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SpaceX Successfully Launches Jason-3 Satellite, Rocket Landing Partial Success (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket today carrying the Jason-3 ocean monitoring satellite. "Jason-3 data will be used for monitoring global sea level rise, researching human impacts on oceans, aiding prediction of hurricane intensity, and operational marine navigation," NASA said. Unfortunately Space X reports that the attempt to land the Falcon 9 on a drone platform was only a partial success. According to the company twitter page: "First stage on target at droneship but looks like hard landing; broke landing leg."
Update: 01/18 04:16 GMT by S : Here's a brief video of the landing attempt (somewhat loud).
Confirmation of Jason-3 separation. *Now* we can say that "SpaceX Sucessfully Launches Jason-3 Satellite".
Now let's wait for news on the landing...
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
Because it has no crew and is remote controlled, with various automated features such as locking to specified GPS coordinates..
I'm not sure why you're confused about this.
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
Oooh, actual news:
Great to have the update. Not so great for whatever people were in charge with making, prepping, and inspecting the legs ;) Unless it was a design flaw.
I guess we have a new question now - why it didn't lock.
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
Musk provides the first pic. Actually, I expected worse. They can probably scrap this one for parts and send them off to destructive testing.
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
I also thought that going back to barge landings seemed like an unnecessary complication, as I was under the impression that the reason the first two attempts were at sea was because that proof-of-concept was needed to get permits for a ground landing. Today during the webcast, though, they clarified that for polar orbits such as this, they need to launch from Vandenburg in California, and there isn't a convenient piece of ground to land on.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
> I do wonder how feasible it would be to build some sort of a hydraulically stabilized landing platform on top of the barge
Look up "Sea Launch", which was a partnership between Boeing, Kvaerner A.G. (Norwegian ship and drilling platform builder), and Russian rocket companies. They launched rockets from a converted drilling platform out in the Pacific Ocean.
A semi-submersible platform like that takes on ballast water to lower the center of mass below the waves, while the platform on top is held *above* the water on columns. The waves can then pass through the columns without moving the platform much, because it's not a solid wall like the side of a ship. The ballast water mass also makes the whole platform more massive and hard to move.
Right now (or very soon) you will likely be able to pick up drilling platforms for scrap value. With the price of oil so low, expensive ways to extract oil, like fracking and ocean drilling, can't make a profit, so the drilling companies stop doing it, and some of them go bankrupt.
The latest tweets from Musk indicate that on reading the data, the landing was not "hard". Apparently one of the legs failed to lock. Also it landed 1.3m from the center.
Elon Musk @elonmusk 6h6 hours ago
Definitely harder to land on a ship. Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: much smaller target area, that's also translating & rotating.
Elon Musk @elonmusk 6h6 hours ago
However, that was not what prevented it being good. Touchdown speed was ok, but a leg lockout didn't latch, so it tipped over after landing.
Most of the posts in this discussion are based on incomplete information.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Here's the video of the landing :https://www.instagram.com/p/BAqirNbwEc0/
The rocket made a near perfect landing, even better than the last one. It must be so frustrating for SpaceX team to fail because of something like this.