SpaceX (general discussion)

Their initial videos showed a landing on dry land. I had assumed that the barge was mandated as a safety issue during testing, to keep potential crashes away from KSC's launch facilities.
 
TomS said:
Their initial videos showed a landing on dry land. I had assumed that the barge was mandated as a safety issue during testing, to keep potential crashes away from KSC's launch facilities.
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Could be just a way to avoid red tape while doing the risky tests, like you say. (It does reduce the fuel requirement as well though as the thing doesn't have to fly all the way back.) All things considered, maybe it's easier landing on a barge in the approximate unguided landing area than trying to fly it all the way back for a ground landing.
 
There is one million reasons why they are doing it on barge instead of land first, they are fairly obvious.

Let me underline their obviousness by the full video of the landing that became available just now;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhMSzC1crr0&app=desktop

RCS on top worked so hard, so hard...
 
They might have set it to private, but they couldn't beat Flanker... Downloaded it in 1080p before it got taken down. Linky;

http://www.filedropper.com/crs-6firststagelanding

(yes, it is safe)
 
This one should work ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAzwuEmZcmE
 
We already knew that they were getting paperwork in line to do landing at Vandy, the surprise is that they are hoping to do it at Cape in June already;

The first attempt to stick a Falcon 9 booster on a landing pad at Vandenberg could come as early as July following the launch of the French-U.S. Jason-3 ocean altimetry satellite mission, she said.

“We’d love to land Jason-3, which we’re going to launch in July; we’d love to land that on land at Vandenberg,” Shotwell said.

Another possibility “might” be following the scheduled June launch of a commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station from the Cape, Shotwell said.
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From; http://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-dragon-cargo-spacecraft-rocket-stage-makes-hard-landing-2/

We shall see.
 
That'd be quite a flight back, coming all the way back to the launch area. (The turning maneuver would be interesting.)
 
Indeed. The boostback would need to be much longer and probably adding another layer of complexity. On this and CRS-5 attempt the barge was 200 miles out to the sea.
 
Leaked video of the landing as seen from the barge;

https://vid.me/i6o5
 
From Spacex:

"Cause of hard rocket landing confirmed as due to slower than expected throttle valve response. Next attempt in 2 months"

I wonder where their land based landing pad is located? Seems like it would take a lot of delta V to do a 180 and return to base. Or is the ascent profile primarly vertical for the first stage? The barge location seemed to be pretty far out to sea.
 
fredymac said:
Seems like it would take a lot of delta V to do a 180 and return to base. Or is the ascent profile primarly vertical for the first stage? The barge location seemed to be pretty far out to sea.
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The 2 landing attempts already used a "partial boostback profile" where the stage landed far short of where a ballistic trajectory would have taken it.
AIU, they're aiming for 2 landing profiles:
[list type=decimal]
[*]on land, if there's enough fuel to do that, or
[*]on the barge, if the payload margin is too small to allow boostback.
[/list]
 
Another landing attempt on Sunday. This will be another barge landing rather than dry land. Spacex also released another video on the last attempt.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcTOTeoaafU




Story Here:
http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/06/25/spacex-aims-for-another-rocket-landing-experiment-sunday/
 
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing. I'll be watching!

David
 
They also apparently have 3 barges now. One for the west coast launches has already gone through the canal, while two are in Florida at the moment.
 
OK, I'm looking at that 'smoke/vapor' trail left as the first-stage comes creaming down ass-backwards. I know that there are at least two firings of the single center engine during the landing phase. do they keep that engines gas-generator burning after the first breaking burn?

What's the source of that smoke/vapor trail on descent?

David
 
Moose said:
They also apparently have 3 barges now. One for the west coast launches has already gone through the canal, while two are in Florida at the moment.
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No, they have two right now. 303 and 304. 300 got retired.
 
flanker said:
Moose said:
They also apparently have 3 barges now. One for the west coast launches has already gone through the canal, while two are in Florida at the moment.
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No, they have two right now. 303 and 304. 300 got retired.
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Uneconomical to repair?
 
flanker said:
Moose said:
They also apparently have 3 barges now. One for the west coast launches has already gone through the canal, while two are in Florida at the moment.
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No, they have two right now. 303 and 304. 300 got retired.
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I stand corrected, was misreading the data.
 
Catastrophic failure of first stage right after passing through Mach 1 around the 2 minute mark. I didn't see any unusual behavior prior to the explosion.

The announcer is now confirming loss of vehicle but they don't know what happened.

Both NASA's commercial resupply vehicles have now suffered a launch failure so this will impact ISS operations.
 
Looks like the whole Dragon decided to completely bail. :'(

SYwUIbI.gif
 
Looking at it from about T=2:14 you can see a bright spot near the 1st/2nd stage junction prior to the plume of vapour which appears to come from the same spot at about 2:19...
 

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Fast work in getting that put together.

I seem to see the engines still running even as the vehicle is exploding. The first large white cloud appears to come from above the engine compartment near the area where the landing legs are tucked in. I wonder if something really stupid like pre-mature deployment occurred?
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNymhcTtSQ


At Maximum Q (highes Aerodynamic pressure on rocket) the Falcon 9 produce a Smoke trail behind it
priore Stage separation, the second stage Tank are Pressurized here the Second tank simply disaggregated at this moment


either the welding on Tank was faulty
or the tank was damage by some thing at maximum Q by ice or one of cover blow off denting the tank.
 
At the 2:16 mark, 2 white spots appear near the bottom of the payload shroud. I don't remember seeing those on prior launches (during first stage boost phase). Well the announcer indicated that they had a lot of telemetry data so Spacex may be able to isolate the cause relatively quickly.

As a marketing and confidence re-storing gesture, I wonder if they will try to re-fly as soon as possible (vs the Antares situation). Spacex had a pad abort during an early launch and then turned around 24 hours later rather than spending a week trying to second guess themselves.

ULA must be quietly celebrating right now.
 
Well that's a bummer. I wonder how many hours we'll have to wait before the politicians start trying to make hay of this.
 
Just seen it on Sky News, any thoughts on the cause of the explosion?
 
Tweet from Elon Musk: "There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause."
 
fredymac said:
At the 2:16 mark, 2 white spots appear near the bottom of the payload shroud. I don't remember seeing those on prior launches (during first stage boost phase).
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That is just airpressure man. It is around solar panel covers, nothing to see here.
 
fredymac said:
ULA must be quietly celebrating right now.
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Lets not be childish, alright?

https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/615167324887191552

+

http://www.federalspace.ru/21551/
 
sferrin said:
Well that's a bummer. I wonder how many hours we'll have to wait before the politicians start trying to make hay of this.
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Dick Shelby probably has an intern making giant placards of those failure pics, senators love having placard on easels when they talk.
 
they have identified the cause
in Second stage, Inside Lox tank one of steel stud holding Helium tank, failed at 1/5 of load it design for.
it rupture it connected Helium tank, what released it entire content at once, leading to overpressure that let to burst asunder of second stage
strut.jpg


http://spacenews.com/falcon-9-failure-linked-to-upper-stage-tank-strut/

http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/20/9004463/space-x-falcon-9-rocket-explosion-cause-explained
 
http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/10/9695838/spacex-return-to-flight-december-19th
 

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