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SpaceX Falcon rocket explodes on landing after delivering satellite to space
- rplnt 11y agoTechnically, it exploded well before it delivered the satellite. edit to add some facts since this seems to be getting downvoted pretty quickly: Stage 1 landed and exploded at around T+10min, the satellite was deployed at T+56min. This was just two minutes after it was delivered on its final orbit. Both of those could be considered "delivered to space", neither of which happened before the failed landing.
- ctolsen 11y agoYou're being downvoted because it's a stupid assertion and it's "technically" not even the same craft at that point.
- rplnt 11y agoThe title presented it as if it were a single craft at all times. Of course "delivering 2nd stage to space" would sound silly, but I'm sure the title could be worded factually correct and still be simple and informative (as titles should be).
- sageikosa 11y ago"SpaceX booster explodes during recovery, payload delivery unhindered"
- lmm 11y agoThe satellite was comfortably above the Kármán line by the time of the failed landing.
- rplnt 11y agoComfortably for ~2 hours before it would fall back to Earth. I think that "delivered" implies that something is done, in this case a final position for the satellite.
- marshray 11y agoI think this is an interesting point. While I don't think we ought to rush out and change our terminology, I had not heard this anywhere else.
- jffry 11y agoSee also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10923582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10923582
- madaxe_again 11y agoa) isn't this from last year? IIRC they had two failed barge landings. This looks like the first one. b) The headline makes this sound like a miserable failure - still beats "fell into the ocean never to be found again", as all other current first stages do.
- krisoft 11y agoa) No this has just happened yesterday. tweet confirming: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/688837706005131264 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/688837706005131264 b) true :)
- LoSboccacc 11y agonew launch. they need the barge for heavier payloads, because it costs much more fuel to go all the way back, so they'll keep testing. Musk posted an early statement blaming icing due to bad weather conditions. https://www.instagram.com/p/BAqirNbwEc0/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BAqirNbwEc0/ ...and of course press is overly sensationalistic. nothing new there to report.
- neolefty 11y agoIn this case, they had enough fuel to return to the launch site but they used the barge because they couldn't get permission to return to Vandenburg. http://observer.com/2016/01/breaking-spacex-fails-a-third-time-to-land-falcon-9-rocket-on-drone-ship/ http://observer.com/2016/01/breaking-spacex-fails-a-third-ti...
- NikolaeVarius 11y agoIts a failure because it didn't do what it is supposed to do. Current first stages do exactly what they are supposed to do extremely well.
- mikeash 11y agoIt did exactly what it was supposed to do: deliver the second stage to the right place and velocity, and attempt a landing. The landing failed, but it's part of a test program, failures are supposed to happen. They got paid ~$90 million for this flight, and the customer is happy because they got exactly what they paid for.
- marvin 11y agoSpaceX actually got very close to sticking this landing. Sea conditions were reasonably rough, with 3-meter waves. It's also the first time SpaceX launches in fog, IIRC. Everything about the landing except the stuck leg seemed to be perfect. So IMHO, the fact that the rocket exploded is not the most pertinent fact about this experiment. The main piece of news is that SpaceX is exceedingly likely to be able to recover rocket boosters intact from sea, even in non-perfect weather conditions.
- noobie 11y ago>It's also the first time SpaceX launches in fog Musk said the "root cause may have been ice buildup due to condensation from heavy fog at liftoff."
- ridgeguy 11y agoIce buildup on cryogenic components has been a problem with earlier private launch attempts from VAFB. See [1]for a frozen main LOX valve that didn't fully open due to ice frozen out of humid air. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Rocket_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Rocket_Company
- smoyer 11y agoAs a former gymnast, I like the sticking the landing analogy but a human (even on an unstable mat) has far more control over their balance point (we do much of our balancing by bending at the waist - if only the rocket had one). In any case, I agree that this was very close. I've also spent a reasonable amount of time on "big water" and was specifically watching the attitude of the landing deck with respect to the horizon. I didn't see much movement of the barge (but that doesn't mean there wasn't some instantaneous movement that together with the force of landing exceeded the leg's load rating). The other thing that's struck me is that the SSTO advocates could end up becoming irrelevant. Who's going to argue we need SSTO at all if we can recover and reuse all the stages anyway? Multiple stages will remain dramatically more efficient (Yes - I know we don't get space planes with two hour flight times from New York to Tokyo quite as easily). Finally ... I just have to say "I LOVE THIS". I remember as a child watching the Apollo missions and, as an engineer, I haven't been this excited about a project for a long time. Isn't this exactly the type of thing we can rally humanity around? Who's going to argue that it's not a great accomplishment?
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoSpeaks volumes for Mr. Musk's character that they're being completely open and honest about this problem. Turns the conversation from "What happened? What are they hiding?" to "Interesting Engineering problem. How can it be addressed?"
- kardos 11y agoThey don't have much in the way of competition to keep 'trade secrets' from
- Callmenorm 11y agoThat's because Musk created a company without peer.
- tw04 11y agoIf that isn't tongue in cheek, you're insane. There's a laundry list of companies that are competition to them, including two of the largest defense contractors in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_co...
- davej 11y agoNot sure it was meant literally. I took it as more of a jibe at the quality of existing space companies (and Blue Origin).
- mikeash 11y agoThey have lots of trade secrets. They famously don't file patents, because their primary competitors are overseas and won't respect them anyway. Musk discusses it a bit in this interview: http://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/all/ http://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/all/ The reason they're cavalier about landing videos is that there's not much you can really take from them that would be useful to building your own version of this system. It sounds like much of their "secret sauce" is in manufacturing techniques, materials, and internal design.
- jaffee 11y agoI want to know what exploded - I wouldn't have expected it to have very much leftover fuel at that point...
- lmm 11y agoRocket fuel/oxidiser together are pretty explosive (by their very nature) - even if it was just leftover vapour in an otherwise empty tank.
- ctolsen 11y agoThis is the an explosion of 5 gallons of petrol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C72bv2YhZ6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C72bv2YhZ6A Doesn't take that much to make an impressive bang.
- krisoft 11y agoThe rocket runs out of usable fuel, but that doesn't mean that it is empty. If for no other reason the turbo pumps would probably get damaged beyond repair if you run the tank bone dry. Also it's not just fuel, but oxygen too in the right ratio.
- mabbo 11y agoIf you put a spark inside a full gas/petrol can, not much happens. Not enough oxygen. Half full? Still not such a big deal. But empty the can, leaving behind just the fumes and the oxygen, and you have yourself a bomb. My understanding is that the rocket here is a similar problem. It's a giant tube of explosive material. I wouldn't want to tap it with a hammer. And they've got it falling to earth at supersonic speeds, then calmly setting itself down on a barge at sea in 3m waves.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoThat was pretty much exactly what I expected to see from the video given the description of a broken landing leg yesterday. Elon's twitter comment about the ice is interesting because it adds some interesting twists. If the stage is icing up as it descends it would change the mass calculation, however it does not seem to shed ice when it lands in the video. He suggested that ice at launch may have interfered with leg locking, which would mean that ice survived travelling supersonically through the atmosphere. But hard to figure how that could be.
- marvin 11y agoIn an earlier re-entry video, the camera lens ices up during the re-entry burn, presumably due to water from the engine exhaust. So I don't think that re-entry is necessarily enough to heat up the stage enough to melt all the ice on it.
- Symmetry 11y agoIn this case the ice would have been protected by being enclosed or mostly enclosed by the leg mechanisms.
- morsch 11y agoAt least the barge looks like it should be reusable.
- bantunes 11y agoCould someone explain to me why they attempt this? Wouldn't inflating a set of floating devices when it goes down the ocean an easier way of retrieving it? Or something other than this REALLY HARD TO PULL OFF maneuver? Genuinely interested.
- dchesterton 11y agoThey want to use this tech to eventually land rockets on other planets so the rocket needs to be able to land upright. Short term it might be easier to land on inflatables but they're looking at the bigger picture.
- jsumrall 11y agoNo, its just not possible to maintain the integrity of the rocket if you're going to somehow lay it down on an inflatable. How could an inflatable withstand the temperature of the firing engines?
- el_zorro 11y agoThe utility here is not really landing on other planets, but instead the order of magnitude decrease in launch costs if they don't have to build a new first stage for every launch.
- dchesterton 11y ago
- Medox 11y agoThe landing could be made safer by something like cushioned walls that deploy towards the rocket after touchdown, to avoid such explosions. Think of a giant Christmas Tree stand like this: http://www.christmastreeland.co.uk/product_images/v/428/761_.. http://www.christmastreeland.co.uk/product_images/v/428/761_.... but with cushioned hooks on the barge. You can't always hope for all 4 legs to be in perfect condition, or that there aren't high waves in the ocean. That rocket is huge and seems to fall too easily, while a stand with hooks can't be too expensive, unlike a complete new rocket...
- ceejayoz 11y agoHere's a side-by-side comparison of their three barge landing attempts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA7RzJckvQ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA7RzJckvQ4 I don't think big, over-engineered solutions really look necessary with the amount of progress they're making. Plus, there aren't any cushioned walls on Mars, which is SpaceX's eventual goal - use this sort of tech to touch down there.
- ethbro 11y agoAlso, if you deployed mitigation methods prematurely, then it stops the drive for improvement and tuning of the core landing functionality. Quick deploy cushions or other "Oops" enhancements might feature into the final version of the barge, but for now I think they're still trying to maximize the landing success rate. Better not to split engineering resources when the most important problem can still benefit from optimization.
- JulianMorrison 11y agoThey are landing on Mars. That's the ultimate point. Mars does not have airbags.
- Medox 11y agoI get the Mars part but they could have the walls to be fail safe at least on Earth. It's not like they will improve the design only if the rocket falls over and explodes. They would still have to land it up straight, while having some sort of "no wall touched" target (or award). Not to mention the money they save if not every fail is also a complete loss of the rocket. p.s. Money left is also good for future Mars missions.
- ohitsdom 11y agoAn exact bulls-eye, absolutely amazing.
- jsumrall 11y agoThe rocket exploded because it fell over, not the other way around. Had one of the landing gears not malfunctioned, it would have been fine.
- tetraodonpuffer 11y agoyeah, it feels the title this time should be rocket explodes AFTER landing, to give a better feeling of how close this was
- eric_h 11y agoespecially since it seems to have hit the bullseye on the center of the barge (maybe missed dead center by a few inches).
- lsaferite 11y ago4 feet
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoYou can tell it missed by a few inches from the video?
- jsprogrammer 11y agoIt's not really a landing if the whole thing collapses and explodes right after touching the platform. https://www.instagram.com/p/BAqirNbwEc0/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BAqirNbwEc0/
- msandford 11y agoIf a pilot successfully takes an airplane out of the air and onto the ground such that all the weight of the airplane is on the wheels, and that weight transfer causes one of the tires to pop, and that causes the plane to skid, and then roll over, and then blow up, what kind of failure was that? Was it the pilot failing to land the airplane properly? Or was is the airplane failing to behave as expected after landing? How exactly do you define the act of landing? Do you have to come to a full and complete stop? If that's true then few airplanes have ever "landed" until they've pulled up to the gate to disgorge their passengers.
- ck2 11y agoWould it be possible to have locking mechanisms directly in the dock itself? ie. maybe the rocket descends several feet INTO the dock into a hole which then locks around the body of the rocket? || || ==||== dock (which opens wide for decent and then closes) || ^^
- ceejayoz 11y agoI'd imagine that'd be even more complex and prone to failure.
- lmm 11y agoTo be clear it's a barge, not a dock. It might be possible, but we're talking about a rocket descending from hypersonic spaceflight; the accuracy is always going to be +/- a few metres. And the rocket would still have to have some kind of "hardpoints" that were strong enough to absorb the landing impact (you don't want to land smack on the delicate engine nozzles). A (relatively) big flat landing field and legs on the rocket itself seem like the smart approach (and Musk wants whatever technology they use to be usable for landing on Mars too).
- ck2 11y agoYeah but if a rocket can so easily explode just by falling over, I'm not sure there are any legs I trust it to land on. I mean what if the legs were damaged during launch somehow, how exactly would it get back down safely other than just dropping it in the ocean completely?
- lmm 11y agoThere are any number of critical systems on a rocket - what if the fuel tanks were damaged during launch somehow? Or the grid fins? Or the hydraulic tanks? Or the engines?
- zardo 11y ago>I mean what if the legs were damaged during launch somehow, how exactly would it get back down safely other than just dropping it in the ocean completely? Then it blows up and you fix the extremely serious problem that threatened the primary mission by damaging the rocket during launch.
- halviti 11y agoIs there a reason not to design the rocket with more legs, say 6 legs instead of 4?
- valarauca1 11y agoWeight...
- ceejayoz 11y agoWeight. Every pound you use up on things like legs is a whole bunch of pounds you can't take to orbit.
- Rooster61 11y agoThis just in: Elon Musk has reportedly terminated all employees who uttered the phrase "Break a leg!" before launch. In all seriousness though, this was by and large a successful landing, not to mention that they successfully put their payload into orbit without a hitch. The number of things that have to go right to even get that rocket to touch down on the barge is mind boggling. Truly impressive, and bodes well for the future of SpaceX.
- yread 11y agoAmazing! If they want to use this tech for landing people on Mars (or anywhere) they still have some way to go though!
- verytrivial 11y agoI like to think that with these videos SpaceX is also making a very worthy contribution to more realistic movie special effects.
- smegel 11y ago> explodes on landing This is a pretty unfair characterization. It actually made the landing for most purposes, then a specific failure occurred - a leg failed to lock and it fell over. And yes, when a rocket falls over it will often explode.
- chronic50 11y agoWould you prefer "lands then explodes"? Stop trying to rephrase failures.
- mikeash 11y ago"Explodes after landing" would be more accurate, I think.
- TylerE 11y agoAs a (student) pilot, I agree. You aren't landed until stationary and stable.
- baq 11y agoand the "explosion" is borderline, it's very close to just "burns really fast", especially when you see what's left after the fire goes out: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CY8-PdyU0AABqaa.jpg:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CY8-PdyU0AABqaa.jpg:large (there's quite a lot of rocket left)
- JoblessWonder 11y agoThe video pretty clearly shows/sounds like an explosion. Not a huge one, but one none the less.
- grey-area 11y agoThat's a trick of perspective and scale, you are not seeing a rocket but one landing leg intact attached to the engine block. The tube exploded as you'd expect when it fell over and disintegrated. Not really important though, they got the hard part right.
- AaronM 11y agoThey are getting really close to sticking a landing on a barge. I would be surprised if we don't see a successful barge landing this year.
- Animats 11y agoThis is progress. They got a good landing, then the landing gear collapsed, and not because of a hard landing. Next time they'll have a design that forces the landing gear down and locked, ice or no ice. Somewhere down in Hawthorne, someone is probably freezing one of those mechanisms in a cold chamber right now. This is way better than back in July, when the booster blew up because of a strut failure. That was a major quality control failure.
- codecamper 11y agoThis is the second time something like this happened. Why not put 4 tall posts up - equidistant from each other - a square. Then a wire net between the posts. When it tips over, it can just fall into the wire net.... they could even have motors to unwind a little while it leans over on them to allow "soft catching" the rocket. Foam over the wires would help here. Actually... why not skip the barge & the dramatic landing and just catch it with a big underwater net? I suppose getting the rocket wet with salt water is not good? (the inside is covered with liquid spill indicators which void the warranty?)
- LewisJEllis 11y agoRockets are more fragile than one might think, but even assuming that would work, it's significantly more useful to be able to land just about anywhere that's flat. Also, we don't have giant posts and nets waiting for us on Mars.
- ansible 11y agoAnything other than a perfect vertical landing is likely to result in damage to the structure and components. Thus negating most of the value in landing the 1st stage. Sea water is also highly corrosive to many materials.
- usrusr 11y agoMy initially reaction were similar ideas, but thinking about it some more i am not sure if the empty tank could tolerate the stresses from getting caught in a net. And with a landing strut failure like today, you would probably lose the engines even with the tank not completely tipping over. But SpaceX seem to be exceptionally good at control systems, fast and precise automated planning. Maybe they will just skip the level of passive rocket catcher structures and intend to move directly to a three-axis actuated landing table? A system like that that could take responsibility for a tiny little amount of deceleration (think extra suspension) and a fair bit of balancing completely outside of the mass budget of the rocket.
- codecamper 11y ago3 axis table? Do you mean that the platform would be able to shift either way to keep it from wobbling over? That seems hard given that a rocket is tall & skinny. How about a massive electromagnet underneath?
- trhway 11y agothey just need airbags installed on the barge so the moment rocket lands the airbags inflate and hug the rocket.
- sebringj 11y agoThey keep getting better so quickly! I'm in no way qualified to say this but I would have to guess the tip over after landing is a very trivial problem to overcome compared to atmospheric entry with 180 degree flip and burn to slow for landing. Go SpaceX!
- interdrift 11y agoCan't wait to fiddle with the landing source code after they release it in 10 to 20 years time :D
- DanielBMarkham 11y agoCongrats to the guys at Space-X! Love to see me some hardware blowing up. Seriously, I'm not being facetious. We make aeronautical hardware safe by flying the crap out of it. That means lots of flights. Lots of accidents. The more you fly it, the more problems you have, the safer it is. Congrats guys. Every time gets closer and closer. A few more and you'll have this thing nailed. That's good for all of us.
- Havoc 11y agoWhy is the barge landing part so important to them? Seems unnecessarily difficult. Big world out there...surely some suitable location can be found that is less wobbly for a start.
- tempestn 11y agoThey have a limited number of launch sites available to them, and the landing site is based on trajectory and fuel. Depending on the mass being launched, there will often not be enough fuel to turn around, and if you keep going, there's not much but ocean for a long way. Also, not any land will do. You need a pretty big, purpose-built space to land a rocket. With a barge, they can put that space where they need it.
- LewisJEllis 11y agoLaunches which send the payload beyond low earth orbit require too much velocity for the first stage to then turn around and make it all the way back to the launch site. They put the barge downrange so less fuel will be needed to turn around and land, enabling first stage landings on beyond-low-earth-orbit launches.
- StillBored 11y agoThis has got to be a large part of why they were looking to launch from south Texas. that gives them a few hundred miles of gulf, and then they can land in FL.
- sushirain 11y agoPerhaps landing into a tank of non-corrosive liquid would prevent such collapses? Or on some kind of "glue"/alloy that quickly freezes. You can also have spearguns firing cords from the top of the rocket to the ground after landing, to hold it.
- pazimzadeh 11y agoI was thinking that same thing. Maybe not water but some kind of non-conductive gel?
- vulpes 11y agoOne of the main stated goals of vertical landings is so they can do it on other planets/bodies. There are other proven methods of reuse when you have a benefit of an atmosphere and/or infrastructure. A working vertical landing mode that can also be used on Mars, Moon and other objects in the solar system is one of the major mission at SpaceX. Shipping a giant vat of non-corrosive/conductive liquid to another planet does not appear viable.
- rezashirazian 11y agoAm I the only one who was surprised by how violently the rocket exploded when it fell to its side?
- manicdee 11y agoThin metal tube containing gaseous oxygen and kerosene, pressurised to 50psi. I suspect there is also a termination system that deliberately detonates so as to control the mode of failure (i.e.: combust the dangerous stuff before it has an opportunity to mix with the other stuff and make things worse)
- elif 11y agoPut yourself in the liquid oxygen's shoes. One second, you're chilling out at -207 C with your bros and some kerosenes, maybe even stopping off in near space--then, out of nowhere your containment vessel is compromised and you're evicted.. expected to just phase change and mix with all those common atmospherics. I think I'd react the same way.
- grogenaut 11y agois there a reason they can't like come to a stop over the water and then land in it and just expand some floats?
- robotresearcher 11y ago1. Salt water is very corrosive, and would require extensive rebuild of the engines. 2. They want the tech to land on Mars before too long.
- grogenaut 11y agoI figured salt would be the reason. Also the thermal stress of quenching it. Forgot about the mars aspect.
- JimmaDaRustla 11y agoDidn't it land, then fall over and explode? Also, didn't this portion of the rocket land before the satellite was deployed?
- niels_olson 11y agoI wonder if they've considered side curtain airbags to catch the rocket once it's really close like that, sort of like Amazon traps your item in 3 or 4 of those big bags, instead of lots of bubblewrap.