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."
That I had to double-check that I was watching a live stream and not a CGI of what they expected to happen.
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.
What a shitty Slashdot summary for such an important event!
Don't bother reading that shitty article. Just go to SpaceX's website directly, where there is video footage. Or look at the SpaceX tweets.
They certainly do know where their towels are...
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...
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.
It is hard to make a rocket nozzle that works well in the atmosphere and in space.
Yes! This is one of the reasons for staging. The first stage engines are optimized for atmospheric use and the upper stage for vacuum or near vacuum conditions. In the case of the Falcon Heavy, the first stage uses 27 Merlin 1D engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine_family)#Merlin_1D, and the upper stage uses a single vacuum optimized Merlin 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine_family)#Merlin_1D_Vacuum. This isn't the only reason for staging (all that extra mass from carrying extra storage tanks for empty fuel and oxygen is another big one) but it is a major one.
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.
Here is a tweet with a view of monitors showing smoke clearing from the drone ship deck with no rocket aboard. It seems it missed the ship. Not too surprising as the centre core is a new machine that has never flown before. Also, the re-entry profile was likely one of the hottest ones they have tried.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
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.
Let's be fair though - that first step into a new frontier was followed almost immediately by near-total retreat. This time the most important part of the engineering has been put front and center: the economics. We've just watched the most powerful rocket to fly in more than thirty years (by a factor of more than two) send an appreciable payload on an interplanetary trajectory, while landing all three first-stage boosters back on Earth (well, two of three, still waiting for confirmation on the core).
Yeah, it's only the fourth most powerful rocket ever launched, and is more than a factor of two behind the Saturn V, the most powerful ever launched. But it landed again, and can (presumably) fly again, bringing the cost down to a fraction of anything flown before.
This time when we go to space, we'll have a fair shot at staying there. And that is groundbreaking, in the farmer tilling his field sense. Going up turned out to be the easy part - coming down again in one piece, that's what will unlock space beyond Earth orbit as more than a research novelty.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I noticed the words "Don't Panic" displayed in large, friendly letters on the Tesla's console.
Let me make sure I have a firm grip on my towel.
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.
Not at all - all the first-stage boosters use atmosphere-optimized engines that also work pretty well in space. But you'll notice that the single second-stage engine has a much larger bell, almost as large as those from the 9 first-stage engines combined - that's to optimize it for vacuum, which gives it a nice efficiency boost.
Basically, when designing the engine you have to pick the ambient pressure to optimize for - at that pressure it will burn as powerfully efficiently as possible, with effectiveness dropping as pressure changes in either direction - typically first stage engines are optimized for high power somewhere in the mid-to-high atmosphere, where they spend most of their time, while second stages are optimized for efficiency in full vacuum, since they don't need the raw power for liftoff, or to ever deal with an atmosphere.
I would assume there's also other optimizations that can be done to reduce efficiency falloff as pressure changes, but they almost certainly come at the expense of lower peak performance, so it's a balancing game.
As for trying to shape the first-stage plume by vectoring the engines - it might be possible, but is unlikely to show any gains. You need to keep two things in mind:
1: Any vectoring will, by necessity, be trading forward thrust for lateral vectoring effect
2: By the time the plume leaves the bell, it's basically stopped pushing the rocket forward - the rocket isn't actually propelled by the gasses shooting out the back - it's propelled by those by those rapidly-expanding gasses bouncing off the engine and bell as they expand. Once they leave the engine bell they no longer have any effect on the rocket at all (except possibly indirectly through fluid-dynamics effects on the surrounding atmosphere.
Combine the two, and you'd have to pull off some pretty impressive fluid-dynamic miracles to even manage to break even. And even assuming you somehow managed that, it would almost certainly become impossible as you exceeded the speed of sound (aka the speed at which atmospheric disruptions can propagate)
Here's a good photo of what's basically going on - the bell is designed to contain the engine exhaust until it falls to ambient pressure and stops expanding, at which point no more work can be extracted from it. Too big, and the atmospheric pressure pushes the plume away from the bell, and you lose thrust to turbulence losses and wasted mass worth of useless bell. Too small, and the gas is still expanding when it leaves the bell, and you're throwing away all the work that could have still been done. Obviously in a vacuum that gas is going to keep expanding essentially forever, but the more it expands, the less remaining work it can do, and the faster the size (and mass) of a containing bell will increase. So at some point the diminishing returns just aren't worth pursuing any further.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/cJ4e...
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
After several years of our so-called "leaders" casting their eyes down, looking to the past, and pitting one against another in a zero-sum game, it is exhilarating to see what happened today.
America is greatest when we look for hard - some might say impossible - challenges and go for it.
And all this because of an immigrant.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Over 64% of the company, Arianespace, is from France. Germany is the next highest percentage, with just under 20%.
Confirmed at the news conference. Not enough fuel left on the central core; only one of the three engines managed to relight, and the stage hit the water at 300mph. However, SpaceX not only didn't plan not to use the central core again, but doesn't plan to use the side boosters either; they're not Block 5, and SpaceX only plans to re-launch Block 5 from now on. That said, the side boosters appear to be in good shape.
The main concern right now is on the upper stage. They've never had a stage dwell so long in such a high radiation flux. It should re-light, but they won't know until they try.
It's time for Operation Crazy Plan.
In the press conference today he said he's hoping that the cameras on the drone ship turn out to be intact, he expects there to be some good explosion footage on them ;) I love how it always gets posted.
One interesting thing from the press conference: of all of the parts of the rocket, he's most pleased to get the titanium grid fins on the boosters back. The central core didn't have the new grid fins, but the boosters did - and they're very expensive, and currently a production bottleneck for them.
It's time for Operation Crazy Plan.
It wasn't quite live. There is obviously a long enough delay inserted that they were able to shut down the feed before the world saw the main rocket crash.
From what I've read of Elon Musk, that isn't how he operates. If the damn thing was to have just blew up on the pad, not only would the feed keep rolling, Elon Musk would out talking about how bitch'n the explosion was.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom!
From what I've read of Elon Musk, that isn't how he operates. If the damn thing was to have just blew up on the pad, not only would the feed keep rolling, Elon Musk would out talking about how bitch'n the unscheduled rapid disassembly was.
FTFY
#DeleteChrome
And the more corporate egotists we have in space now, the better off we are. It means competition, new ideas and assumption of risk.
Slight correction: the core ran out of ignition fluid (a mix of triethylborane and triethylaluminum, ignites on contact with LOX (or most anything, really)), not fuel. A similar setup was used for both the Saturn V's F-1 engines, and the SR-71's J58 engines.
And a status update: the second stage re-lit just fine, and in fact exceeded expectations - the aphelion of the orbit is well past Mars, just shy of Ceres in fact.