31 ms·

SpaceX: “Close, but no cigar. This time”

598 points by ggonweb 12y ago

grecy 12y ago
Interesting. It had quite the lean, And close to zero vertical velocity. Then it looks like it accelerated at the last second in an attempt to move sideways back the center of the barge. I wonder if the top of the rocket was at or very near the center? Also you can clearly see the landing legs deployed, jeez they look tiny. Must just tweeted "Next rocket landing on drone ship in 2 to 3 weeks w way more hydraulic fluid. At least it shd explode for a diff reason." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/556105370054053889 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/556105370054053889
- mitchty 12y ago
  Was probably the engine gimbaling and thrusting up to attempt to correct but was just unable to due to the fins not being around the whole descent.
  - 0x5f3759df-i 12y ago
    Not only were the fins unable to move, the position they were stuck in was a very unhelpful position.
    - Sammi 12y ago
      Yes, and could speculate that the main engine fired 'wrongly' because the control code didn't take into account that the fins were locked.
      - Florin_Andrei 12y ago
        Hm, if I was the guy designing the control loop on that thing (not gonna happen in real world, but bear with me), I would definitely take into account the fins position - the real position, not the one I want them to be in. Not that it would have helped anyway in this case.
        Symmetry 12y ago
        I suspect that the code takes the fin's starting position into account in each planning cycle but also assumes that the fin will move as directed in the future.
        Florin_Andrei 12y ago
        No rotary encoders on those things?
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  I really appreciate his matter of factness in these sorts of tweets.
- _nate_ 12y ago
  To me, the video has an optical illusion effect, caused by the bright light from the engine. The rocket is not directly over the platform, it’s actually off the far corner by about 50-100 feet, it comes horizontally into the platform and crashes over it. Meaning it’s not close to the center of the platform and trying to accelerate off of it, it was laterally moving over it from the side and crashed the engine into the barge, which kicked it up over the platform.
- mbell 12y ago
  From what I can tell, and I think you can see a bit in the video, when the grid fins ran out of hydraulic pressure they locked full in one direction. The last burn this thing does is often called a 'suicide burn' as there are a couple complications to landing it. First, it only has enough fuel left for a short burn. Second, it's not possible to run the single engine they use to land it at a low enough thrust level that it can hover. i.e. 1 of 9 engines at the lowest possible thrust it can operate at is more than enough to accelerate the empty stage body upward. As a result they have to 'blip' it just before landing and cut at the exact time needed to reach 0-ish velocity at landing. This means the thing is moving _fast_ just before the video starts. I'm guessing that with the grid fins locked in an extreme direction 24 seconds before getting to the barge they still had a lot of influence over the flight path since it was still moving fast. This pulled the top to an angle. The engine fired and the vectoring capability of the engine tried to toss it back over the ship but it just couldn't correct the lean before hitting the barge.
- m_mueller 12y ago
  Maybe they could improve the failure behaviour with some failsafe mechanism? *If the rocket is not within a certain envelope, gain as much distance to the pod as possible? Later when they want to have landing on land, a designated area for aborting could be used.
ufmace 12y ago
Cool video! Just what we've been waiting to see. I wonder what actually exploded there? Part of the argument for why the landing was supposed to be relatively safe was that the stage would be mostly empty of fuel by the time that it landed, so there wouldn't be much to explode if something went wrong. So is that an explosion of the remaining fuel in the rocket, or something on deck?
- delinka 12y ago
  I figured it was just the automatic aperture on the camera causing the flame to simply appear bigger. I'd point out that the sound didn't change (no boom) but then maybe the mic was already clipping. Still, I'd like more detail to be certain whether something exploded. Edit: no, you're right. I just mis-remembered. When I reviewed the video, it looks like the thing breaks open and I'd suspect the last remnants of fuel are spilling out.
- geerlingguy 12y ago
  It doesn't take much to make the kind of explosion you see in the video (those chemicals are quite volatile). I think the safety comes from that being the extent of the explosion. Compare that to a fully-fueled stage, which would have 90x more fuel, a 90x larger fireball, shock wave, etc. The deck of the ship almost looked undamaged!
  - Sammi 12y ago
    Images of the barge post explosion here: http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/01/11/photos-spacexs-rocket-landing-platform-back-in-port/ http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/01/11/photos-spacexs-rocket-l...
- TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
  "Mostly" != "entirely". Also, don't forget the rocket engine itself My guess would be the explosion was of the remaining fuel in the rocket engine and tank. Either that or it wasn't actually an explosion, just burning fuel-air mix spewing about after the rocket nozzle deformed too much.
- 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jefurii 12y ago
Wow, they struck a glancing blow to that barge! From space!
jacquesm 12y ago
Looks like it did not come down vertically but at a slant, but they got the positioning better than I thought they would on this try. One thing to note is that it is from now on officially a very bad idea to piss off Elon Musk if he knows where you live, being able to hit stuff with this kind of accuracy using rockets from space is normally enough to get you placed on the 'axis of evil' list. Incredible precision.
- guelo 12y ago
  You joke but a future were corporations control ICBMs to their advantage is a realistic worry.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    That's no longer the future. SpaceX is a corporation and that rocket could have been pointed the other way for a bit longer easily.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    I'm trying, but not succeeding, to imagine a non-fiction situation where a corporation has any business advantage in owning and/or controlling an ICBM. Can you expand on your comment? What would a corporation do with this, other than to perhaps implement same day delivery of packages around the globe?
    - moskie 12y ago
      I don't necessarily believe this to be a possibility... but if the US contracted out "security" to companies like Blackwater, it seems at least.... plausible that they could contract out "missile defense."
      - returnofdjedi 12y ago
        This could get bad if the contracted party is corrupt?
    - 12y ago
mjs 12y ago
Is that in realtime?
- moskie 12y ago
  Oh, you're asking if the video is slowed down/sped up. Ok. At first, I thought you were asking if we were watching it in realtime.... and seeing rocket after rocket blow up on this barge.
  - returnofdjedi 12y ago
    Cool.If would be great to know how musk distributes his time between Tesla And Spacex.
    - mikeyouse 12y ago
      From here: http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-day-in-the-life-of-the-tesla-and-spacex-ceo-2012-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-day-in-the-life-of-... > Musk splits his time between his two companies. He's at SpaceX's LA-based headquarters on Monday and Thursday, then he heads to Tesla (in the Bay Area) on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Friday he splits time between both. Tesla Design has offices in the same office park as SpaceX. He lives in LA, so the schedule makes sense in that he flies LA -> SF Tuesday AM and then SF -> LA Thursday night.
- JshWright 12y ago
  Looks like it to me. The smoke and fog seems to be moving at a very 'normal' speed.
  - iamcreasy 12y ago
    That's even more impressive then!
fluffheadsr 12y ago
love that they're trying something new and exciting.. you're gonna fail when you're going for it.. but at least someones going for it. looking forward to hyper loop.
- returnofdjedi 12y ago
  Elon Musk is the Tesla and Steve Jobs of our generation.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    People always compare him to Jobs but I don't think it's right. Jobs hated any sort of public failure. He pushed the envelope in some ways, but never put something out there until it was polished and consumer-ready. Jobs was great at seeing how technology could be combined in novel ways and how to boil products down to exactly what they needed, but he didn't push forward entirely new tech, and I can't imagine Jobs publicly showing a video of his flagship product exploding into a fiery mess.
  - digerata 12y ago
    Yep! Just a little less crazy and a lot less of an asshole.
  - lsaferite 12y ago
    Oh the confusion. Perhaps 'Nikola Tesla' would have been better.
    - Crito 12y ago
      More business sense than Tesla. Less in the way of personal technical/scientific achievements. He's not very popular on the internet for a variety of reasons, but I think that Edison is a better comparison. Not the first person I'd compare him to, but I'd sooner compare him to Edison than Tesla.
      - lsaferite 12y ago
ChuckMcM 12y ago
That is awesome! I appears the stage has maybe 10 m/s horizontal velocity and less than that vertical, but at that angle I can see how difficult it would be for just engine gimballing to get get it vertical again. I wonder if the barge is equipped to record a downlink of telemetry from stage. Once it gets close enough you should be able to shoot over at least some data which the barge could presumably keep 'safe' in a blast protected storage system.
ChrisBland 12y ago
Wow, what an amazing feat to come this close. To think just ~100 years ago humans took flight for the first time. Now we are able to launch a rocket in orbit, then fly the first stage to land on a small platform floating in the middle of the ocean.
- hnnewguy 12y ago
  >Now we are able to launch a rocket in orbit, then fly the first stage to land on a small platform floating in the middle of the ocean. You know we landed on the moon, right? I mean, this is cool, but from a sheer "fascinating achievement" standpoint, this is at least a few notches behind that.
  - bunderbunder 12y ago
    The engineer's perpetual irritation: Your most impressive achievement never has as much sex appeal as you'd hope.
  - InclinedPlane 12y ago
    Landing on the moon was a historic achievement, but this work with reusable rockets is on the same scale. In order to colonize space and no longer be bound to just the Earth, we will need transportation that costs less than a billion dollars per person. Apollo showed us that the stars are in our grasp, SpaceX wool provide the means of actually grasping them.
  - tomswartz07 12y ago
    Surely, but this is all computer controlled. Humans are pretty crafty, but it takes a special kind of craftiness to program a computer to do it as well as a person. :)
  - KeytarHero 12y ago
    Can't we just appreciate how both are fascinating for entirely different reasons? I think it's pretty amazing we were able to get a rocket to land (edit: well, almost land) to this precise a spot - and all by itself, without human pilots. Sure, it's no moon landing, but it has certain other challenges the moon landing didn't have. I think both are really cool.
sixQuarks 12y ago
Sorry for sounding like such a fanboy, but during my 40 years on this earth, I have never been more impressed with a human being. The guy is pushing the envelope on perhaps the most difficult engineering/technological endeavor ever attempted by a private company - and he's making it look cool and futuristic. As if that wasn't enough, he's doing this in two different industries simultaneously. I'm not saying he can do no wrong, but I'm just flabbergasted that there are still so many armchair critics and naysayers when it comes to Elon Musk.
- returnofdjedi 12y ago
  I think All this was attempted before too but nothing quite was made which was marketable too.
- epmatsw 12y ago
  He's like a real life Tom Swift. It's awesome!
- Someone1234 12y ago
  > I'm not saying he can do no wrong, but I'm just flabbergasted that there are still so many armchair critics and naysayers when it comes to Elon Musk. That's why you're a fanboy. Nobody is perfect, and Elon Musk likes to make fun of the competition quite publicly when they have an issue, while ignoring his project's own failures. It is hard to even discuss the man on HN as anything that could even be taken as critical gets downmoded or flagged. Just look at yesterday's hyperloop discussions, nobody could say anything critical without being very actively attacked. By the way make sure "show dead" is turned on to see the full discussion. Honestly his track record is very impressive indeed. His aspirations are also impressive. However his fans are insufferable as is HN's general attitude about the man. When someone is treated as if they're beyond reproach and their ideas are also, you're just asking to get led down the garden path. The hyperhoop concept in particular is pretty bad, and the white paper leaves more questions than it does answers. The cost is too high and the value too low Vs. normal high speed trains (e.g. Japan). Plus there are massive safety issues surrounding it (as you can see from the thread yesterday, that were largely just ignored and downmodded). Overall I'll be happy when people start acting rationally around the guy again. Currently I feel like I at a One Direction concert surrounding by a bunch of screaming teenage girls (on HN in particular). PS - I wouldn't dream of criticising this rocket failure. Rockets are hard, the last 80 years have proven that again and again.
goshx 12y ago
Could someone please explain the "no cigar"?
- danielweber 12y ago
  It's an expression to say "close but no cigar" if you try something but don't get it. The "cigar" would be what you smoke after a victory.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Here you go: http://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/close,_but_no_cigar http://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/close,_but_no_cigar
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Uhhrrr 12y ago
  It's from a time when it was common to offer cigars as rewards for playing carnival games. If you missed the target or milk can or whatever, "close, but no cigar!".
  - goshx 12y ago
    thank you all!
  - returnofdjedi 12y ago
    I have watched A Few Good Men to guess what it means . I forgot what it meant though.
  - gcb0 12y ago
    like urban dictionary?
- murtza 12y ago
  I am working on a project to define phrases in English like "close, but no cigar". Here's the page for this phrase: http://jargonism.com/words/437 http://jargonism.com/words/437 I would be interested to hear feedback from HN on what would be useful on the word page, in addition to a definition and an example?
butwhy 12y ago
I still don't understand how hydraulic fuel is used in this case and how lack of it caused this failed landing.
- joezydeco 12y ago
  Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8896790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8896790
- robszumski 12y ago
  The fins turn and are powered by hydraulic fluid. When it ran out, the fins stayed pointing in a certain direction, which meant the stage couldn't steer. Then it hit the ship.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  The hydraulic oil is not used as a 'fuel' to burn but to control the actuators for the grid fins. So if you lose control because you run out of hydraulic oil the last bit of the descent will be uncontrolled. So they almost made it with enough hydraulic oil, which means that next time the grid fins will work all the way down, which leaves a ton of other possibilities for mishap (too high a descent rate, rogue waves, barge being slightly at an angle and so on). Makes you wonder why the hydraulic circuit isn't closed, probably they figured an open loop system is more reliable than a closed one (half the gear and no need for a sump, which comes in handy when you have to deal with gravity coming from all directions).
  - mitchty 12y ago
    Open loop is lighter than closed. No need for a closed loop if you have a set time of operation. I thought I heard they were also pumping the fuel through the system as well so I imagine this amounts to just a bit more propellant and another go.
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      > I thought I heard they were also pumping the fuel through the system as well I think they use fuel as the hydraulic fluid for the gimbaling of the motors, but not for the grid fins.
thescorer 12y ago
This was "close?"
- joezydeco 12y ago
  Getting a sub-orbital rocket traveling at multiple Mach to decelerate and land (vertically, nose up) on a point in the ocean that's about 200 square feet in size? Yeah, that was very close.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  Considering it came down from 60 miles up and 5x the speed of sound, yes, this is pretty damned close. Especially given the probable cause, needing just a little more hydraulic fluid, and the fact that it's literally the first try for real landing.
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  Put a .5" x .5" cardboard square on a wooden post. Grab a pushpin. Start counting paces away from the post. Stop when you're about four city blocks away. Start running full speed towards the post. Hurl the pin at the post as hard as you can when you're three city blocks away. Pin glances off of one corner of the cardboard square. Crowd yells, "epic fail!"
  - ctdonath 12y ago
    In contrast, from the HN-featured article about finding the Beagle2 probe on Mars: MRO's data confirms that Beagle landed just 5km from the centre of its targeted touchdown zone. 5km, and it was considered a bulls-eye accurate landing.
    - taeric 12y ago
      At the relative ranges we are talking about here, those numbers are probably more comparable than many would realize. Consider, Mars at its closest, is over 6700km away. The space station at its furthest is 418km. (Assuming I looked up the correct numbers, of course.)
whoisthemachine 12y ago
Explosions are cool
simias 12y ago
I'm annoyed by this trend of having posts with 0 context or analysis on the top of the frontpage. Yesterday we had a link to some bitcoin chart showing a sudden drop in price (why? I still don't know). A few days ago it was a gif of a flowchart for some brainfuck interpreter (I had to dig into the comments to find the link to the source code). And now... Vine?! The problem with that kind of submissions (images, short videos...) is that they're quick to overtake more in depth articles because people upload it in seconds without 2nd thought. I don't want the front page of HN be overtaken by imgur posts, if you see what I mean.
- sp332 12y ago
  This story is a few days old, so I guess the upvoters figured most people were already aware of the context. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8895397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8895397 Also, HN's obsession with linking to "original sources" means you often get a raw feed instead of commentary.
- lnanek2 12y ago
  On most sites like this a little context can be added by the title on the social news site, but Hacker News does not allow that. Moderators will change the title to whatever the page has.
grondilu 12y ago
On this video the trajectory seems a bit weird. It looks like the rocket does its approach slightly to the right and afar, and then when it gets closer it changes direction and goes towards the camera, more or less in the direction of its tilt. As if the rocket began to tilt only around the end to a point the engine could not compensate anymore except by adding a large horizontal acceleration.
- krschultz 12y ago
  The rocket ran out of power for its control fins at some point during the descent, so this is indeed partially out of control. The engine is doing a lot more than was intended during this video.
Pro_bity 12y ago
This is why the landing pad is run autonomously.
ForHackernews 12y ago
HN when SpaceX screws up: "Wow, what an amazing job they've done learning from this mistake and moving forward!" HN when NASA screws up: "Wow, this shows how government can't do anything right. They should privatize everything and outsource it to SpaceX."
- sosuke 12y ago
  I'll bite, the second phrase never happens. NASA isn't trying in the same way that SpaceX is trying at all, they are doing amazing stuff, incredible feats like Mars rovers. When that feel of commentary comes around is when the bureaucracy of the government gets in the way of taking the risks to make the discoveries possible. We cheer SpaceX because we see them taking action, taking risks, and making progress. We get frustrated with NASA because we've gotten use to the idea of go fast break things. However http://www.nasa.gov/missions/schedule/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/missions/schedule/index.html shows they are launching 3 new projects, they just aren't the sexy science right now so don't get all the cheering. You better believe there was a lot of ooo's and aaahhh's around the new Hubble photos. So they come out with something amazing like that, then you hear that the government (in 2004 mind you) is not willing to fund them enough to keep Hubble alive, combined with the feature of loss of human life from the 2003 Columbia disaster making them risk averse. When we see SpaceX taking risks and making discoveries, or SpaceShipOne doing the same and exploding, but then the team keeps going, we cheer that, we rally around the against all odds determination to make space accessible. NASA has done amazing things, but they are hamstrung by the government and their own bureaucratic growth. What once was a warm blanket in the space race is now being used to try and smoother them to death now that there isn't a commercial or war time payout. </rant>
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  This wasn't really a screw up, though. The mission was accomplished - successful resupply flight to the ISS. The landing was a R&D test - the first of this nature - with the leftover pieces.
kylerpalmer 12y ago
Just like KSP
XJOKOLAT 12y ago
Great video. Exploding rockets and failed attempts give plenty to talk about and get excited about. But Spacex have already launched a rocket and landed it in a similar way as they are doing here. Ok, so they are flying it somewhere else, GPS'ing, and landing it somewhere else. I enjoyed the video but ... just seems like a small progression in the grand scheme of things. Cool, but no cigar. This time.
- sp332 12y ago
  It looks like a small progression, but it failed. Rocket science is hard! Remember, no one has ever done this before.
jonalmeida 12y ago
Can someone explain what the rocket was trying to do? Was it trying to correct itself to land vertically thrusters-first? I also don't understand how it got in that particular trajectory either from this vine.
- Sammi 12y ago
  Because the fins were locked, they might have thrown off the control code.
- callesgg 12y ago
  It ran out of hydraulic fluid and could not control itself properly. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553963793056030721 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553963793056030721
- duskwuff 12y ago
  Here's a video of the desired behavior, more or less: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxiK7K28PU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxiK7K28PU The video's a few years old, so the hardware's changed a bit since then, but I think you'll get the idea. :)
  - jonalmeida 12y ago
    Thanks, I remember watching this along time ago. I was under the impression they had landing the rocket all figured out after this :)
krmboya 12y ago
Maybe OP, but if Elon Musk makes actual technical contributions to his companies, I'd be super impressed.
- throwawaymsft 12y ago
  Like being the Chief Designer (CTO) of SpaceX?
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    He owns the company, he could take the title Head Janitor if he really felt like it. It might not necessarily reflect his actual duties.
- MLR 12y ago
  Well he has two undergraduate degrees, one in physics, and was accepted on to a physics PhD programme, I don't think he's just a front man.
stealthlogic 12y ago
The amount of nay sayers in this thread is too damn high.
sandworm 12y ago
SpaceX is certainly doing great things, but where was this vid a couple days ago? When I first heard of the hard landing I jumped online to see the vid. But no vid appeared. Then I realized what was happening. A vid of a crashing rocket is never a good thing for a spacelaunch company. It's just bad PR. Thinking back, we don't see many vids from SpaceX that aren't unqualified successes. They surely had this vid withing minutes, of not seconds of the landing attempt. But they delayed its release until the media and the public were educated sufficiently to understand that, despite the flames, this landing was not a failure.
- 32faction 12y ago
  > Where was this video a couple of days ago? Usually when there's an error or a failure on a mission, there will be an immediate lockdown of all PR, videos etc to analyze the problems first and understand what happened before the official release of material. This might seem trivial but I'll type it anyway. First off, if SpaceX released videos and didn't know what happened, the press would obviously speculate and SpaceX's brand would lose value somewhat. If the videos were released and the problem is a little harder to solve, well now you have a video of your error circulating and you don't even know what to tell the press what happened. If you watch the Mission Control footage during Columbia's fatal reentry, when Houston realized the worst had happened, Flight Director Cain said over the intercom "G.C., FLIGHT, Lock the doors". This was meant figuratively and literally; He told Ground Control to lock the doors of Mission Control so no one could leave, and that all information regarding the incident would not leave that room. Not even the President could enter that room after Ground Control locked the doors.
- Crito 12y ago
  It would be embarrassing for SpaceX if somebody from the public discovered something in the video that SpaceX had missed. It therefore makes sense that they would sit on the video for a while, making sure they had learned as much as there was to learn from it before releasing it to the public.
- ufmace 12y ago
  I think you're getting downvoted for the perceived negative tone, which I'm not sure if you intended. It's true, but I don't see anything wrong or sinister about it. If I was in charge of SpaceX, I would have done the same thing. Even without the video, several news sources jumped into calling the mission a failure, even though the actual mission of resupplying the ISS went perfectly, and the landing was a long-shot experiment. Those calls would only be louder with a flashy explosion video with no backing explanation on hand, ready to go out with the news of the landing failure. By the time more info was available, the story would be gone, and the explanation would be ignored. This would damage SpaceX's brand, ability to get Government missions and private contracts, etc. It's also entirely plausible that they didn't bother to install a high-speed data link from the barge to the mainland for the purpose of getting the video instantly. It would probably be an expensive and finicky way for them to instantly distribute video that would more likely than not be damaging to their brand.
eyeareque 12y ago
I think its awesome that they are open and show off their failures like this. This is one company that I am rooting for.
nickhalfasleep 12y ago
I wonder what the cost savings to space there are for buying a trip for a satellite on a "used" booster. Also if SpaceX is recycling the 1st stage, I wonder if they have plans to "Recycle" the 2nd stage in orbit.
- quux 12y ago
  I imagine the cost savings would be huge. The fuel and oxidizer for a typical satellite launch is only a few hundred thousand dollars, but the rocket is in the 10's of millions. Even if you add a million or 2 for refurbishing the used booster it's still huge. IIRC SpaceX's next generation of rockets will be designed so a reusable second stage will be possible.
- ufmace 12y ago
  We'll just have to see on that - it depends a lot on how many times the 1st stage can be reused, how much the refurbishment costs, and what the risk involved is. The first launch is pretty low-risk at this point, but how risky is the tenth launch on the same 1st stage? IIRC, they are on record as wanting to eventually recover the 2nd stage as well. It's a much tougher problem though - the 2nd stage has much higher velocity at engine cutoff, its engine is a variant designed to operate in vacuum and reportedly can't be made to operate in the atmosphere easily, and any additional hardware added to the 2nd stage has a much higher penalty on the rocket's performance than on the 1st.
- krasin 12y ago
  Somebody on /r/spacex made the following spreadsheet to demonstrate the effect of savings due to the reusability of the first and potentially second stages: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhFJHvEz4SHQdDBvanoxSzhUbEhnd05OZENiTDBBR0E&usp=sharing#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhFJHvEz4SHQdDB...
  - Gravityloss 12y ago
    That's interesting, though it doesn't take into account all the non-rocket costs in the launch. Also the factory has to exist, probably the yearly cost does not scale linearly with the number of engines produced. That said, once you go there, if launch prices drop to one tenth, all kinds of other things can start to happen.
notjustanymike 12y ago
I'm amazed it's taken this long for innovation to happen in rocketry. Here's an entire industry that -expects- your production model to explode and crash after one use. Literally anything that doesn't explode and crash is a step forward. And it's been this way for 50 years!
32faction 12y ago
I feel if the 1st stage booster had an attitude control system toward the top like the BRAHMOS missile [1], the lean could've been corrected to at least have the rocket be upright when it impacted the platform. Although the choice to add an attitude control system would probably take up more space and add mass which is critical for a stage rocket. [1] http://i.imgur.com/5RWkvem.gif http://i.imgur.com/5RWkvem.gif
- pbnjay 12y ago
  It does (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgLBIdVg3EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgLBIdVg3EM), it just ran out of hydraulic fluid in this case.
  - 32faction 12y ago
    Those are just grid fins which are used more for steering than attitude control. If I kick the rocket over those fins won't do any thing because they can't correct the force I applied to kick the rocket over. An active thruster (an attitude control system) can recorrect the force of my kick and reorient the rocket vertically.
    - pbnjay 12y ago
      How are you going to kick a rocket falling from outer space? You don't need active thrusters (and all the extra weight that comes with it) when gravity and wind will do the job for you just as well.
      - 32faction 12y ago
        > How are you going to kick a rocket falling from outer space? I meant if there was some external force like a wind shear or grid fin/hydraulic line failure that pushes the rocket hard enough on descent to alter it's vertical orientation, those grid fins won't really do much to correct that force. > Gravity and wind will do the job for you You cannot control gravity or wind. You just have systems that manipulate those forces. Grid fins are a passive system in that they manipulate the fluid the rocket is in to steer it on course but not to correct drastic attitude alterations. But again, if the updates to the hydraulic lines work out, then they won't need the active thruster system. Adding an active thruster system is just engineering for worst case scenarios.
downandout 12y ago
Could an aeronautics person kindly explain why it's so hard to get this thing to land as it's supposed to? I'm not being judgmental at all here; I am saying that as a software engineer with no aeronautics experience, I simply don't understand the problem. Assuming all of the sensors indicating tilt, altitude, etc. are accurate, the software portion coordinating where and how much thrust needs to deployed to keep it level and descending at an appropriate speed should be relatively straightforward to write. And yet, with at least dozens of undoubtedly brilliant people working on this very problem, the result is the world's most expensive fireworks show.
- narag 12y ago
  I wonder if the thin cylinder shape is to blame and if it would be easier to land if it sported a stabler shape. Can aerodynamics be compatible with something like a tetraedron mesh?
  - pjscott 12y ago
    It actually has a pretty low center of mass. Most of its bulk is empty fuel tank, and the engines are on the bottom.
- vladimirralev 12y ago
  Not aeronautics, but control systems engineer and I've seen the explanation. The rocket engine they use is too powerful to hover and move towards the destination in a slow adjustment loop. And there is no throttle control on the engine, 70% minimum which is still too powerful. In order to land you turn the engine off and wait to pick up some vertical speed, then in the last N seconds you turn the engine on to kill the speed you picked up from the freefall just before you hit the ground. Best described as a hover-slam. If your position during the freefall is off, you can't just keep the engine running to hover around and fix it (like they do in their dev rocket), it would fly up quickly if they do. In this video they still have lots of fuel in the rocket so they were trying to hover a little, however in the real landing presumably the rocket will be empty thus the hover-slam will be harder.
wickedlogic 12y ago
What is the weight on the rocket? It seems like towers with something like cable lasso's would help with the final descent stabilizing by securing the top of the rocket, or weighted arms/blocks that box in the rocket during final. So it never has to 'land', just hover.
rvennar 12y ago
So the rocket just explodes and the trash goes in the ocean? Thanks for polluting our oceans. Can I take all my household trash and just dump it in your living room?

598 points by ggonweb 12y ago

grecy 12y ago

Interesting. It had quite the lean, And close to zero vertical velocity. Then it looks like it accelerated at the last second in an attempt to move sideways back the center of the barge. I wonder if the top of the rocket was at or very near the center? Also you can clearly see the landing legs deployed, jeez they look tiny. Must just tweeted "Next rocket landing on drone ship in 2 to 3 weeks w way more hydraulic fluid. At least it shd explode for a diff reason." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/556105370054053889 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/556105370054053889

mitchty 12y ago
Was probably the engine gimbaling and thrusting up to attempt to correct but was just unable to due to the fins not being around the whole descent.
- 0x5f3759df-i 12y ago
  Not only were the fins unable to move, the position they were stuck in was a very unhelpful position.
  - Sammi 12y ago
    Yes, and could speculate that the main engine fired 'wrongly' because the control code didn't take into account that the fins were locked.
    - Florin_Andrei 12y ago
      Hm, if I was the guy designing the control loop on that thing (not gonna happen in real world, but bear with me), I would definitely take into account the fins position - the real position, not the one I want them to be in. Not that it would have helped anyway in this case.
      - Symmetry 12y ago
        I suspect that the code takes the fin's starting position into account in each planning cycle but also assumes that the fin will move as directed in the future.
        Florin_Andrei 12y ago
        No rotary encoders on those things?
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I really appreciate his matter of factness in these sorts of tweets.
_nate_ 12y ago
To me, the video has an optical illusion effect, caused by the bright light from the engine. The rocket is not directly over the platform, it’s actually off the far corner by about 50-100 feet, it comes horizontally into the platform and crashes over it. Meaning it’s not close to the center of the platform and trying to accelerate off of it, it was laterally moving over it from the side and crashed the engine into the barge, which kicked it up over the platform.
mbell 12y ago
From what I can tell, and I think you can see a bit in the video, when the grid fins ran out of hydraulic pressure they locked full in one direction. The last burn this thing does is often called a 'suicide burn' as there are a couple complications to landing it. First, it only has enough fuel left for a short burn. Second, it's not possible to run the single engine they use to land it at a low enough thrust level that it can hover. i.e. 1 of 9 engines at the lowest possible thrust it can operate at is more than enough to accelerate the empty stage body upward. As a result they have to 'blip' it just before landing and cut at the exact time needed to reach 0-ish velocity at landing. This means the thing is moving _fast_ just before the video starts. I'm guessing that with the grid fins locked in an extreme direction 24 seconds before getting to the barge they still had a lot of influence over the flight path since it was still moving fast. This pulled the top to an angle. The engine fired and the vectoring capability of the engine tried to toss it back over the ship but it just couldn't correct the lean before hitting the barge.
m_mueller 12y ago
Maybe they could improve the failure behaviour with some failsafe mechanism? *If the rocket is not within a certain envelope, gain as much distance to the pod as possible? Later when they want to have landing on land, a designated area for aborting could be used.

ufmace 12y ago

Cool video! Just what we've been waiting to see. I wonder what actually exploded there? Part of the argument for why the landing was supposed to be relatively safe was that the stage would be mostly empty of fuel by the time that it landed, so there wouldn't be much to explode if something went wrong. So is that an explosion of the remaining fuel in the rocket, or something on deck?

delinka 12y ago
I figured it was just the automatic aperture on the camera causing the flame to simply appear bigger. I'd point out that the sound didn't change (no boom) but then maybe the mic was already clipping. Still, I'd like more detail to be certain whether something exploded. Edit: no, you're right. I just mis-remembered. When I reviewed the video, it looks like the thing breaks open and I'd suspect the last remnants of fuel are spilling out.
geerlingguy 12y ago
It doesn't take much to make the kind of explosion you see in the video (those chemicals are quite volatile). I think the safety comes from that being the extent of the explosion. Compare that to a fully-fueled stage, which would have 90x more fuel, a 90x larger fireball, shock wave, etc. The deck of the ship almost looked undamaged!
- Sammi 12y ago
  Images of the barge post explosion here: http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/01/11/photos-spacexs-rocket-landing-platform-back-in-port/ http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/01/11/photos-spacexs-rocket-l...
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
"Mostly" != "entirely". Also, don't forget the rocket engine itself My guess would be the explosion was of the remaining fuel in the rocket engine and tank. Either that or it wasn't actually an explosion, just burning fuel-air mix spewing about after the rocket nozzle deformed too much.
12y ago

deleted 12y ago

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jefurii 12y ago

Wow, they struck a glancing blow to that barge! From space!

jacquesm 12y ago

Looks like it did not come down vertically but at a slant, but they got the positioning better than I thought they would on this try. One thing to note is that it is from now on officially a very bad idea to piss off Elon Musk if he knows where you live, being able to hit stuff with this kind of accuracy using rockets from space is normally enough to get you placed on the 'axis of evil' list. Incredible precision.

guelo 12y ago
You joke but a future were corporations control ICBMs to their advantage is a realistic worry.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  That's no longer the future. SpaceX is a corporation and that rocket could have been pointed the other way for a bit longer easily.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  I'm trying, but not succeeding, to imagine a non-fiction situation where a corporation has any business advantage in owning and/or controlling an ICBM. Can you expand on your comment? What would a corporation do with this, other than to perhaps implement same day delivery of packages around the globe?
  - moskie 12y ago
    I don't necessarily believe this to be a possibility... but if the US contracted out "security" to companies like Blackwater, it seems at least.... plausible that they could contract out "missile defense."
    - returnofdjedi 12y ago
      This could get bad if the contracted party is corrupt?
  - 12y ago

mjs 12y ago

Is that in realtime?

moskie 12y ago
Oh, you're asking if the video is slowed down/sped up. Ok. At first, I thought you were asking if we were watching it in realtime.... and seeing rocket after rocket blow up on this barge.
- returnofdjedi 12y ago
  Cool.If would be great to know how musk distributes his time between Tesla And Spacex.
  - mikeyouse 12y ago
    From here: http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-day-in-the-life-of-the-tesla-and-spacex-ceo-2012-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-day-in-the-life-of-... > Musk splits his time between his two companies. He's at SpaceX's LA-based headquarters on Monday and Thursday, then he heads to Tesla (in the Bay Area) on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Friday he splits time between both. Tesla Design has offices in the same office park as SpaceX. He lives in LA, so the schedule makes sense in that he flies LA -> SF Tuesday AM and then SF -> LA Thursday night.
JshWright 12y ago
Looks like it to me. The smoke and fog seems to be moving at a very 'normal' speed.
- iamcreasy 12y ago
  That's even more impressive then!

fluffheadsr 12y ago

love that they're trying something new and exciting.. you're gonna fail when you're going for it.. but at least someones going for it. looking forward to hyper loop.

returnofdjedi 12y ago
Elon Musk is the Tesla and Steve Jobs of our generation.
- mikeash 12y ago
  People always compare him to Jobs but I don't think it's right. Jobs hated any sort of public failure. He pushed the envelope in some ways, but never put something out there until it was polished and consumer-ready. Jobs was great at seeing how technology could be combined in novel ways and how to boil products down to exactly what they needed, but he didn't push forward entirely new tech, and I can't imagine Jobs publicly showing a video of his flagship product exploding into a fiery mess.
- digerata 12y ago
  Yep! Just a little less crazy and a lot less of an asshole.
- lsaferite 12y ago
  Oh the confusion. Perhaps 'Nikola Tesla' would have been better.
  - Crito 12y ago
    More business sense than Tesla. Less in the way of personal technical/scientific achievements. He's not very popular on the internet for a variety of reasons, but I think that Edison is a better comparison. Not the first person I'd compare him to, but I'd sooner compare him to Edison than Tesla.
    - lsaferite 12y ago

ChuckMcM 12y ago

That is awesome! I appears the stage has maybe 10 m/s horizontal velocity and less than that vertical, but at that angle I can see how difficult it would be for just engine gimballing to get get it vertical again. I wonder if the barge is equipped to record a downlink of telemetry from stage. Once it gets close enough you should be able to shoot over at least some data which the barge could presumably keep 'safe' in a blast protected storage system.

ChrisBland 12y ago

Wow, what an amazing feat to come this close. To think just ~100 years ago humans took flight for the first time. Now we are able to launch a rocket in orbit, then fly the first stage to land on a small platform floating in the middle of the ocean.

hnnewguy 12y ago
>Now we are able to launch a rocket in orbit, then fly the first stage to land on a small platform floating in the middle of the ocean. You know we landed on the moon, right? I mean, this is cool, but from a sheer "fascinating achievement" standpoint, this is at least a few notches behind that.
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  The engineer's perpetual irritation: Your most impressive achievement never has as much sex appeal as you'd hope.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  Landing on the moon was a historic achievement, but this work with reusable rockets is on the same scale. In order to colonize space and no longer be bound to just the Earth, we will need transportation that costs less than a billion dollars per person. Apollo showed us that the stars are in our grasp, SpaceX wool provide the means of actually grasping them.
- tomswartz07 12y ago
  Surely, but this is all computer controlled. Humans are pretty crafty, but it takes a special kind of craftiness to program a computer to do it as well as a person. :)
- KeytarHero 12y ago
  Can't we just appreciate how both are fascinating for entirely different reasons? I think it's pretty amazing we were able to get a rocket to land (edit: well, almost land) to this precise a spot - and all by itself, without human pilots. Sure, it's no moon landing, but it has certain other challenges the moon landing didn't have. I think both are really cool.

sixQuarks 12y ago

Sorry for sounding like such a fanboy, but during my 40 years on this earth, I have never been more impressed with a human being. The guy is pushing the envelope on perhaps the most difficult engineering/technological endeavor ever attempted by a private company - and he's making it look cool and futuristic. As if that wasn't enough, he's doing this in two different industries simultaneously. I'm not saying he can do no wrong, but I'm just flabbergasted that there are still so many armchair critics and naysayers when it comes to Elon Musk.

returnofdjedi 12y ago
I think All this was attempted before too but nothing quite was made which was marketable too.
epmatsw 12y ago
He's like a real life Tom Swift. It's awesome!
Someone1234 12y ago
> I'm not saying he can do no wrong, but I'm just flabbergasted that there are still so many armchair critics and naysayers when it comes to Elon Musk. That's why you're a fanboy. Nobody is perfect, and Elon Musk likes to make fun of the competition quite publicly when they have an issue, while ignoring his project's own failures. It is hard to even discuss the man on HN as anything that could even be taken as critical gets downmoded or flagged. Just look at yesterday's hyperloop discussions, nobody could say anything critical without being very actively attacked. By the way make sure "show dead" is turned on to see the full discussion. Honestly his track record is very impressive indeed. His aspirations are also impressive. However his fans are insufferable as is HN's general attitude about the man. When someone is treated as if they're beyond reproach and their ideas are also, you're just asking to get led down the garden path. The hyperhoop concept in particular is pretty bad, and the white paper leaves more questions than it does answers. The cost is too high and the value too low Vs. normal high speed trains (e.g. Japan). Plus there are massive safety issues surrounding it (as you can see from the thread yesterday, that were largely just ignored and downmodded). Overall I'll be happy when people start acting rationally around the guy again. Currently I feel like I at a One Direction concert surrounding by a bunch of screaming teenage girls (on HN in particular). PS - I wouldn't dream of criticising this rocket failure. Rockets are hard, the last 80 years have proven that again and again.

goshx 12y ago

Could someone please explain the "no cigar"?

danielweber 12y ago
It's an expression to say "close but no cigar" if you try something but don't get it. The "cigar" would be what you smoke after a victory.
mikeash 12y ago
Here you go: http://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/close,_but_no_cigar http://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/close,_but_no_cigar
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Uhhrrr 12y ago
It's from a time when it was common to offer cigars as rewards for playing carnival games. If you missed the target or milk can or whatever, "close, but no cigar!".
- goshx 12y ago
  thank you all!
- returnofdjedi 12y ago
  I have watched A Few Good Men to guess what it means . I forgot what it meant though.
- gcb0 12y ago
  like urban dictionary?
murtza 12y ago
I am working on a project to define phrases in English like "close, but no cigar". Here's the page for this phrase: http://jargonism.com/words/437 http://jargonism.com/words/437 I would be interested to hear feedback from HN on what would be useful on the word page, in addition to a definition and an example?

butwhy 12y ago

I still don't understand how hydraulic fuel is used in this case and how lack of it caused this failed landing.

joezydeco 12y ago
Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8896790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8896790
robszumski 12y ago
The fins turn and are powered by hydraulic fluid. When it ran out, the fins stayed pointing in a certain direction, which meant the stage couldn't steer. Then it hit the ship.
jacquesm 12y ago
The hydraulic oil is not used as a 'fuel' to burn but to control the actuators for the grid fins. So if you lose control because you run out of hydraulic oil the last bit of the descent will be uncontrolled. So they almost made it with enough hydraulic oil, which means that next time the grid fins will work all the way down, which leaves a ton of other possibilities for mishap (too high a descent rate, rogue waves, barge being slightly at an angle and so on). Makes you wonder why the hydraulic circuit isn't closed, probably they figured an open loop system is more reliable than a closed one (half the gear and no need for a sump, which comes in handy when you have to deal with gravity coming from all directions).
- mitchty 12y ago
  Open loop is lighter than closed. No need for a closed loop if you have a set time of operation. I thought I heard they were also pumping the fuel through the system as well so I imagine this amounts to just a bit more propellant and another go.
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    > I thought I heard they were also pumping the fuel through the system as well I think they use fuel as the hydraulic fluid for the gimbaling of the motors, but not for the grid fins.

thescorer 12y ago

This was "close?"

joezydeco 12y ago
Getting a sub-orbital rocket traveling at multiple Mach to decelerate and land (vertically, nose up) on a point in the ocean that's about 200 square feet in size? Yeah, that was very close.
ceejayoz 12y ago
Considering it came down from 60 miles up and 5x the speed of sound, yes, this is pretty damned close. Especially given the probable cause, needing just a little more hydraulic fluid, and the fact that it's literally the first try for real landing.
thaumaturgy 12y ago
Put a .5" x .5" cardboard square on a wooden post. Grab a pushpin. Start counting paces away from the post. Stop when you're about four city blocks away. Start running full speed towards the post. Hurl the pin at the post as hard as you can when you're three city blocks away. Pin glances off of one corner of the cardboard square. Crowd yells, "epic fail!"
- ctdonath 12y ago
  In contrast, from the HN-featured article about finding the Beagle2 probe on Mars: MRO's data confirms that Beagle landed just 5km from the centre of its targeted touchdown zone. 5km, and it was considered a bulls-eye accurate landing.
  - taeric 12y ago
    At the relative ranges we are talking about here, those numbers are probably more comparable than many would realize. Consider, Mars at its closest, is over 6700km away. The space station at its furthest is 418km. (Assuming I looked up the correct numbers, of course.)

whoisthemachine 12y ago

Explosions are cool

simias 12y ago

I'm annoyed by this trend of having posts with 0 context or analysis on the top of the frontpage. Yesterday we had a link to some bitcoin chart showing a sudden drop in price (why? I still don't know). A few days ago it was a gif of a flowchart for some brainfuck interpreter (I had to dig into the comments to find the link to the source code). And now... Vine?! The problem with that kind of submissions (images, short videos...) is that they're quick to overtake more in depth articles because people upload it in seconds without 2nd thought. I don't want the front page of HN be overtaken by imgur posts, if you see what I mean.

sp332 12y ago
This story is a few days old, so I guess the upvoters figured most people were already aware of the context. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8895397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8895397 Also, HN's obsession with linking to "original sources" means you often get a raw feed instead of commentary.
lnanek2 12y ago
On most sites like this a little context can be added by the title on the social news site, but Hacker News does not allow that. Moderators will change the title to whatever the page has.

grondilu 12y ago

On this video the trajectory seems a bit weird. It looks like the rocket does its approach slightly to the right and afar, and then when it gets closer it changes direction and goes towards the camera, more or less in the direction of its tilt. As if the rocket began to tilt only around the end to a point the engine could not compensate anymore except by adding a large horizontal acceleration.

krschultz 12y ago
The rocket ran out of power for its control fins at some point during the descent, so this is indeed partially out of control. The engine is doing a lot more than was intended during this video.

Pro_bity 12y ago

This is why the landing pad is run autonomously.

ForHackernews 12y ago

HN when SpaceX screws up: "Wow, what an amazing job they've done learning from this mistake and moving forward!" HN when NASA screws up: "Wow, this shows how government can't do anything right. They should privatize everything and outsource it to SpaceX."

sosuke 12y ago
I'll bite, the second phrase never happens. NASA isn't trying in the same way that SpaceX is trying at all, they are doing amazing stuff, incredible feats like Mars rovers. When that feel of commentary comes around is when the bureaucracy of the government gets in the way of taking the risks to make the discoveries possible. We cheer SpaceX because we see them taking action, taking risks, and making progress. We get frustrated with NASA because we've gotten use to the idea of go fast break things. However http://www.nasa.gov/missions/schedule/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/missions/schedule/index.html shows they are launching 3 new projects, they just aren't the sexy science right now so don't get all the cheering. You better believe there was a lot of ooo's and aaahhh's around the new Hubble photos. So they come out with something amazing like that, then you hear that the government (in 2004 mind you) is not willing to fund them enough to keep Hubble alive, combined with the feature of loss of human life from the 2003 Columbia disaster making them risk averse. When we see SpaceX taking risks and making discoveries, or SpaceShipOne doing the same and exploding, but then the team keeps going, we cheer that, we rally around the against all odds determination to make space accessible. NASA has done amazing things, but they are hamstrung by the government and their own bureaucratic growth. What once was a warm blanket in the space race is now being used to try and smoother them to death now that there isn't a commercial or war time payout. </rant>
ceejayoz 12y ago
This wasn't really a screw up, though. The mission was accomplished - successful resupply flight to the ISS. The landing was a R&D test - the first of this nature - with the leftover pieces.

kylerpalmer 12y ago

Just like KSP

XJOKOLAT 12y ago

Great video. Exploding rockets and failed attempts give plenty to talk about and get excited about. But Spacex have already launched a rocket and landed it in a similar way as they are doing here. Ok, so they are flying it somewhere else, GPS'ing, and landing it somewhere else. I enjoyed the video but ... just seems like a small progression in the grand scheme of things. Cool, but no cigar. This time.

sp332 12y ago
It looks like a small progression, but it failed. Rocket science is hard! Remember, no one has ever done this before.

jonalmeida 12y ago

Can someone explain what the rocket was trying to do? Was it trying to correct itself to land vertically thrusters-first? I also don't understand how it got in that particular trajectory either from this vine.

Sammi 12y ago
Because the fins were locked, they might have thrown off the control code.
callesgg 12y ago
It ran out of hydraulic fluid and could not control itself properly. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553963793056030721 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553963793056030721
duskwuff 12y ago
Here's a video of the desired behavior, more or less: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxiK7K28PU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxiK7K28PU The video's a few years old, so the hardware's changed a bit since then, but I think you'll get the idea. :)
- jonalmeida 12y ago
  Thanks, I remember watching this along time ago. I was under the impression they had landing the rocket all figured out after this :)

krmboya 12y ago

Maybe OP, but if Elon Musk makes actual technical contributions to his companies, I'd be super impressed.

throwawaymsft 12y ago
Like being the Chief Designer (CTO) of SpaceX?
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  He owns the company, he could take the title Head Janitor if he really felt like it. It might not necessarily reflect his actual duties.
MLR 12y ago
Well he has two undergraduate degrees, one in physics, and was accepted on to a physics PhD programme, I don't think he's just a front man.

stealthlogic 12y ago

The amount of nay sayers in this thread is too damn high.

sandworm 12y ago

SpaceX is certainly doing great things, but where was this vid a couple days ago? When I first heard of the hard landing I jumped online to see the vid. But no vid appeared. Then I realized what was happening. A vid of a crashing rocket is never a good thing for a spacelaunch company. It's just bad PR. Thinking back, we don't see many vids from SpaceX that aren't unqualified successes. They surely had this vid withing minutes, of not seconds of the landing attempt. But they delayed its release until the media and the public were educated sufficiently to understand that, despite the flames, this landing was not a failure.

32faction 12y ago
> Where was this video a couple of days ago? Usually when there's an error or a failure on a mission, there will be an immediate lockdown of all PR, videos etc to analyze the problems first and understand what happened before the official release of material. This might seem trivial but I'll type it anyway. First off, if SpaceX released videos and didn't know what happened, the press would obviously speculate and SpaceX's brand would lose value somewhat. If the videos were released and the problem is a little harder to solve, well now you have a video of your error circulating and you don't even know what to tell the press what happened. If you watch the Mission Control footage during Columbia's fatal reentry, when Houston realized the worst had happened, Flight Director Cain said over the intercom "G.C., FLIGHT, Lock the doors". This was meant figuratively and literally; He told Ground Control to lock the doors of Mission Control so no one could leave, and that all information regarding the incident would not leave that room. Not even the President could enter that room after Ground Control locked the doors.
Crito 12y ago
It would be embarrassing for SpaceX if somebody from the public discovered something in the video that SpaceX had missed. It therefore makes sense that they would sit on the video for a while, making sure they had learned as much as there was to learn from it before releasing it to the public.
ufmace 12y ago
I think you're getting downvoted for the perceived negative tone, which I'm not sure if you intended. It's true, but I don't see anything wrong or sinister about it. If I was in charge of SpaceX, I would have done the same thing. Even without the video, several news sources jumped into calling the mission a failure, even though the actual mission of resupplying the ISS went perfectly, and the landing was a long-shot experiment. Those calls would only be louder with a flashy explosion video with no backing explanation on hand, ready to go out with the news of the landing failure. By the time more info was available, the story would be gone, and the explanation would be ignored. This would damage SpaceX's brand, ability to get Government missions and private contracts, etc. It's also entirely plausible that they didn't bother to install a high-speed data link from the barge to the mainland for the purpose of getting the video instantly. It would probably be an expensive and finicky way for them to instantly distribute video that would more likely than not be damaging to their brand.

eyeareque 12y ago

I think its awesome that they are open and show off their failures like this. This is one company that I am rooting for.

nickhalfasleep 12y ago

I wonder what the cost savings to space there are for buying a trip for a satellite on a "used" booster. Also if SpaceX is recycling the 1st stage, I wonder if they have plans to "Recycle" the 2nd stage in orbit.

quux 12y ago
I imagine the cost savings would be huge. The fuel and oxidizer for a typical satellite launch is only a few hundred thousand dollars, but the rocket is in the 10's of millions. Even if you add a million or 2 for refurbishing the used booster it's still huge. IIRC SpaceX's next generation of rockets will be designed so a reusable second stage will be possible.
ufmace 12y ago
We'll just have to see on that - it depends a lot on how many times the 1st stage can be reused, how much the refurbishment costs, and what the risk involved is. The first launch is pretty low-risk at this point, but how risky is the tenth launch on the same 1st stage? IIRC, they are on record as wanting to eventually recover the 2nd stage as well. It's a much tougher problem though - the 2nd stage has much higher velocity at engine cutoff, its engine is a variant designed to operate in vacuum and reportedly can't be made to operate in the atmosphere easily, and any additional hardware added to the 2nd stage has a much higher penalty on the rocket's performance than on the 1st.
krasin 12y ago
Somebody on /r/spacex made the following spreadsheet to demonstrate the effect of savings due to the reusability of the first and potentially second stages: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhFJHvEz4SHQdDBvanoxSzhUbEhnd05OZENiTDBBR0E&usp=sharing#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhFJHvEz4SHQdDB...
- Gravityloss 12y ago
  That's interesting, though it doesn't take into account all the non-rocket costs in the launch. Also the factory has to exist, probably the yearly cost does not scale linearly with the number of engines produced. That said, once you go there, if launch prices drop to one tenth, all kinds of other things can start to happen.

notjustanymike 12y ago

I'm amazed it's taken this long for innovation to happen in rocketry. Here's an entire industry that -expects- your production model to explode and crash after one use. Literally anything that doesn't explode and crash is a step forward. And it's been this way for 50 years!

32faction 12y ago

I feel if the 1st stage booster had an attitude control system toward the top like the BRAHMOS missile [1], the lean could've been corrected to at least have the rocket be upright when it impacted the platform. Although the choice to add an attitude control system would probably take up more space and add mass which is critical for a stage rocket. [1] http://i.imgur.com/5RWkvem.gif http://i.imgur.com/5RWkvem.gif

pbnjay 12y ago
It does (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgLBIdVg3EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgLBIdVg3EM), it just ran out of hydraulic fluid in this case.
- 32faction 12y ago
  Those are just grid fins which are used more for steering than attitude control. If I kick the rocket over those fins won't do any thing because they can't correct the force I applied to kick the rocket over. An active thruster (an attitude control system) can recorrect the force of my kick and reorient the rocket vertically.
  - pbnjay 12y ago
    How are you going to kick a rocket falling from outer space? You don't need active thrusters (and all the extra weight that comes with it) when gravity and wind will do the job for you just as well.
    - 32faction 12y ago
      > How are you going to kick a rocket falling from outer space? I meant if there was some external force like a wind shear or grid fin/hydraulic line failure that pushes the rocket hard enough on descent to alter it's vertical orientation, those grid fins won't really do much to correct that force. > Gravity and wind will do the job for you You cannot control gravity or wind. You just have systems that manipulate those forces. Grid fins are a passive system in that they manipulate the fluid the rocket is in to steer it on course but not to correct drastic attitude alterations. But again, if the updates to the hydraulic lines work out, then they won't need the active thruster system. Adding an active thruster system is just engineering for worst case scenarios.

downandout 12y ago

Could an aeronautics person kindly explain why it's so hard to get this thing to land as it's supposed to? I'm not being judgmental at all here; I am saying that as a software engineer with no aeronautics experience, I simply don't understand the problem. Assuming all of the sensors indicating tilt, altitude, etc. are accurate, the software portion coordinating where and how much thrust needs to deployed to keep it level and descending at an appropriate speed should be relatively straightforward to write. And yet, with at least dozens of undoubtedly brilliant people working on this very problem, the result is the world's most expensive fireworks show.

narag 12y ago
I wonder if the thin cylinder shape is to blame and if it would be easier to land if it sported a stabler shape. Can aerodynamics be compatible with something like a tetraedron mesh?
- pjscott 12y ago
  It actually has a pretty low center of mass. Most of its bulk is empty fuel tank, and the engines are on the bottom.
vladimirralev 12y ago
Not aeronautics, but control systems engineer and I've seen the explanation. The rocket engine they use is too powerful to hover and move towards the destination in a slow adjustment loop. And there is no throttle control on the engine, 70% minimum which is still too powerful. In order to land you turn the engine off and wait to pick up some vertical speed, then in the last N seconds you turn the engine on to kill the speed you picked up from the freefall just before you hit the ground. Best described as a hover-slam. If your position during the freefall is off, you can't just keep the engine running to hover around and fix it (like they do in their dev rocket), it would fly up quickly if they do. In this video they still have lots of fuel in the rocket so they were trying to hover a little, however in the real landing presumably the rocket will be empty thus the hover-slam will be harder.

wickedlogic 12y ago

What is the weight on the rocket? It seems like towers with something like cable lasso's would help with the final descent stabilizing by securing the top of the rocket, or weighted arms/blocks that box in the rocket during final. So it never has to 'land', just hover.

rvennar 12y ago

So the rocket just explodes and the trash goes in the ocean? Thanks for polluting our oceans. Can I take all my household trash and just dump it in your living room?