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SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Center Booster Lacked Ignition Fluid To Light Engines and Land On Platform (latimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: The center core booster of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy didn't land on a floating sea platform as intended during last week's first test flight because it ran out of ignition fluid, company Chief Executive Elon Musk said Monday. Musk took to Twitter on Monday morning to give a few more updates on the Falcon Heavy's first flight. After liftoff, the rocket's two side boosters touched down simultaneously on land, eliciting cheers and applause from the crowd of SpaceX employees gathered in the company's Hawthorne headquarters, as seen on the launch livestream. Those two boosters, which were used in previous launches of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, will not be reused again, Musk said in a post-launch news conference last week. But the center core booster ended up hitting the Atlantic Ocean at 300 mph and about 328 feet from the floating platform where it was supposed to land. Musk said Monday that there wasn't enough ignition fluid to light the outer two engines of the booster "after several three engine relights."
Practice.
Because you simply cant buy PR like this. https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... Absolutely spectacular.
Good-bye
As a highly rated reply said, "practice". I'd like to add that it's also the only nominal way to land them. The alternative is to make a mess on the LZ, or chuck them someplace where they'd be pollution.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
We don't really know how much they actually included. For all we know they already had increased the quantity to what they thought was a safe margin.
The balancing act is pretty insane, any increase in rocket mass means a decrease in payload mass. They literally have to build a rocket that's just equipped to do what it needs to do in order to maximize payload. After all, a rocket is cool and all but it's the payload that really matters.
If they do decide to add more fluid then they'll probably see if they can cut mass anywhere else. It may not take much, but finding 50-100lb is going to be a challenge.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Whenever I see 328 feet, I know that someone said "about 100 meters" and the reporter multiplied it under the assumption that us yokels can't figure out what it means without their help. It really pisses me off when reading an article about something slashdot-worthy, like a rocket. We never went metric in the US, but you'd have a hard time finding one of us today who isn't bilingual enough to grasp 100 meters as easily as 100 yards or 300 feet.
On the other hand, if the SpaceX guy did the conversion because he knew that the moronic reporters would otherwise report it as "328 feet, 1.00788 inches", I withdraw my objection with a chuckle.
See that "Preview" button?
I didn't know the Chinese didn't use metric.
I actually got a little choked-up.
Was hard not to. Felt like one of those "Holy shit, humanity... Holy shit." moments.
Shit coming back from space and landing without banging off the ground or splashing into the water... is pretty amazing. Even cooler that the entire thing is autonomous.