SpaceX Successfully Lands Its Rocket On A Floating Drone Ship Again (theverge.com)

Early Friday morning, SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship at sea for the second time. The company has recovered the post-launch vehicle a total of three times, two of which involved the rocket landing on a floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Before the launch, the landing was deemed unlikely as the rocket would be "subject to extreme velocities and re-entry heating" in its attempt to launch a Japanese communications satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit high above Earth. Elon Musk tweeted: "Rocket reentry is a lot faster and hotter than last time, so odds of making it are maybe even, but we should learn a lot either way." As a result of the successful mission, Musk followed up with, "May need to increase size of rocket storage hangar." The first successful launch was in December, when the rocket landed at a ground-based spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The second landing occurred in April on a floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

Comments

Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

How does this impact me or most other people in any significant way? I don't think it does.

I'll get modded down because this is an unpopular question to ask. But it needs to be asked. Shouldn't we put our resources to better use, like stopping global warming? Can anyone give me a good answer? I'm doubting it.

Re:Simple question

[blackpaw]

How does this impact me or most other people in any significant way? I don't think it does.

I'll get modded down because this is an unpopular question to ask. But it needs to be asked. Shouldn't we put our resources to better use, like stopping global warming? Can anyone give me a good answer? I'm doubting it.

No you'll be modded down because its an idiotic question to ask, not mention flamebait.

Re:Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

Global warming is studied using satellites you miserable cunt troll. And isnt recycling also a good way to fight global warming? Anyway, fuck you.

Re:Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

And how do you track the progression of global warming if replacing failing satellites remain stupidly expensive?

Re:Simple question

[Teancum]

How does this impact me or most other people in any significant way?

To start with, you would likely not be writing this comment in the first place if it wasn't for space-based assets. While you might be able to say that your actual TCP/IP packet only traveled along a fiber cable, the work of placing that cable inevitably used at least the GPS satellite constellation along with numerous other space-based vehicles. Like it or not, spaceflight has every day impacts upon your life, no matter how disconnected and isolated you might think your life has become. It is what makes the modern civilization function.

As a matter of fact, this particular satellite was a telecommunication satellite that will be broadcasting over the western Pacific Ocean region (aka eastern Asia).

Shouldn't we put our resources to better use, like stopping global warming?

It is stuff like this that you even know about global warming. How else do you think a genuinely global monitoring effort measuring temperatures, ocean conditions, sea levels, and other factors are even followed in the first place? This is how resources are being used to help stop such environmental pollution. If you don't know what is happening, you can't stop it from happening in the future.

I promise you that at least some data packets you are going to be using in the future will go across this particular satellite. The world is just far too interconnected.

The fact that the rocket landed again successful means that anything going into space is going to be much, much cheaper in the future as competitors to SpaceX try to copy the effort and come up with at least something that can compete commercially against SpaceX. That is what is so significant about this particular flight in addition to the payload that actually got up into space.

Re:Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why we can't have nice things.

Perhaps you're right, perhaps you're wrong -- but why do you have to foam at the mouth so much?

    "using satellites you m1$era+l c#n5#*&$%brflll..."

C'mon. Take an example from this post downthread. Clear, level-headed, with actual content worth discussing. Might convince the OP, might not. But has made the world a better place. Your post, to the contrary...

Re:Simple question

[davester666]

We are working as hard as possible to enable a hot-air windbag to be able to move to Mars.

Re:Simple question

[wonkey_monkey]

You've had it explained to you several times. This is exactly the sort of story that Slashdot should be running. Most of its readers are interested in exactly this kind of inspiring and exciting scientific achievement (also loud rockets and flames and stuff). And that didn't happen by accident, it's Slashdot's raison d'etre.

If you don't like it, just fuck off somewhere else!

Shouldn't we put our resources to better use, like stopping global warming?

Why are you wasting time posting idiotic questions to Slashdot instead of spending every waking moment searching for a cure for cancer, or whatever you believe to be the single most important issue?

Re:Simple question

[Gavagai80]

What this particular launch did was put a communications satellite into geosynchronous orbit over the pacific coast of Asia. If you live in east Asia, you may use it. If not, you won't use this particular satellite. Either way, you more than likely use communications of some sort and will thus benefit from lower bills and improved service from cheaper satellite launches. For example, in the coming years you may be able to post your slashdot comments with a cost-effective large swarm of LEO internet satellites (which would minimize latency).

Re:Simple question

[Bruce Perens]

It effects you the way early sea exploration did. Without that, I would be living in some other country, if I was living at all.

Re:Simple question

[ultranova]

How does this impact me or most other people in any significant way? I don't think it does.

Reusable rockets is one of the key technologies to bring down the cost of space travel. Once it comes beneath a certain treshold, you get a positive feedback loop in the form of space-based industries. The end result is hopefully having it cheap enough for colonization.

So, potentially, it's the beginning of industrial-scale space travel, which would be just as much of a change Industrial Revolution has proved to be. But even at absolute worst, it means cheaper satellites.

I'll get modded down because this is an unpopular question to ask. But it needs to be asked. Shouldn't we put our resources to better use, like stopping global warming? Can anyone give me a good answer? I'm doubting it.

One of our worst problems is that our resource management system is still based on the feudal model, with money taking the place of land, and our nobility is just as corrupt, selfish and inept - and nowadays just as hereditary - as the preceding bunch. If one of them actually does his job - invests the resources under his control into advancing humanity - should he be attacked for it just because you'd rather see him take on some other cause?

You got modded down because you got handed a bar of silver and are whining it's not gold.

Re:Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

"There are no stupid questions" is sometimes wrong. However let's be fair to the parent. Global warming is more important than the. However, there are big oil companies that knew about global warming since the sixties and have been preparing to lie about it since just after. They have so much money invested in those lies it is extremely difficult to push out the truth.

Satellites allow us to directly measure the warming and it's effects making the lies of the global warming deniers so obvious that many of those they duped are now starting to see through to the truth. Cheaper satellites is likely to help with this. You will notice that we no longer hear about measurement station related errors in the temperature data. Satellites are the thing that disposed of that particular trick.

Re:Simple question

[camperdave]

How does this impact me or most other people in any significant way? I don't think it does.

Right at the moment, it doesn't. However, that first stage that landed may be used to launch a communications satellite that might be used to transmit your sports, game shows, and reality shows to you. Or perhaps it will be used to launch a weather satellite that will let the barley farmers produce a better yield for cheaper beer. As far as putting your resources to better use, cut your military spending by 1%. You'd still have the biggest, baddest military on the planet by far, but you'd have an extra 6 billion dollars to put towards global warming.

Re:Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

Stopping global warming is easy enough: just reduce the population to sustainable levels. 99% of all people are soon to be rendered useless by automation anyway, so why postpone the inevitable?

Re:Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

And a fuckitty fuck fuck to you too, good sir! :)

Re:Simple question

[Antique Geekmeister]

The ability to do manned repair of satellites lowers the cost of the satellites and improves their longevity. That helps weather prediction, which affects food availability and food prices worldwide. This also paves the way to refuel and upgrade LEO satellites, and the next generation of such craft should be able to reach geo-synchronous orbits. It also paves the way for manned manufacturing in space, where zero gee make the creation of large, uniform crystals or silicon wafers for computers much easier, and certain types of electrolysis based chemical synthesis and analysis becomes much easier.

It also paves the way for solar satellites to harvest solar power and send it to non-polluting power stations on Earth, which can provide far more energy than is available from fossil fuels or fusion, and far more safely than fission.

Re:Simple question

[stealth_finger]

How does this impact me or most other people in any significant way? I don't think it does.

About as much as anything else.

Re:Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

How does your existence impact me or most other people in any significant way? I don't think it does.

I'll get modded down because this is an unpopular question to ask. But it needs to be asked. Shouldn't we put our resources to better use, like stopping global warming instead of keeping you alive? Can anyone give me a good answer? I'm doubting it.

Re:Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar power, also known as beamed fusion

Re: Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

I would agree about global warming. It's a threat to the 1%. But, it's needed for the rest of humanity. More co2, more plants, more foodstuffs. More people able to survive. That's a threat to the 1%. More people, need space. More people to work in space, more exploration, more use of resources in space. Once in space we will see man, as unique in life. There are micro organisms in space, maybe talking green lizards, or flying penguins, but no mankind. So someone controlling, by not expending, will be threatened. Their greed, is their undoing.

Re:Simple question

[Hamsterdan]

"It also paves the way for solar satellites to harvest solar power and send it to non-polluting power stations on Earth"

Last time I tried that in Simcity it didn't end that well ...

Re:Simple question

[Pseudonymous Powers]

No you'll be modded down because its an idiotic question to ask, not mention flamebait.

Not to mention that he's asked the same question on a bunch of posts over the last week. I miss the Moo-Cow Troll and the Appy-App-Appers Troll.

Re:Simple question

[bev_tech_rob]

No you'll be modded down because its an idiotic question to ask, not mention flamebait.

Judging by the responses in this thread, the troll made a good catch today......

Re:Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

When the troll is obvious there is no need for clever discussion. So, fuck you!

Re:Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

No you'll be modded down because its an idiotic question to ask, not mention flamebait.

Not to mention that he's asked the same question on a bunch of posts over the last week. I miss the Moo-Cow Troll and the Appy-App-Appers Troll.

Pretty sure those trolls all died from Systemd exposure

Re:Simple question

[jensend]

Though your second question may be unpopular I don't think that's the problem with it.

Asking the "shouldn't we put our resources to better use" question certainly makes sense when talking about human spaceflight. The claim some others here are making that the reason this is important is future space colonization is not really credible. And maybe you could make a case for questioning the value of some NASA probe missions.

It simply doesn't make any sense when talking about satellite launches. We all, directly or indirectly, rely on satellites every day; we will need to have some number of launches every year for the forseeable future. To do this in a way that is less expensive, more rapid, and more environmentally friendly really is a big deal. This IS putting our resources - resources we're already using - to better use.

There really isn't a way to make your first question reasonable. Though will be some benefit to everyone from this, you may well not call it significant. But it's possible to live your life in a way such that practically nothing in the news impacts you very significantly. So if you're only interested in what directly and significantly impacts you, quit wasting your time reading news on the internet.

At its best, Slashdot has been a site where impressive feats of engineering have been publicized and celebrated. (e.g. the Top 10 Hacks long ago.) If "news for nerds" isn't the "stuff that matters" to you, don't spend your time here.

Re:Simple question

[jellomizer]

1. Affordable Reusable space flight means less cost per flight saving you tax money.
2. Technology to automatically land a space craft back can be adapted towards self driving cars, machine operations, and other areas where humans cannot react fast enough or would be too much of a dangerous situation to do so.
3. Earth is a limited quantity. A future in space travel will help insure our survival.
4. Knowing what we don't know and finding new questions to ask is how we progress.

Re:Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think that relatively inexpensive Earth observing satellites would be a good tool for observing the effects of global climate change?

Re:Simple question

[dmgxmichael]

It also paves the way for solar satellites to harvest solar power and send it to non-polluting power stations on Earth, which can provide far more energy than is available from fossil fuels or fusion, and far more safely than fission.

Uh, solar power is simply redirected fusion. That is, after all, how the sun works.

Re:Simple question

[AlterEager]

Stopping global warming is easy enough: just reduce the population to sustainable levels. 99% of all people are soon to be rendered useless by automation anyway, so why postpone the inevitable?

Nah, stopping global warming doesn't need us to get rid of 99% of people, just the ones emitting most of the CO2.

Say 300 million from North America and 500 million from Europe. That should just about fix it.

Re: Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

"More CO2, more plants, more foodstufs." But those foodstuffs have less nutrition per unit material (as shown by actual research in how plants grow in higher CO2 levels).

Re:Simple question

[LWATCDR]

"How does this impact me or most other people in any significant way? I don't think it does.

I'll get modded down because this is an unpopular question to ask. But it needs to be asked. Shouldn't we put our resources to better use, like stopping global warming? Can anyone give me a good answer? I'm doubting it."

1. More so than any tv show or movie would.
2. Well since we use satellites to monitor weather and climate change and this means that launching them will cost less it actually is helping at least monitor climate change.
3. You posting on slashdot uses electrical power which generates C02 so STOP IT!

Re:Simple question

[wildsurf]

There are no stupid questions. But there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots.

Re: Simple question

[Coren22]

It seems that that could not be true, or else the dinosaurs never would have existed.

The nutrition was enough for huge lizards(birds?) to survive on, it should be enough for humans.

Re:Simple question

[Urkki]

It also paves the way for solar satellites to harvest solar power and send it to non-polluting power stations on Earth, which can provide far more energy than is available from fossil fuels or fusion, and far more safely than fission.

Uh, solar power is simply redirected fusion. That is, after all, how the sun works.

Everything is redirected fusion, even including geothermal, because fusion is how radioactive elements in Earth were made. Only non-fusion energy production mechanism I can think of is gravity, in other words tidal power (also black hole accretion disks, but we don't have any, yet).

Re:Simple question

[ArmoredDragon]

Just to elaborate on that point, the biggest barrier to space exploration, by a mile, is how much it costs to escape Earth's gravity. This goes a long LONG ways towards lowering that barrier.

And ultimately, space exploration is the key to our long term survival, and may even be the short-term future of our economy.

Re:Simple question

[Bruce Perens]

Couple this with the fact that the em-drive, astonishingly, has passed 6 tests so far and seems not to be pseudo-science. I wasn't expecting that. They need to get one on ISS and see if they can raise the orbit.

Re: Simple question

[Anguirel]

Yeah, it'd depend on what one counted as "nutrition". Pure sugar or various other organic compounds? Probably higher concentrations (by a small amount, since there has to be more of something to have less of something else, percentage-wise). That's what the carbon dioxide would go into. However, it's uncertain whether those would be human-edible/digestible as opposed to primarily being just more cellulose structure or other similar roughage that would pass through.

Inorganic bits various animals need to survive (e.g. iron, calcium, zinc)? Probably going to be in lower concentrations -- roots will extend further, presumably, and pick up some extra, but the growth will be primarily made up from additional organic compounds.

As for Dinosaurs? Some probably would have been able to digest plants differently, like how cows can digest grasses, but humans can't. If we're only counting things as "nutrition" if humans can digest it, it's easily possible to have less nutrition without being impossible for dinosaurs and the like to survive on it.

Re: Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when Slashdot was the home of intelligent, thoughtful commentary.

Here we have Exhibit A as to why this site is in the throes of decline.

Actually, a whole host of exhibits. Dumb commentary, 'news' posted days after its made the rounds elsewhere, and every thread turning into a political shit flinging contest.

Aye, poor Slashdot. It's true I once knew ye.

Re:Simple question

[idji]

SpaceX is owned by Elon Musk, who owns Tesla. He has two goals in life: "Save Earth" and "Make Mankind a multiplanetary species". The goal of Tesla is to fix global warning - go and watch Elon's introduction of the Model 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?.... Yes, go and watch the first few minutes - you see that he really cares about global warming more than his cars. So yes, this guy is putting everything into saving Earth and saving Mankind. His Gigafactory is about bringing down cost of batteries. and TODAY, he was slamming the fossil fuel industry publicly at SpaceX. Name one other person doing as much single handedly to stop global warming. He might win a Nobel Prize for stopping war in the Middle East by getting us all off our addiction to oil.

Re: Simple question

[Coren22]

Yes, I agree totally. We are trying to have an intelligent conversation, while idiots like you bitch about the things that make Slashdot what it is.

Dumb commentary,

Um, the whole point of Slashdot is the comment section.

'news' posted days after its made the rounds elsewhere,

This is how Slashdot works. If you see something interesting somewhere, you write up a submission about it. If you don't like that, go read Fox News, it seems like it would be more your speed.

and every thread turning into a political shit flinging contest.

Really? I only see that from that AC republican spammer. Most of us are discussing the points. I challenged an assertion that I did no understand, and was given an intelligent well though out response.

My background isn't the intricate details of biology, but on /., there is someone who knows exactly how these systems work. I asked a question, and got an answer, isn't that the basis of how intelligent conversations work?

Aye, poor Slashdot. It's true I once knew ye.

And finally, no, you never knew Slashdot, as your complaints are the complaints of a newbie who doesn't understand the basic facts about how Slashdot functions, therefore you couldn't possibly be a long time reader or commenter.

Re: Simple question

[Anonymous Coward]

More co2, more plants, more foodstuffs. More people able to survive.

Moron.

So what?

[YesIAmAScript]

Those GPS satellites were put up. There was no requirement for rocket recovery to make that happen.

What this does is make launches cheaper.

How does that affect me?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, have limited imagination.

Re:So what?

[Harlequin80]

Cheaper launches means more launches which means more satellites which means better services, more bandwidth and more experiments conducted and more information gather which results in new ideas, new inventions and new aspects of your life which will affect you.

Re:So what?

[camperdave]

The GPS satellites have a limited lifespan. They need periodic replacement, which means we need more launches. If the US can buy those launches for less money, then there is more money for beer.

Re: So what?

[gerf]

I recall that back in the 1990s Bill Gates wanted to build a satellite based cell network. It failed partially due go launch costs. The joking image showed Bill tossing satellites up by jumping on a springboard. More immediately, we need more weather satellites to improve weather forecasting, to keep GPS working, and better communication to far flung places. I recall possibilities of better balanced high speed bearings made in space, balanced better due to microgravity, so cheap launches could spur that. Long term, Musk wants to colonize Mars, and further. He's making the space elevator look less necessary after all.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cargo cult.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is cheaper, they can improve services faster and they'll be a bit cheaper too.

Re:So what?

[bbn]

How does that affect me?

Everything becomes a little bit cheaper because society now has to spend less money on launches. You have to pay less tax because the government get cheaper launches. Your internet may become a little cheaper because internet companies have to pay less for launches. You can get slightly more TV for the same money because broadcast companies pay less for launches. And so on.

You can also reverse the question. What would happen if launches became much more expensive? We would get less satellites and that might include less accurate weather forecasts, less service for farmers to optimise production, less optimal GPS service and so on.

Everyone benefits from this. Even the launches not made by SpaceX are going to be cheaper, because competitors have to do it cheaper to compete.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those GPS satellites were put up. There was no requirement for rocket recovery to make that happen.

What this does is make launches cheaper.

How does that affect me?

You, madam, have a limited imagination.

Re: So what?

[Teancum]

Part of that effort to build the satellite network resulted in the Iridium satellite constellation. A combination of 1990's electronic technology (it wasn't all that good... really) along with as you said the extremely high launch costs caused the companies to go bankrupt. Iridium itself has gone through several sets of owners, and it was kept on life support financially basically because the U.S. military couldn't find any alternative that could provide global coverage like Iridium was doing.

To give an example of the technical capabilities of Iridium, the first generation had a data throughput speed of 2400 baud for individual customers. That might have been sufficient for reading a few e-mails in the 1990's, but is grossly slow for current needs. The costs for Iridium phones are also insanely expensive compared to what was promised.... and frankly the satellites couldn't handle the crush of millions of users in that first generation either to spread those costs around.

Bill Gates' plan to have a large number of cheap satellites might have worked, but as you have pointed out it needed cheap launch costs to make it possible. $10k/kg to orbit is not cheap.

Re:So what?

[thegarbz]

What this does is make launches cheaper.

Yep exactly. Speaking of the GPS satellites which were put up, between 1978-1985 we put up 10 satellites. In 1989 and 90 we put up another 9 more to cover the world. Between 1990 and 1997 we replaced all of those satellites with 19 new ones. Guess how many of these 38 satellites are still in operation? Zero. The current satellites have an operational life of 12 years.

The single most significant cost of keeping our GPS system functioning is getting cheaper. How does that affect you? You tell me, this is coming out of the budget paid for by your taxes, not mine.

Re:So what?

[samwichse]

Well, he IS a script...

Re: So what?

[chispito]

While we're talking Iridium, they produce the brightest satellite flares, which can be rather striking. The website Heavens Above even has a helpful page where you can see when and where they are visible.

mission success

[rossdee]

Did the payload make it into the right orbit? That wasn't stated in TFA.

Re:mission success

[Anonymous Coward]

Payload made it to orbit.

And to the idiot. Imagine that every time you drove to the shops you torched your car. That's current launch economics.

Space-X is drive it home again, wipe the bugs off the screen, use it again tomorrow.

Re:mission success

[Bruce Perens]

Yes, they had total mission success.

Re:mission success

[Anonymous Coward]

As noted by others the payload made it to an (initial) orbit, but at the moment it is a highly elliptical orbit. Over the next few (days? weeks?) it will use on-board propulsion to enter its final geostationary orbit. Everything has gone better than planned, at least so far, though SpaceX's job is done everything that remains is on the satellite operator.

Re:mission success

[cowdung]

haha.. nobody cares..

we only care if he lands his rocket. ;)

(well, we do care.. because if it doesn't make it then the landing can't be said to be a full success)

SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Bruce Perens]

Landing a first stage after a ballistic re-entry is a pretty big deal. This means that SpaceX can recover the first stage in low-remaining-fuel situations like heavy payloads, geostationary injection (because it's a higher orbit) and when the booster is the center stage of a Falcon Heavy (and is really high and far downrange).

Since they've recovered 9 out of 10 engines, they've recovered most of the cost of both stages. If they can get a high recovery rate (and this more-difficult recovery argues that they might), that drives down the cost of a launch.

People at ULA watched this one and it sure wasn't good news for them. They can't compete financially with SpaceX as an expended rocket, forget about their competing with working first-stage recovery. It also blows the ULA recovery strategy - ejecting the engines and recovering just them, instead of the entire booster - out of the water.

But the big challenge for SpaceX now isn't one with astounding demonstrations of technology. It's doing the same thing over, and over, and doing it quickly, and making a profit. SpaceX wanted to reach a cadence of 18 launches this year, and they have so far launched 4 in the first third of the year. To be a profitable company and to reap the economic advantage of first-stage recovery, they will need to get higher than 18 per year.

So, I'm disappointed that Elon announced the "instant Mars demo" immediately after last month's at-sea landing. Yes, for Elon SpaceX has always been about Mars. But now is the time for SpaceX to focus on making a profit and having a rapid cadence. If Elon does that, he will have lots of $$$ and recovered boosters for Mars projects.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[DerekLyons]

If they can get a high recovery rate (and this more-difficult recovery argues that they might), that drives down the cost of a launch.

The real question is how much it drives down the cost of a launch - I.E. how much does refurbishment and recertification cost? Yeah, yeah, I know what Musk has tweeted. I don't put much credence in his ego driven preening.
 
 

But now is the time for SpaceX to focus on making a profit and having a rapid cadence. If Elon does that, he will have lots of $$$ and recovered boosters for Mars projects.

He'll have lots of boosters, sure. Enough bucks for the hardware though? That's another very open question.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Bruce Perens]

I don't put much credence in his ego driven preening.

Much as I am blown away by all of this, I agree that Elon can't always be taken at face value. He reminds me of when I worked for Steve Jobs and we had to account for the "reality distortion field".

There is more than just refurbishment cost. SpaceX has very large fixed costs. Only the operational costs will be changed by recovery.

Consider the first airplane crashed at the end of every flight. Eventually we got to the point of minimal refurbishment necessary per flight. If they can do that and if the launch demand expands with lower prices, which I think it will, they can drive the prices much lower.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

This landing profile was lower-fuel, higher-speed, three-engines for (roughly) 10 seconds and 12G.

It'll be interesting to see if their confidence in this much more aggressive landing burn means that they use it for easy missions as well, to increase the mass fraction a tad more.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Bruce Perens]

They just published a 71% increase of the mass fraction. See this.

Not having a boost-back burn means the barge is 660 km out to sea instead of 270 km. They'd better get really good at their at-sea operations if they want to do a lot of those.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[AK Marc]

So, I'm disappointed that Elon announced the "instant Mars demo" immediately after last month's at-sea landing. Yes, for Elon SpaceX has always been about Mars. But now is the time for SpaceX to focus on making a profit and having a rapid cadence. If Elon does that, he will have lots of $$$ and recovered boosters for Mars projects.

Cheaper launches are about Mars. You don't launch to Mars. You launch 10-100 times to build a launch platform in orbit, then launch to Mars from orbit, not the surface. So as the costs drop, the profitability increases. The profits are "reinvested" into more launches (unpaid ones) to put up a Mars launch platform. With 18 per year, and 10% being profits launched as "bonus" launches, that'd be about 2 a year dedicated to Mars. Depending on the plan, that puts the Mars launch a few years off. If they can launch more per year, they can speed that up, but they seem very connected. Launches = Mars. Not today, not tomorrow, but eventually.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Rei]

Indeed, I have to wonder what ULA is thinking going forward. They made the mistake of seriously underestimating SpaceX. It's understandable - there have been a lot of wannabee private rocket companies over the years. But they really dropped the ball on this one. Now they're deep in the middle of working towards an incremental, 50% price reduction via the Vulcan, which isn't anywhere close to being enough to be competitive.

So what do they do? I assume they finish their current efforts and try to get as many (probably at least partially coerced) launches out of it as they can. But meanwhile? Some possibilities:

1) Start over from scratch and target an even lower launch cost than SpaceX. It's certainly possible; rocketry costs are still orders of magnitude more than the cost of the energy that the rockets consume.
2) Move to a launch niche market filling in the gaps in SpaceX's product line (smaller rockets, storeable rockets, etc)
3) Take a "bold leap" in another direction, such as focusing on space tugs (such as Lockheed's "Jupiter") - basically, giving SpaceX LEO while claiming for themselves beyond-LEO.
4) Refocus away from rockets, to satellite development
5) Focus on NASA contracts unrelated to delivering payloads for low prices - for example trying to become a prime contractor on interplanetary crew vehicles, whatever-giant-rocket-congress-has-mandated, etc, things of that nature.
6) Move into a rocketry supporting role, focused on launch/range/communications services/etc
7) Try to crush SpaceX by whatever dubious legal and political means they can dream up
8) Put head in sand, pray that SpaceX shoots itself in the foot
9) Give up on the space market altogether, focus on other businesses.

Right now they seem to be going for 20% #7, 80% #8, meaning that they're probably headed toward #9.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Rei]

There is more than just refurbishment cost. SpaceX has very large fixed costs. Only the operational costs will be changed by recovery.

Indeed. Recovery can thus be seen as a "scale up" of operations, not a replacement for them. Last I heard they were hoping to get a couple dozen uses out of each stage. Doing so would thus represent a 1 1/2 orders of magnitude scaleup in operations.

It's not really crazy because their needs are certainly expected to increase. Not even taking into account the growth in the market that would occur from such low prices. Every Falcon Heavy is going to consume 28 engines and represents four large cores. And who says things stop with the Heavy? We know some of the speculation about the "Raptor", but they could very well give a Raptor-powered main stage standard Falcon-style boosters. That is, if they ever do end up producing a large Raptor-powered launch system. And no matter what, every Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch consumes one engine that never comes back.

With how much of the launch market they want to take over, especially for heavy launches, they're going to need a serious scaleup. And recovery is a type of "scaleup".

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[r0kk3rz]

But the big challenge for SpaceX now isn't one with astounding demonstrations of technology. It's doing the same thing over, and over, and doing it quickly, and making a profit. SpaceX wanted to reach a cadence of 18 launches this year, and they have so far launched 4 in the first third of the year. To be a profitable company and to reap the economic advantage of first-stage recovery, they will need to get higher than 18 per year.

Not true, maybe not as astounding to watch but a big demonstration of technology is actually flying those engines again, and again.

There's not much use to showy rocket landings unless they can cheaply run those engines again

Re: SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Kjella]

Not that I'm really disagreeing with you but how big is the total launch market at current rates? This is not like Tesla and the car market, as I understand it SpaceX is already a fairly big player. Even with reusable rockets there won't be a mass market any time soon.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[jabuzz]

I would argue that the only way to undercut SpaceX is via a Skylon approach and I don't think the technology is available to ULA.

On the other hand the ESA should ditch Ariane 6 before it goes any further and go full in on Skylon/Reaction Engines as the would have access to the technology.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easier to make profits if your launches are expensive. Why doesn't SpaceX understand that? By underpricing the competition they are ruining the industry for everyone. Their only justification is the dubious goal of a cheap Mars mission.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

Can' they just license the reentry tech. They can put SpaceX fins on their rockets.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Teancum]

But the big challenge for SpaceX now isn't one with astounding demonstrations of technology. It's doing the same thing over, and over, and doing it quickly, and making a profit.

I agree with you that is a core problem for the company. Having two launch pads in Florida and getting the third launch pad in Texas (not ignoring the one in California.... but that is specialized for polar/military payloads) is going to help a lot in terms of clearing their manifest too. Gwynne Shotwell just gave a speech with a Q&A recently about the Falcon Heavy and made a few remarks about the work done on pad 39A too. They are just about ready to start using that site for launch operations there, where a second launch team is likely to help increase that flight rate.

I'll also point out that at the moment range operations at Cape Canaveral in general needs to be streamlined if launch rates are to be increased. That involves more than just SpaceX and might even require a general rethinking for flight operations there for the other launch providers that use the same site. I know for a fact that the Space Shuttle really messed up launch schedules where a Shuttle launch not only took priority but also blocked out a huge hunk of the calendar for nearly a 3-4 week period of time. I would expect that the SLS and the crewed launches (both SpaceX and Boeing are launching out of KSC) are going to be in a similar situation.

By Texas law and the contract signed by SpaceX with the City of Brownsville and the surrounding communities, the Brownsville spaceport can have at most 12 launches per year and each one must be no closer than 20 days from the previous launch. While that might help work around some scheduling problems for some payloads when stuff is happening at the cape, it doesn't mean there is going to be much more of an increased launch tempo.

In other words, I think about the most that almost any private commercial launch provider could ever do right now with the current launch infrastructure for orbital spaceflight in America is about 20 launches per year... and that is being very generous. Last year SpaceX got in seven flight, with one catastrophic failure that required a full engineering review and a return to flight program that satisfied not only the FAA-AST regulators but also all of the customers... especially NASA and the DOD. If they get over a dozen flights in this year, I would be surprised.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Would push their schedule back even farther competitiveness-wise.
2) There would be outcry from other small rocket developers - ULA takes government subsidies to keep their rocket line running for the Air Force, so the smaller players would cite antitrust concerns. They're already doing that over OrbitalATK's idea of using surplus ICBMs as launchers.
3) Plausible, but this would be against ULA's charter as I understand it - they exist purely to run the launch business of Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, to the point where they're bound by contract to only develop and operate rockets and they send money back to their parent companies.
4) Against ULA's charter - won't happen
5) They already do this. The problem is that by law those launches have to be competitive unless there's a reason one provider can do the mission and the others can't.
6) Politically impossible. Too many jobs at stake.
7) Possible, but SpaceX has its own resources.
8) They can do it, but it won't work.
9) That would be dissolving the company.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easier to make profits if your launches are expensive. Why doesn't SpaceX understand that?

Because your statement makes no sense at all. If your launches are 10% less expensive than your competitors' launches, and you charge 5% less than your competitors *to* launch, you're making quite a bit more profit.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

Barring that catastrophic failure, they would have had more than a dozen flights last year. They are currently on pace to have 16 launches this year.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Rei]

I would not agree with that. There's a lot of interesting approaches out there (I even have one of my own... though so does every other rocketry nut on the planet ;) ) for significant cost reduction. The question is what will actually play out best, with what sort of investment, in what sort of market.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[silentbozo]

There's one other possibility that's a variation of the possibilities that you've listed:

Buy a used rocket fleet from Elon and launch those. That way ULA can leverage all of their launch provider infrastructure while getting the benefits of lower cost.

If SpaceX manages to continue cores, they're going to have a backlog to refly. If they successfully refly their cores multiple times (validating reuse), but are not able to step up launch cadence because of staffing/location issues, it creates a window for someone else to say, hey, do you mind if we buy some of your excess rocket inventory?

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[EnsilZah]

Well, Tory Bruno is claiming the ACES upper stage will be a sort of space tug, it will stay and get refueled on orbit and then will be able to reposition payloads launched to it.

They can also just remain a second option for 'Assured Access to Space' and collect whatever subsidies are required to keep them afloat until someone else like Blue Origin or Orbital ATK make them redundant.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Bruce Perens]

It's only a "race to the bottom" if the product quality is worse. We have no evidence that SpaceX product quality is worse in any way.

As far as I can tell it's just price competition, and darn it's about time!

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Bruce Perens]

I think the launch cadence law with Brownsville might change eventually. Brownsville wants jobs and that little neighborhood near Boca Chica isn't going to stand in the way.

I don't believe that two F9 launches a month per pad presents any logistical complications. Recovery would need more vessels. They aren't yet ready to launch FH that fast, so 1 FH/month. So, say 12/year for Boca Chica, 24 for Vandenberg, 24 for KSC LC-39a, and 24 for Canaveral AFB pad 40 are the maximum they could do right now. That's a lot of room for growth.

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of how much ego or "reality distortion field" Elon Musk may (or does) have, the fact that he is putting craft into orbit then landing most of the expendable parts back on Earth in one piece is huge. It's an engineering accomplishment in this field well beyond anything humanity had done previously. And Elon Musk deserves some credit for making that happen.

Re: SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[cbhacking]

SpaceX is a big player indeed. Take a look at http://spaceflightnow.com/laun..., and you'll see that SpaceX is right up there in launches scheduled. It's even competitive with Soyuz. That's with Falcon Heavy not online yet, too; they'll be able to pick up even more jobs once they can put heavy and even super-heavy-class payloads up. For that matter, they may not even need FH for that; according to their latest payload limit updates, the F9 is a Heavy-Lift Launch Vehicle (more than 20 tons to LEO) if flown in expendable configuration (no legs, no fins, probably little if any first-stage RCS, and no need to conserve fuel for re-entry and landing). They can't re-use those boosters, but they can use the profit margin on them to focus on making reusable launches even cheaper and faster.

As for mass market, though, that's a case where SpaceX's success will feed on itself. Right now, satellites are super expensive to launch. This means that you want to make the ones you launch super-reliable (sucks to get them into space and discover they don't work), very feature-rich (to maximize value per launch), as long-lived as possible (to amortize their launch cost over a longer time), and as future-proof as possible (because expanding capacity or capabilities later will be extremely expensive). All of this, of course, makes the satellites themselves extremely expensive. Therefore, there's less market for launches, because there's only so many satellites that it makes sense to launch at $200M a pop.

Now, imagine that the launch costs go way down. Suddenly, the total cost of launching a satellite also goes way down, and the vast majority of it is now the cost of the satellite. When you can launch two cheap satellites for less total cost than one expensive one and get the same capabilities, or launch four three-year satellites (planning each one to be an upgrade on the last) instead of one long-lived beast that will need bleeding-edge components at launch and still be quite obsolete in 12 years (but costs more than 4 times as much), you will end up with double or quadruple your launch count. When launches become cheap enough that it's viable to build an affordable global personal communication network like what Iridium wanted to be, you'll see a wave of companies wanting to put up the network that will replace the concept of cell towers, and they'll need to put up a *lot* of satellites.

Also, it's not just satellites. Remember that Dragon 2 is designed to be reusable as well. When launching a human-rated vehicle into orbit becomes cheap enough that space tourists don't have to be one of the 0.001%, you'll have a lot more people lining up to go... and you'll need places for them to go, so that'll increase your satellite market again as Bigelow and such launch space hotels. Then there's things like asteroid mining, which is currently hampered by launch costs but could become a regular source of launch contracts if the costs come down enough to make the business model viable.

As for "any time soon"... launches are already accelerating. It'll snowball as prices drop, as reliability increases, and as capacities expand.

Re: SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain further for the rest of us who don't say QED after reading your post?

Re:SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[Anonymous Coward]

Tweets by other SpaceX employees in the past few months indicate that a refurbished launch will be priced at least 30% lower then a new launch. It's nowhere close to the 90% lower cost value, but it's a significant discount.

Re: SpaceX's Next Big Challenge

[PPalmgren]

They can send stuff higher and reserve less fuel to return the rocket to the coast, but as a side effect have to deal with rougher seas and weather for the barge and have a smaller tolerance for error. It saves them either large amounts of fuel or allows larger payloads.

borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as education

[xeno]

On one hand, it's thrilling to see the incredible become very credible. The very idea of this kind of spacecraft landing was thought to defy the laws of physics a decade ago, considered an engineering impossibility just a few short years ago, foolish to attempt last year, and by the end of this year, it probably won't get a headline. I'm not sure I'd want to work there, but the pace of SpaceX's science and engineering advancements is astounding. Kudos to anyone who can take the stress; the output is truly impressive.

More in the moment, though, I see what they meant by "subject to extreme velocities and re-entry heating" as it appears the octaweb shielding took enough heat damage from the 2x re-entry speed and 3-engine retroburn that the shielding and some underlying componentry continued to burn for a bit. But the borg over there interpret damage as education, and I doubt we'll see the same problem again. F*ing impressive. I look forward to more info in the morning.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Bruce Perens]

We don't know what was burning down there. It might just have been fuel seeping out of the turbopump. They did a 3-rocket burn this time, and the other two times we've seen a 1-rocket burn.

It's got a much larger fire on the way up. I agree it was alarming, but we don't know that it represented actual damage yet.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[xeno]

Sort of... there's far more heat stress behind the engines on re-entry than launch. And while low-level fire suppression (misting, more or less) on the drone ship is more or less par for the course, the SpaceX operators had to be significantly worried to fire up a high-pressure nozzle toward the engines, what with the potential thermal damage from sudden uneven cooling, not to mention physically pushing it sideways. All speculation, but yeah, it was alarming.

Overall, though, another serious win for science and balls.

not more storage, faster reuse :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

he doesn't need to build a bigger hanger to store them in, he needs to start re-launching them! :-)

Re:not more storage, faster reuse :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Even under the best of circumstances they're going to spend most of their time in one hanger or another. Either prepped and waiting for their next launch or waiting for their checkout & any necessary refurb.

Torching the car

[Anonymous Coward]

I bike to the shop, you insensitive clod!

(Besides, I'd like to see more torching their cars, until they run out of money, but perhaps that's just me).

On a more serious note: kudos to SpaceX, their engineers and visionaries. We definitely need this more than some dubious "financial products".

Still. We need asking hard questions too, now more than ever, and running over the ones asking questions like a mob of raging apes doesn't really look like progress to me.

Re:Torching the car

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't object to you riding a bike, you can torch that instead :). Relative economics are the same if it's an expensive bike.

This really is a game changer, I have serious doubts about Mars as that's a really bad choice compared to the moon, but this makes space exploration/exploitation actually viable - as compared to just being an expensive dick waving competition.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Bruce Perens]

There's a lot of water dumped on the pad at launch, and I'm sure some of it splashes on to the bells.

I don't think they are worried about pushing it sideways, the word from Musk is that they don't really have to tie the rocket down once it's landed, and winds and rocking on something 160 feet high are probably more force than that water stream. The rocket is very bottom-heavy with the tanks empty.

When they turned the water on, the nozzle was tilted upward. It wasn't aimed at where the flame was. So it's not too clear what was going on, but I agree that nozzle looked like it was commanded or the result of some sort of fire alarm.

Boring!!

[EzInKy]

Why should we be impressed by them repeating already demonstrated science? You think this is a nerd site or something?

Musk runs on vision

[monkeyxpress]

So, I'm disappointed that Elon announced the "instant Mars demo" immediately after last month's at-sea landing. Yes, for Elon SpaceX has always been about Mars. But now is the time for SpaceX to focus on making a profit and having a rapid cadence. If Elon does that, he will have lots of $$$ and recovered boosters for Mars projects.

Perhaps, but the reality is that Elon did not design these rockets himself. What he did was convince the best minds in rocketry to move to a startup company with fewer resources than the companies they were leaving, longer work hours, and greater job insecurity. His ability to create a vision and convince people to buy into it is his real strength (as was Jobs etc) and that is what he knows best. Talent isn't easily attracted by 'we will ramp up production to xxx units per year'. It is attracted by 'we will change the world...' etc etc.

Having said that, you are right that at some point Elon needs to deliver in quantity, both with SpaceX and Tesla. The reality is that changing the world normally requires a lot of boring grunt work and it will be interesting to see if he is a good enough business manager to pull this off. Worryingly, this lack of pragmatism is what sunk Jobs before his second coming. He got carried away with the vision on things like Lisa and this got in the way of making a commercially viable product. One just hopes that Musk's reality distortion field has not developed to a level where it engulfs the host yet.

Re:Musk runs on vision

[Bruce Perens]

I had an office across the hall from Steve at Pixar for some years. I wasn't that important, maybe they just wanted to keep an eye on me. One day, he made his peace with Bill Gates, and sometime that day I looked up and the NeXT workstation wasn't on his desk any longer. There was a Windows laptop there.

Maybe Elon will get that sort of rude awakening sometime.

Re:Musk runs on vision

[St.Creed]

I think he's pretty aware of economies of scale. With Tesla he has been pushing toward the model 3 for years, just so the operation can be profitable and sustainable. To have him discount that whole strategy 'because rockets' sounds rather far-fetched.

Re:Musk runs on vision

[TheSync]

One day, he made his peace with Bill Gates, and sometime that day I looked up and the NeXT workstation wasn't on his desk any longer. There was a Windows laptop there.

I bet the next day he was so frustrated that he said "I bet I can sell NeXT to Apple and give them an operating system that doesn't suck this bad.."

Re:Musk runs on vision

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce,
By 1997, the NeXT workstation would have been running largely outdated hardware and would have been ready for replacement.
The fact that they replaced it with with a system from a company that just loaned them $150 million should not be seen as distrust of the NeXT system, since earlier that year they had committed to basing OSX on the NeXT operating system.
OSX lives on, I do not see what rude awakening you are referring to.
Gary (btw, I am not going to use my login again until /. is no longer being used as an astro-turfing tool, I suggest all members do the same)

Re:Musk runs on vision

[Bruce Perens]

The funny thing is that when he went back to Apple, he described it as "like a strung-out old girlfriend who you want to help, but you don't want to get too involved."

Re:Musk runs on vision

[Bruce Perens]

This was before Steve went back to Apple, so earlier than '97.

Re:Musk runs on vision

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, interestingly enough Apple purchased NeXT in early 1997, while Jobs did not officially return to Apple until July 1997... Similarly, you were both at Pixar for a pretty long period of time, so please pardon my assumptions.

In any case, NeXT lives on in OSX and Apple has chosen a startling different path for their OS than MSoft has... So I still do not get the rude awakening angle

How are the costs adding up though?

[Viol8]

Are the costs of the extra fuel required for landing plus recovery and refurbishment of the engines and control systems (I assume the rocket body is scrap) less than simply building a new one? I guess it must be if not now at least at some point in the future but I'd like to see some figures.

Re:How are the costs adding up though?

[Bruce Perens]

Fuel isn't a big part of the cost. It's around $200K for the entire load.

We have yet to find out about the refurbishment costs, they haven't even done the test burns on the second returned booster yet, but they are trying for essentially no refurbishment.

This latest rocket came in at twice the speed (2 km/sec through the atmosphere) and had a 12-G burn at the end, and there might have been damage that wasn't on the other two recovered boosters.

Re: How are the costs adding up though?

[Anonymous Coward]

SpaceX hasn't given any indication that they would need to replace the body, although we won't know until they've successfully relaunched a used stage. They most likely won't reveal the exact costs (we don't know the manufacturing cost for new stages or their profit margins either) as that's proprietary.

Re: How are the costs adding up though?

[cjameshuff]

Their intent is to "gas and go": replenish fluids and fly again. They've discussed future plans of refueling at sea and flying the stages back to land, which gets them back in a few minutes and avoids a long and costly trip with a support vessel towing an ASDS which is unavailable for landings until it gets towed back out to sea.

They've not relaunched, but they refueled and fired up the first stage they brought back. Something broke loose and was ingested by one of the turbopumps, shutting one engine down, but the stage was otherwise in full working order. Their plans are to run the second recovered stage through ten test fires and fly it again, and SES is interested in having one of their satellites be the payload.

Arguably a first

[cbhacking]

The headline ends with the word "again", making it sound like this is a repeat of a prior event, but in reality this is very much a new achievement. The first two successful landings were from relatively light payloads sent into low Earth orbit (LEO). This mission was sent to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO), a much harder destination. The max payload for GTO is well under half what it is for LEO, because you need to get the satellite going much faster.

To get a big satellite to that orbit, SpaceX has to push the launch vehicle a lot closer to its limits. The engines burn longer, on the ascent, leaving the rocket with less fuel to try and slow itself for landing. At the same time, the first stage boosts to a much higher suborbital peak. It therefore has to re-enter through more atmosphere, while going faster, with less fuel to slow down. The increased speed and distance means more heating of the bottom of the rocket, which doesn't have anything like the heat shielding a Dragon capsule (or similar) would. Fortunately, it's not going as fast as an orbital capsule... but it's still going a lot faster than it would be on a launch to LEO.

Demonstrating that the first stage can be recovered even after a launch to GTO is a really big deal. In it's own way, it's as big a deal as the first two successful landings. In December we saw the first ever landing for an orbital booster, then a few weeks ago we saw the first ever landing at sea (which is necessary for GTO boosters to have any hope of landing, but that launch was a LEO launch). Today, we saw the first even landing of a GTO launcher. That is a huge deal!

Re:Arguably a first

[oobayly]

I had to watch the SES-9 & CRS-8 missions to check that out*. For GTO, MECO is at 8,300km/h & 65km. For LEO, MECO is at 6600km/h & 74km. So they managed to recover a stage travelling 25% faster. The lateral velocity would have been greater too, because the launch profile is flatter.

* Not really to check it out, but to compare the actual numbers. It'll obviously have to go faster to get to GTO.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[JaredOfEuropa]

Is there a decent video of the launch and landing? That Verge article is just animated GIFs and tweets.

Why no video of the landing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last video of the first 'landing' was clearly a reversed video of a rocket taking off, it looked dodgy as HELL, so presumably that's why there is no video of this 'landing'? All I see are two useless animated gifs.

Re: Why no video of the landing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you're trolling, but I'll bite. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L0bMeDj76ig

Re: Why no video of the landing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? What does that show? Why does the Vice website only contain two completely useless gifs? Why were we never shown the video from the RAFT of the previous landing?
And by "trolling", I presume you mean "asking questions for which I don't have answers" or "questioning what the TV tells me, which we can't possibly allow"...

Re:Why no video of the landing?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's your job to prove that SpaceX is lying, it is not our job to prove what is already considered to be a truth. Your turn.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to The Verge.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1...
Slashdot should not use them as source of anything. They are allmost as bad as buzzfeed.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Michael Woodhams]

The landing is at about 9:10 here but there isn't very much to see: it was a night landing from a nearby camera - the moment of landing is invisible in glare. You get to see the glare, then it fades to reveal the landed rocket.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[cbhacking]

Hopefully they'll post an aerial video soon, though the quality will still be less than that amazing video of the daytime landing.

On the live feed, a bunch of people sort of sighed or went "aww" as the screen lit up with the glow... I guess it kind of looked like the rocket had exploded, and the video was frozen before that so you couldn't tell what had happened. Then the exhaust and glow start to clear and you can see the intact landing legs and engine nozzles, and all hell breaks loose.

I was dancing in my chair. What an incredible thing to see...

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[St.Creed]

I'm not sure I'd want to work there, but the pace of SpaceX's science and engineering advancements is astounding. Kudos to anyone who can take the stress; the output is truly impressive.

I get stressed whenever I have less work than I can handle, and feel great when I can really make a contribution and the work is twice the amount I could handle with confidence, and I need to find a solution that saves the whole project. The rush I get when I make the deadline in those circumstances is amazing.

Working with slower folks who need to have everything explained twice is also creating a lot of stress for me. I prefer smart co-workers that just need a few words, or none at all, and where we can count on getting things done because we're all very good at what we do and can trust each other in that.

Working for Tesla or SpaceX would be about the best job I could imagine having. Apart from building my own company ofcourse, which is what I'm doing now. But I'd settle for equity if I could help build those companies. They make tangible contributions to a better world.

Of course, I'm not an American so this option is mostly nonexistent. Still... I could dream :)

Reuse effect on cost

[dallaylaen]

I'm not sure I get it right, but here's my impression.

One-time rockets impose tight conditions on all parts' lifespans and quality: they must live through the launch with five nines reliability, yet making them last any longer is a waste of resources. Putting backups is a waste as well.

The reuse, on the other hand, means that (1) long lasting parts are not a waste and (2) backups are not a waste. This means that longer lasting, less reliable parts (i.e. closer to civil manufacturing, think commercial aircraft) can be used which in turn means much simpler production and QA. And *that* will drive the price tag down (eventually), not saving half the mission cost at half the mission cost.

*If* my assumptions are correct, *then* we're going to see a slight increase in engines number/power, and a series of successful launches/landings *despite* failing engines.

Re:Reuse effect on cost

[Sooner Boomer]

Another thing to consider is that some parts suffer greater stresses and wear than other parts. The turbopump is probably the hardest working/wearing part. The tanks, on the other hand, are mostly just along for the ride.

Re:Reuse effect on cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you do have some parts that wear quicker than others with decent engineering that isn't an issue. You simply swap them out after X flights, having them in locations that are accessible without disassembling the entire device (in this case rocket motor) is where the "decent engineering" part comes in. We see this today with modern commercial aircraft where they have several partial refurbs and a few full refurbs in their service life. This seems to have been a design philosophy with the Falcon 9 as if you see some of the photos there seems to be a lot of accessibility to the various parts of the motors.

The "article" didn't cover much

[Bender Unit 22]

not already covered in the summary here.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't any chase plane video for this landing.

The chase planes that took the video's you're referring to for the previous landing is from a Nasa plane as that was a Nasa flight to ISS. As this wasn't a Nasa flight and Space-X doesn't have a chase plane, no video...

Posted AC to preserve mod points.

Hmm, better idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be a better idea to have a large container of water (on the water), and just slow it down enough that it doesn't get damaged, then land the thing in said container of water?
Or something else, like a huge foam, huge aerogel, a huge ball-pit. (preferably with noisy children in it)
I mean, let's face it, the rocket itself is a fairly sturdy thing, it won't break that easily if it lands in something soft enough. Circles are strong.

Why the boner over trying to land it upright?
I mean, it is a fantastic achievement and I love hearing of their success, but it would be far easier with the soft-land at side-angle surely?
In the end, it will end up flat anyway when it gets carted off back to land.
This takes out an extra few steps and just lands it on its side.
It would also use less fuel since the longer side has more impact on its speed.

Re:Hmm, better idea?

[pscottdv]

The reaction mass comes out of the bottom end.

Re:Hmm, better idea?

[chispito]

Because the hard way is the best way. No parachutes are needed, it's landing-site agnostic, the rocket doesn't need to be strengthened in any other dimensions than it already is for launch, they're already working extensively on propulsive soft landings for their crew module and most importantly to Musk, I imagine, the technology scales up with bigger rockets.

Re:Hmm, better idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rockets are designed to deal almost solely with vertical stresses (along the nose to engine axis). Engineering them to be able to handle stresses on any other axis vastly increases the mass of the launch vehicle, reducing the payload mass.

When it is "carted off back to land" it will be in/on a structure specifically designed to minimize non-vertical stresses on the vehicle.

Re:Hmm, better idea?

[nick1austin]

Because landing upright works for Mars and the Moon; It also scales well to larger payloads.

Elon is being sneaky and developing a way to colonise Mars but getting paying customers to fund the necessary R&D.

The NASA method of using a heatshield, parachute and skycrane to land the Curiosity Rover on Mars was ingenious but at the maximum weight limit of what that method could achieve. Any heavier and it won't work.

A propulsive vertical landing on Mars could go much heavier. Much much heavier. Weights of 50 tons to the surface of Mars are being talked about.

Assertion Proof Please?

[mykepredko]

Antique,

Sorry, but where is the proof to your assertion that manned repair of satellites lowers their cost and improves their longevity?

As far as I know, there is only one example of a satellite being repaired in orbit (the Hubble Telescope) and, pulling together the costs of the shuttle flights to the satellite, I think you would be very hard pressed to demonstrate that it was more cost efficient to fix it rather than simply replace it.

Personally, I love the concept of having a permanently manned outpost to maintain and refurbish satellites but I don't believe it is cost effective or reasonable any time soon - if it were, then I would expect a big part of the ISS' mission would have been to provide this service.

Re:Assertion Proof Please?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were more satellites that were repaired on orbit. Solar Max, for instance. There were also a number of cases where satellites had upper-stage failures and were retrieved, brought back to Earth, and re-launched by shuttle.

Re: Assertion Proof Please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hubble. Cost of repair vs cost of new sattrlite.

Re: Assertion Proof Please?

[Coren22]

http://www.livescience.com/357...

According to that, the total cost of all the upgrades came in at $10 billion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The original estimate was $400 million, final cost after the overruns was $2.5 billion. We could have launched 4 of them for the costs of the 5 servicing missions.

It is up to you if you think it was worth it, personally, I think it was, though perhaps lifting two would have made for even better pictures.

Re:Assertion Proof Please?

[Antique Geekmeister]

SpaceX is still on course to lower the cost/pound to orbit by a factor of roughly 25. Even if that figure is very optimistic, I'd anticipate them lowering the cost/pound by at least a factor of 5. That makes repairs vastly more reasonable. And it would not need a permanent outpost. At those kinds of prices, and with the spare maneuvering capacity of these craft, multiple satellite repairs become possible on a much smaller budget.

Re: Assertion Proof Please?

[mykepredko]

Thanx - good reference.

feeding the troll

[Anonymous Coward]

It is another step on reducing launch costs, which makes it more economically feasible for us to take miserable trolls that benefit from the advances of science while actively trying to undercut science, and shoot them into the Sun.

What's next

[Anonymous Coward]

At one time, it was said that it was impossible to come up with a flyout plan that would result in a recovery. X appears to have found one.

At one time, similar story with landing on a moving target. They appear to be getting there on this as well.

Next challenge is starting to reuse some of the parts.
Some static test firing of the recovered engines to see what they can actually still do would be interesting.
Perhaps a 'something old and something new' launch with 1 engine on it's second trip?
Maybe a launch with a whole booster and water ballast?

That seems more interesting than building a bigger bone yard.

Re:What's next

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no intent on "reusing some of the parts". SpaceX intends to reuse entire (first stage) boosters as is with little to no refurb. There have already been hold down tests on the first returned booster and I assume that the second will be tested shortly followed closely by this one. It sounds like they intend to fly cargo on a previously flown stage sometime in the next few months. As you suggest a few dumb tests probably would be wise, but it costs quite a bit of money, resources & requires approvals to fly one of these things even if you're just boosting dead weight so going with some (low end) cargo isn't crazy either.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'll bet it was a nighttime 'landing', how convenient... If you believe this, you'll believe anything.
Why is there no footage of the landing from the raft of the previous landing? We see a very far away shot of an obviously CGI rocket 'landing' on a CGI raft in the sea, and only later do we see the view from the camera on the raft - i.e. much higher resolution. Why could that possibly be?

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Sooner Boomer]

We don't know what was burning down there. It might just have been fuel seeping out of the turbopump.

As the booster uses fuel as the working fluid in the hydraulic system (in a total-loss manner), it probably was fuel from the hydraulic system leaking/draining. A concern I had was that since this is a total-loss system (the fuel is not recirculated, but rather dumped when "the other side" of an actuator is powered) the booster could have run out of fuel/hydraulic fluid before it touched down. Wonder how much was left in the tank?

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to always be small fires on engines after landing. Just was more prominent this time because being a night time landing at sea there was no other view to show off.

Someone asked about this after the first landing, and the answer was basically "eh, it's fine and to be expected," a mix of the special paint they use (that is designed to burn off... which is why the bottom of the falcon is white going up and black coming down... and left over fuel / fluids.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Anonymous Coward]

There was something very significant to see in my opinion. Pause it at 9:15 just as the camera adjusts to the flare, and look at the drone ship itself. If you do a search and find an overhead shot of the drone ship, you'll see there are two circles on it - a large outer white circle, and a smaller, yellow inner circle, with a logo in the center. The legs are visibly within the yellow circle, aside from the leg on the left which is out of the frame. They landed *more* precisely than they did on the previous landing.

In other words, even with a harder situation, a more difficult landing, they continued to improve the outcome.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[chispito]

Here you go. For future reference, just tack an "&t=8m53s" on the end of the link, substituting whatever value for minutes and seconds you're looking for. I linked a bit earlier than 9:10 to establish context.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Valkyre]

The after-burning is expected. The same thing happens on a pad safe during an abort. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... This is the aborted launch from SES-9, and you can clearly see that there are flames under the rocket post-abort, but this same rocket launched 4 days later (had to make a new launch window) without issue.

Trickle Down

[DarthVain]

I also remember the Iridium constellation. It was massively expensive. When they tried to pass onto consumers. Not only with 5000$ "phones" but with insanely priced subscription packages that really put them out of reach for anybody without either extreme need or for government/industrial/military use. So while it seem to be sold as a "personal" solution, it really priced itself out of that market pretty quickly.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Bruce Perens]

Yes, it looks pretty much like what we saw.

Re:borg^h^h^h^hSpaceX interpret damage as educatio

[Anonymous Coward]

Could have been random chance on the precision...

What's the fire at 10:17?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like a growing fire on the booster on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

at 10:17 it's quite a bit larger. Is this normal or another tweak that needs attention? I think that they try blast it with an extinguisher shortly afterwards.

Irrespective, a most excellent outcome; big smiles our our faces! :) :) :)

Re:What's the fire at 10:17?

[cowdung]

good observation.. I hadn't looked that far into the video.

landing on float-ship

[Anonymous Coward]

outstanding achievement on record. congratulate the team Spirit