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SpaceX Landing Attempt Video Released
An anonymous reader writes: Last week, SpaceX attempted to land a Falcon 9 rocket on an autonomous ocean platform after successfully launching supplies to the ISS. It didn't work, but Elon Musk said they were close. Now, an amazing video has been recovered from an onboard camera, and it shows just how close it was. You can see the rocket hitting the platform while descending at an angle, then breaking up. Musk said a few days ago that not only do they know what the problem was, but they've already solved it. The rocket's guiding fins require hydraulic fluid to operate. They had enough fluid to operate for 4 minutes, but ran out just prior to landing. Their next launch already carries 50% more hydraulic fluid, so it shouldn't be an issue next time.
It suddenly occurred to me that I've never heard of a hydraulic system "using up" its fluid before. Anyone know anything about how/why the rocket is different?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Seems to me that I would save that for emergencies. Use the high speed descent to pressurize air for controlling.
Just saying...
Looks like most of my Kerbal Space Program landings.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
In soviet russia, the rocket lands you.
I think I've watched the loop 50 times.
Capt'n, I'm givin' ya all we got!!!!!
This was the first time SpaceX had flown the new grid fin control system on a real first stage under real conditions. They did not know exactly how well the grid fins would behave. As it turned out, the grid fins had to move more than they expected during the descent (or the forces were larger than they expected), so they ran out of hydraulic fluid 30 seconds before landing. This is similar to an airplane losing control of its elevator just before landing. The fact that the rocket reached the barge and that its vertical speed was reasonably slow (certainly not 100m/s) indicates the resiliency of their systems. They are putting 50% more fluid into the system, so this shouldn't happen next time.
I think this video is epically cool. I can watch it again and again. Simply awesome.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Now with more fluids! First 3000 customers get an extra half liter!
You know, there are places where being 'innovative' is not the wisest move.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What gets me most about this is the nonchalant attitude.
"yea we blew up the rocket and the barge, but no biggie. We'll do better next time"
I think that is why nerds get so exited over SpaceX. That attitude of not letting fear of failure dictate future actions.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
On vine? Are you fucking serious? It's 7 seconds long.
WTF is going on with the left margin. God damn it, it is broken in every single browser. Are they crapping on classic slashdot to punish us for beta not working?
My guess is that fluids encountering massive temperature and pressure shifts can't be reclaimed in the normal way during the flight? Just a guess though.
he tweeted
Next rocket landing on drone ship in 2 to 3 weeks w way more hydraulic fluid. At least it shd explode for a diff reason.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
To borrow from the KSP forum, that's "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly". Or, "explosions", to the uninitiated.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Hydraulic systems are in a loop, with the "spent" fluid recirculating back to the reservoir. How did they "run out"?
Where did the fluid go?
The system is an open hydraulic system. Closed systems require tanks and pumps which carry a mass penalty. They only need the system to function for about 4 minutes. Why bother with a closed system when the functioning period is so short. They will increase the amount of fluid by 50% so this shouldn't happen again. All in all a nearly successful experiment.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Explain your alternative ideology, please.
What about corporations as large/powerful as states? Are they good or bad?
--
Remember, when feeding trolls, be sure to keep your hand flat.
They just blew up the rocket. Usually the rocket just falls in the ocean so to see it "almost" land is cool. Next time it just might work!
All they needed was a big butterfly net and they had it ;)
Someone has a robot trained to throw a lasso perhaps?
Rotate around CG and that looks right on target.
This was the first Falcon 9v1.1 flight [1] with gridfins and [2] sent to land on a teeny tiny little platform at sea (a MUCH smaller target than an aircraft carrier, while descending from MUCH higher than any carrier pilot and having no wings and only VERY limited fuel and throttle-range for lift and control)
It was an excellent display of competence that puts Boeing and Lockheed-Martin to shame; both mega-corps have been sucking billions from the government nipple for many decades without ever once even TRYING to make such an improvement for which they certainly had the expertise and resources. These giant aerospace companies were born as innovative entrepreneurial entities that invested in technological advances and experiments to advance "the state of the art" in order to win their share of the free market.... but after the deaths of their founders they got hired-gun CEOs and moved to a model of only innovating when they could get the government to give them billions of dollars to do it. With many decades of "cost-plus" contracts (where the government pays "whatever it costs, PLUS some percent as profit") the big bloated defense contractors have had no incentive to innovate (ABSOLUTELY ZERO incentive to reduce costs) and have become lazy. SpaceX and more more like it are needed to drive the big old firms into either returning to efficiency and innovation, or bankruptcy.
Convince stores in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? At night? In foggy weather? I'm sue we will see other camera views but this isn't capturing pics of some twerp stealing potato chips.
Further, I don't recall Musk saying anything along the lines that this was about you.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I don't think I have presented an alternate idealogy, have I?
"corporations as large/powerful as states? Are they good or bad?"
Corporations as large/powerful as states always work in league with the state. And corruption always follows; were it not to then what would be the point of the corporation joining forces with the state?
And to continue this discussion one needs to note, that it is the state that retains control of the guns, because that is what makes them a state. Meaning, when push comes to shove you don't rreally have a large powerful corporation and a state, you have a state in control of a large corporation, who let's them think they have some degree of power. And what is this other than a different flavor of big government statist tyranny. This is not a good thing, generally, for individual liberty, is it?
At any rate, you haven't really presented me with an argument for statism/socialism here, all you really did was ask a question, and not a terribly difficult one.
Calling me a troll doesn't count as a winning argument for socialism.
So they only blew up the rocket.
Hey, their competitors would have just thrown it away anyway...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The thing barely nudged the barge at a slightly wrong angle and blew up. I'm not too convinced that the outcome will be any better even if it touches down upright. Still, props to SpaceX for being the pioneers.
Do you consider socialist anarchy / anarchist socialism impossible, or are you just avoiding that option to be annoying to us "pinko commies"?
P.S. I won't argue with you, because I'm obviously not a statist. It just seems awfully strange that you automatically associate socialism with statism.
Do you think all people have a right to healthcare? Do you think all people have a right to a minimum wage, and paid days off to boot,
Why do you think some people shouldn't have a right to healthcare?
Why do you think some people shouldn't have paid days off?
Why do you think some people shouldn't have a right to a minimum wage?
Not like it matters, those are all value judgements and therefore cannot be actual facts.
Socialism is statism.
Socialism is a political/economic system where ownership or conttrol of property in or is trending towards the collective. Socialism is simply a form of statism. The term statism is preferred because it encompasses all forms of tyrannical systems, not just 'socialism'. Hence, communism, fascism, socialism are all correctly understood to be statist.
Now if you are happuly not a socialist/statist, perhaps you know someone who you want to send here so they can have reality explained to them by me.
These are not value judgements in any way.
Healthcare is a service that has to be performed by other men. Healthcare does not well up out of the ground, nor does it grow on trees. Paid days off, in the same way, have to be paid for by someone.
If you have a right to healthcare, then this means other people must work to provide you this care. Will these other men be paid? Paid for by who? At what rate? What if the provider does not want to work for the rate you agree to, will some agent force them to do this work? (Forcing other men to work? That used to be called slavery!)
No thing, that requires other men to spend their time or money can ever be a right of another.
You have the right to free speech. No one has to work or spend money to give you this right.
You do not have the right to healthcare.
You do of course have the right to go out, get a job and purchase any healthcare you want. But it is not a right. No matter what the Obama administration tells you, this is not a right.
Some low or mid end high speed cameras would be great. With DC lighting during landing. We could see lots of details. I mean, they could.
The "garbled footage" was a radio signal from the incoming first stage. Getting good communications from a vehicle during re-entry is a hard problem. And a GoPro (at least before this landing attempt) wouldn't have helped much because it would have been on the ocean floor along with the rest of the rocket.
And in the case of this particular landing attempt, it was before sunrise in heavy fog.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
It seems SpaceX is relying on a trial-and-error strategy during the development of the soft landing capability of their booster much more than they (or others in the industry) do for other components or capabilities of space launch or other aeronautical systems. I don't see (unmanned) rockets or drones being developed in this fashion. Even large rockets that can achieve orbit will normally be modeled, simulated and tested component-wise to the point that they will usually work at the first or second attempt when the entire system is integrated and tested for the first time. So why is this so different here? Is it just cheaper? Or is it actually that much harder to make the rocket land softly on its own exhaust jet than to make it go into orbit?
Hey, as these things go, this was a very very good failure. Consider that we've just progressed from the old reality's typical "the vehicle will splash down somewhere in this 500-square-mile area of the ocean," to Spacex's new reality of "we accurately flew down to a 0.0018-square-mile platform, and borked the touchdown on this first try."
I'll take that kind of progress any day.
I think not...(*poof*)
And I should add; no where did I say that a person should not have paid days off. I do, and I like them.
However, this is not a right and for the state to force one man to provide paid days off to another is just another way that the statist pushes wealth redistribution (Marxism) on us.
As I said, my arguments *cannot* be defeated, I am right, and the statist is wrong every time.
Now, are there are difficult questions, because these have been pretty easy.
Seeing this and pondering about this problem, I suddenly came up with a terrific idea, for which I'll file a patent as soon as possible.
The basic idea, without revealing too much detail, would be to store some sort of very large sheet of tissue, or some other strong fabric, inside a pack or something. The sheet -- which could be duplicated as needed, to improve safety, let's say three of them -- would be neatly folded in order: 1/ to be stored efficiently and 2/ to deploy quickly and as widely as possible.
At some point in the reentry, let's say a few miles above the landing spot, the sheets would deploy thanks to a system of sorts -- let's say an altimeter -- and, by the magic of fluid mechanics and the Archimedes principle, would slow the rocket enough for it to land safely.
Now that I think of it, that system could be extended to people, who could jump from an airplane, just for fun or for military operations. Hmmm...
The first reports I read said the rocket came down to hard and damaged the platform. I thought it landed vertically by coming in too fast and smashing the platform surface. Watching the video, the rocket landed sideways before exploding. Things always goes badly when they go sideways.
~amightywind was skeptical that Musk had no video of the disaster, and now he has been proven right. What else aren't you showing us Mr. Musk?
I personally find this is about as cool as anything I have seen in the last decade. What they are doing requires the very best engineering that mankind currently offers -- I'll take this over building 2000 feet tall buildings, or 50 mile long bridges any day.
Just a few hundred dollars' worth of additional GoPros pre-set at various angles on the landing platform would dramatically increase the quality of coverage.
The rocket project itself is orders of magnitude more complex than the problem of recording it. It's not asking much and in return they would have a very useful visual record of the landing.
NASA made proper documentation of the Apollo missions a priority and the world is better off for it.
your idealogy is FALSE and that you blindly and sheepishly support a failed system
All ideologies are false. That's what makes them so tasty. We crave simple rules and easy answers for this complex, interwoven world of ours. And once we subscribe to a set of Answers, we can confidently stride them out upon others... especially those weaker souls who may want to look at an issue from multiple angles and acknowledge the inherent difficulties of society's seemingly numerous and intractable problems. There's nothing better than feeling intellectually invulnerable and knowing that all voices that run in any way counter to your own are automatically corrupt or incompetent, dismissible out of hand without even having to listen to them. The world is so clear when righteousness runs thru your veins.
Whatever the source--left or right, extremist or complacent-- unchecked ideology is the true enemy of humanity .
(Yah, I know... don't feed the trolls, but I've been where AC is, and it is a trap unto itself.)
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Did we watch the same footage? The video I saw wasn't from any camera mounted to the rocket, it was from one fixed in the corner of the barge.
You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice
--Peart
Saying all ideologies are false does not make them false. You may not believe in them, this is fine, however your political system is shaped by them and you cannot escape from this. These idealogies exist, and other men believe in them. Idealogy comes from many sources, philosophy, the writings of others etc.
The idealogy of statism can be distilled to the following (never mind all the altruistic nonsense that exists in Marx that the statist preaches and watch what they do): "We few are going to take from the many because we have the guns".
Now if you want to assert that this is not true (it is) or that it is a good thing (it is not) then you are welcome to do so.
That being said, there is nothing wrong with "look at an issue from multiple angles and acknowledge the inherent difficulties of society's seemingly numerous and intractable problems", this is an admirable trait.
Since you aren't asking a question, I will respond to your saying I am a troll. Not so. I am not trying to distract as such, I am interested in this discussion, and will do as I have stated above. I am only choosing this forum as this is where the population that I am trying to adddress is to be found. I am honestly looking to have this discussion with exactly the people who frequent this forum - the socialist (call it Democrat if that makes it clearer to you) demographic of Slashdot is well known, and I am seeking specifically to avoid political forums.
Troll? I prefer to think of this as an off topic post, which is what it is. It would be great if this could be posted as a main thread, but I just don't see this happening.
Anyway, still waiting for those challenging questions...
Remind me again, why doing this crazy rocket landing is better than using a parachute recovery like the shuttle boosters did?
Or hide in your anonymity and know you are a coward
Quite the bluster from an Anonymous Coward.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
I watched the video and I can't understand how this rocket could be reused? I mean even if it hit the target it looks like it still would have broke apart significantly.
My impression was I guess a more controlled landing, not a controlled crash.
I don't recall me saying it was about me, either.
Your points are irrelevant. Neither the Atlantic-ness nor the night-timeness nor the fogginess had anything to do with the poor quality of the coverage. The coverage was poor because it was taken from a single, not-great position and the camera was aimed mainly at the deck. This could be solved with a handful of additional cameras.
No not bluster, I mean this literally.
Socialism consists of taking from those that produce in society, keeping most of the money in the hands of the ruling elite, and giving some amount of this money back to those in society that do not produce. This money is taken by means of violence - that is to say if you do not give your money to the state they will put you in jail, and if you resist you will eventually be forced to do so by men with guns (and this is observable fact, of course).
This is theft, it cannot be described any other way.
I don't much care for people who steal my money.
And like I said, my arguments cannot be defeated. Go ahead and try. If you cannot justify and rationalize your support of socialism, then you are just a common thief, and a coward. (Not that you specifically stated this is your position, I am speaking in the general).
open hydraulic systems are common in rockets ; very light weight but limited in usage time
Closed systems require tanks and pumps which carry a mass penalty.
Strictly speaking, you don't need multiple reservoirs for a closed hydraulic system. You only need one, and that reservoir can be your accumulator. In practice we usually have at least two; one is the accumulator, and one of them permits degassing the fluid which can be necessary as it heats up. With an open system you definitely only need the accumulator, and some kind of control valve. On a spacecraft, hopefully you also have a backup. A shuttle valve is one valve that lets you pump fluid in (or from) multiple directions, usually two of them, and which you can run with a servo (or however) to get variable control over hydraulic flow. Most hydraulic systems with a pump also need a pressure relief valve, which is a common point of failure. Sometimes they just have a pressure switch, which is another common point of failure.
On a car, the power steering system has a reservoir with degassing typically attached to the pump, but sometimes nearby. The shock absorbers are a closed system, but [typically] use a nitrogen-charged diaphragm to handle the fact that the interior volume of the shock changes; both as the shaft enters the body of the shock, and as the working fluid heats up.
Anyone out there know the specific layout of the control system for each vane? I'd imagine that the fluid is going to the cylinders and then to the control systems and on to the waste ports, but that's where my imagination ran out since I'm not a rocket scientist nor do I play one on teevee
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem with blackout during a hot re-entry from orbit is plasma from the heatshield or tiles (in the case of the Shuttle) blocking radio signals at Mach 20 or so (about 6 km/second or thereabouts). This wasn't the case of the Falcon first stages as they were never going fast enough in the atmosphere to produce any plasma. If any of them had then the bottom of the stage would have melted since it's mostly lightweight low-melting-point alloys. Those sorts of temps would also have damaged a lot of the motors, the actuators, the guide fins etc.
As for the accuracy thing, again it was not a re-entry from orbit and the stage had guidance systems to bring it down to the barge, much as the Shuttle never had a problem finding the runway and painting the centreline during its landings. What puzzled me more was the speed at which the stage hit the barge. It should have been a lot slower, even with the failure of the guidance fins.
Think of it as evolution in action. You can stay on one planet while some disaster takes it out. We have lots of choices of disaster, don't we? The human race can continue via those "space nutters".
Sure, we should try to avoid the disaster, etc., but planets are not forever.
Bruce Perens.
You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice
--Peart
They sang that lyric, but the printed lyric books read "You cannot have made a choice". I've always loved the fact that they described agnosticism both ways.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I dunno, I'm happy enough with my voluntary free association with the United States. I'm free to leave if I stop liking it, as are you.
What anti-state people don't seem to grasp is that the very same people who you hate in the government, the people who want to control your life and take things from you, weren't made that way by big government. Just look at Mexico. Big drug cartels (who may or may not be entirely the creation of anti-drug big government) are more powerful than the government. Wherever there is an advantage to be had by banding together and robbing the weaker or more honest people, you'll find that niche being filled. The job of government is to fill that niche with the least harmful and most inept robbers. That overpaid, uncooperative, unfriendly civil servant that you despite? Give them a gun and a posse and see how well that turns out for you.
I mean, If it's already slowed down like this, why not just gently land the rocket into the ocean and take it up with some prepared nets/ropes? IMHO it can save a lot of headache from trying to hit a platform this small.
If the water getting in the rocket is problem, what about a gigantic sheet of plastic on the water surface? (still cheaper and more reliable than hitting the landing pad).
Wow, when Musk said that it was a "hard landing" I thought he may have been exaggerating, he wasn't. Though it was VERY close. If I'm not mistaken the rocket is oriented pretty well (though is off the landing pad) just before it suddenly goes 45 degrees (presumably in an attempt to get to the barge) and slams into the deck. A larger pad would definitely help, but they may be able to tweak the navigation software to make it work.
Elon stated while being questioned last week that the steering fins went hard-over (which means they were driven to their maximum angle) when the fluid ran out. With the fins pushing the rocket over, it didn't have much hope of landing. And, yes, a pressurized accumulator is the most likely design of this system.
/u/DixieAlpha over at reddit programmed a Kerbal Space Program model to try to land with grid fins fixed at 30 degrees. The results were scarily similar to this landing.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
The fact that the next launch was already going to carry 50% more fluid indicates that they had an idea that there might not have been enough. That decision about how much fluid was needed would have been made early on, and they could not have fixed it later, as this secondary experiment could not be allowed to interfere with the primary mission.
The engineers monitoring the landing would have seen the fins be driven to hardover and known instantly that they'd run out of fluid (if they didn't have a sensor for that). Elon tweeted that they'd run out of hydraulic fluid within hours of impact.
As others have stated, this was testing anyway.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
The initial reason for not releasing video was that it was dark and foggy, and the video was not fit to release. While this may have been more about controlling the news cycle by forcing the media to use pictures of the successful launch, it is clear that this video required a lot of levels adjustment to make it acceptable, and that has created noise in the image. However, apart from the drops of water on the lens, which is unavoidable, the quality is quite good.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Those handful of cameras were either toasted, or the images were washed out by the glare and the mist. There were a good many cameras on the barge, in various places.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Solid booster casings are a very different beast. A solid booster rocket needs to be very strong, because the combustion chamber of a SRB is literally the entire rocket. The whole thing needs to withstand combustion chamber pressure. So it is strong, tough (and heavy), so you can do what you like with it.
A liquid fuel rocket is a much more fragile beast. If allowed to tumble through the atmosphere, or hit the water at parachute speeds, it would be totally destroyed.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
They are using fuel as hydraulic fluid, an old and (apparently) still stupid idea. The SR-71 used JP-6 as fuel and hydraulic fluid -- one Habu pilot told me, "yeah, dumb engineering decision. If you are on bingo fuel, you might as well plan for a ditch, because bingo also means you are out of brakes and maneuvering." That was 35+ years ago. You'd think Elon would have covered that base.
The fault that caused this failure was the control fins running out of pressurized hydraulic fluid. When this happened, they were driven fully to one side, pushing the rocket over. The engine tried it's best to counter that, but it didn't have a hope.
A fellow fan tried something similar in the Kerbal Space Simulator. I imagine the real flight was very much like this:
http://gfycat.com/PointedWhisp...
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
I can say I don't necessarily agree with everything you just said, but it was so refreshing to read compared to the libertarian claptrap will usually get around here.
Sure, that looks almost fixed. Kind of in the way PayPal is almost e-money.
Bob Stein, http://bobste.in
48% confidence that 2014 is the warmest year on record. (Straight from the 2014 NOAA state of climate report)
Warmest year on record, by 0.04C with an error margin of 0.09C (Seriously?)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...
1. I was alive for the moon landing. I was actually IN THE VAB during a Saturn V stacking... so NO, the DC-X did not pre-date me... and, BTW, the DC-X NEVER went over a few thousand feet up, NEVER even went supersonic, NEVER carried a payload (Falcon lofted a second stage AND payload out of the atmosphere) and had a huge area of (stable and fixed) desert to land on.
2. Yeah, Grumman did an excellent job on the Apollo LEMs (COMPLETELY on a cost-plus government dime), but several important caveats:
2a. Every LEM was flown by a test pilot CDR, aided by a flight engineer (mis-named LMP (Lunar Module Pilot))
2b. The LEMs all landed vertically on the MOON, therefore: NO atmospheric effects like wind and transonic shock waves, only 1/6th gravity, MILES of landing fixed and stable area (not a rolling and pitching barge at sea)
2c. As soon as government stopped shovelling the dollars, Grumman stopped innovating.
So, NO, you only THINK it's been done before because you are not as informed as you think you are.
I am NOT a typical twenty-something SpaceX fanboy who thinks Musk can do no wrong and will deliver utopia while being totally ignorant of history. It's precisely because I know the history, was there to see much of what is significant to this discussion, and value the classical "free market" and the benefits of competition that I was willing to say "Well Done" the the Hawthorne team.
Footnote: one thing that makes my earlier points even further is that even the SpaceX main facility in Hawthorne USED TO BE a Boeing facility.... again: the "big boys" had EVERYTHING to do this but simply chose NOT TO over the past decades for a very simple reason: "cost-plus" contracts. With cost-plus contracts, vendors are actually DE-INCENTIVISED to improve and lower costs because their "plus" part would SHRINK since it is calculated as a percentage of a base amount that would be reduced.