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SpaceX SES-9 Mission Live Webcast
- nerdy 11y agoThey're aiming for 6:35 ET, from the page: We’re targeting today, Friday, March 4 at 6:35pm ET for launch of SES-9. The window extends to 8:06pm ET. The SpaceX webcast is scheduled to go live here (on http://www.spacex.com/webcast http://www.spacex.com/webcast) and on YouTube about 10 minutes prior to launch. For rocket views, launch countdown audio and telemetry info, use this link for our technical webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIkPP2LM8DU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIkPP2LM8DU
- melling 11y agoSupersonic...
- toufka 11y agoRainbow-bars [NO SIGNAL] right when stage 1 was landing on the barge... So suspenseful! The last frame before video cut out http://i.imgur.com/3HCnn7c.png http://i.imgur.com/3HCnn7c.png Edit - looks like stage 1 did not survive landing (this time). https://twitter.com/MatthewBTravis/status/705908015711518720 https://twitter.com/MatthewBTravis/status/705908015711518720 The Drone Ship says, "Sorry guys :(" https://twitter.com/TheDroneShip/status/705907706209693696 https://twitter.com/TheDroneShip/status/705907706209693696
- qrybam 11y agoTell me about it - never thought I'd be this excited about something landing on a floating platform!
- dtparr 11y agoYeah, at least this time we expected that to happen. (SpaceX webcast guy indicated the rocket shakes the uplink dish so hard on approach it's likely to lose signal every time).
- daeken 11y agoI do wonder why they don't have a separate small barge with a couple fiber runs between them, to do the comms (e.g. host the dish(es)). I guess it just isn't that important.
- dtparr 11y agoThat was asked on the spacex sub-reddit. The response was something like "you underestimate the power of a Merlin" which I took to mean that a reasonable distance to avoid the effects is too far to reasonably run ship-to-ship cabling.
- daeken 11y agoThat's totally reasonable, too. I had assumed that the wash from the rocket would be largely straight down, but that's probably way wrong.
- igjeff 11y agoIt is probably pretty much straight down...until it impacts the flat surface of the ship.
- mark-r 11y agoFiber optic cable is relatively light weight and strong for the bandwidth it supplies. This seems like a cop-out.
- spdustin 11y agoI'm sorry, but is it possible that the literal rocket scientists have given it more thought than you've given it credit for? I've only been posting here for a bit over a year. Has HN always had an issue with these sorts of pragmatic speech mis-queues where one posits that the experts are not aware of some painfully obvious solution? I find it to be condescending, but I'm not sure that such commenters realize it, and so I struggle with pointing it out - in case they didn't honestly realize the issue - or keeping my mouth shut, thereby avoiding potential conflict with someone who either can't be swayed or may actually be smarter than the group whose collective knowledge is being challenged. EDIT: I asked a legitimate question. Down votes don't teach people who want to learn, people.
- dz0ny 11y agohttp://i.imgur.com/3HCnn7c.png http://i.imgur.com/3HCnn7c.png
- stcredzero 11y agoThey need a bigger barge with more powerful station-keeping, and a dynamically stabilized hydraulic landing platform. (Along with a gimbal-stabilized uplink dish.)
- mikeash 11y agoI don't think any of the landing crashes so far have been due to the barge's size or movement. It's always been problems with the rocket, not the barge.
- stcredzero 11y agoYou're probably right. If they needed that stuff they'd probably build it. But I bet that what I suggest would result in being able to land in rougher weather with better media from 1st stage landings.
- mikeash 11y agoI imagine so. I'm not sure how much they care about the satellite feed, but handling rough weather would definitely be a plus. There was already one landing attempt that they had to give up on because weather was good at the launch site but bad out at sea.
- m_mueller 11y agoIt's hard to tell really. If the barge was bigger it basically means more leanient constraints for the final approach, which could result in a softer landing. Remember that Falcons can't hover and thus have to achieve perfect timing for the final burn. If you constrain time down to almost zero and space down to a few meters and the initial velocity is terminal velocity + pretty fast horicontal movement, it's almost a wonder that they're already doing what they're doing.
- Coincoin 11y agoLast time it effectively landed correctly in pretty rough conditions. The only problem was a landing leg did not lock because of ice and the stage was lost.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoWhile I'm sure there are a number of people who are really interested in the SES-9 success, I was really hoping to see a water landing. I continue to be amazed at how difficult it appears to be to get a reliable signal from an unmanned boat out in the Atlantic back to land.
- mikeash 11y agoIt looks like getting a signal in normal circumstances is doable, but problems occur when a 200ft rocket shows up wanting to make friends.
- wolf550e 11y agoLots of motion in the frame -> high bandwidth requirements.
- mikeash 11y agoThat might cause the video to go funky, but it shouldn't cut the feed. My guess is that the satellite dish or other communications hardware gets upset when the first stage effectively takes a flamethrower to it.
- robszumski 11y agoThe issue is vibration which throws the uplink out of alignment with the receiver.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- NickNameNick 11y agoOr just shakes it a lot.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoSeems a likely explanation. Its the engineer in my that goes wild here though, I think "why not have the uplink on a smaller flotation unit being held in place by a sea anchor? Or given the amount of time needed to monitor the return is relatively short (you know to the minute when it "should" touch down) could you launch the uplink on a hex a copter so that it could stand off from the barge, free of vibrations while the rocket landed? How about a 2.4Ghz cross link to an independent platform with its own uplink? How about using a towed fiber optic cable to a remote relay station away from the barge? Etc. I totally understand that this is a small (and in the larger picture unimportant) part of the mission, but the problem calls to me :-)
- agumonkey 11y agoI just love SpaceX skill in quantum mechanics http://imgur.com/StUjcAc http://imgur.com/StUjcAc Maybe, maybe not
- samstave 11y agoWhy arent there literally hundreds of GOPRO cams on the droneship? I mean they can make a robotic rocket and sea-based-landing platform, but they cant take good video with $100 cameras? Why are all vids cut off as if it was some lame redditor's crappy gif repost? Edit: I was clearly misinformed. My question was bad and I feel as.
- ceejayoz 11y agoThey have GoPros all over, and they usually release video afterwards from them. The problem is not the cameras, it's the uplink. Turns out cellular signals aren't so strong several hundred miles out to sea, and satellite uplinks are a bit iffy when your dish is being vibrated by a rocket.
- samstave 11y agoAh, well I was interested in longer content even delayed by days...
- dtparr 11y agoThe problem as I understand it is not the cameras, as we generally get footage later. It's that whole "bandwidth" thing when you're 600km out to sea and a 14 story rocket comes flying in and messes up your satellite uplink.
- sillysaurus3 11y agoI like how your imgur post is a proxy for the number of people that view HN. Probably 1/10th the viewers clicked the link. The link is at about 6k views in 2 hours. Kind of mindblowing how much viewership a toplevel comment gets, especially compared to the number of upvotes/downvotes.
- gozur88 11y agoNice "intermission" music. I'm glad the launch is going well. After all those false starts a first stage failure would have been depressing.
- ajtaylor 11y agoThe only question that matters right now is: did stage 1 land successfully on the barge???
- mhandley 11y agoIt looked like it was somewhat off-center just before the video froze. Hope I'm wrong.
- mikeash 11y agoIt intentionally comes down a bit off center so that if the engine(s) don't relight, the rocket crashes into the ocean instead of the ship. It then maneuvers onto the ship from there. The video may have just cut off before that.
- gozur88 11y agoUnless you're SES, in which case the remaining 2nd stage stuff is pretty important.
- melling 11y agoAfter all that's what they're getting paid for. They can crash a dozen more stage 1's and they're still making money. If only other startups worked that way.
- catilac 11y agoDid I see video footage of inside the fuel tank?
- generj 11y agoElon confirms 1st stage did not get a good landing https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/705917924972736512 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/705917924972736512 Edit - text of tweet: "Rocket landed hard on the droneship. Didn't expect this one to work (v hot reentry), but next flight has a good chance." Very impressive nonetheless. I am wondering if they had a loss of the drone ship?
- mikeash 11y agoIt's unlikely the drone ship would be lost. The rocket is coming in nearly empty. The explosions we've seen in the past are really just the remnants of fuel briefly burning, it's not all that powerful. The rocket itself is light compared to the ship. It's a little bit like someone throwing a soda can at your head. It'll hurt, but it won't break your skull. Some of the support equipment on the deck might take damage (there are fun pictures of the ship after previous attempts with various items dented and scorched) but the ship itself should be fine.
- generj 11y agoAh, OK. For some reason I had the mental image of a bunch of inexpensive ships which would surely sink if they got hit at high velocity. It's pretty incredible, given how large the rockets are, that the ship dwarfs them, but recalling earlier landing videos you are correct.
- mikeash 11y agoJust to put some numbers on it, this barge is the MARMAC 304, modified by SpaceX. According to this page: http://www.mcdonoughmarine.com/recent-news.html http://www.mcdonoughmarine.com/recent-news.html That ship has a cargo capacity of over 13,000 tons. I believe an empty Falcon 9 first stage is around 20 tons. Totally different scales.
- ape4 11y agoI read that entire barge blog. Its interesting.
- Animats 11y agoAnother successful Falcon 9 launch. Too bad about the booster landing. The barge landing is very tough; it requires drastic maneuvers in the last seconds to hit that tiny target. The land-based landing pad is much larger. The Falcon Heavy launch was supposed to be next month, but that's slipped to late 2016, maybe.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- melling 11y agoThe analogy you're making is someone says "hey, the delivery company is still making money on each delivery so it doesn't matter if they don't figure out how to recover the boxes in the next 100 trips." Then some other person comes along and says "hey, let's remember every other deliver company just lets the boxes turn into garbage." The point I wanted you to make is that some company is developing a great new technology while running a profitable business. If robotics, self-driving cars, clean energy, etc could do the same, we'd all benefit. Instead we get the HN Nerd thing where someone just states the obvious because we're all a bunch of fucking idiots. Way to go Mike Ash. Think this is our second go-round.
- Dylan16807 11y ago>The point I wanted you to make is that some company is developing a great new technology while running a profitable business. If robotics, self-driving cars, clean energy, etc could do the same, we'd all benefit. That's a perfectly nice point, but it's also obvious. Were you stating such an obvious thing "because we're all a bunch of fucking idiots"? Your original post's wording really seems to be wishing other startups could get away with that kind of waste as long as their core product is good, not wishing they were trying to massively eliminate waste.
- melling 11y agoNope, everyone knows that landing the first stage is an incredibly difficult problem to solve, right? I was simply saying that they have a lot of time and money to solve it because they have a profitable business that doesn't depend on them solving it. Lots of startups are VC backed long shots. Most startups fail because they run out of money. It seems to be the way the market is played these days. SpaceX is kept private, for example, so it doesn't have to be held hostage by public markets. That's rare for most companies.
- mikeash 11y agoAre you really trying to blame me for an argument you got yourself into with someone else? Way to go indeed.