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Yet another incredible show from SpaceX. At this point, if they said they were going to build a football stadium on Europa, my only question would be when does
by alangibson 9y ago
Yet another incredible show from SpaceX. At this point, if they said they were going to build a football stadium on Europa, my only question would be when does it open.
But I couldn't help but laugh at the fact that they can launch a massive rocket on the first try and land (at least) 2 cores, but the camera STILL cuts out on the drone ship.
- nicpottier 9y agoI do find that super weird. You would think one of the nearby ships would have a feed as well no?
- pikchurn 9y agoWhat nearby ships?
- gehsty 9y agoThe landing barge is towed into position by tugs, and once the boosters are landed I presume it is towed back out, so there will be some tug boats nearby.
- codeulike 9y agoI thought the barge was a drone?
- ygra 9y agoIt has station-keeping thrusters to stay at precise GPS coordinates. But it can't move far under own power and is towed. The name ASDS is not really to be taken literally here.
- gehsty 9y agoIt will likely be a proper dynamic positioning system so will more than likely use two independent reference systems for position, one could be a DGPS system the other could be as basic as a taughtwire....
- mastax 9y agoThe nearby ships with the people that weld the booster to the deck for transport.
- jasongill 9y agoThere aren't any nearby ships, for obvious safety reasons. Plus, any nearby ships would have the exact same issue - where exactly would you "feed" to, when any ship that far out is going to be using a commercial satellite data feed (ie, very slow and unreliable)?
- Udik 9y ago> for obvious safety reasons The safety reasons don't hold, you can easily shoot from several kms away (there are people on land several kms away from the launch pad). In the worst case, you can pilot a drone from several kms away, close enough to the barge. > any ship that far out is going to be using a commercial satellite data feed The footage from the droneship always appears perfect seconds before the landings. So it's not simply the fact of being at sea.
- nicpottier 9y agoEarlier in the feed they showed some ships that were presumably towing the drone out. I'm sure there are some that are within a mile or two. To your second question, how about a camera on a boat closer in with a hard line to a boat farther out with the satellite connection? You act as if sending a video feed is an unsolvable problem despite them beaming living video through the rest of the mission when they are in space.
- madeuptempacct 9y ago"ie, very slow and unreliable" Yea, right - Tesla can't afford a radio off shore. Sure.
- porjo 9y agoYes, very hard to believe this was a technical failure/limitation. My money would be on a deliberate cut, possibly even automated, when the systems became aware of impending failure. It'd be important for SpaceX that any negative outcomes are delayed from public release in order to control what makes it into the headline news. The fate of the reusable components would be a particularly sensitive aspect of the PR campaign.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- andygates 9y agoNah, this is standard stuff for SpaceX. They always get signal dropouts and someone always says "conspiracy!" They're not interested in the extra hassle of continuity for the sake of putting on a live show. The droneship has tons of cameras, the booster has tons of telemetry, that's all they're interested in. (if you must spin a conspiracy, the one where they deliberately don't upgrade to keep their fans guessing is more credible - it's zero effort)
- porjo 9y agoI have nothing to gain by SpaceX failing. I wish them all the best. I'm just stating what I think is pretty obvious - that this was a massive PR exercise, apart from anything else. My BS detector goes into overdrive at times like that. When you mount cameras on a landing barge, you would expect there to be a high likelihood of them being damaged or affected in some way when your rocket lands. So you do the obvious thing, and setup a redundant camera feed somewhere at a distance. Previous test landings at sea had a chase plane. Where was that this time?
- pikchurn 9y agoI don't find that surprising. The communication link back is presumably by satellite since it is in the middle of the ocean, and probably a directional antenna because of the high bandwidth. You have any good suggestions for having a reliable connection via directional antenna on a flimsy barge that a rocket is landing on in this middle of the choppy north Atlantic?
- post_break 9y agoKeep the camera and antennas on the boat instead of the platform with a zoom lens?
- niftich 9y agoTow a cable from the barge to a nearby ship, buoy, or platform on which the antenna sits, that's out of range of the vibrations and faces a different direction?
- gervase 9y agoI believe they are required as part of FAA regulations to ensure that no manned craft are within 15 miles of the landing zone? Something like that, at least, which would complicate a tether-based approach.
- larkeith 9y agoI think the suggestion was a separate but tethered unmanned platform, which would presumably have less vibrations. I would imagine it's just not cost-efficient for SpaceX, as they'll be able to recover the footage later regardless.
- oh_sigh 9y agoThey could perfect it, by having say an underwater wired data feed going to an ancillary ship which transmits it, which then is out of the thrust cone of the rocket. But it's probably just not worth it to get the footage 5 minutes early.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]