Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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

Posted by msmash on from the sad-news dept.

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.

11 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. RUD FUD by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Informative

    I like that....

    This is still lots better than what NASA is doing. Stressing the technology. Doing new things.

    Going ka boom. Everybody needs an earth shattering kaboom now and again. I just wish they'd have audio on the drone ship.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  2. All Electric? Cool! by BenJeremy · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...the launch of two powerful all-electric communications satellites

    I'm glad we are finally getting past the era of internal combustion and the earlier coal-fired satellites!

    1. Re:All Electric? Cool! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Gotta push the memes while they're hot. Gluten free water. Asbestos free turkey. Non radioactive microwave oven.

    2. Re:All Electric? Cool! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      ion propulsion is NOT "all electric". Still need some particles to ionize.

    3. Re:All Electric? Cool! by ClayJar · · Score: 5, Informative

      Also, chemical propellant is "heavy", meaning it takes much more mass to get an equivalent kick. If you want real words, the Isp (specific impulse) is lower for chemical propellant engines than for ion engines. With all electric satellites, you can carry much less propellant, meaning you can have a satellite of comparable capability in much less mass. In the case of these two satellites, the Boeing BSS-702SP platform they're built on means you can fit two on a "normal" GTO launch. That basically halves your launch costs.

      The tradeoffs are that while all electric propulsion is very "fuel efficient", the thrust of ion engines is a very small fraction of that of the more conventional chemical propellant engines, so instead of taking days to settle in to your final orbit, it can take weeks of slow orbit raising. This is a "cost" that may or may not be worth the trade. Also, since the 702SP satellites are launched in pairs, a launch failure could take out two birds with one... rocket. To give a bit of insurance against this, Eutelsat and ABS chose to split two rockets. They'd each fly one satellite per launch, meaning they only risked one of their two each flight in case of a Very Bad Day.

  3. Telemetry by JamesPLynch · · Score: 5, Informative

    Musk tweeted:
    "Looks like thrust was low on 1 of 3 landing engines. High g landings v sensitive to all engines operating at max."
    "Upgrades underway to enable rocket to compensate for a thrust shortfall on one of the three landing engines. Probably get there end of year."

    Landing video froze at the last moment but it looked like a bulls-eye landing. There was flame climbing up the side of the stage. Telemetry should be helpful in making improvements.

    1. Re:Telemetry by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Funny

      Does the engine design have that margin already?

      FWIW, the Falcon 9 heavy will have nine of these engines. 8/9 seems easier than 2/3 (and of course 7/9 is easier on the eyes).

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    2. Re:Telemetry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Falcon 9 has 9 of those engines. they only use 1 to 3 of them for landing depending on the launch profile, using all 9 of them would make the rocket go back up instead of landing (technically if they left 1 of them turned on long enough it would make the rocket go back up, part of what makes landing a falcon so challenging compared to the blue origin's rocket)
      Falcon heavy will have 9 on each core, with 3 cores, total of 27 of engines, but each core will have to land independently. So for the landing, not much actually changes, other than two of them happening at the same time (and one slightly later if they try to recover the center core, probably only going to be feasible on very heavy launches to LEO)

  4. Takeoffs More Important by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:Someone is playing Kerbal Space Program by ray-auch · · Score: 5, Informative

    RUD = "Rapid Unplanned Disassembly" has been around a _lot_ longer than ksp.

    See google books for one example from 1991, but it goes back much further than that.

  6. Re:Someone is playing Kerbal Space Program by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Also lithobreaking is used as a term for crashing."

    No, that refers to a type of prison labor. You mean lithobraking.