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SpaceX's Latest Launch Successful, But Ends With a "Hard Landing" (theverge.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the that's-some-soft-pedalling dept.

Eloking writes with this news from The Verge: SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket into space this afternoon, but — as expected — failed to land the vehicle on a drone ship at sea afterward. CEO Elon Musk said the rocket 'landed hard' on the drone ship. The mission requirements made a successful landing unlikely. This was SpaceX's fourth attempt to land the Falcon 9 post-launch on an autonomous drone ship floating in the ocean. All of the previous sea landings failed too, though the third attempt came very close. The company had low hopes of a successful landing from the start of this mission, since the rocket had to send a heavy satellite into a high orbit. That requires a lot of fuel for the launch itself, so there wasn't much fuel left for the rocket's return to Earth and powered landing.

5 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Expectations game by ratnerstar · · Score: 4, Funny

    SpaceX and Marco Rubio are duking it out to see who wins "best management of the expectations game." Personally, I'm gonna give "third place win" the edge over "successful failure," but that's just me. Good hustle all around guys!

    --
    Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler. --The Devil and Daniel Webster
    1. Re: Expectations game by beelsebob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Right, successfully inserting a communications satellite into geostationary orbit, exactly as contracted to do... Such a fuck up.

    2. Re: Expectations game by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "When NASA has a launch failure or even a postponement it's nightly news, complete with commentary as to how it's all a waste of money, government can't do things right, etc."

      The public expects a government space program to be run with perfect safety, which everyone in the business knows is as unattainable as safe aviation was in 1920, and that it must not do anything "adventurous" like landing a booster, even if the activity is not mission-critical and does not pose any threat to human life. Manned space programs have to go private not because NASA is incompetent, but because only the private sector is allowed to take risks.

    3. Re:Expectations game by Rei · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Are there still people here who don't know the difference between an orbital and a suborbital rocket? I thought we were past that.

      AmiMoJo: the difference between landing a suborbital rocket and landing an orbital rocket is the difference between jumping off your couch and landing on your feet without falling over, and jumping off a ladder and landing on a pogo stick without falling over.

      --
      Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
    4. Re: Expectations game by Teancum · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, I think part of his argument is that they aren't doing it. How many successful landings have they had on their barge?

      How many successful landings has anybody had from landing a 5 story tall launch vehicle above the Karman Line (aka what is commonly thought of as actually outer space) and then landing that rocket on a barge in the ocean?

      I think the level of expectation here is just a tad bit high, where even the notion of calling this a failure is simply absurd.

      Very useful engineering data was obtained on this flight, including in the landing. For a rocket that wasn't expected to be recovered at all in this particular case, SpaceX did a pretty good job at trying to recover it, and got some pieces anyway as it actually did land on the barge.... just not as slowly as necessary to get it in one piece.