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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."
Sorry guys, this isn't horseshoes or hand grenades.
It's rocket science.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Probably as a test. Sure, they landed on their feet. But I'm there there is a wealth of telemetry telling them what went right, what went wrong, and what almost went wrong.
Practice.
FFS, America, USE METRIC !
Because you simply cant buy PR like this. https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... Absolutely spectacular.
Good-bye
The ignition fluid in question is TEA-TEB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triethylborane#Rocket, a mixture of triethylborane and triethylaluminium. This is a common ignition fluid for rockets which burn RP-1 (rocket grade kerosene), since RP-1 is hard to ignite. The two are mixed because one of the two has really dependable ignition while the other one burns more cleanly. This sort of ignition system has been in use since the 1960s, but SpaceX is the first to use the TEA-TEB ignition system to ignite a rocket engine while the rocket engine is moving quickly *downwards* into the atmosphere. Experiments will sometimes work, and sometimes won't. They are obviously figuring out just how much TEA-TEB they need.
They really shouldn't have used all the fluid on the flamethrower tests
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"?
To save people video watching:
In the post-flight press conference, Musk said that the titanium grid fins are hard to manufacture and expensive and they currently don't have many, so he was very pleased to get these ones back. Also, the titanium grid fins are larger, and the side boosters need the bigger fins because the nose cone (rather than blunt end) reduces the effectiveness of the fins.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I don't know why the LA Times is reporting this as new news. I'm pretty sure I had heard by Wednesday or Thursday that the problem was the rocket rant out of TEA-TEB ignition fluid. Don't journalists watch press conferences and read analysis anymore? Does the CEO need to Tweet about it before they pay attention?
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?
~$5 million for the centre core IIRC, and it wasn't going to be reused in any case. All-in-all, fairly cheap in aerospace terms for valuable data.
Sometimes there's no substitute for actually trying things out and failing. Aiming to succeed but not being afraid to fail is one of the major reasons why SpaceX has advanced their development so quickly (even with a 5-year delay on original estimates for the first Falcon Heavy test flight).
A fabulous, deep, funny book on rocket fuels and the crazed chemists that developed them is called "Ignition!", by John D. Clark and forward by Isaac Asimov. Example text:
"Recommended lab attire for working with this volatile compound: Running shoes."
Ignition! has been long out of print. Thankfully archive.org has a copy here: https://archive.org/details/ig...
Of the possible failures that could have occurred, this seems like the best one. This was the newest part on the whole 'kit' so it wouldn't surprise me if it was an issue in calculations or some minor mechanical issue that resulted in this. In the end this was still an 80% success and were this a commercial launch, the buyer wouldn't have been overly disappointed since the payload made it into orbit. I have no doubt the next launch will be a complete success with all 3 rockets landing without problem
Don't skimp on the metrics! The mission was 100% success given it launched successfully and put the payload into high orbit. All buyers would be perfectly satisfied with the result. The landings of 2/3 boosters is extra, and the reignition of the second stage to achieve Mars trajectory was extra - although the angle was slightly off. I'd grant these an additional 50% bonus so 150% successful mission far beyond anyone's expectations. Even Musk said he'd be happy if it blew up far enough from the launch pad to not cause damage.
The target orbit was one that went at least to Mars orbit. There were no requirements that it only go to Mars orbit. They burned to depletion to demonstrate the amount of second stage performance available after a 6 hour coast (that being a requirement of some defense launches).
it's amazing how many people don't know what a test flight is for.
i could live a little longer in this prison
Of course; but this one's not designed to do that. If you're committed to the Falcon style of recovery, the parachute system is dead mass. In space flight, mass is money so you sort of have to commit to one recovery system or another.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.