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SpaceX Releases Ultra-HD 4K Footage Of Falcon 9 Landing (4k.com)
An anonymous reader quotes 4K.com:
On June 3, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was placed into low-orbit for the sake of launching its Dragon spacecraft into their eleventh Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-11) to the International Space Station... Last week SpaceX shared on their Youtube channel the remarkable 4K UHD footage of the landing, and since many of us are not used to watching this kind of footage except for Sci-Fi movies or video games, the landing seems almost Hollywood-level surreal, especially since it happens so quickly and accurately. You can watch the video at 4k and 60 fps here if you happen to own a 4K TV or UHD PC monitor with the right hardware specs... The footage above isn't SpaceX's first 4K video of one of its launches. The company has also previously released other videos of even more impressive landings directly onto the surfaces of drone ships.
The article also reminds readers that "If you are by any chance looking to send something or someone out of space, Elon Musk's company offers reasonable prices for their launching services, starting at $62 million for its Falcon 9 and $90 million for the Falcon Heavy."
The article also reminds readers that "If you are by any chance looking to send something or someone out of space, Elon Musk's company offers reasonable prices for their launching services, starting at $62 million for its Falcon 9 and $90 million for the Falcon Heavy."
If you are by any chance looking to send something or someone out of space...
If I knew where the hell "out of space" was, I might be interested.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Do they really think they can fool us by reversing the footage of a launch? This has about as much truth to it as Comey's testimony.
Here are some really cool videos of SpaceX landing the first stage of their rockets (on land and on sea). They've done it 11 times by now, and have already re-flown one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (sped up barge landing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (real-time land landing)
I hope they start doing the entire stream in 4K
Jeff Bezos? Is that you?
If you watch the video mentioned in TFA you can see the top of the rocket (and the rest of the landing pad) visibly snapping into focus at the 10 second mark. I'm guessing that this is at the point where the auto focus system can finally latch onto something that it can use for a focal point.
But given that the camera is a fixed distance from the landing pad a fixed focus system would have been superior in this instance.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
2/5, a camera tracking the rocket closer up would have been nicer.
The last explosion was the BE-4 powerpack on the test stand, right?
Ezekiel 23:20
Despite having a virtual monopoly on all the cool space stuff, it still takes a private organization to make space amazing. Government is a joke.
Uh, yea, NASA is expensive (unless compared to DoD) but only a fool would consider what NASA does as NOT amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAL4F6IWC-Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQmTdYPVJxM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKVPFyu_tHQ
How about 4K video of the last explosion?
That's what this is. It's just the explosion is controlled this time.
This is amazing footage of something that the "experts" said couldn't be done. This scares the shit out of traditional defense contractors like Boeing and the United Space Alliance.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
If SpaceX are going to tout their "reasonable prices" they should adjust them slightly:
"starting at only $61,999,999.99 for its Falcon 9 and just $89,999,999.99 for the Falcon Heavy!"
No, Hillary was the cunt. You millennials really have trouble keeping your genders straight, don't you?
Nope, focus seems spot-on from the start. Perhaps your playback is switching streams at that point?
Just Kidding, we all know how moot that would be. The landing and retrieval certainly does put a kinder face on rocketry, something desperately needed. Its something that will be useless if remanufactured for war.
[($)]
Is there a link to download the video for people stuck on the wrong side of the "National Broadband Network"?
sustainable living
Nothing new here Neil Armstrong performed a similar landing manoeuvre on the moon in the 1960's using nothing more than a joystick.
You can see the thrust vectoring a bit, but mostly, just a no big deal, smooth transition to zero everything. (Position and angles and their derivatives.)
I think they've got it!
So what's next? Heavy is probably easier than folks?
No, Hillary was the cunt. You millennials really have trouble keeping your genders straight, don't you?
Unlike you, millennials can tell the difference between having a cunt & being one. And there's none bigger in America right now than Putin's Agent Orange.
Actually, rocket experts all did know that you could land a rocket on its tail. After all, the lunar module landed that way. What they did not know is whether you can re-fly a booster at a net cost savings over just building a new one. And although SpaceX has proven that they can re-fly the booster, it will take some years of operation to actually show that they save money this way.
I think they'll do it. But we've got to be realistic and realize that it's not done yet.
Bruce Perens.
SpaceX would not have been able to get this far without: 1) Experience built by NASA at great expense.2) Direct financial support from NASA.
Bruce Perens.
For those that think SpaceX is soaking up piles of investor's money, it should be pointed out that SpaceX hasn't had any additional investment since the Fidelity/Google round of investment that arguably wasn't even for operations but rather for the satellite constellation.
More to the point, I think SpaceX is laughing all of the way to the bank right now and making tremendous profits off of its rockets right now. That they might be earning even more profit from each launch due to reflown boosters and space capsules (CRS-11 is a reused Dragon that was originally flown on CRS-4), they certainly seem to be able to meet payroll, pay for major expansions, and engage in R&D for future designs on their own dime. As to if this particular area of operations is profitable yet, I agree that remains to be seen.
All told, I would think that SpaceX has likely put in about a quarter of a billion to a billion dollars worth of R&D resources into its reusable rocket core development program. As per some discussion Elon Musk had after the reflown core happened, SpaceX plans on recouping that investment over the next several years.
People were interested in rocketry and space exploration long before NASA existed, and maybe something like SpaceX would be doing something more useful than delivering frogs to earth orbit if space exploration had been driven by societal profit rather than a sociopathic desire to plant an ugly nationalistic flag on the Moon.
Actually, rocket experts all did know that you could land a rocket on its tail. After all, the lunar module landed that way
The hard part is dealing with the erratic atmosphere at supersonic speeds. It's a lot easier in a vacuum.
When you talk about burning investor dollars, you're forgetting to consider SpaceX's fixed costs, which are huge. If they just had the cost of the rocket, they might well be profitable. But SpaceX has over 6000 employees now, with all of the facilities to support them, all of the ground support infrastructure, expensive leases, etc. If you only consider the salaries that many people would have, there is no way that income from rocket launches so far would keep up with it.
I think the present burn rate is at least USD$1 Billion per year.
Now, can reusable rockets be profitable? Probably eventually. It's not sinking the research cost, but getting the refurbishment cost close to zero. The Block 4 booster is supposed to have a longer lifetime, and that's not flown yet, so that is one of the things we are waiting to see. Block 3 boosters are good for 4 flights maximum, sometimes less.
And they haven't let us see the refurbishment of the boosters at all, so we don't know how severe it was.
I think SpaceX also told a fib about the reuse of the spacecraft on CRS-11. The CRS-4 spacecraft had a salt-water dip and wasn't going to fly again without a lot of rebuilding. I think it would be more realistic to say only the pressure vessel was reused, and the CRS-4 spacecraft was stripped to the pressure vessel and then rebuilt as if it were a new spacecraft.
Bruce Perens.
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cant wait to earn money for overpriced pictures of space. Is only a matter of time before they butt heads with their Chinese counterpatts accused of faking a spacewalk in the training aquarium and faking a Moonlanding withcomputer-generated precision.
I counted launches this year and got 7. Apparently, each launch is priced at 65 million USD or more. 7 x 65 = 455. We're now in June, so if they got 7 more launches out, that's around the 1 billion you estimate the burn rate to.
Now, I don't know if you include materials in the burn rate, but if they manufacture the rockets in-house, I would guess salaries would be the dominant factor.
The hard part is dealing with the erratic atmosphere at supersonic speeds. It's a lot easier in a vacuum.
Espescially if you are dealing with a perfict sphere.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
False basis.
1) Just because someone (actually several someones) did something fundamentally similar before you means they forever have claim to every derivative work. Furthermore, NASA is a government funded entity. It's R&D (among other things) is for the good of the country and its citizens which include Elon and the SpaceX investors. NASA did, and does, amazing things. SpaceX also does amazing things including some very impressive R&D. Would the situation be different without NASA? Sure. But that's basically asking "so if the USA never had a space exploration program..." then SpaceX very well might be a russian company. (oh wait, who's been doing a lot of our launches?)
2) This is simple misdirection. NASA absolutely funds relevant development efforts but that's not even the case here. NASA bought (committed to) launches from SpaceX. That's not support, that's purchasing services that NASA currently requires and has no means to execute themselves. Was it immensely helpful to SpaceX? Absolutely. Did it save the company? In a manner of speaking but SpaceX still had to be a viable supplier. It was not a gimmie/bail-out at all.
NASA gets a lot of credit for building the US Space program, though a large portion of their work was outsourced so even claiming it all as 'theirs' is a fundamentally flawed argument. They just paid for a bunch of genius engineers to build things that were at (or beyond) the material science of the time. SpaceX has a much easier time of it now with the history of design that the US and USSR went through years back...but that's not to say modern science couldn't recreate much of that work for far, far less effort today.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
On 3 June 2017, the CRS-11 capsule largely assembled from previously flown components from the CRS-4 mission in September 2014 was launched again for the first time, with the hull, structural elements, thrusters, harnesses, propellant tanks, plumbing and many of the avionics reused while the heat shield, batteries and components exposed to sea water upon splashdown for recovery were replaced.
Now, you could be correct that they outright lied about that but I fail to see why they would. Furthermore, that's the dragon capsule not the booster itself.
Yes, exact/recurring refurb costs are still being figured for the boosters but what gives you belief that those costs are going to be similar to building the thing from scratch? Even if it's 50% less, that reduces their capital costs per launch by half leaving fuel (negligible) and support costs (significant, but not exceptional).
Thinking that they can't turn a profit is nonsense though. Sat launching is most certainly profitable. I say that simply because 1) companies are launching satellites and 2) other companies are paying for those launches and then making a profit off having them up there. If the cost to launch exceeded what companies could afford to pay, there wouldn't be launches. Instead the bottleneck isn't paying customers, it's how fast the very limited number of launching companies can blast shit into the sky.
Yes, there's money going into R&D for the next generation (and evolution) of launch platforms. That's what you do when you want to ensure your company has a future. (oh, and your species too if you want to include that viewpoint)
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
You are discounting the technology that NASA has transferred. It's not just that someone has done something before, it's that they have the full set of research and development documents available to companies like SpaceX.
SpaceX is still entirely dependent on NASA for its existence today, because the money made from commercial satellite launches doesn't meet its burn rate.
NASA has funded more than just the ride at commercial-satellite prices. Consider the funding that we know about:
The CRS program includes substantial development funding. If you break down the total cost, it comes to well over $600M/flight, 4 times what SpaceX charges for a satellite launch.
Then we have over 3 Billion to develop and fly Dragon 2.
There is also the fact that NASA (and its very close partner the Air Force) own all of the working ground facilities SpaceX is using and the Eastern and Western ranges. SpaceX won't have its own launch site for years and it's not clear that SpaceX is building the tracking stations for its own range.
Bruce Perens.
NASA would not have been able to get this far without the experience built by Nazi Germany at great expense (see V-2 rocket.)
Where did you find that statement "capsule largely assembled from previously flown components"? That is probably an accurate statement. But what we've been hearing in the news has been much less qualified, mostly sounding as if they'd reflown the capsule without significant refabrication.
At the worst, rebuilding a booster could save materials costs only, but if you consider the cost of testing, it could eliminate any savings on materials. If you have to image an entire tank for cracks, for example, it can cost more than the tank. If you've seen the fairing imager in Hawthorne (I got a tour in 2015), that's obviously a time-consuming and expensive operation, even though it's entirely automated.
I'm not saying that they can't achieve a significant cost decrease, just that it's too soon for them to have proven that they can consistently reuse boosters without too much refurbishment expense and without mission failures. We'll know much better in a year or so, and they might be able to compellingly demonstrate a savings within two years. That's just based on the number or reuse missions they can fly in that time.
Bruce Perens.
Shotwell stated the cost of refurbishing the stage used for the SES-10 launch was "substantially less than half" the cost of a new stage, a figure likely to drop rapidly as they gain experience with the procedures required...provided they don't experience any failures that can be traced to damage from previous flights.
Another thing to keep in mind is that their flight rate without reuse is limited by production rate. Apart from saving the cost of producing a new rocket, reuse allows them to perform launches that would otherwise go to competitors due to a lack of launch vehicles.
Well, it was reassuring that the Bulgariasat booster has been refurbished at KSC. No trip to McGregor or Hawthorne. So, not interfering with new booster manufacture and probably not work as intensive as the first one.
Bruce Perens.