10 ms·
"That core booster approached the platform as planned, but it unfortunately hit the water going 300 MPH and was lost, because some of its return engines failed
by runesoerensen 9y ago
"That core booster approached the platform as planned, but it unfortunately hit the water going 300 MPH and was lost, because some of its return engines failed to light"
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/06/spacex-landed-two-of-its-three-falcon-heavy-first-stage-boosters/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/06/spacex-landed-two-of-its-t...
- meatbags 9y agoThanks for the closure - I've been refreshing twitter all morning. I've seen the much-touted $90M price-tag for the FH launch, but does that take into account loss of the core or boosters?
- Analemma_ 9y agoSpaceX has been keeping their launch prices pretty consistent, even when they couldn't know how many F9 stages they would actually recover. I think they've factored in testing losses into the price.
- drawnwren 9y agoI wouldn't be surprised to learn that advertised prices are still far above what they could achieve after flying for a while and paying down some of their R&D debt (and if/when the market becomes even a little bit competitive).
- mathw 9y agoAlmost inevitably. They don't need to hit rock-bottom prices because they're already there compared to the rest of the current market, and they can use the money to pay back their enormous R&D budget, or if Musk is just throwing that money off as a worthwhile loss then to pay for research on BFR and their other future projects. After all if you can make a hefty profit while still undercutting the competition you're basically winning at capitalism.
- akozak 9y agoI think he said in the press conference that they weren't planning to reuse the core or boosters. (But then mentioned later they wanted some of the parts? IDK)
- mxvzr 9y agoIf I understood properly none of the boosters were block 5 so they weren't looking at re-flying them. They are however interested in recovering the grid fins on the side boosters, which were redesigned to accommodate for the nose cones now sitting on top of them.
- dmix 9y agoBlock 5?
- pi-rat 9y agoVersion 5 of the falcon design.
- Cogito 9y agoTo be perhaps slightly more accurate, it's like a major version 5. Almost (if not) all missions include changes of some kind; the manufacturing blocks each have significant, incompatible differences in parts. Upgrading the grid fins would be a minor version change, modifying the engine to increase its throttle depth a major one. I don't know, but it seems like there would need to be significant re-tooling for each new block, and many parts would be incompatible with previous blocks.
- erikpukinskis 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_Full_Thrust#Block_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_Full_Thrust#Block_5
- dtparr 9y agoThe latest hardware revision that's expected to be the mainstay for F9 flights going forward. Has better performance and addresses some reusability issues discovered in earlier blocks.
- JshWright 9y agoThe $90m price is for a fully reusable FH, yes. The cores in this particular flight, however, were not intended for reuse either way.
- mikejb 9y agoThe damage to the ASDS might be more of a problem. Depending on how badly it was damaged, it might not be available to catch other cores that could have landed otherwise
- z3t4 9y agoIt look cool to have them land on their own, but wouldn't it be much cheaper to use parachutes and drop them in the ocean !? Either way they are going to take them apart down to each bolt and then reassemble again to make sure there are no faults. You don't simply fill it up and relaunch.
- wiredfool 9y agoNo. This has been gone ove many times, but: Parachutes aren't cheap or easy. Saltwater is horrible for precision parts. They are trying to gas and go, or at least move, gas and full power test.
- mathw 9y agoA large part of the work SpaceX are trying to do is get it so that they can pretty much just give it a fairly simple inspection, fill it up and relaunch it. They already need far less work between launches than the space shuttle did.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago> You don't simply fill it up and relaunch. Yes, you do. Or at least, that's what they want to do. They've already reflown a bunch of their landed rockets, including the two boosters on Falcon Heavy. The ultimate goal is to be able to fill it up and relaunch, and the ultimate motivation for propulsive landing is simple - that's what is needed on Mars (parachutes won't do much there), so they want to master it. EDIT: I meant that today, with Falcon Heavy Test Flight behind us, the two side boosters qualify as reflown - this was their second mission, not the third.
- jotm 9y agoSo the FH boosters were reused? The ones that landed back again? Amazing, great news to start a morning :)
- jl6 9y agoWas it just lucky that the core didn’t directly impact the drone ship or was it designed to aim to the side in the event of the landing speed being too high?
- giarc 9y agoI read somewhere that the drone ship was damaged.
- JshWright 9y agoElon mentioned in the press conference that two of the engines on the droneship (it has four, one on each corner) were damaged.
- JBlue42 9y agoDo they send another ship to fix the drone ship?
- jordanthoms 9y agoThere's another ship nearby which tows it, it doesn't go all the way in and out of port on its own power. And the ship has taken far bigger poundings in the past, one of them blew a huge hole in the deck.
- imglorp 9y agoI'm kind of glad they had something fail. That means maybe they learned something new to improve the next shot.
- make3 9y agomost of the people I know are twisted pessimists. you're a twisted optimist
- simonh 9y agoThe rocket ran out of engine igniter fluid. It had enough to light the centre engine, but not the two side engines. That seems to imply they were trying to do a 3-engine landing, which they tested recently in the 'failed to expend the rocket' incident. This might explain why they miscalculated the igniter requirement since they don't have much experience with 3-engine landings.
- MayeulC 9y agoOn the other hand, if you look carefully at the landing video, it looks like they did a three-engine landing boost on the other boosters: https://youtu.be/BBA7su98v3Y?t=517 https://youtu.be/BBA7su98v3Y?t=517 So they have definitely learned something valuable in that landing incident.
- simonh 9y agoCool. I'd assumed they only did that with the centre core, but you're right.
- dtparr 9y agoInteresting. Looks like a 1-3-1 burn (start with 1, ignite two more for a bit, then finish on a single one). I wonder how much longer the '3 engine burn' was for the GovSat launch last week that did a 'water landing'
- rocqua 9y agoIs the normal landing a 1-engine landing? If so, is the advantage of a 3-engine landing that it requires less fuel due to having a much shorter 'suicide burn'?
- delaaxe 9y ago> But the core, middle booster, which attempted to land aboard “Of Course I Still Love You,” a drone barge that SpaceX uses as a mobile, ocean-borne landing pad stationed in the Atlantic for its flights departing from Florida, wasn’t recovered. “Of Course I Still Love You” is the name of a spacecraft in The Culture, a series of novels that inspired Elon Musk when he was young.
- elmar 9y ago'Crazy things can come true': Elon Musk discusses Falcon Heavy launch: Full presser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sytrrdOPYzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sytrrdOPYzA