Slashdot editors nailed it on this one.

  • Spoilers (Score:5, Informative)

    by ElizabethGreene ( 1185405 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @11:23AM (#59634900)

    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.

    • 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.

  • 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]

  • And have they recovered the craft from the seas yet? I've not heard.

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