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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?
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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!!!!!
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?
name on the jar of large - 4kep your
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?
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.
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Attention all warriors for social justice, statists, progressives and Democrats.
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Well I have a challenge for you.
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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
Would it kill SpaceX to set up a proper video recording system for their multimillion dollar project? All the landing attempts have had garbled footage. They're trying to make history and attract customers, it's worth ponying up a couple grand for some more GoPros.
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.
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.
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*)
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.
Remind me again, why doing this crazy rocket landing is better than using a parachute recovery like the shuttle boosters did?
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.
open hydraulic systems are common in rockets ; very light weight but limited in usage time
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.
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
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
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.