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I remember there was a phase of Falcon design where it looked like they had perfected barge landing, and then they had a rash of failures. Later on they admitt
by ortusdux 2y ago
I remember there was a phase of Falcon design where it looked like they had perfected barge landing, and then they had a rash of failures. Later on they admitted to intentionally crashing older boosters so they could find the limits of the hardware. They were iterating at such a pace that the data was worth more than a recovered booster. I wonder if that was the case today?
- ericcumbee 2y agoYes Musk said before one of the first flights, that they are making changes and building new hardware at a much faster rate than they could ever hope to fly it right now. pretty much something to the effect that by the time they get to fly hardware a lot of it is obsolete.
- mjamesaustin 2y agoTo give an example of this, the Starship they've been flying on the last few flights is already obsolete. There's a newer V2 but they wanted to burn through the rest of the V1s they had already built and get more data before flying V2.
- fastball 2y agoThey also apparently already have a V3 in the works.
- cyphertruck 2y agoIt's been announced, and is surely being designed, but they are only building hardware for V2 right now. Most likely V2 will continue as long as they need to get dialed in what they want V3 to be, then they will switch. V2 seems to be based on the learnings from V1, and I think V3 is the real design they want to fly-- but V3 depends on Raptor 3 and probably other advancements, and Raptor 3 is still at the testing stage in MacGregor. For instance the V2 design seems to use Raptor 2.5 which is a Raptor 2 variant with Raptor 3 style interface with the ship. So they are testing the ship design to support Raptor 3 before they have Raptor 3. The engines are really heart of these things and drive the development cadence.
- polishdude20 2y agoThat makes so much sense. Once you find the correct parameters for an optimal flight, use the rest of the rockets to map the state space of configurations to see how much they can deviate
- rajnathani 2y agoInteresting, so if they do not intend to recover the rocket from the water here, then this was an effective waste-disposal method for their obsolete V1 design?
- ricardobeat 2y agoI was surprised to learn that, besides the environmental impact of the leftover fuel - though methane is the least toxic of them, and decomposing electronics, the metal rocket body itself can be a boost for marine life and corals by serving as shelter. Guess the outcome depends a lot on the design and materials used.
- snypher 2y agoThis is why I throw beer bottles into the sea, it's new habitat for sea creatures. Not really, but it makes a good excuse for littering.
- ricardobeat 2y agoTrue recycling.
- wil421 2y agoWhy would they plan to catch it and then divert mid flight if they didn’t want to reuse it?
- SexyKitty17 2y ago[flagged]
- afro88 2y agoIt's possible to plan for multiple eventualities. They may have pushed it to its limits (or beyond) and decided the best destination based on how it handled it
- ammojamo 2y agoI believe they diverted to save the tower from being potentially damaged/destroyed by a failed landing.
- zamadatix 2y agoWhich would be in direct conflict with the reason given originally above.
- eru 2y agoThey might be happy to push hard enough to risk the booster, but be much less willing to risk the tower? Seems perfectly consistent to me.
- zamadatix 2y agoI like SpaceX as much as the next nerd but that's not "intentionally crashing the booster" it's "doing the only other type of landing you can when you abort the first plan of landing it successfully". I'm sure they got useful data out of it (it's better than "booster blows up in mid air") but this is squarely in "2nd attempt to land with chopsticks wasn't as ready as they hoped" bucket, not "132nd attempt to land the booster was intentionally destroying it to see how much farther they could be pushing it" as was originally implied with the wording and prior example.
- iknowstuff 2y agoDuring the livestream they did keep saying that they’re pushing it past its expected limits.
- SexxxyKitty17 2y ago[flagged]
- whaaaaat 2y agoThat was primarily said for the second stage. The primary stage I didn't hear them call out as often (if at all?)
- bensandcastle 2y agowas a stated objective before the launch: "faster/harder booster catch" https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858867695233425734 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858867695233425734
- rksiitd 2y agoI guess you are right! https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859036912348262787 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859036912348262787
- lesuorac 2y agoDo you have to pay to scrap old rockets? I guess that could be an interesting cost savings measure, just lose/destroy your old inventory instead of paying disposal.
- simondotau 2y agoI have no idea, but my guess is that the cost of fuel would be an order of magnitude greater than any possible disposal costs. Also, people pay good money for high-quality metals. The scrap value is probably greater than the logistics cost of getting it to a scrapyard. You wouldn’t even need to scrap it. Cut it up and turn it into some mega silos for agriculture or materials suppliers. Or just set it aside and donated to the Smithsonian in a few decades…
- simondotau 2y agoAnd, I should add, but if anyone discovered that the fuel was being wasted for no benefit, it would be a PR nightmare, especially as there’s no end of people eager to find fault with the company’s founder and largest shareholder.
- hoseja 2y agoIt's running on natural gas and air. The fuel is actually really cheap.
- kfrzcode 2y agoProbably not as much as if you steer it toward the graveyard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_cemetery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_cemetery