SpaceX (general discussion)

[Flyaway]

Analysts Disagree About Classified Sat Zuma’s Fate

Of this there is no doubt: At 8 p.m. on Jan. 7, a SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral AFS carrying a classified U.S. government payload code-named Zuma. After that, things get murky. A pilot flying over East Africa snapped pictures of the rocket’s upper stage depressurizing and venting propellant after a planned deorbit burn about 2 hr. 15 min. after launch, Marco Langbroek, a Dutch scientist and amateur satellite tracker, noted on SeeSat-L, an internet mailing list for ...

http://m.aviationweek.com/space/analysts-disagree-about-classified-sat-zuma-s-fate

 

[Michel Van]

Yes, That's normal procedure At SpaceX around 2 hr. 15 min. after launch into LEO.
The second stage makes deorbit burn and dump remaining fuel over board, before reentry over Indian ocean.

 

[Flyaway]

This article from the Washington Post raises the possibility of litigation between SpaceX and Northrop Grumman to determine who was at fault.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/lost-in-space-questions-mount-over-fate-of-secret-satellite-as-spacex-pushes-ahead/2018/01/12/c7b42cde-f729-11e7-b34a-b85626af34ef_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-national%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.cf994504c914

U.S. Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), who said he received a “preliminary briefing,” had two concerns about the possible loss of the satellite.

“One is the loss of the intelligence that would have been available,” he said. “The second concern is the reliability of the delivery systems. And that issue is being debated between the contractors, SpaceX and the satellite manufacturer, Northrop.”

While he said he did not know who was to blame, he indicated that the dispute might lead to litigation. “Those two companies are going to have a long and, I suspect, very expensive discussion,” he said.

 

[Flyaway]

http://fortune.com/2018/01/12/spacex-northrop-grumman-iridium-zuma-satellite/

 

[Flyaway]

This article by Jeff Foust on The Space Review website provides a comprehensive overview of what and by whom was reported by involved entities and media on ZUMA following launch to the present:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3410/1

 

[Flyaway]

Taxpayers May Pay for Secret Satellite Lost After SpaceX Launch

Relevant section.

U.S. taxpayers may end up paying for the missing satellite launched by Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. that crashed into the ocean earlier this month, part of a classified U.S. government mission dubbed “Zuma.”

Questions remain around the event, which appeared to be unsuccessful despite a fruitful rocket launch and first-stage landing. But SpaceX and Northrop Grumman Corp., the satellite builder, aren’t likely to bear the costs. They probably have contracts with the government that limit the firms’ liabilities tied to the lost satellite, according to several industry experts.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-18/taxpayers-may-pay-for-secret-satellite-lost-after-spacex-launch

 

[sferrin]

Not sure why that was even worth the effort of an article. I guess it gets them clicks for the faux outrage factor.

 

[TomS]

Not sure why that was even worth the effort of an article. I guess it gets them clicks for the faux outrage factor.

It is odd. Obviously, launch providers don't want to accept liability, especially for payloads that cost much more than the launch services Commercial launch customers get insurance to cover this instead. The government self-insures, as always.

 

[Flyaway]

Not sure why that was even worth the effort of an article. I guess it gets them clicks for the faux outrage factor.

Probably because a lot of the general public didn’t know this.

 

[kcran567]

-Deleted-

 

[Flyaway]

And now it starts to get really political.

The Zuma failure has emboldened critics of SpaceX

Taxpayers are tired of getting ripped off," a professional coalition builder wrote.

Now, at least one of the post-Zuma criticisms can be linked to SpaceX's competitors in the launch industry: Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the parent companies of United Launch Alliance. A recent opinion article in Forbes raised like-minded concerns about SpaceX's reliability under the rubric of "doubts." This was authored by Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of The Lexington Institute, which derives revenue from contributions by Lockheed, Boeing, and other major defense companies.

Thompson's article appeared to be coordinated with a hearing on commercial spaceflight this week in the US House. While most representatives asked good, probing questions about delays in the commercial crew program—the effort by Boeing and SpaceX to build spacecraft to carry astronauts to the International Space Station—Congressman Mo Brooks was an exception.

Brooks represents the northern tier of Alabama, including the Decatur region where United Launch Alliance builds its rockets. During the hearing, Brooks said, "I'm going to read from an article that was published earlier this week, entitled 'Doubts about SpaceX reliability persist as astronaut missions approach,' it was in Forbes magazine." Brooks, who has received about $70,000 in donations from Lockheed and Boeing during his Congressional career, then went on to read critical parts of the piece into the record

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/the-zuma-failure-has-emboldened-critics-of-spacex/

 

[merriman]

And our Federal representatives wonder why we -- the Great Unwashed -- are so distrustful of government, and particularly the Congress.

David

 

[gTg]

SpaceX gets good news from the Air Force on the Zuma mission
The important national security customer gives SpaceX a vote of confidence:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/spacex-gets-good-news-from-the-air-force-on-the-zuma-mission/

 

[FighterJock]

SpaceX has set the first launch of the Falcon Heavy for February 6th from launch Pad 39A at Cape Canaveral Florida.

http://spacenews.com/spacex-sets-first-falcon-heavy-launch-for-feb-6/

 

[fredymac]

GovSat 1 launch on Wednesday flew a re-used booster which is not planned for further use. However, Spacex attached landing legs and did an experimental high thrust landing burn with 3 engines and the booster soft landed into the water without damage. With the intact booster floating on the water, Spacex decided to see if they can tow it back to land.

 

[sferrin]

GovSat 1 launch on Wednesday flew a re-used booster which is not planned for further use. However, Spacex attached landing legs and did an experimental high thrust landing burn with 3 engines and the booster soft landed into the water without damage. With the intact booster floating on the water, Spacex decided to see if they can tow it back to land.

Imagine if they tow it back to land and discover they can fly it again. (Yes, I'm aware sea water is not nice to metal.)

 

[Michel Van]

WOW

i heard that sometime piece of rocket stage is found in atlantic
but complet Falcon 9 first stage ?! Congratulations SpaceX you dit it again

Let's hope Musk not get on stupid Ideas like "let's drop the Drone-ship and land like this and tow first stage with tug into harbor..."

 

[sferrin]

WOW

i heard that sometime piece of rocket stage is found in atlantic
but complet Falcon 9 first stage ?! Congratulations SpaceX you dit it again

Let's hope Musk not get on stupid Ideas like "let's drop the Drone-ship and land like this and tow first stage with tug into harbor..."

If it worked, why would it be a stupid idea? Suddenly your landing pad is the entire ocean instead of a postage stamp, and you don't need to maintain and man it. If they could bring back a first stage, much like SRBs were brought back to the Cape, why not?

 

[Archibald]

Brilliant, really. They become so successful at recovering boosters that now boosters have grown an intelligence and refuse to die in suicide mission as all rockets did before them.

Soon spaceX will be overwhelmed with rebelling rocket cores claiming "I have a right to live, I have a right to get a landing and not a crash."

More seriously, such things happening proves that booster recovery is now a mature technology.

 

[Silencer1]

Brilliant, really. They become so successful at recovering boosters that now boosters have grown an intelligence and refuse to die in suicide mission as all rockets did before them.
Soon spaceX will be overwhelmed with rebelling rocket cores claiming "I have a right to live, I have a right to get a landing and not a crash."

This situation has been nice described by certain books of Ian M. Banks "Culture" cycle.
Look, like Elon Musk is at least know, where the names of SpaceX droneships comes from.
I mean - OCISLY and JRTI

 

[TomS]

WOW

i heard that sometime piece of rocket stage is found in atlantic
but complet Falcon 9 first stage ?! Congratulations SpaceX you dit it again

Let's hope Musk not get on stupid Ideas like "let's drop the Drone-ship and land like this and tow first stage with tug into harbor..."

If it worked, why would it be a stupid idea? Suddenly your landing pad is the entire ocean instead of a postage stamp, and you don't need to maintain and man it. If they could bring back a first stage, much like SRBs were brought back to the Cape, why not?

Because it doesn't work and can't work. The SRBs required so much refurbishment (thanks in large part to salt water immersion) that it would almost have been cheaper to expend them. And Falcon 9 is a lot more complex than an SRB. The goal of Falcon 9 was to limit or even eliminate the amount of inspection required before relaunching. Dunking the stage in salt water basically guarantees that it will need a tear-down inspection.

 

[sferrin]

WOW

i heard that sometime piece of rocket stage is found in atlantic
but complet Falcon 9 first stage ?! Congratulations SpaceX you dit it again

Let's hope Musk not get on stupid Ideas like "let's drop the Drone-ship and land like this and tow first stage with tug into harbor..."

If it worked, why would it be a stupid idea? Suddenly your landing pad is the entire ocean instead of a postage stamp, and you don't need to maintain and man it. If they could bring back a first stage, much like SRBs were brought back to the Cape, why not?

Because it doesn't work and can't work. The SRBs required so much refurbishment (thanks in large part to salt water immersion) that it would almost have been cheaper to expend them. And Falcon 9 is a lot more complex than an SRB. The goal of Falcon 9 was to limit or even eliminate the amount of inspection required before relaunching. Dunking the stage in salt water basically guarantees that it will need a tear-down inspection.

I was just saying IF. I realize it's not a slam dunk. That said, there has to be a reason they tested the 3-engine "hard" landing. Any ideas why?

 

[_Del_]

If it worked, why would it be a stupid idea? Suddenly your landing pad is the entire ocean instead of a postage stamp, and you don't need to maintain and man it. If they could bring back a first stage, much like SRBs were brought back to the Cape, why not?

If you still have to send out a ship to drag it back or fish it out, why not just use the drone ship/pad for most applications? Is maintenance on a drone ship more expensive than the cost of corrosion treatment and inspection on the stages plus the maintenance on whatever other ship is dragging the stages back? I doubt it.

Because it doesn't work and can't work.

As you just begrudgingly admitted, it was still cheaper to return the SRBs and return them. It gives SpaceX an option to possibly recover the stage if something goes wrong and it can't make it to the designated pad for whatever reason. The high-G 3-engine burn also uses less fuel. If you can use less fuel for recovery but still succesfully recover the stage (albeit not ideally) doesn't that allow you to increase Delta-v for certain launch profile and/or possibly recover stages that would otherwise not be considered recoverable?

Obviously it is less attractive than not dunking them, but it could still be more attractive than lost stages. Even if they just turned it into a donor after the teardown inspection instead of refurbing and reassembly, there might be value in trying to recover them.

 

[sferrin]

If it worked, why would it be a stupid idea? Suddenly your landing pad is the entire ocean instead of a postage stamp, and you don't need to maintain and man it. If they could bring back a first stage, much like SRBs were brought back to the Cape, why not?

If you still have to send out a ship to drag it back or fish it out, why not just use the drone ship/pad for most applications? Is maintenance on a drone ship more expensive than the cost of corrosion treatment and inspection on the stages plus the maintenance on whatever other ship is dragging the stages back? I doubt it.

Good point.

 

[Orionblamblam]

As you just begrudgingly admitted, it was still cheaper to return the SRBs and return them.

When I still worked at ATK there were studies to determine whether it was in fact less expensive to re-use than expend and the answer was:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

However, if you decide to just throw them away, you save a fair amount of weight in parachutes and such. Not a whole lot of performance gain for the payload, but it was still there. Plus, if you expend the boosters you have to make more, which gets you into economies of scale. So the assumption was that it would indeed be cheaper to expend the boosters for the Ares V than reuse them, but that would look bad, so... reuse them and save face.

None of this math comes close to being applicable to Falcon 9, of course.

The high-G 3-engine burn also uses less fuel. If you can use less fuel for recovery but still succesfully recover the stage (albeit not ideally) doesn't that allow you to increase Delta-v for certain launch profile and/or possibly recover stages that would otherwise not be considered recoverable?

A higher-g, lower-fuel landing burn allows you to burn a little more fuel for the tossback maneuver, so you could recover a booster from further downrange.

Obviously it is less attractive than not dunking them, but it could still be more attractive than lost stages. Even if they just turned it into a donor after the teardown inspection instead of refurbing and reassembly, there might be value in trying to recover them.

They could turn over such boosters to your more aggressive high schools and vocational colleges for training and/or attempts to refurbish. Imagine what *that* would do to student morale... work hard on this years class project and maybe you'll get to attend the launch attempt.

 

[sferrin]

They could turn over such boosters to your more aggressive high schools and vocational colleges for training and/or attempts to refurbish. Imagine what *that* would do to student morale... work hard on this years class project and maybe you'll get to attend the launch attempt.

Yeah but then we'd have people bitching about "intelligence", or "work ethic" privilege. :

 

[Hobbes]

That said, there has to be a reason they tested the 3-engine "hard" landing. Any ideas why?

They seem to be testing corner cases/limits of the recovery process (what's the minimum fuel required for recovery).

 

[Flyaway]

SpaceX a serious competitor for five upcoming Air Force launches

The US Air Force has published a request for proposal (RFP) of launch services for five separate satellites from 2020 to 2022. Filed with relation to the USAF’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program, under which only SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance (ULA) are certified, both launch companies can be expected to submit proposals for the launch of all five satellites.

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-competes-air-force-launch-contract/

 

[Flyaway]

Air Force Strike Takes Out SpaceX's Floating GovSat Booster

Whatever the case, trusted anonymous sources have confirmed to AmericaSpace that the U.S. Air Force carried out an air strike to blow up the unsafed floating booster.

http://www.americaspace.com/2018/02/08/air-force-strike-takes-out-spacexs-floating-govsat-booster/

 

[sferrin]

Air Force Strike Takes Out SpaceX's Floating GovSat Booster

Whatever the case, trusted anonymous sources have confirmed to AmericaSpace that the U.S. Air Force carried out an air strike to blow up the unsafed floating booster.

http://www.americaspace.com/2018/02/08/air-force-strike-takes-out-spacexs-floating-govsat-booster/

Better to blow it up than risk China towing it back home and cranking out their own Falcon 9s.

 

[TomS]

From the Atlantic? Seriously?

More realistically, if they can't tow it for whatever reason, it becomes a hazard to navigation and needs to be cleared somehow. But I'm skeptical about this story until it gets better sourcing than this.

 

[sferrin]

From the Atlantic? Seriously?

Uhm, we brought a 9,000 ton destroyer all the way back from the Middle East. A couple hundred thousand pounds of rocket (if that) would be nothing by comparison.

 

[TomS]

From the Atlantic? Seriously?

Uhm, we brought a 9,000 ton destroyer all the way back from the Middle East. A couple hundred thousand pounds of rocket (if that) would be nothing by comparison.

Yes, you can do long-distance tows (though we generally put our bent combatants on heavy lift ships instead). But it really helps when the object you're towing was designed to be seaworthy in the first place. Towing a relatively fragile rocket booster stage around Cape Horn (or Good Hope) sounds like a fool's errand. The Chinese covertly grabbing onto a Falcon 9 booster (covertly because it still belongs to SpaceX) and secretly transporting it around from the Atlantic, all the while hoping that the COPVs or other components don't let go in some catastrophic way, strikes me as grossly improbable. It's the stuff of a James Bond movie, not real life.

The notion that China can't possibly invent anything new and must be stealing all their technology from the US is incredibly shortsighted. They've got a couple of billion people to work with and have spent decades of effort developing their capabilities. That's finally paying off. We need to stop being surprised that they can do advanced science and technology with their own resources.

 

[sferrin]

From the Atlantic? Seriously?

Uhm, we brought a 9,000 ton destroyer all the way back from the Middle East. A couple hundred thousand pounds of rocket (if that) would be nothing by comparison.

Yes, you can do long-distance tows (though we generally put our bent combatants on heavy lift ships instead). But it really helps when the object you're towing was designed to be seaworthy in the first place. Towing a relatively fragile rocket booster stage around Cape Horn (or Good Hope) sounds like a fool's errand. The Chinese covertly grabbing onto a Falcon 9 booster (covertly because it still belongs to SpaceX) and secretly transporting it around from the Atlantic, all the while hoping that the COPVs or other components don't let go in some catastrophic way, strikes me as grossly improbable. It's the stuff of a James Bond movie, not real life.

The notion that China can't possibly invent anything new and must be stealing all their technology from the US is incredibly shortsighted. They've got a couple of billion people to work with and have spent decades of effort developing their capabilities. That's finally paying off. We need to stop being surprised that they can do advanced science and technology with their own resources.

Don't be so literal. When I said "tow" I just meant transport. Sealift, crane onto a barge, tow, whatever. And who said they can't invent? The fact that they steal anything not nailed down though is beyond dispute.

 

[TomS]

Point taken.

It does seem to be confirmed that the booster was sunk deliberately. But I'm standing by my point, which is that this was done was because of the threat to navigation that the booster posed, not some nebulous concerns about possible espionage.

1) This was an unanticipated event. It's unlikely the Chinese have a salvage ship hanging around US coast just in case they got the chance to steal a SpaceX booster.

2) Recovery of arbitrarily shaped objects floating at sea is a dangerous task. The fact that SpaceX didn't manage to get that stage under tow as they planned is probably a sign that conditions were not favorable for grabbing it.

3) A low-lying floating object with pressurized tanks and explosives on board is a clear hazard to navigation and would need to be removed, regardless of whether you think the Chinese are going to snatch it up.

 

[Flyaway]

From the Atlantic? Seriously?

More realistically, if they can't tow it for whatever reason, it becomes a hazard to navigation and needs to be cleared somehow. But I'm skeptical about this story until it gets better sourcing than this.

You can find more detail here.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/961622795900866561

 

[Archibald]

Oh, really ? the Air force bombed the stage to sink it ? Reminds me of the RAF and RN bombing the hell of the Torrey canyon tanker in '67, to try and light the oil and clean all the mess. Those were the days...

 

[Flyaway]

SpaceX Hired Company to Destroy Floating GovSat Booster, Not USAF

http://www.americaspace.com/2018/02/09/spacex-hired-company-to-destroy-floating-govsat-booster-not-usaf/

 

[sferrin]

SpaceX Hired Company to Destroy Floating GovSat Booster, Not USAF

http://www.americaspace.com/2018/02/09/spacex-hired-company-to-destroy-floating-govsat-booster-not-usaf/

Sounds more realistic but not as cool as the notion of a B-1B dropping a couple LGBs on it.

 

[GTX]

The notion that China can't possibly invent anything new and must be stealing all their technology from the US is incredibly shortsighted. They've got a couple of billion people to work with and have spent decades of effort developing their capabilities. That's finally paying off. We need to stop being surprised that they can do advanced science and technology with their own resources.

Agreed.