12 ms·

SpaceX Successfully Soft-Landed Booster Rocket in the Atlantic

306 points by typpo 12y ago

JimmaDaRustla 12y ago
"Telsa" - and I stopped reading... Edit: For the record, www.telsamotors.com redirects to www.teslamotors.com
- anarchy8 12y ago
  Why?
  - vitno 12y ago
    because it's "Tesla"
    - mercury888 12y ago
      He probably thought it was still r/technology
    - JimmaDaRustla 12y ago
      Yes, it just goes to show the horrid journalism that gets vomited out online in attempt to generate traffic...journalists don't even bother proof reading. Bloggers who write for free and contribute to HN have more pride, and care more about their articles than most professional journalists.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- BrandonMarc 12y ago
  Ironic, since Musk stated explicitly he wouldn't answer any Tesla questions.
BrandonMarc 12y ago
Equally large news from today's press conference at the National Press Club - SpaceX is taking on ULA (united launch alliance, a consortium of incumbent players in the market) and the "block buy" allocation of military / national-security launches to ULA. Here's their handout, from one of the reporters there: https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/459734785314013184 https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/459734785314013184 Playing politics a bit, Elon's claiming a ~ 75% reduction in launch costs by using Falcon 9 rockets instead of the block buys allocated to ULA, so he's filing a lawsuit to give his company access to this market. He even goes into details of how some of ULA's engines are manufactured in Russia, and given the festivities in the Ukraine our legislators would rather be less dependent on Russia for space access. He even whets the politicians' appetites with his blurb at the bottom describing how $1B per year could instead pay for operating a fleet of A-10's, or 15 Marine Corps battalions, or 12 F-16 squadrons ... or it could instead pay for purchasing 10 F-35's, 2 LCS's, or 50 UH-60 Black Hawks. Politicians (and Beltway reporters) definitely respond to money dangled in front of their face. Here's how he arrives at the ~75% reduction, btw: • ULA annual cost: $3.0-3.5B • ULA cost per launch: ~$460M • Falcon 9 cost: "under $100M" This forum has tons of live-blog style commentary leading up to and during the press conference. http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=lsmvrej5r2jcakuthchhko36i5&topic=34552.0 http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=lsmvrej... -------------------- (edited to clarify about ULA engine sourcing; thanks physcab)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - BrandonMarc 12y ago
    "Seems like the wrong time to be sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kremlin" -- Elon Musk He's certainly not making friends in Russia today. That said, I feel like the ISS is too important to be left to the whims of the US Congress. IIRC NASA plans to deorbit the American part of it within the next decade, while Russia keeps the rest aloft and turns it into a waystation for planetary missions.
    - 12y ago
cloudwalking 12y ago
- Successful soft landing in the Atlantic - Seas were too rough for a quick recovery - Rocket subsequently destroyed by wave action - Will attempt recovery of the next Falcon 9 launch - A Falcon 9 recovered on land could be re-used the next day (!) - SpaceX is lobbying to allow private competition for National Security launches (eg GPS satellites)
- redthrowaway 12y ago
  Is "the ocean was wavy" really a justifiable reason for losing the rocket? Surely sea conditions are something they'd take into account when planning and executing the mission.
  - DanielStraight 12y ago
    The mission was to launch the satellite they were being paid to launch. Recovery of the rocket was a test they were running on the side. The mission justifiably got priority.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      It's strange how many people seem unable to understand this. SpaceX got a bunch of testing essentially for free. NASA was gracious to allow it. They could have easily said, "We're paying you to launch stuff to ISS, keep those crazy landing legs far away from our payload." Sea conditions were too rough for recovery. Their options were to wait for better weather, annoying the customer and possibly losing the launch (they had one more launch window after the one they used before the payload went to another launch company), or go for it and still accomplish a great deal of testing even though they probably couldn't recover the rocket. Total no-brainer to choose the second option.
      - kristofferR 12y ago
        NASA isn't stupid, they know that if SpaceX manages to get rocket reusability they'll save a lot of money which would otherwise be spent on rocket launches.
Patrick_Devine 12y ago
Is it SpaceX's intention at some point to forgo the launch tower and launch directly off of the landing legs grasshopper style? I realize it's not really necessary, but it might make it easier to get a rocket off of Mars instead of having to build a tower. Although, presumably if you can refine rocket fuel on Mars, maybe building a launch tower is no big deal. Anyways, kudos again to Musk and SpaceX.
- aschampion 12y ago
  The strongback does a lot more than legs ever would: resistance to winds when awaiting the launch window, fueling, data connections, etc. Not to mention you need some sort of tower to lift the rocket upright after payload integration and servicing -- unless you do vertical integration, which they will need to do to win USAF contracts. But then you need a crane, anyway.
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    And eventually, you'll need a way to get the people in it.
  - amatix 12y ago
    Genuinely curious, why would USAF (or anyone) need vertical integration?
    - rst 12y ago
      These requirements seem to apply mostly to "national security" payloads (e.g., spysats), so the exact nature of the requirements is classified. It's easy to come up with a plausible guess about what the requirements might be (optics going out of alignment if you tip the spysat on its side?), but those who know don't say --- and those willing to venture a guess, like me, are showing they don't actually know.
- hga 12y ago
  I don't know about the need for a "tower", but the Falcon 9 launch sequence includes firing up all the engines and making sure they're running fine. Same too for the SSMEs as I recall. That's one of the great advantages of liquid fuel rockets, you can turn them off. Ditto the mighty Saturn V, they started "8.9 seconds" before launch, 300 milliseconds apart. So you need some serious hardware to hold it down till release, and to deal with all that exhaust.
arsey 12y ago
I am glad I read this article because it alerted me to the existence of NASA's robot astronaut named Robonaut [0]. [0] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/robonaut.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/robonaut.html
paul_f 12y ago
This may be a dumb question, but why are they test landing in the ocean instead of on land? Flight paths preclude it?
- iliis 12y ago
  The seas are huge and empty. Keep in mind that this was just an experiment which could easily have gone wrong. You probably don't want to have to explain why you made a rocket-shaped hole in somebody's roof ;) Also: Chances are higher that you're able to recover useful wreckage (like data loggers) when you crash into water.
- conroy 12y ago
  Safety. Previous attempts at a soft landing failed, with the firsr stage crashing into the ocean. Once they can be sure of a soft landing, my bet is they'll move to land.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- rst 12y ago
  They can't assume the test will work. (The first attempt, at the Cassiope launch, didn't.) Crashes at sea are a lot less consequential than crashes on land. (Flight paths are not an issue; they eventually expect to recover boosters from other space station cargo runs, which will follow the same trajectory.)
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  Safety and ease. Landing in the ocean they don't have to boost back which saves them fuel (so it's essentially trivial to just add a test onto an existing launch at no significant payload penalty), plus they get to run through most of the flight profile (especially the most important parts) without having any potential of hitting anything on land and with the expectation that the vehicle is going to be destroyed anyway. They have several (at least 4) more flights within the next year with sufficient payload margin to do more of these tests so they can spend time gaining confidence (at almost zero cost to SpaceX) and exploring the boost back trajectory (coming closer to land) before actually attempting a landing.
BrandonMarc 12y ago
Wait ... did Elon mention building a spaceport in Brownsville, TX? I can see how that would work well for GEO and GTO launches. That's an interesting breakdown for launch manifests: - FL, 39a: the NASA launches - FL, 40a: the DoD launches - TX: the GEO launches - CA: the polar launches (Vandenberg) It is interesting, that by bringing the lawsuit, Elon is essentially saying "hey! how come the block buy deal magically appeared only now that a viable competitor exists?"
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  Yep, they've been seeking environmental approvals for a little while. They've leased a site off shore on an island in the Laguna Madre. http://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/local_news/article_1e58c04a-75ba-11e3-a5f7-0019bb30f31a.html?mode=jqm http://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/local_news/article_1e5...
yazaddaruvala 12y ago
Where would the booster have landed? What if the Russian tug boat, that was chilling outside of Florida, stole the booster? That would be an interesting turn of events.
001sky 12y ago
(1) Telsa CEO Elon Musk announced a major breakthrough in spaceflight on Friday (2) Musk revealed the potentially "revolutionary" news on Friday during a hastily organized press conference (3) "What SpaceX has done thus far is evolutionary, not revolutionary," Musk said. (4) "If we can recover the booster stage, the chance is there for revolutionary." What was announded today was a critical first step. But there is nothing seemingly new in the press conference report, beyond what Elon had tweeted on the day of the soft-landing itself. The only new news is that the vehicle was lost, which doesn't really seem to be a "breakthrough" in the context of Musk's own explanation. The bigger step here will be getting the recovery because the need to confirm empirically what kind of shape the engineered pieces come back in. Many problemes like the icing on the shuttle (which de-laminated and caused projectile damage) are not going to be discovered without such an inspection.
biscotti 12y ago
At the NPC conference Elon confirmed a choppy video feed from the booster. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_rnija1nOA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_rnija1nOA
dfc 12y ago
It is absurd that a citizen must pay to view the decision from his previous case against Boeing. https://archive.org/details/gov.uscourts.cacd.179146 https://archive.org/details/gov.uscourts.cacd.179146
- cvbncvbncgbc 12y ago
  Are you sure? https://ia600706.us.archive.org/32/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.179146/gov.uscourts.cacd.179146.docket.html https://ia600706.us.archive.org/32/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.1...
  - dfc 12y ago
    Yes I am sure that this is how PACER works and furthermore I am also sure that the RECAP project does not have anything for this case. Did you notice the link you provided is merely a list of 71 case related documents? Do you know how many of those 71 documents have nothing listed in the "upload date" column?
wolf550e 12y ago
video and transcript of the session: http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/spacex-press-conference-at-the-national-press-club-2014-04-25 http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/spacex-press-conference-a...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

306 points by typpo 12y ago

JimmaDaRustla 12y ago

"Telsa" - and I stopped reading... Edit: For the record, www.telsamotors.com redirects to www.teslamotors.com

anarchy8 12y ago
Why?
- vitno 12y ago
  because it's "Tesla"
  - mercury888 12y ago
    He probably thought it was still r/technology
  - JimmaDaRustla 12y ago
    Yes, it just goes to show the horrid journalism that gets vomited out online in attempt to generate traffic...journalists don't even bother proof reading. Bloggers who write for free and contribute to HN have more pride, and care more about their articles than most professional journalists.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
BrandonMarc 12y ago
Ironic, since Musk stated explicitly he wouldn't answer any Tesla questions.

BrandonMarc 12y ago

Equally large news from today's press conference at the National Press Club - SpaceX is taking on ULA (united launch alliance, a consortium of incumbent players in the market) and the "block buy" allocation of military / national-security launches to ULA. Here's their handout, from one of the reporters there: https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/459734785314013184 https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/459734785314013184 Playing politics a bit, Elon's claiming a ~ 75% reduction in launch costs by using Falcon 9 rockets instead of the block buys allocated to ULA, so he's filing a lawsuit to give his company access to this market. He even goes into details of how some of ULA's engines are manufactured in Russia, and given the festivities in the Ukraine our legislators would rather be less dependent on Russia for space access. He even whets the politicians' appetites with his blurb at the bottom describing how $1B per year could instead pay for operating a fleet of A-10's, or 15 Marine Corps battalions, or 12 F-16 squadrons ... or it could instead pay for purchasing 10 F-35's, 2 LCS's, or 50 UH-60 Black Hawks. Politicians (and Beltway reporters) definitely respond to money dangled in front of their face. Here's how he arrives at the ~75% reduction, btw: • ULA annual cost: $3.0-3.5B • ULA cost per launch: ~$460M • Falcon 9 cost: "under $100M" This forum has tons of live-blog style commentary leading up to and during the press conference. http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=lsmvrej5r2jcakuthchhko36i5&topic=34552.0 http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=lsmvrej... -------------------- (edited to clarify about ULA engine sourcing; thanks physcab)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- BrandonMarc 12y ago
  "Seems like the wrong time to be sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kremlin" -- Elon Musk He's certainly not making friends in Russia today. That said, I feel like the ISS is too important to be left to the whims of the US Congress. IIRC NASA plans to deorbit the American part of it within the next decade, while Russia keeps the rest aloft and turns it into a waystation for planetary missions.
  - 12y ago

cloudwalking 12y ago

- Successful soft landing in the Atlantic - Seas were too rough for a quick recovery - Rocket subsequently destroyed by wave action - Will attempt recovery of the next Falcon 9 launch - A Falcon 9 recovered on land could be re-used the next day (!) - SpaceX is lobbying to allow private competition for National Security launches (eg GPS satellites)

redthrowaway 12y ago
Is "the ocean was wavy" really a justifiable reason for losing the rocket? Surely sea conditions are something they'd take into account when planning and executing the mission.
- DanielStraight 12y ago
  The mission was to launch the satellite they were being paid to launch. Recovery of the rocket was a test they were running on the side. The mission justifiably got priority.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    It's strange how many people seem unable to understand this. SpaceX got a bunch of testing essentially for free. NASA was gracious to allow it. They could have easily said, "We're paying you to launch stuff to ISS, keep those crazy landing legs far away from our payload." Sea conditions were too rough for recovery. Their options were to wait for better weather, annoying the customer and possibly losing the launch (they had one more launch window after the one they used before the payload went to another launch company), or go for it and still accomplish a great deal of testing even though they probably couldn't recover the rocket. Total no-brainer to choose the second option.
    - kristofferR 12y ago
      NASA isn't stupid, they know that if SpaceX manages to get rocket reusability they'll save a lot of money which would otherwise be spent on rocket launches.

Patrick_Devine 12y ago

Is it SpaceX's intention at some point to forgo the launch tower and launch directly off of the landing legs grasshopper style? I realize it's not really necessary, but it might make it easier to get a rocket off of Mars instead of having to build a tower. Although, presumably if you can refine rocket fuel on Mars, maybe building a launch tower is no big deal. Anyways, kudos again to Musk and SpaceX.

aschampion 12y ago
The strongback does a lot more than legs ever would: resistance to winds when awaiting the launch window, fueling, data connections, etc. Not to mention you need some sort of tower to lift the rocket upright after payload integration and servicing -- unless you do vertical integration, which they will need to do to win USAF contracts. But then you need a crane, anyway.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  And eventually, you'll need a way to get the people in it.
- amatix 12y ago
  Genuinely curious, why would USAF (or anyone) need vertical integration?
  - rst 12y ago
    These requirements seem to apply mostly to "national security" payloads (e.g., spysats), so the exact nature of the requirements is classified. It's easy to come up with a plausible guess about what the requirements might be (optics going out of alignment if you tip the spysat on its side?), but those who know don't say --- and those willing to venture a guess, like me, are showing they don't actually know.
hga 12y ago
I don't know about the need for a "tower", but the Falcon 9 launch sequence includes firing up all the engines and making sure they're running fine. Same too for the SSMEs as I recall. That's one of the great advantages of liquid fuel rockets, you can turn them off. Ditto the mighty Saturn V, they started "8.9 seconds" before launch, 300 milliseconds apart. So you need some serious hardware to hold it down till release, and to deal with all that exhaust.

arsey 12y ago

I am glad I read this article because it alerted me to the existence of NASA's robot astronaut named Robonaut [0]. [0] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/robonaut.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/robonaut.html

paul_f 12y ago

This may be a dumb question, but why are they test landing in the ocean instead of on land? Flight paths preclude it?

iliis 12y ago
The seas are huge and empty. Keep in mind that this was just an experiment which could easily have gone wrong. You probably don't want to have to explain why you made a rocket-shaped hole in somebody's roof ;) Also: Chances are higher that you're able to recover useful wreckage (like data loggers) when you crash into water.
conroy 12y ago
Safety. Previous attempts at a soft landing failed, with the firsr stage crashing into the ocean. Once they can be sure of a soft landing, my bet is they'll move to land.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rst 12y ago
They can't assume the test will work. (The first attempt, at the Cassiope launch, didn't.) Crashes at sea are a lot less consequential than crashes on land. (Flight paths are not an issue; they eventually expect to recover boosters from other space station cargo runs, which will follow the same trajectory.)
InclinedPlane 12y ago
Safety and ease. Landing in the ocean they don't have to boost back which saves them fuel (so it's essentially trivial to just add a test onto an existing launch at no significant payload penalty), plus they get to run through most of the flight profile (especially the most important parts) without having any potential of hitting anything on land and with the expectation that the vehicle is going to be destroyed anyway. They have several (at least 4) more flights within the next year with sufficient payload margin to do more of these tests so they can spend time gaining confidence (at almost zero cost to SpaceX) and exploring the boost back trajectory (coming closer to land) before actually attempting a landing.

BrandonMarc 12y ago

Wait ... did Elon mention building a spaceport in Brownsville, TX? I can see how that would work well for GEO and GTO launches. That's an interesting breakdown for launch manifests: - FL, 39a: the NASA launches - FL, 40a: the DoD launches - TX: the GEO launches - CA: the polar launches (Vandenberg) It is interesting, that by bringing the lawsuit, Elon is essentially saying "hey! how come the block buy deal magically appeared only now that a viable competitor exists?"

mikeyouse 12y ago
Yep, they've been seeking environmental approvals for a little while. They've leased a site off shore on an island in the Laguna Madre. http://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/local_news/article_1e58c04a-75ba-11e3-a5f7-0019bb30f31a.html?mode=jqm http://www.valleymorningstar.com/news/local_news/article_1e5...

yazaddaruvala 12y ago

Where would the booster have landed? What if the Russian tug boat, that was chilling outside of Florida, stole the booster? That would be an interesting turn of events.

001sky 12y ago

(1) Telsa CEO Elon Musk announced a major breakthrough in spaceflight on Friday (2) Musk revealed the potentially "revolutionary" news on Friday during a hastily organized press conference (3) "What SpaceX has done thus far is evolutionary, not revolutionary," Musk said. (4) "If we can recover the booster stage, the chance is there for revolutionary." What was announded today was a critical first step. But there is nothing seemingly new in the press conference report, beyond what Elon had tweeted on the day of the soft-landing itself. The only new news is that the vehicle was lost, which doesn't really seem to be a "breakthrough" in the context of Musk's own explanation. The bigger step here will be getting the recovery because the need to confirm empirically what kind of shape the engineered pieces come back in. Many problemes like the icing on the shuttle (which de-laminated and caused projectile damage) are not going to be discovered without such an inspection.

biscotti 12y ago

At the NPC conference Elon confirmed a choppy video feed from the booster. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_rnija1nOA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_rnija1nOA

dfc 12y ago

It is absurd that a citizen must pay to view the decision from his previous case against Boeing. https://archive.org/details/gov.uscourts.cacd.179146 https://archive.org/details/gov.uscourts.cacd.179146

cvbncvbncgbc 12y ago
Are you sure? https://ia600706.us.archive.org/32/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.179146/gov.uscourts.cacd.179146.docket.html https://ia600706.us.archive.org/32/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.1...
- dfc 12y ago
  Yes I am sure that this is how PACER works and furthermore I am also sure that the RECAP project does not have anything for this case. Did you notice the link you provided is merely a list of 71 case related documents? Do you know how many of those 71 documents have nothing listed in the "upload date" column?

wolf550e 12y ago

video and transcript of the session: http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/spacex-press-conference-at-the-national-press-club-2014-04-25 http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/spacex-press-conference-a...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]