SpaceX Successfully Launches Satellite Into Orbit On a Used Falcon 9 Rocket (techcrunch.com)

Darrell Etherington reports via TechCrunch: SpaceX has launched a Falcon 9 rocket loaded with a geocommunications satellite commissioned by the Government of Luxembourg. The satellite, created by Orbital STK and to be operated by SES, will support humanitarian and military operations for Luxembourg, among other communications functions. The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, a day after its initial planned launch. The original window wasn't viable due to weather, but the rocket launched as planned at the opening of its backup date with favorable weather conditions today. This launch today didn't include a recovery attempt of the Falcon 9 first stage booster used during the launch. The booster used was a reflown rocket, however, having been used May last year during a mission for a different client.

Comments

The big show is on Feb 6

[Woldscum]

Falcon heavy is launching on Feb 6. That will be a show. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/s... Test fire https://twitter.com/SpaceX/sta...

No recovery, but they did soft land

[jfdavis668]

I guess they do this to obtain data, but they go through the landing procedure even if they don't plan on recovering. The first stage did its reentry burn, landing burn, deployed the landing legs and soft landed into the water. You can hear the call outs in the video.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like it was a really soft landing: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/958847818583584768

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[jfdavis668]

Outstanding

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Rei]

Yeah, this was a pretty mundane launch until that happened. A rocket not designed for water landings, assigned for disposal at sea while testing a new landing approach, apparently survived a water landing intact and afloat. How? Beats me. I'd think that, with its propellant and pressurant spent, it'd be crushed when it fell over. Or that those engines would drag it deep enough into the water to crush the tanks at the base. And once its ruptured, the whole thing (up to the bulkheads) can flood

But, there it is.... guess it's hardier than I thought. Probably a higher residual pressure than I assumed.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Richard_at_work]

I'm actually convinced (not seriously) that Musk is recovering these "soft water landing" disposable boosters so he can have a private, secret stash of rockets somewhere, almost certainly called "Moonraker 1" and "Moonraker 2"...

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Anonymous Coward]

The stainless steel tanks that can hold highly pressurized and chilled LOX are very strong, and in order to be buoyant, they just need to be mostly empty

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so much, sea water is highly corrosive and most of the reason that they decided to land on barges and not pull them out of the sea for re-use

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Rei]

Falcon 9 is thin alumium, not heavy stainless steel. And it's not a question of being buoyant, it's a question of not ripping the fragile skin/tank in the situation where the propellant has been used up. You have a structure the height of a 25 story building, built of thin alumium, falling over (after being dragged a couple stories into the water by the heavy engines at the bottom).

The only reason that the rocket doesn't collapse just from launching forces alone is the internal pressure. That's why they have the CF helium tanks, to maintain that. But I would think that the pressurant would be gone by this point. Perhaps they keep it fully pressurised through landing. Even still, that's a major whallop we're talking about here.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Kjella]

How? Beats me.

Well we've seen them do smooth landings so I assume the simulation ended with them hovering right over the water. A 2009 quote said:

Weighing in at over 7,700 kg (17,000 lbs), the thrust assembly and nine Merlin engines represents over half the dry mass of the Falcon 9 first stage.

Basically you got a very heavy end which means it'd splash pretty much straight down in the direction it's built to withstand max-q, it wouldn't really tip over trying to keep its balance as some of the failed landings did. And the empty tanks obviously provide a lot of buoyancy as long as they stay intact, in fact either the LOX or RP-1 tank should suffice alone. The impressive part is the quasi-landing. That it can survive the drop into the ocean, eh... the heavy part probably took less of a beating than a diver jumping from the 10m board.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Richard_at_work]

That's assuming they are dumped into the sea in the first place - we never actually see the landing... they could have their third barge in use without us knowing it...

The photo of a booster on it's side above may be an inflatable made as a decoy.

Musk is Illuminati!!!!!!!!

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[mschuyler]

Sure they went through the motions. Why not? The issue is this: The drone ship could have been out there to get this first stage, but it could not get back to port, unload the stage, and get back out on station before the Feb 6 launch of Falcon Heavy, where they attempt to recover all three cores at once. In fact, the drone ship is probably already out there on station. They had to make a choice. Which core did they want back? I think the outlying stages will both be second use, but IIRC the center stage is a first-use. It makes more sense to retrieve that newer less-used stage than one that has already flown twice Plus, PR wise it would be much more valuable to capture three stages at once.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Michael Woodhams]

For launches there are bits of ocean, including the landing point, where boats are forbidden and this is checked by the space center's range safety people, who I think are airforce or navy. This isn't insurmountable, but Musk either needs to divert the rocket out of the forbidden zone (without this being noticed), suborn the range safety people to ignore the secret landing barge, "ASDS Just Read the Extortion Note", or hide the recovery vessel in some way, e.g. a submarine capable of quickly swallowing a Falcon 9 booster.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[desdinova 216]

so Elon Musk has gone from being Tony Stark to a Bond villain?

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Bruce Perens]

The Illuminati is Not a Frivolous Subject. On the other hand, cutting a deal with the devil is a frivolous subjecct.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention SpaceX is running out of warehouse space for all their landed boosters - none of which will be useful once the Block 5 booster arrives with much cheaper reuse.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Teancum]

Between Elon Musk's description of global thermonuclear destruction (he advocated... more as a joke but it was a semi-serious suggestion... that the polar icecaps of Mars could be nuked to release atmospheric gasses to terraform the planet), building tunnels under cities, having orbital space lasers under his control (with the Skylink satellites), and a forgotten island retreat under his control (Kwajelin Island)..... does that make him into a Bond villain?

It is merely a matter of perspective, but billionaires like him certainly seem like they have the potential to be a supervillain as much as a superhero.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[JoshuaZ]

Actually, Musk has reported that this one came down intact enough that they are going to actually try and tow it back to shore https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/958847818583584768. They don't normally leave the landing legs on for the rockets they don't want to reuse, but this one was apparently being used for an experimental hard burn, and it looks like they wanted to keep the aerodynamics the same to get better information about that. Given that this one managed to survive, it tentatively suggests that whatever they did differently for this "landing" worked pretty well.

Re: No recovery, but they did soft land

[Rei]

Except that if its slowly sinking into the water vertically deep enough that the water can slow the rollover and the "whack"at the end, then you have water pressure to deal with.

Regardless, I hope there's video :)

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Michael Woodhams]

He is a genius tech billionaire who can launch satellites and, due to Tesla, has a public reputation of Great Guy Who Is Trying To Save The Planet. Join the dots.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Anonymous Coward]

He could have a submarine waiting for the rocket without being observed by the range safety officers

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[religionofpeas]

It's also a block 3 booster, which takes a lot more effort to refurbish than newly developed block 5 variant. They already have enough old boosters, so they don't really care about saving another block 3 booster even if they could.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[CeasedCaring]

It's possible the "hard burn" landing was to test if they could reduce damage to the drone ship by coming to a hover above the ocean, then "sideslipping" onto the barge.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Talderas]

You have a structure the height of a 25 story building, built of thin alumium, falling over (after being dragged a couple stories into the water by the heavy engines at the bottom).

There's no need to exaggerate here. The 1st stage of Falcon 9 is not as tall as a 25 story building. That's the whole rocket and payload that reaches that height and they certainly aren't trying to land an entirely intact rocket. The first stage is 38m putting it closer to 12 stories.

Re:No recovery, but they did soft land

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt they would have no use, at a minimum they could be refurbed and used for expendable launches (much like they tried to do with this one) so the new Block 5 boosters could be used only for reusable flights. But going out of the way to recover blocks 4 and before would be foolish. And hopefully SpaceX will standardize their block 5 designs and isolate all of the older/specialty cores, having a bunch of similar but slightly different vehicles floating around increases the difficulty/cost in maintaining them and increases the chance of someone making a mistake, and mistakes generally don't end well in rocketry.

Luxembourg? Military?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Luxembourg require a satellite for military operations? If it is not geosynchronous, then they would only have coverage once every 90 minutes or so. You would think that if someone stood in the tallest building, or mountain top, in the country you would be able to see it in its entirety.

Re:Luxembourg? Military?

[Rei]

It was launched to GTO, according to the webcast.

Re:Luxembourg? Military?

[AHuxley]

Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) are doing all kinds of security work together i.e. Benelux-cooperation.
Beyond thats is the "The Ring of Five" i.e. Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Denmark doing their own security work together.
Then NATO.
Nations, groups within groups of nations are all working together on their own security.

Re:Luxembourg? Military?

[Bruce Perens]

When they say "military" and "Luxembourg" in the same sentence, that always means "NATO". Some equipment purchased and operated directly by NATO, including a squad of aircraft, is on paper owned by Luxembourg. Also, look at the number of their all volunteer military staff of 350 and 100 civilian employees and their military budget of about $360 Million/year which is $1 Million per military staff person regardless of rank. Obviously most of this goes to NATO.

Re:Luxembourg? Military?

[nospam007]

"Why would Luxembourg require a satellite for military operations?"

Because it's part of Nato and this is one of its contributions.
They also plan to rent out its results.

We also own half a warship and half something I can't remember, together with Belgium.

It was quite a joke around here in Luxembourg.
We have an wee army of +- 600 soldiers, 3 companies.

Re:Luxembourg? Military?

[Gunstick]

Hi Bruce, greetings from Luxembourg.

As you can already extrapolate from the other inaccuracies in the Slashdot text, this is indeed not a satellite for Luxembourg, but a Luxembourg owned military communication satellite. The transponders are to be rented out to military organization for profit.
And of course this is mainly NATO as Luxembourg is a NATO member.
There have been some criticism about if this is a good idea, as it may be supporting drone operations and other less moral activities.

Re:Luxembourg? Military?

[Gavagai80]

The satellite (which is geostationary) covers all of Europe, the middle east and north Africa. That gives us an idea of Luxembourg's future territorial ambitions.

Me too :-)

[Bruce Perens]

If you who have "Feel the Heat" tickets: I'll be there. Happy to meet any Slashdotters who happen to be going too.

Re:Me too :-)

[PFactor]

You, me, and a few hundred of our newest friends!

Re:Me too :-)

[apoc.famine]

Sadly I don't, but I am starting to feel a little sick already. I'll try to tough it out this weekend, but I'm pretty sure I'll need to stay home Tuesday. With a pizza, some beers, and a great deal of childish excitement.

"created by Orbital STK"

[ScentCone]

Really, lazy editors? Is it too much to ask to even get the company names correct? It's "Orbital ATK," and has been for quite a while, now.

Re:"created by Orbital STK"

[fisted]

I for one would prefer Orbital APK. Preferrably an orbit that's very stable.