Slashdot Mirror
SpaceX Successfully Lands Two Falcon Heavy Boosters Simultaneously After Rocket Launch [Update] (spaceflightnow.com)
After nearly a decade of development, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket has successfully launched from pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida today. After reaching orbit, the two side boosters simultaneously landed at Landing Zone One. We do not know the status of the central core of the rocket, which was destined to land on the "Of Course I Still Love You" drone ship roughly 8:19 minutes into the flight.
According to Space.com, the Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket to launch since NASA's Saturn V -- the iconic vessel that, with 7.5 million pounds of thrust, accomplished the definitive Apollo-era feat of putting astronauts on the moon. Elon Musk says that Falcon Heavy is "twice as powerful as any other booster operating today." As for the payload, it includes a Tesla Roadster electric car. "The Falcon Heavy will send the vehicle around the sun in an elliptical orbit that will extend farther than Mars' orbit," reports Space.com.
UPDATE: SpaceX has confirmed The Verge's reporting that the middle core of SpaceX's Heavy Rocket missed the drone ship where it was supposed to land. "The center core was only able to relight one of the three engines necessary to land, and so it hit the water at 300 miles per hour," reports The Verge. "Two engines on the drone ship were taken out when it crashed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a press call after the rocket launch. It's a small hiccup in an otherwise successful first flight."
According to Space.com, the Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket to launch since NASA's Saturn V -- the iconic vessel that, with 7.5 million pounds of thrust, accomplished the definitive Apollo-era feat of putting astronauts on the moon. Elon Musk says that Falcon Heavy is "twice as powerful as any other booster operating today." As for the payload, it includes a Tesla Roadster electric car. "The Falcon Heavy will send the vehicle around the sun in an elliptical orbit that will extend farther than Mars' orbit," reports Space.com.
UPDATE: SpaceX has confirmed The Verge's reporting that the middle core of SpaceX's Heavy Rocket missed the drone ship where it was supposed to land. "The center core was only able to relight one of the three engines necessary to land, and so it hit the water at 300 miles per hour," reports The Verge. "Two engines on the drone ship were taken out when it crashed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a press call after the rocket launch. It's a small hiccup in an otherwise successful first flight."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Quite amazing to watch the two boosters land simultaneously (at 37:58).
I guess Mr. Musk was sandbagging a bit when he said he would be happy if the pad wasn't destroyed.
Everyone at SpaceX must be very proud, and rightly so.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
many things are shitty nowadays - islamic fundamentalism, dying off of coral reefs, melting of permafrost, plastic pollution in the oceans, spreading of idiocracy.... one bright, very bright spot is Space X and a community of people (of which I am a member) that fervently follows the space programs, our steps into the new frontier.
I feel lucky that there are other people like me, and I can interact with them through the Internet (mostly on reddit).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Undoubtedly the coolest technology test in history. Epic. Well done SpaceX! You've just inspired kids again like NASA did in the 60's.
Awe-inspiring to watch those 2 boosters land in a flawless ballet of dust and fire. This is one for the history books.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I have to admit I was watching it live and it looked like everything went smoothly as can be. I'm guessing SpaceX probably simulated everything for the launch but as they say sometimes you have to try it out in real-life to see if it really works! I imagine the United Launch Alliance might be panicking now as SpaceX is well on their way of making "Heavy" launches significantly cheaper as former heavy launches were all done by them with a significantly more expensive rocket.
Sure, what they've done isn't exactly easy, but it's not as groundbreaking as you make it out to be. This is an incremental improvement on 1960s-era technologies. The hardest work underlying this technology was done before 1970. That earlier work was truly groundbreaking, and even more impressive because so much of it predated practical digital computing. They aren't 'stepping into a new frontier'. That was done decades ago by our grandparents, or even our great grandparents on some cases. The most innovative aspects of SpaceX are more when it comes to the economics and financing of space launches. The technological advances are actually quite minimal.
Even if the center core turned out to not land correctly, this is still absolutely amazing. The simultaneous landing of both the side boosters was literally awe-inspiring. SpaceX had initially said they might stagger their landings by a little in case one went wrong, but it looks like they had the hubris to land them both literally at the same time. And lesson there is hubris is fucking awesome, and those obnoxious Greek gods can go suck it.
More seriously, this is going to have a massive impact on the heavy end of the launch market. Even without reuse, it looks like Falcon Heavy is going to be cheaper for almost all big payloads than any of the other heavy launchers, especially Ariane 5 and Delta Heavy. The only issue right now limiting its use are twofold: First, it has a relatively small fairing, so it is possible that some payloads will have volume issues- but that will be rare, and making a new fairing is something SpaceX may do if a customer is interested in it. Second, the Falcon Heavy is for pretty obvious reasons not man-rated. That may change in the future, and the current plan right now is to just man-rate the Falcon 9, but if the Falcon Heavy does get man-rated then there will be almost no market for anything else. If Grey Dragon or others can go on a Falcon Heavy it will be a very different situation. And of course, the Falcon Heavy doesn't have the same lift capability as the SLS, but the SLS still hasn't flown yet, and will cost literally a billion dollars or so a launch.
I wouldn't assume conspiracy. Elon is the sort who'd just let the feed roll. He's been quite open about how "space is hard" and honest and forthcoming when things go wrong. Whatever took out the video feed was accidental.
Ed Tice exulted:
That I had to double-check that I was watching a live stream and not a CGI of what they expected to happen.
My wife and I watched the SpaceX live stream of the launch just minutes ago. The liftoff was so "nominal" - to use Launch Control's colorless term - it brought tears to my eyes.
And the simultaneous safe landing of the two external boosters (both of which have flown to space and returned previously!) made us both cry tears of joy and pride in this landmark achievment.
As a teenager, I was privileged to watch Apollo 11 lift off for our moon from the vantage of the front yard of our rental house in Satellite Beach. For me, this maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy was an event that resonated very strongly with that one: an aspirational and technological peak moment in the history of our species. The main difference here and now (aside from 48.5 years or so) is that, while the promise of Kennedy's lunar landing initiative was squandered by the petty vindictiveness of Richard Nixon's personality, the successful launch of the Falcon Heavy brings the quest that the Apollo program initiated back to life again - and puts us back, at long last, on the path toward eventual human habitation of the entire Sol system.
The true Space Age starts now ...
(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)
--
Check out my novel ...
With that many engines to steer, I wonder if there is some way to use the extra degrees of freedom to shape the plume to get a bit more thrust?
I don't have a source for this off-hand, but given my understanding my guess is going to be no. Almost all the things that happen to alter the thrust profile occur in the engine itself or immediately outside the engine. Anything you would do that could have any chance at this would end up having to have multiple outer engines pointing somewhat inwards which would mean you'd have some thrust canceling out from the outer engines. Anything you could gain by somehow altering the profile of the inner engines wouldn't be remotely worth losing thrust that way. If more containment would give more thrust in some range, you'd just build your engine with a longer nozzle.
The way you adjust the plume is to have a higher expansion on the engines operating in vacuum. On the normal pressure engines, you expand the plume to atmosperic pressure, but on a vacuum engine, that's not a limit.
For an engine that operates in atmosphere, and then continues to operate in vacuum, you can somewhat compromise-- overexpand some, but not enough to lose performance at lift-off. That's what the original Atlas boosters did: all three engines fire on take-off, but the two outboard engines were dropped and the center engine continues to orbit. The center engine had a higher expansion, so it would perform better in vacuum, at the cost of some performance loss at take-off.
Alternately, you can have an extendable nozzle.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It was pretty obvious when they killed the webcast so quickly.
https://twitter.com/chillichee...
The technical term is "FUCKING AWESOME!"
It was a beautiful thing. Launches have been pretty dull for many years, but this felt just like the first Shuttle launch, like something new and amazing had happened.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What a pleasure it was to see rockets land like God and Robert A. Heinlein intended!
Why is all the good stuff already modded 5, when I have mod points?
That's part of Musk and his team's brilliance. They understand that failure is as good a teacher, sometimes even a better teacher, than success. Those earlier rocket engineers blew up a lot of hardware in the quest for space. You cannot be afraid to take chances.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
He may seem like a money-burning madman, but maybe that's what it takes.
I see little madness in burning money this way. What better can a man do with lots of money? Get a nice car, maybe two, get a beautiful villa... a yacht, a place to spend the winter... and then? Another villa? Two more, three more? After a certain point, magabucks are just a number on your bank account, and purely pointless.
What Elon is doing with his money is awe-inspiring, electrifying, actually transcendent. One of the best damn thing you can do with your life before kicking the bucket.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Falcon Heavy has a much smaller payload capacity than Saturn V.
Good thing they can send 2 or 3 for less money.
As Airbus is learning quite painfully, larger payload isn't the ultimate metric.
The Saturn V was an amazing thing for its day. But needs and the optimal equipment changes. In the era of a few big missions, that Saturn V made sense. But now we are in the era of lots of small to medium sized missions, the Falcon Heavy makes more sense.
Reusable launch systems aren't new. Nothing about it is particularly remarkable.
Except the boosters that fly themselves back to the launch site and land on their tail. That, until Space X, was sci fi movie stuff.
Since they started landing rockets on barges. It has happened many, many times before on Falcon 9 landings. Turns out connectivity in the middle of the ocean is flaky. At any rate, what makes a mockery of science is shooting off your mouth with conspiracy ramblings anytime you don't understand something and haven't bothered to take a minute to look it up despite living in the 21st century with the internet in your pocket.
This space intentionally left blank
FH is as safe as F9
How do you figure that? FH is basically three F9s strung together. Whatever the chance of a catastrophic failure is on a F9 launch, FH will be basically 3 times that.
The true Space Age starts now ...
(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)
Wow, thank you, you and a few others posted my thoughts, my optimism, my hope so perfectly.
I was sitting there glued to the TV, watching it, just thinking to myself "Come on, Beautiful Machine, you can do it!"
Sadly it seems like the main rocket was lost, but they'll get the kinks out. What a beautiful achievement.
It would have been nice if you'd been able to post that as yourself and keep your moderations - I have a feeling that they were as insightful as your post here.
Thanks.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Yeah it was fucking awesome, and all the Elon Musk haters out there can go SUCK IT!
Seriously. This guy is just about the ONLY person in the world who has been rewarded with huge amounts of money, and has decided to audaciously pursue his positive vision for a bold and bright future for humanity. THE ONLY FUCKING PERSON. Everyone else out there is just trying to scam and suck as much money as they can out of human civilization before the lights go out. He is trying to give us a sustainable energy future, he is trying to solve our practical transportation problems, and he is trying to get us to the next stage in space travel and exploration. Virtually nobody else is doing that, and in fact they seem to be trying to do everything they can to prevent these advances.
"Fucking awesome" doesn't even scratch the surface of how fucking awesome this is.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
And the more corporate egotists we have in space now, the better off we are. It means competition, new ideas and assumption of risk.
Your life must suck badly.