Slashdot Mirror
SpaceX Lands the 13th Falcon 9 Rocket of the Year In Flames (theverge.com)
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida this afternoon and, while the rocket successfully delivered the Koreasat-5A to its designated orbit, it managed to catch fire after landing on one of SpaceX's autonomous barges. The Verge reports: That rocket's mission [was] to send a satellite known as Koreasat-5A into space, where it will hang above Earth for 15 years while providing communications bandwidth for Korea and Southern Asia. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered Koreasat-5A to its designated orbit, marking the the company's 16th successful mission of the year -- twice the number of successful missions in 2016. Shortly after liftoff, the first stage of the rocket returned to Earth and landed (flamboyantly) in the Atlantic Ocean on one of SpaceX's autonomous barges. (The fires eventually went out.) It was the 13th successful landing of a Falcon 9 rocket this year, the 15th in a row, and the 19th overall.
So why couldn't NASA do this?
They need a landing trench. And maybe some LN2 system to displace oxygen. And they definitely need to get rid of kerosene. This is why it was predicted for Saturn V that any on-pad detonation would be worse than for a purely-hydrogen rocket.
Ezekiel 23:20
This does feel like a bit of goalpost shifting.
"Reusable boosters are impractical. And landing on a barge? Not possible."
SpaceX begins to sucessfully reuse boosters.
"But these reusable boosters, they catch fire when they land!!"
WHEN THEY LAND - you know, that goal that, if you recall, was said to be impossible just a couple of years ago?
Or maybe they've just made landings boring enough that a bit of burning fuel on a section that is routinely covered in flames and hot gases during ascent and descent is news now.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Why does it matter for the people it the rocket has a landing issue without people in it? This potentially damages the vehicle to the extent of preventing its further use for any purpose but it is no issue for the people.
Ezekiel 23:20
With the amount of heat and the fuel involved, I'm a bit surprised this doesn't happen more often. I suppose that booster is parts now or is SpaceX going to risk trying another flight with it. Maybe dangeriously discounted? :)
If it was in flames then the best option is it was caused by some combustible that was on the landing pad that got ignited and started to burn the rocket. Worst option is there was a fuel leak that almost caused the rocket to explode.
Did you even see the video? There was a bit of kerosene burning on the rocket, after it landed in a column of flame. Rockets can handle flames. The commentator described it as "a little bit toasty", which, yes, probably means a little bit more refurbishment before they launch this rocket again.
Hopefully they solve this before they use this for launching people.
They're not going to land any people on rockets until BRF which uses methane, not kero.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It is what I would consider a success. They got the satellite into orbit at half the price anyone else could do. No one else has been able to land boosters AT ALL. That one of them landed a bit toasty is immaterial to the overall success of the mission.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Yeah, whats the big deal? Rockets can handle flame. They will just refurbish it and launch it again. How many refurbished rockets has SpaceX launched commercially?
If I recall correctly, they've relaunched three. They've also recovered those twice used rockets as well.
That it *is* a concern is obviously proven by the post-landing pictures.
So you can see there is internal damage, or indeed any damage at all, through the images??
I don't see anything that looks to me like there is any kind of lasting damage. But unlike you, instead of assuming I know what actually happened through a few pictures of some kerosine flames, I'm not presuming anything about damage until the company comes out with more detail.
Would say you the regenerative cooling was active during the entire re-entry phase even after it has separated and stops firing?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Only a handful so far. According to wikipedia the launch on October the 11th was the third reused booster. TFA doesn't seem to say if todays launch was a reused booster.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Fucking Lipo batteries!
Yeah, whats the big deal? Rockets can handle flame. They will just refurbish it and launch it again.
It actually is a big deal if your intention is to get rid of the refurbishing phase altogether, at least after most landings. (But admittedly, it may not be necessarily an issue for Falcon 9 in particular due to the hard lower limit on its launch costs imposed by the expendable upper stage.)
Ezekiel 23:20
BFR TLA, not BRF
Why in the hell do all the links go to social media or an ad-spam site? Linking to some schmo's twitter post is just poor form. Cant you just fucking link to the SpaceX site instead of perpetuating this incredibly shitty era we have gotten into where all data must include ads? Why is slashdot sending me over to The Verge when spacex has all the relevant info? Just give us the data, fuck off with your partnerships.
http://www.spacex.com/webcast
Good-bye
Yeah, whats the big deal? Rockets can handle flame. They will just refurbish it and launch it again. How many refurbished rockets has SpaceX launched commercially?
Indeed the consensus on r/spacex (which is filled with some VERY knowledgable people about the Falcon line) is that such post-landing fuel burnoff is both normal and harmless. The remaining fuel is dumped intentionally before the rocket is "made safe" so crews can approach to secure it to the barge, and sometimes it ignites from contact with hot things. The temperatures are much less than those structures sees in normal use so it doesn't hurt anything.
As for how many: three so far. Note that is also three more than any other organization on the planet!
NASA has now approved use of flight-proven boosters, which is huge for SpaceX.
The re-use rate in 2017 will be about 25%. SpaceX is aiming for 50% in 2018, and will pivot to block-5 which will further decrease work required during booster turnaround.
Exciting times... looking like rocket reuse is finally a thing!
USAF is also on board after some number of successful re-use flights, as are a bunch of comsat co's.
At this point anyone NOT having the ability to refly boosters is gonna be in more and more trouble going forward.
It landed in Flames? I'm not familiar with country of Flames.
Table-ized A.I.
The GEO landings are much harder than the LEO ones. A lot more energy in the first stage. But the refinements continue to make it easier. Also, eventually Falcon Heavy is going to be taking over the more marginal launches from Falcon 9.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
That is very much true. And the next generation vehicle should also get rid of the harder landings anyway. Everything will be RTLS, and GTO launches could use orbital refueling for improving the payload way beyond what two separate launches to GTO could deliver anyway (with the reusable upper stage's dead mass of ~80 mt going to GTO only once instead of twice).
Ezekiel 23:20
I wonder why not land them in a pond and then fish them out of the water.
Perhaps they would not survive the heat stress?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Well personally, it doesn't instill great confidence in me if a machine that I was "on" blows up/catches fire/has some major malfunction several minutes after I'm no longer "on" it. It makes me feel damn lucky I survived. Not exactly great for customer retention.
That fact that they are pursuing this and having successes at all is remarkable. Back when they first announced landing the first stage as a goal, it was called out left and right as being impossible. More power to them.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
I'm a little doubtful that we're going to see too many FH launches. It sounds like they want to mostly skip FH and head straight for BFR to save some money and simplify development. If I've heard right the FH won't even use purpose built hardware but some recovered side stages and a new center stage. They seem to want to just get it basically functional in order to launch some of their short term heavy cargo flights while they build the BFR after which they'll get rid of both. When you think about it are some pretty compelling reasons do so, it massively simplifies production, does away with a lot of development for a less capable craft, will cover pretty much any short/midterm launch vehicle market needs & will support their Mars ambitions. Of course it is completely dependent on them succeeding in it becoming a fully reusable and easily refurbishable craft, but given that that this all happened after their tank and meth/lox engine tests I'm guessing that they were very encouraging.
Technically, it's not a malfunction. Anyway, so far, the Soyuz launch vehicles have been having much worse "malfunctions" after you're no longer "on" them.
Ezekiel 23:20
Even a more-expensive-than-expected BFR/BFS launch will be cheaper than a FH flight, quite likely with regards to total launch costs, and almost certainly with regards to $/kg. So it makes perfect sense that delaying the FH by several years and bumping up BFR/BFS would result in early FH cancellation.
Ezekiel 23:20
It seems that the barges could easily accommodate a fire suppression system. A matrix of foam shooting nozzles would do it. The system could be autonomous with heat sensors, or just "fire all upon landing". Just an idea.