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SpaceX Lands Falcon 9 Rocket At Cape Canaveral (planetary.org)
Rei writes: At 8:40 PM today, SpaceX successfully launched and relanded the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral, as well as delivering to orbit the last portion of ORBCOMM's communication satellite constellation. This also marks SpaceX's return to flight and the first launch of the "Full Thrust" Falcon 9 v1.1 with densified (extremely chilled) propellants. The company will now shift its efforts toward catching up on its backlog, investigating and refurbishing its landed first stage, and preparing for the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket this spring. Congratulations to everyone at SpaceX!
I actually cheered out loud. I've been a space fan since the shuttle program began. This is great news, and great progress.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
*drinks beer*
How many times can they reuse the rocket?
I wonder how much of this was due to learning from the past misses and updating to version 1.1, and how much was from deciding to land on the ground and not on a barge at sea. Hell, learning from past misses and deciding not to land on a barge might be the same thing.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
Hats off to you guys, I was cheering so loud my kids thought something was wrong with me haha.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
That'll teach Blue Origin not to get cocky...
Or not: http://mashable.com/2015/04/30/penis-rocket-bezos/#SRDCQNhZ9SqH
Props to Blue Origin for what they did a few week ago. But, what SpaceX did is one step above and beyond and a game changer. I warned everyone else in my house (I was the only one watching this SpaceX launch) not to worry if I excitedly started yelling and clapping!! Keep doing it again SpaceX!
Everybody knows you wait until the first service pack comes out before launching.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Great job SpaceX! My wife and I kept the kids up to watch and we were cheering like we won the Super Bowl! Awesome!!!
Look, I just made you read my signature.
If you'd been paying attention... There was a live video feed of the attempt. Here's a recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Wow, what a sight to behold. It was pretty hard to stay quiet while watching that streak of light come down with everybody cheering. Probably the first "USA! USA!" chant I've ever heard that was both entirely well-deserved and not even a little bit sarcastic. An historic occasion indeed. :-)
Congratulations SpaceX, this is like that 4th launch where everyone suddenly went from doubt to astonishment.
[SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS
With airplanes, a carrier landing is quite a bit more difficult than landing on land. You can land with a stuck rudder OR with a stuck elevator OR you can land on an aircraft carrier. I wouldn't want to try to land on an aircraft carrier with a stuck rudder.
I don't know the details of the SpaceX controls, but I suppose it's possible that a glitch like a stuck valve would be easier to work around with a larger landing zone, and one that's not moving. In theory, with the stuck valve they might have had the option of manipulating the controls differently to land 300 yards away and upright.
"There is no joy like nerd joy!"
America. Love it!
Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Better known as 318230.
I've watched it land 4-5 times now and every time it's just as fantastic, I get all giddy inside. YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Actually SpaceX's Grasshopper accomplished what Blue Origin only just did back in 2013. Try again.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
Congratulations to Elon and co. A feat of engineering!
Given the current corruption and incompetence in DC?
Um, actually, DC-X accomplished that in 1993-1995.
Hopefully it will be one of many such successful launches and recoveries in the year(s) to come, It'll be nice to get some video of day landings as well as while I'm sure a night launch/landing is great for those actually witnessing it on the ground you can't really see much on video. I'm also curious as to how closely to center it landed on its pad, would it have been successful if they had gone for a ocean platform landing or did a larger pad make all the difference.
They fly all around the heavens, and don't find a single trace of GOD. Man, such idiots. HE IS THERE!!!
And congrats to SpaceX, this is a very important step in the right direction!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is one of the more important and positive events of the last many months. Not forgetting Amazon and their earlier landing. Get off the planet or go extinct. Many people in the west think going extinct is the better way. Thankfully, even as a majority, they don't count as much as individuals with a burning vision and will to fly.
Yes, and if you read about that, you'd see some of Blue Origin's personnel came from that project. So Bezos only just did the same thing his people were capable of 20 years ago.
Musk's SpaceX just put a rocket into orbit, delivered a payload, and brought it back down safely. That's never been done before. That's an order of magnitude more difficult than what we've been discussing. This is the biggest advancement in space flight since the first shuttle landed.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
Bezos's launcher only reaches 62km altitude, at mach 3. It's less than half the height of Falcon 9 stage 1. It does not do a gravity turn due to the fact that it doesn't get to orbit. All of these make sticking a landing much much easier. If you want Space X to just go up, back down, and land it (like bezos did), then look at 2013, when they did that. Now they've also beaten Bezos to landing the launcher for an orbital space craft.
Note, things like the launcher being twice as tall as Bezos' isn't a case of "well, Space X made a poor design choice to make it that tall"... Instead, it's a case of "if you want to reach orbit, you need low drag, so you need a long thin space craft".
1. How Native American lands in Florida were used without permission to
2. Help elites leave the planet to create a poor-free utopia while
3. Destroying the environment as they leave.
Won't SOMEONE think of the children!!
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
Can someone explain why NASA with thousands of engineers and decades of experience couldn't or wouldn't do what SapceX did?
I'm sure they could have done this by the 70's if that were their goal. The essentially did the same type of control landing the LEM on the moon (controlled flight of a balanced rocket). In fact it's more difficult to control something short like the LEM where the CP and CM are close together than a long cylinder. At least mathematically, they each have their problems. But they opted for wings which may or may not have been a correct decision based on expected missions.
That's never been done before.
Except by NASA with the Space Shuttle and Roscosmos with the Buran spacecraft. Other than those two vehicles, you are correct.
It is the first rocket to land on its end like originally envisioned by Robert A. Heinlein almost 80 years ago though. It will also be a whole lot easier to cycle this lower stage core than it was to cycle the Space Shuttle.
No, both of those are re-entry vehicles that used first stage and second stage rockets to get into space (which they later ditched). This was a first stage rocket returning to Earth by itself after delivering its payload. Massive difference. This is unprecedented.
If you can't wrap your head around that...I don't even know how to explain it down to your level.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
It's a big development, but the space shuttle did re-use everything except the fuel tank. The solid rocket boosters were recovered and reused, and the expensive bits (the main engines and support equipment) were mounted on the orbiter itself.
I think that the main promise of the SpaceX recovery is that the simpler, more reliable, and cheaper traditional rocket stack can now be used in a way that is much more reusable - making it even cheaper than it already was.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You are right that the return of a Falcon first stage is a lot more impressive than what Bezos managed. But the part of Falcon that returned is not the part that attained orbit. I believe it did not even reach 5000 m/s, which would not be enough to reach orbit.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Sorry, McDonnell Douglas DC-X beat Bezos to it.
Okay, "recovered" (ejected then deployed parachutes, to be picked up in the ocean by a crew later), but didn't make it up into orbit. Making it into orbit is the key for what makes this rocket different than anything in the past.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
Okay, "recovered" (ejected then deployed parachutes, to be picked up in the ocean by a crew later), but didn't make it up into orbit. Making it into orbit is the key for what makes this rocket different than anything in the past.
Upon further looking, the part of the Falcon9 that came back didn't make it into orbit, either. But delivering a payload of 10 satellites into orbit and making it back in one piece is still astounding for one rocket to do. Splitting hairs at this point...
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
In my opinion such a landing add an unnecessary complexity. The Shuttle program showed that it is impractical.
I think it is just one more attempt to do it differently, not with a parachute, not as it was done originally in 1957 and 1961. Kind of its own, an US way. .
It's not hard to explain simply. The space-shuttle equivalent would be if the big orange liquid fuel tank and if the white segmented solid rocket boosters successfully soft-landed on land after a launch, instead of falling into the sea and being recovered as no more than scrap.
Comparing the shuttle itself to the Falcon 9 first stage, the Shuttle needed extensive refurbishment work after every single flight, much more than the initial project concepts called for. Until SpaceX does more testing or test flights we won't know how much refurb work this will need, but given the lack of re-entry forces, hopefully quite a bit less.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
...electric cars nobody can afford...
I see a half-dozen Teslas a week these days. They're not cheap, and they're out of the price range of most people, but so is your average BMW or Mercedes Benz or even Cadillac.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'm sure they could have done this by the 70's if that were their goal.
I think the thing is that never would have been their goal. I'm not speaking of corruption (nor suggesting anything like it) but the thing with NASA is that their pockets have always been very deep. Thus they kind of just looked at discarding a stage 1 rocket a necessary cost of doing what they do and figured the funding would just be there anyways. The problem though is a high cost means that something is impractical, even if you can do it (such as the moon landing in the 60's.)
This is exactly where the private sector has an advantage: It seeks to become more practical, and it's a good time for the private sector to begin taking over at least when it comes to near earth missions, and I think it's time for governments to begin focusing more on deep space rather than fucking around with ISS.
It appears you've never landed an aircraft. You did mention ome of three major challenges, though.
> The reason that a carrier landing is harder
There are at least three reasons that a carrier landing is harder .
1. The runway has been relocated, so you have no approach landmarks. The first thing is that you actually start lining up for landing many miles from where you intend to touch down. To land in Baltimore, you might learn that you need take a right at Atlantic City, NJ. With a carrier, your turns and altitude changes are never in the same place. This one doesn't apply so much to the rocket.
2. Wave motion (AGL keeps moving). The magic to a smooth landing is to make it so that you reach EXACTLY zero altitude at precisely the same moment when your forward motion puts you at the beginning of the runway, at the same instant that your lateral adjustment, with wind, puts you in the middle of the runway, while at the same instant you have ceased lateral motion against the wind and brought the yaw exactly parallel to the runway, at the same time roll goes to zero, while maintaining proper flare (pitch). In other words, the craft is moving in six dimensions* and you try to hit just the right mark in all six dimensions at precisely the same time. It's awfully tough to hit zero AGL at exactly the right time when the ground is moving up towards you, then down away from you. Too difficult for me to try in real life. SpaceX has had much trouble with this. They had the rocket perfectly vertical, and they were able to reach 0 AGL, but they couldn't do both at the same time - touch down while the vehicle was vertical. It's much easier to do that of zero AGL remains constant, rather than having the ocean move the barge up and down.
3. The landing area is much smaller. Factors 1 and 2 can easily cause the landing to occur 40 feet to far to the right, or 400 feet to far down the runway. An ocean-going landing area isn't big enough to allow any margin of error.
> The reason that a carrier landing is harder is because the runway is shorter. With a vertical landing vehicle, it's a non-issue.
The best way to really understand this is to try landing a model helicopter smoothly. Not a drone that flies itself when you let go of the stick, but an old-fashioned model heli. If you can't try that, imagine a perfect, frictionless air-hockey table - the puck glides absolutely perfectly across the table. The lightest feather touch will send it to the other side of the table because there is no friction. That's hover - there is no friction keeping you in the same spot over the ground. Your job is to position the puck at an exact spot on the table and keep in there by tossing pebbles at it.
For anyone that read that and was confused by "moving in six dimensions", consider that an aircraft can MOVE to the left, it LEAN to the left, or it can be POINTED to the left. Aircraft don't have tires in contact with the ground, so with a crosswind you can be pointing to the left while moving to the right. It can GO up or it can POINT up. So the six dimensions of movement are:
X
Y
Z
Yaw
Pitch
Roll
>Musk's SpaceX just...
Eh... not quite. The rocket they brought down safely never got anywhere near orbit (1.6km/s = 4% of LEO kinetic energy). But, while their first stage rocket didn't get dramatically closer to orbit than Blue Origin's did, it did so while carrying a second stage that DID make it to orbit. That extra ~80 tonnes of payload is the difference between a useful first stage rocket and a proof of concept flight.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
A destructive test means something like cutting the finished part open, chemically etching the metal and examining it under a magnifying glass. It is simply 'testing that destroys the part, the opposite to non-destructive testing like ultrasound.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
This payload was light enough, and the upgraded F9 grunty enough, that it could do it, but larger payloads will require an ocean landing.
A barge landing can use the atmosphere for braking, but that means that you re-enter halfway across the Atlantic. Returning to the launch site takes a honking great boost-back maneuver. The booster accelerated to 6000 km/h (1 mile per second) before staging. While some part of that is vertical and gravity will help, for orbital insertion the majority is lateral, and the booster has to cancel all of that velocity propulsively before it can start backtracking to the launch site.
The fundamental job of a rocket is to supply kinetic energy to a payload. Energy consumed in boost-back is not delivered to the payload.
As Elon Musk explains, return to launch site is much more expensive than return to barge. F9 can deliver 300 GJ of energy to the second stage and return to a barge. Or it can deliver 120 GJ to the second stage and return to the launch site. That's 40%. Return to launch site is throwing away 60% of the booster.
Notice how much they talked about the performance increases. Higher engine thrust, densified LOX to fix more fuel into the first stage, a stretched second stage. Even though the net payload mass is one third of the Dragon capsule on CRS-7.
(Dragon has 6000 kg payload capacity, plus the pressurized capsule and orbital maneuvering system isn't light. 12×172 kg of Orbcomm satellites is 2064 kg, plus a fairing and deployment bus.)
Although it's >90% of the weight, the cost of kerlox rocket fuel is so tiny compared to the rest that it's worth burning more fuel for a higher-probability of recovery. But not all payloads give you that option.
Six degrees of freedom, not six dimensions. Still only the boring old 3 dimensions.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
take a right at Atlantic City, NJ
I'm not putting you in charge of navigation. You're supposed to take a left toin at Albuquerque.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Linux is a complete re-write and many of the contributors live overseas.
This is an irrelevant side conversation. SpaceX's use of Linux is tactical, not strategic, and they could just as easily used many other OS's in place of Linux, so long as they were capable of getting the job done.
Since most of the time is spent in user space running the applications they need the platform to run, and not in the system calls, it's really quite irrelevant what software platform is implementing those system calls, just like the speed, overhead, or number of system calls a second, and other benchmarks on which Linux prides itself, are largely irrelevant.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
The Falcon 9 first stage could probably reach orbit if it wasn't lifting the 80+ ton second stage and payload (though probably not with enough fuel for a return flight). It's a much bigger, much more efficient rocket than New Shepard, which was lifting a ~5 ton capsule.
To be fair, a Green Card is not the same as being "from the USA" and Elon Musk himself is from South Africa. So it was a bit strange to me too to hear "USA - USA" when SpaceX is really competing mostly with other US companies...
Not really splitting hairs. Both the Shuttle and Falcon 9 discard and lose a good part of their spacecraft - the Shuttle loses the whole (huge) LF tank, F9 loses the whole (big and pretty complex) second stage. Apples to apples, Falcon 9 loses more, "percentage-wise".
The real difference though is in cost of refurbishing of what is recovered.
Refurbishing the shuttle and preparing it for a launch (800mln) costs about 10x more than building the Falcon 9, both stages, from scratch (80mln)!
And then recovery of Falcon 9 first stage about halves these costs.
So, the real difference isn't really in what, how much is recovered, how it flies and lands. The real difference is the absolutely vast reduction of costs. 80mln was already something very competetive. Halving it is a total game-changer!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I'm sure they could have done this by the 70's if that were their goal. The essentially did the same type of control landing the LEM on the moon (controlled flight of a balanced rocket). In fact it's more difficult to control something short like the LEM where the CP and CM are close together than a long cylinder.
It's easier to land on the moon than to land on the planet because you only need 1/6 as much vertical thrust, while your orientation rockets still work just as well as ever. I'd think that overall it would still be an easier job.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I see a half-dozen Teslas a week these days. They're not cheap, and they're out of the price range of most people, but so is your average BMW or Mercedes Benz or even Cadillac.
I drive a 1982 Mercedes-Benz 300SD. Originally it cost around $33k, which with inflation puts it over $85k. Tesla money. I am replacing it with a 1997 Audi A8 Quattro. Also originally into the Tesla money. Expensive cars ain't even new. And eventually, the middle class can afford them, if they're willing to turn a wrench. Remember when wrenching used to be an American pastime? And I'm not even talking about because you had to, I'm talking about because you wanted to. My 1960 Dodge Dart was as reliable as the day is long. Sure, it was designed to spew lead out its arse (it had 12:1 compression, no less) and it would be completely unsafe by modern standards but it needed very little attention, probably less than almost anything modern with a shitload of sensors and gewgaws to fail. And the relatively small-displacement big-block engines (of which the original 318 was one) were just big rocks. That one had 240hp and 340 ft-lb out of 5.2 liters though, which would not be bad today for a naturally aspirated engine. Not great, but okay. But now people don't seem to want to know anything.
That, naturally, fits great with an EV, since there's so much less to go wrong. People who have never taken off their plastic engine cover don't seem to get how much complexity is involved in a combustion engine. For each cylinder you've got a piston with a bearing and a wrist pin, and two or more cylinder rings; a conn rod (probably powder metal, but if not, then very possibly forged) with two caps (cracked if PM, machined if forged) and four bolts; the bearing at the crank; typically two intake and two exhaust valves (maybe another valve in there someplace) and for each valve a spring, a two- to four-piece lifter or follower, probably a butterfly flap or another second-stage intake valve which is held to an actuator rod by two to four screws, a set of hardware to hold the cam near that cylinder comprised of a cover, two nuts, and a bearing, a valve guide, a valve guide seal, and possibly a pressed valve seat, and maybe a valve retainer clip, and possibly a rocker arm and a whole bunch more hardware for that; two head bolts or two studs and two nuts, probably with washers; a fuel injector itself usually composed of one to two dozen parts, usually at least two O-rings and/or quad seals and maybe a rubber isolator for the fuel injector as well, if you are lucky you will get a retention clip or other device which holds the injector to the fuel rail; the electrical connector which attaches to the injector is itself made up of a housing, two pins, a gasket, a retention clip wire and a cover; these days right atop the spark plug for that cylinder (which is itself made up of a body, center electrode, isolator, and a washer, and which has fancy-pants metal coatings applied with vapor deposition) you get an ignition coil pack potted with epoxy in a plastic body (about a dozen parts including the igniter transistor) and usually two bolts to hold it down; the coil pack has a rubber extension unit to reach the plug, itself with a center electrode, a contact spring, and a retention clip; the coil pack has three wires so its connector has one more pin than that of the injector. *breathe* Wait, there's more! Your air-shrouded fuel injector has a air feed line! Where are you going? Come back!
There is so much less to know with an EV it's not even goddamned comical. It fits perfectly with Millenials' waning interest in the car as a status symbol.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> instead of falling into the sea and being recovered as no more than scrap.
They were originally designed for re-use. The abandonment of plans to use the external liquid tank as building materials in orbit, and the poor re-usability of the solid rocket boosters were parts of the tremendous expense and overall failure of the space shuttle program to provide "trucks to space".
This is what I thought the 21st century was going to be like. Rockets taking off and landing again. I can see a passenger version of this in a few years where you can fly from New York to Australia in 30 minutes. The same vertical landing tech can be used to land on Mars. Refuel and return to Earth. Now if we can just perfect flying cars.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
I agree with everything you said, except the final 80 million number. The first stage costs about $16 million, and around $200,000 of that is fuel. So this may cut the $16 million in half, not the $80 million . Still, $72 million per launch is pretty darned good.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Oy, not $16 million - $60 million. Just forget I was here. :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I saw different articles citing different numbers. I saw 16mln too.
I believe the sum of 80mln is including their commercial mark-up - the price for the customer. And while recovery will drop the cost by 16mln, the "price" will be halved, firstly because the expensive development can slow down, and besides because Musk wants space travel to become more accessible, more ubiquitous, and above all to force the competition to step up their efforts.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
One more step closer to running away from our problems.
It's not so much the controlled vertical landing of the rocket, but that they can re-use the rocket engines so many times. NASA never achieved that, for example the SSMEs effectively needed rebuilding after each flight. What SpaceX seem to be shooting for with this is closer to "put the gas in it, go, repeat" without the rebuild between every flight (which made the Space Shuttle so damned expensive).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Not raining on the parade, but the last two attempts were out in the ocean, so if something went wrong, a very large object with fuel still in it wouldn't fall on someone's minivan on I-95 on the way to grandma's house in Boca Raton.
How come this time around SpaceX had the cajones to return the vehicle to Florida? At the altitude this thing reaches, wouldn't a small ballistic error and motor failure (resulting, say, from a little software error that reboots the controller) send the launcher anywhere from a few feet to multiple miles off target? Like Ft. Lauderdale?
I mean, it's fuck crazy cool what just happened, truly, but I sure hope it's got old-fashioned parachutes as a backup before it lands by accident in a retirement community, because the plan is to launch and land a lot more of them and something is bound to go a little wack.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Yes, but often refered to as "6 axis" (not dims) X,Y,Z and A,B,C - Common (well semi) in CNC machining - well, X,Y,Z is default, and you'll see a lot of A (4th Axis) work. Beyond that, you tend to get strange machines
and they can wipe with you, I guess before they flush Elon?
Six degrees of freedom, not six dimensions. Still only the boring old 3 dimensions.
Wrong. Angles and even speeds of rotation are dimensions too. It's a quantification that you can't do the task without? Check. You can measure and assign a value to it? Check. You can compare that value to what you want and do something that changes that value in some predictable way? Check. It's a dimension. Flatness, roundness, co-axialness... I could go on. Geometric tolerances are a big part of what makes the modern world what it is rather than what it was 50 years ago. But you think X, Y, and Z are it. In fact, you think it strongly enough to try and correct somebody that was giving an explanation of a difficult task. Too bad all you did was look foolish.
A simple 3D printer considers temperature and filament feed rate as distinct dimensions also. I program 9-axis milling machines, and as long as people like you fail to understand more than 3 dimensions, I have better job security. No skin off my nose.
And thanks, raymorris, for your interesting comment. You lost me a bit on the air hockey part. Wouldn't it be more like the puck trying to keep itself in place by tossing pebbles away, until it ran out of pebbles? ;-)
The essentially did the same type of control landing the LEM on the moon (controlled flight of a balanced rocket). In fact it's more difficult to control something short like the LEM where the CP and CM are close together than a long cylinder. At least mathematically, they each have their problems. But they opted for wings which may or may not have been a correct decision based on expected missions.
Isn't the CP irrelevant for the LEM, landing on airless Luna?
NASA never achieved that
But they never really tried that either. AFAIK, the SSME are the most complex engines, of any type, ever made and also the most efficient. Performance was their goal, not reuseability.
I think you're getting your units a bit mixed up, I believe Falcon 9 stages at about 7,400 kph, or about 27% of orbital VELOCITY. To do that it burns up about 80% of the total fuel on the rocket to gain kinetic energy. Note that these numbers are probably only ballpark as I'm having trouble finding numbers for v1.1 which had major changes from v1.0.
Yes. There is economic disincentive to reuseability if you are a manufacturer. Why build one rocket when you can build 20?
I've seen some concept-art where external tanks are used as space habitats, and it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Wouldn't it be more cost-effective to use bulk payload launch systems with lightweight, almost passive cowls to protect the payloads, without using the Shuttle as a cargo vessel? The Shuttle seemed like it was better geared as a spacious habitat and workshop for those working in space. The max takeoff weight is 120 tons. The cargo capacity of the shuttle is around 27 tons. Wouldn't it make more sense to lift bulk cargo on the rocket without the presence of the shuttle? Even if the faring weighs 20 tons, that's a hundred tons of cargo and module sizes as large as the shuttle itself, rather than modules small enough to fit within the shuttle cargo bay. The ISS weighs in around 400 tons, that could have been launched in four or five heavy launches if the shuttle hadn't been used to ferry parts.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I think you're right, though those are probably the "all in" numbers if the booster is going to be thrown away instead of trying to land. My number were for this specific rocket though. It doesn't really change much either way, your'e still nowhere near LEO orbital velocity of 28,000 kph.
According to the on-screen speed indicator in the video they were going about 5800kph, or 1.6km/s, at separation. That was after the engines had already shut down and maximum speed had been reached. That *is* about 20% of LEO velocity, but since klinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity that translates to only (20%)^2 = 4% of LEO orbital kinetic energy.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I agree with your analysis of the complexity of an ICE, but I argue that an electric car is no less complex if you look inside the silicon. IGBTs and MOSFETS along with their control networks are quite complex, but they are beyond the mechanics purview. The millions of lines of code in the control systems would certainly be another point of complexity, beyond the ken of the majority of the population. And while the electric motors themselves are simple, their simplicity belies the many thousands of hours that went into designing the field windings and armature to maximize the effectiveness of the generated magnetic flux.
I agree with your analysis of the complexity of an ICE, but I argue that an electric car is no less complex if you look inside the silicon.
All modern cars have traction control. Most of them have torque measurement, let alone estimation. So they have just as much complexity hiding in their silicon...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think the idea is that you have to take the tanks with you anyway, you're not getting very far without a gas tank after all. And, once you've got the tank almost to orbit, it's relatively cheap to nudge it the rest of the way there. At which point you have a great big air-tight tank floating in orbit, just waiting for you to move in.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"the launcher being twice as tall"
I'm no rocket scientist of course but in hindsight I think SpaceX would have preferred to have Falcon a bit shorter and wider. From what I've heard they're pushing the height of the rocket to the very limit so they can keep their current manufacturing, fairing, engineering & engine configuration while making it reusable and keeping/increasing their payload. A thinner rocket definitely helps with drag but it also introduces some difficulties regarding structural flex and center of thrust/mass.
Did anyone else notice that "Mission Control" was made up of 20-somethings in jeans and T shirts, compared to NASA's Apollo Mission Control consisting of older, all male, suit and tie wearing team?
>But now people don't seem to want to know anything.
I assume you're referring to people not wanting to work on their cars today. But really, things have changed dramatically - a cars guts used to be an engine, transmission, and a few auxilliary gew-gaws. Now it's a rats-nest of finicky emission control systems that happen to have a car attached. And in many places you can't register your car unless the ECS is working correctly (or the car is old enough to not have one and be grandfathered in). So, what was once a straightforward mechanical system that anyone who could spin a wrench could tinker with is now encased in a byzantine mess of electronics and computers.
One of the things I'm really looking forward to with EVs is the return to a straightforward drive system that will make things easy for tinkerers once again. Of course autonomous driving is going to add a whole slew of new complexity, but its mostly complexity that can be isolated from the drive system both physically and conceptually. I would hope any autonomous system worth its salt will be analyzing and adapting to actual vehicle performance rather than just assuming the motor and brakes work within factory-specified tolerances. Otherwise we're going to have a real problem as they begin to age.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Umm, maybe not. Even if your maneuvering thrusters can provide a lot more thrust with that tall moment arm, dynamic stability is much lower. It's like trying to balance a pencil on the eraser as compared to balancing just the eraser.
Plus there's the fact that you're operating under lunar gravity, which is 1/6th that of Earth. That buys you roughly six times as long to correct any thrust imbalances - essentially everything is moving at 1/6th speed compared to an Earth landing. Which is a big deal considering the actual landing was done under direct human control because software of the era wasn't up to the challenge. You just can't overclock humans to deal with things that much more rapidly.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Someone gets it. I am an automobile aficionado and have a bunch. I will be adding an EV to my stable, how can I not? There is nothing I don't like about an automobile and no automobile that I can't find something redeeming to say about it. Well, I might have to really stretch for that last one. But I'll find something. Even on a Volga.
I'm still not logging in. (KGIII)
They could also have chanted "Deutschland" "Deutschland", because almost all basic technologies of SpaceX were developed by the Wehrmacht. The great American space pioneers were Wehrmacht personell before.
What SpaceX does is to slightly modernize and to add the first-stage landing technology.
The same can be said about Russian spaceflight - they captured the other half of von Braun's team.
Oh yeah. Communist shittalking.
Here is the news: Your poor suppressed friends in Africa multiply like crazy and will consume hundreds of times more resources than those couple of rockets.
Exponential growth of humanity is the Elefant In the Room, which must be addressed.
Send them sacks of condoms.
It all has to do with gain margins (from control theory) and not gravity or moment arms. To be sable (controllable), the center of mass has to be ahead of the center of pressure. The problem with the lem is than it's squat with a heavy bottom and not a lot of high up mass. There was only 15" between the two.
NASA never achieved that
But they never really tried that either. AFAIK, the SSME are the most complex engines, of any type, ever made and also the most efficient. Performance was their goal, not reuseability.
That Nasa never attempted to develop cheap & reliable engines/launch systems, preferring to tweak & complexify everything is damning in and of itself.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I was on my high school's electric car team. We had a Porsche 914 that had been donated with a blown motor that was converted to electric. It had its share of problems, but the drivetrain was never among them.
I look at electric cars as a way for the car to much more quickly approach appliance-like maintenance and use compared to gasoline and diesel cars. Sure, there will be consumables to change, but the chemical-aspect of the car will not require as much owner involvement as it currently does. No gasoline, no oil change invervals a 3000, 5000, or 7500 miles depending on the manufacturer's penchant. With the end of the need for frequent fluids service I could see on-board tire pressure monitoring evolving into a central tire inflation system so that the less frequent maintenance cycles do not mean tires go underinflated for an extended period of time. That would mean possibly chassis/bearing lubes, tires, brakes (which would probably last longer with regenerative braking), and windshield washer fluid being the most common maintenance. Hell, carwashes might add a couple of services and thus meet 90% of the needs of the car within its first 100,000 miles, and it's conceivable that the cars could go far more than the ~200,000 miles we reasonably expect out of them now.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If you cannot see how the V2 developed all the BASIC technologies which are used in liquid fuel rockets to the present day, you are simply an idiot who should stay clear of engineering.
The Ariane, the Russian civilian launchers, Saturn and also SpaceX are just scaled-up+multistage versions of the V2 engine. All of them trace back to Peenemünde. The V2 already reached outer space and only because Hitler forbid it, they did not launch satellites. The Russkies did, so that they could outdo America propaganda-wise.
The only space launcher which cannot be traced to Peenemünde are the solid-fuel weapons like Topol-M, Polaris and similar. The Japanese try to turn them into sat launchers with little success so far. I guess it is because solid fuel cannot be nicely controlled like the V2-style engines. And that means imperfect satellite orbit.
And even the solid-fuel missiles were largely developed in Germany as early air defence weapons.
But of course all that is based on very early Chinese work on rather small solid-fuel missiles.
The biggest difference of the electric versus the ICE will be the nature of how maintenance and repair is handled. I expect a lot more component-level repair of circuit boards and power systems, along the lines of how Prius owners have been replacing or repairing bad battery contacts to extend the lives of the battery packs, as opposed to the very greasy, fluid-mess job that maintaining a water cooled reciprocating piston engine with hydraulic systems that we currently face.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
There's a StackExchange question that explores this in detail, including hard numbers:
http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/264/energy-cost-of-bringing-the-space-shuttle-external-tank-to-orbit
Vertical integration. Why build 20 rockets when you can charge 20 times for the same one? Profit!
How far apart is the landing pad from the launch pad? The only information I've been able to find is that they are both at Cape Canaveral.
I assume you're referring to people not wanting to work on their cars today. But really, things have changed dramatically - a cars guts used to be an engine, transmission, and a few auxilliary gew-gaws. Now it's a rats-nest of finicky emission control systems that happen to have a car attached.
While that is completely true, it does come with benefits, and not just better emissions. Once the tuner familiarizes themselves with the systems, they can accomplish a great deal just by punching keys. My A8 has a Motronic 5.3, which is broken wide open. Not only can I clone PCMs, but I can also supposedly tune. The Motronic 5.3 is basically the same hardware as the Bosch MS4 (motorsport?) and you can use the documentation for that to understand the M5.3. But even when you can't do that, you can yank out your PCM and drop in a Haltech, or a VEMS.
And in many places you can't register your car unless the ECS is working correctly
Sure, you don't want to be chopping your harness...
I would hope any autonomous system worth its salt will be analyzing and adapting to actual vehicle performance rather than just assuming the motor and brakes work within factory-specified tolerances. Otherwise we're going to have a real problem as they begin to age.
The systems we have now are already adaptive, so I don't see why they wouldn't be.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I expect a lot more component-level repair of circuit boards and power systems,
The actual motor control boards are very expensive, and not all their phases will fizzle at once, so they will be repaired more than most automotive electronics are now. But I've sat through a whole video of a Bosch ABS controller being refurbished, including cracking off the case and milling away the old adhesive. Then a robot resolders all the contacts, because Bosch used some fancy-pants flexible cable bonding technology that didn't pan out. People are definitely refurbing a lot of control units for which no official replacement is available. I'm collecting replacements for all the modules in my Audi, which is basically a goddamned rolling NOC...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...if they were, there could be no boost-back burn.
(But I get your meaning; they are nearly empty.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
> think the idea is that you have to take the tanks with you anyway
Exactly. Custom designing a "bulk payload launch systems with lightweight, almost passive cowl" system would seem to be unnecessary when these large shells nearly reach orbital velocity, anyway. Also note that it's very difficult to design something from scratch that will very leightweight but survive the launch to orbit. If it's light, even hollow, that can add a great deal of drag to the launch system.
"I’m nauseatingly pro-American. It is where great things are possible."
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
estimates for the amortized cost has been as high as $5 billion/launch. When you compare that to SpaceX's fixed $60-130 million per launch that also covers their R&D expenses it's a bargain.
Given facts like this, how does anyone claim with a straight face that government can do things about as efficiently as private-sector efforts can?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I agree it comes with benefits, but it makes the system far less comprehensible to the initiate, and hence it's no surprise that the number of hobbyists has dropped dramatically.
It also doesn't help that there were a couple decades of blatantly user-hostile shenaginas by the manufacturers - making it difficult and expensive for non-dealer mechanics to get their hands on necessary parts and diagnostic equipment.
And of course we can't forget that modern cars are often not designed with user service as a priority - the pressure of emissions reduction and urban crowding has increased the amount of necessary hardware, while also decreasing the amount of desirable volume in the engine compartment, to the point that you often have to go to drastic lengths to access the engine and other core components. (I recently replaced the alternator in a 2000 Volvo, hardly a small car. The recommended technique involved first removing the radiator and fluid reservoirs to give yourself room to work...)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
(I recently replaced the alternator in a 2000 Volvo, hardly a small car. The recommended technique involved first removing the radiator and fluid reservoirs to give yourself room to work...)
Too bad it doesn't have a bolted core support like my 1997 A8. I just did a head job, and have to finish up the timing belt part now, but it started raining and I don't have an inside to work in. The nose of the car is in the carport, so the engine compartment doesn't get rained in, but it still gets too crappy out there. I just remove the bumper (2 bolts) and the bumper shock mounts (6 bolts) and then I can disconnect the core support from the fenders (2 bolts) and move it out of the way. I'm going through a lot of pain, but at least it's a vehicle which was designed to be maintained.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So after seeing the video, I thought, why not?
While not an astonishing success like SpaceX's (I am after all only one man with a dual core laptop or six, they have hundreds if not thousands of brains and supercomputers pouring out their wazoos), I did manage a water landing AND put a payload into orbit. Photo op here.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Heh. This isn't the first time Audi/VW has created something with the intention of never needing service for the life of the vehicle only to discover that they undershot the mark tenfold. There's a performance engine whose cam geartrain is located at the back of the engine sandwiched up against the transmission and adjacent to the firewall. It's a complex assembly of something like five timing chains with tensioners that cannot be accessed with the engine in the car. It's also an interference engine, so when the tensioners fail the valves contact the pistons and the engine is ruined. It costs about $10,000 to have the tensioners replaced (like $3000 in parts alone) and they still aren't any better than the factory units.
Automakers need to stop treating some systems as if they're black boxes (the engineering term, not the flight data recorder term) because the systems concealed within inevitably require service.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I think you are thinking of the R8 engine. Which is Italian.
Granting VW has done some brain dead things on their water cooled cars. The first step in replacing the brake master cylinder on a new 'beetle' is 'remove the front bumper...'
It's like they realized all the old jokes about English cars. At least there are no Lucas electrics.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How much effect does the CP have in vacuum?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yes. There is economic disincentive to reuseability if you are a manufacturer. Why build one rocket when you can build 20?
There is if you're the only manufacturer. But what if your competitor starts offering a lower price? Well then you might want to find some ways to lower your own costs so that you can offer an even lower price. This is actually one of the wonderful things about capitalism is that it encourages people to find more practical ways of doing things.
And believe it or not, SpaceX does in fact have multiple competitors, though most of them aren't private sector, rather they're foreign governments (i.e. Russia, India.)
It's too bad you can't buy stocks in SpaceX right now. I'd like to invest everything I own toward their new success. It'll be te staple for space cargo.
I think you are thinking of the R8 engine. Which is Italian.
Could be, but actually the 40V Audi V8 also resembles that remark. It's got at least three timing chains plus magic tensioners that change the timing, and if anything goes wrong with any of it the engine has to come out to be serviced. But I've done both heads and the timing belt on my 32V engine and it's been bolted down the whole time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The whole vehicle cost 60 mln, but the first stage is 70% of cost, therefore should be around 42 millions.
If it is reused only once, then it reduces costs from 60 mln to 39 mln + refurbishing costs.
If it is reused say 7 times then it reduces costs from 60 mln to 24 mln + refurbishing costs.