SpaceX's Falcon 9 Crashes Into Droneship (cbsnews.com)

SpaceX failed to successfully land its Falcon 9 on a drone ship at sea on Wednesday. Prior to today's crash, the company was able to conduct three successful experimental landing of its used rocket in a row. SpaceX founder Elon Musk noted that the booster rocket had a RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly, he explained) on droneship. From a CBS News report: It was the California rocket company's fifth unsuccessful drone-ship landing after three straight successes, one in April and two in May. Including a successful landing at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station last December, SpaceX's recovery record now stands at four successes in nine attempts. But the landing attempt was a strictly secondary objective. The mission's primary goal, the launch of two powerful all-electric communications satellites, was a complete success and regardless of the loss of the first stage, company engineers expected to collect valuable data as they continue their push to make such landings routine.

Comments

Takeoffs More Important

[Bing Tsher E]

More important than a successful landing is a successful second takeoff of the recovered Falcon 9 stage. Without that this is just scrap metal recovery.

So we will need to wait and see.

Re:Takeoffs More Important

[LWATCDR]

Don't forget about turn around time.
That is going to be an issue. Will the second flight of the first stage be as reliable as the first flight and how long and how much to get to the first flight.
If you can reuse the stage but you have a good chance of it not working the second, third, ...... x time then is it worth it?

Pushing the envelope

[sjbe]

NASA's funding depends on pleasing politicians. So they need to be overly cautious and avoid pushing tech till it breaks, even if we would learn more that way.

I think that philosophy is just timidity at its worst. NASA could go and push the envelope and blow some stuff up. They've done it before. The problem is that they lack an administrator with the cojones to stand in front of congress and explain why blowing up the occasional rocket is a good thing.

SpaceX's investors have a longer attention span than voters.

Voters don't have much say in the funding of NASA. In fact very few of them really give much of a shit about NASA at all and NASA hasn't given them much of a reason to give a shit. SpaceX has a CEO who is also a substantial shareholder (reportedly at least 25%) and controls the company which has a LOT to do with the laser focus and long term outlook.

Re:why no upper body capture loop?

[Immerman]

I imagine adding a ~60m tall gantry with support arm, sturdy enough to withstand repeated rocket detonations at point-blank range (because accidents will still happen), would be a little expensive on what's currently basically a big floating target to shoot massive bullets at. Plus you then have to avoid it during the landing, and have the support arm get in place, adapting to an uncertain rocket position, within a second or so of touchdown before it's too late to do any good.

Then, assuming you solve those problems, you now have a "safety net" that would be financially foolish to not use every time, essentially killing any further advancement in unaided landing stability. Which is counterproductive to their long-term goal of developing the technology to land people on Mars, were there won't be any "safety nets" available. Because *that* is what Musk has repeatedly said is motivating him - launching payloads into orbit is just an economically viable means to that end.

Besides, even here on Earth, being able to land anywhere flat and solid offers far more long-term options than needing a landing gantry.

Re:SpaceX customers

[nitehawk214]

NASA isn't stupid. They know if a rocket with their name on the side explodes, politicians will go apeshit and immediately cut funding. If a SpaceX or Orbital ATK rocket explodes (which both had a NASA ISS payload explode), well that the cost of being on the forefront.

And it is the cost of pushing the envelope, so NASA does what it can to get these missions flying on American hardware from American launch sites. Politicians be damned.

Consider the facts

[Skythe]

I'm sure I am preaching to the crowd here, but the crash should be considered in light of the following facts:
- SpaceX customers still pay for the entire rocket, there is no discount applied yet
- All other competing rockets do not have this capability and burn up on re-entry
- Every landing attempt provides new and unique data that can be used for continuous improvement
- The primary mission (what they are being paid for) was still accomplished