SpaceX (general discussion)

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I don’t get the feeling that Whittaker is some kind of firebrand..a little hidebound maybe. If he gets pushed out—THEN you might get a Greta Thunberg type put in his place out of spite—depending upon how the political pendulum swings.

Warren Buffet was pushing for a “Texas Emergency Power Reserve” in recent years:
www.texastribune.org

Warren Buffett group lobbying Texas lawmakers for deal to build $8 billion worth of power plants for emergency use

In return, lawmakers would agree to create a revenue stream for Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway through an additional charge on Texans’ power bills.
www.texastribune.org www.texastribune.org

Perhaps SpaceX could get some of that via building general LNG tankage as part of diversification?
 
F9 is suspended from flying for the third time in three months, and for the second time it’s an issue with the upper stage.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1840245345118498987
View: https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1840245345118498987


After today’s successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area.

We will resume launching after we better understand root cause
Click to expand...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1840249260429758822
View: https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1840249260429758822


So where did the Crew-9 second stage come down?
Here is the ground track of Crew-9 based on the TLE (orange) and the planned stage 2 deorbit area (white rectangle)
Click to expand...

The most likely failure mode that still results in reentry is a slight underburn (less delta-V, higher resulting perigee). If you underburn too much the perigee will be too high for reentry to occur. So you expect the entry to be further along the orange line but not by too much
Click to expand...

Here is the ground track showing the planned reentry area at bottom left. My analysis suggests that an off nominal deorbit that still ends up with stage reentry will impact on the orange line somewhere between the end of the white rectangle and the equator
Click to expand...

Of course one can imagine weirder scenarios, where the stage points stably in the wrong direction during the burn and ends up in a high apogee arc splashing down further downrange, but it's unlikely.
Click to expand...

More possible is an *overburn* (failure of the engine to shut down) resulting in early reentry nearer (but still safely south of) New Zealand. But I think an underburn is more likely. Hopefully we'll hear more.
Click to expand...
 
I understand a Raptor did a 15 minute burn recently.

On the SuperDracos---I thought Dragon exhausted it's hypergolics on de-orbit--SuperDracos only as launch escape.
 

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