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SpaceX Dragon CRS-6 Launch Webcast
- jjar 12y agoWhen is the launch scheduled for? Also, do you think it'll go ahead this time?
- mezeek 12y ago4.10 Eastern. Weather looks better than it did yesterday.
- Flockster 12y agoAlternative Stream from SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com/webcast/ http://www.spacex.com/webcast/
- exDM69 12y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csVpa25iqH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csVpa25iqH0 official YouTube mirror for SpaceX webcast.
- whatupdave 12y agoThe youtube stream is so much better
- Flockster 12y agoUnfortunately it is not viewable in Germany because of copyright problems.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jerf 12y agoWill we also see the attempt to land the rocket in this stream?
- Phlarp 12y agoI hope so, but it wasn't included in the live stream last time.
- grecy 12y agoAt about +1:30 I heard "Recovery platform has acquisition signal" and then: "Stage separation confirmed. Good luck stage 1" and "We have stage 1 boostback startup" then a little while later "stage 1 boostback shutdown" (sounded good) "stage one entry burn has started" then "stage one entry shutdown" "stage one is transonic" "stage one landing burn has started" "LOS of stage one" (From reddit: waiting for stage one confirm..... Waiting for tweet from Musk) officially waiting for word from the landing ship... webcast over. (From reddit: "We falcon punched the barge" ) (From reddit: "Rumors that the Falcon 9 booster landed on the drone ship, but not softly. At this point, who knows.") (From reddit: Not a successful landing today.) Musk Tweet: "Ascent successful. Dragon enroute to Space Station. Rocket landed on droneship, but too hard for survival." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588076749562318849 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588076749562318849
- Cshelton 12y agoIf it's successful I hope they'll show a quick replay for stage 1. Probably reasons why they don't want to show it live...
- mikeash 12y agoFrom what I understand, the reason they don't show it live is because they don't have enough bandwidth to transmit live video from the barge. They get a frame every second or two, and lots of telemetry, but not video.
- jerf 12y agoThank you, that makes sense. All things considered I'd still call what happened today a good sign.
- ColinWright 12y agoT-3 minutes ... Weather is 60% "go" ... Lightning and clouds still a concern Schedule: PDT ET GMT BST * Webcast: 12:50 15:55 19:50 10:50 * Liftoff: 13:10 16:10 20:10 21:10
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- bobcostas55 12y agoCould someone explain why it's (apparently) so much harder to land on a barge than it is to dock with the ISS?
- codeulike 12y agoDocking with the ISS involves floating in a mostly gravity free environment, with no wind/air resistance, and moving via small controlled jet bursts. Landing a rocket on a barge involves dealing with gravity, wind resistance, air currents and the crazily unstable centre-of-gravity of a large vertical tube balancing on some rockets.
- sounds 12y agoJust wild guesses here but anyone who has played Kerbal Space Program knows that while docking is no piece of cake, it happens slowly and you can back off and try again until you run out of fuel. Landing on a moving target shouldn't be that hard except you get (almost) zero weight budget, you're relying on atmospheric braking which means intense heat, and at the end you're hoping the engine doesn't malfunction. In case it wasn't clear there, the real challenge here is using something that wasn't designed for landing - it was designed for liftoff - to do the landing. Musk is probably just happy it hit the barge, and tried to slow down some. We'll find out later if it: a) ran out of fuel b) misjudged the position and velocity of the barge at the moment of impact c) landed at the intended speed because there were technical concerns that kept it from landing any slower d) something else entirely But keep in mind, the stage landed on the barge. That means it can be salvaged! Pretty cool, if you ask me.
- grey-area 12y ago@PlanetaryRsrcs: Go for launch!! T minus 1 minute 30 #A3R!!
- mladenkovacevic 12y agoAfter this I'm gonna go watch Interstellar for the 3rd time then play some Elite: Dangerous.
- Cshelton 12y ago"Stage 1 has been saved"!!! Edit: Apparently it's not what I hoped, http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2swnth/how_well_does_the_fts_work_on_an_empty_or_nearly/ http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2swnth/how_well_does... 'saved' and 'safed' are pretty similar on stream...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- skilesare 12y agoI was hoping that was what that meant!
- bowmessage 12y agoI heard "Stage 1 FTS has been saved" and shortly after, "Stage 2 FTS has been saved". Not sure what FTS means but hopefully its capture was a success!
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ilkkao 12y agoAnd the commentator doesn't comment or speculate anything about it. Really odd.
- abstractbill 12y agoSame as last time - we didn't hear anything more about the first stage until much later.
- eck 12y agoFTS means flight termination system. Meaning the thing that blows it up if it goes off course and is going to crash into people. They were saying "safed" not "saved", meaning, no longer armed.
- delibes 12y agoThat stage 2 engine nozzle really glows hot! Looks hot enough to melt, but holding together impressively. Also, the exhaust into the vacuum looks like a messy grey cloud, not the bright cone I might have expected. Very cool. Or hot.
- dandelany 12y ago> That stage 2 engine nozzle really glows hot! Yes! Amazingly, although the nozzle looks just like a bell-shaped piece of sheet metal, it in fact uses "regenerative cooling" which means the nozzle is full of small pipes which wind back and forth like a radiator. The rocket fuel is passed through these pipes before combustion, resulting in a heat exchange which is doubly beneficial, keeping the nozzle (relatively) cool and also heating up the rocket fuel so it combusts more efficiently. > the exhaust into the vacuum looks like a messy grey cloud, not the bright cone I might have expected Yep, since there is no atmospheric pressure squeezing it into a cone shape, the exhaust just kind of flies everywhere!
- erobbins 12y agoI thought the 2nd stage engine's nozzle extension was radiatively cooled? First stage engines are regen for sure.
- dandelany 12y agoYou're correct for the last generation of engines - Merlin 1C Vacuum was radiatively cooled. However I haven't found any confirmation one way or the other for the 1D Vacuum engine, which they're using currently. It's possible they haven't made this info public yet due to ITAR.
- Crito 12y agoMerlin 1C Vacuum had a regeneratively cooled combustion chamber but radiatively cooled expansion nozzle. I'm not sure if Merlin 1D Vacuum differs from this though.
- AtmaScout 12y ago
- rvdm 12y agoSuch good motivation to want to be an even better programmer / engineer / scientist. So inspiring what mankind is capable of when we work together.
- AtmaScout 12y agoMy thoughts exactly.
- lutorm 12y agoYou guys know we are looking for software people, right? http://www.spacex.com/careers http://www.spacex.com/careers
- VieElm 12y agoYou guys regularly fire some portion (3% to 5%) of your employees every year yes? I love what you're doing and I'd love to be part of it, but the press doesn't make it out like a great place to be an employee. It makes sense I guess, given the risk involved in launching rockets, but this kind of work environment is probably not for everyone. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-employees-lawsuit-20140811-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-employees-lawsu...
- nine_k 12y agoBeing fired for low performance is okay — if you feel you're continually perform poorly, you should start to look for another job well ahead of this moment. California is not a particularly saturated market for software developers. Not following the legally required procedure is bad, though.
- delibes 12y agoI never watched one of these before ... T+13 shows Dragon deploying solar panels (really should to be called 'wings' I think). I think a second stage camera shows the Dragon with a some fairing panel spinning away from it. This is amazing!
- david-given 12y agoThey also have a camera inside the liquid oxygen tank. You can see it drain away as the second stage engine runs... and then it cuts off. What do you think happens to the remaining fuel? What happens is that it's awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u656se4e34M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u656se4e34M And here's extended video of the last section (I think from a different launch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HZrrHI34x4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HZrrHI34x4
- PLenz 12y agoLooks like we'll have to find out if Stage 1 makes it on twitter. Webcast is ending.
- michaelmcmillan 12y agoT+17m: Not a successful landing today. That sucks. Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/32jnyd/rspacex_crs6_official_launch_discussion_updates/ http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/32jnyd/rspacex_crs6_... Edit: "Looks like Falcon landed fine, but excess lateral velocity caused it to tip over post landing" @elonmusk
- ChuckMcM 12y agoI'm a big fan of arrestor lines around the sides. Basically as the stage lands, stand up four outrigger arms with a cable going through them from the corners of the barge. If it falls over then catch it and lower it gently. But easy to armchair, hard to do! That they have arrived exactly where the barge is (or would have been) 3 times now is pretty awesome in itself.
- andygates 12y agoVery easy to armchair -- but it's a fifteen story beer can, so you need a huge arrestor system, and it's pretty fragile except up its axis. The ultimate goal is to land on a flat pad, so adding stuff now moves away from that goal.
- ChuckMcM 12y agoI love the beer can analogy. Agreed it is a really interesting problem. Which I don't doubt SpaceX will solve. I was not impressed with the ULA "lets just catch the engines with a helicopter" idea. Can't wait to see the recovered barge video.
- mikeash 12y agoThe question is always whether you remove more risk than you add. That's a big part of why it's easy to armchair but hard to do. In this case, for example, I'd bet that the odds of the rocket getting tangled in the lines and ruining a landing are better than the odds of the rocket being saved by the lines. From my armchair observations, it looks like they just need to tweak some constants in their control algorithm to avoid control-induced oscillation. This is the first time that the rocket has reached the ship while still under control (the first landing attempt ran out of hydraulic fluid and went out of control, and of course the second not-quite-attempt didn't have the ship there so it probably wasn't as obvious what was going on) and I imagine there's a fair amount of "oh, duh, how did I overlook that?" going around SpaceX headquarters now that they've finally seen it in action all the way to the end.
- ColinWright 12y ago"Official Rumour" is that the first stage hit the drone ship but did not land well. https://twitter.com/sarahcruddas/status/588076036207812609 https://twitter.com/sarahcruddas/status/588076036207812609
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- icpmacdo 12y ago"Ascent successful. Dragon enroute to Space Station. Rocket landed on droneship, but too hard for survival." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588076749562318849 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588076749562318849
- cygx 12y agoNot totally unexpected: Odds of rocket landing successfully today are still less than 50%. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/587704139225759744 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/587704139225759744
- smackfu 12y agoI think Musk said he just made up the original 50% odds.
- baq 12y agothe original, yes. now they've got experience and say they've got 80% odds for landing one first stage by the end of the year.
- tsotha 12y agoHow can that make sense? Until they actually get a successful landing they can't be sure they don't have a problem that causes a failure 100% of the time.
- smeyer 12y agoPresumably they've tried to estimate that probability and factored it into the 20% probability of not succeeding. (I don't know though, since I haven't seen the calculation.)
- tsotha 12y agoStill... you can't assign a probability to something that is, by definition, unknown. "This is just a complete guess..." <-- reasonable "Bayesian analysis tells us..." <-- smells of ass
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
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- spikels 12y agoRocket landed on droneship, but too hard for survival. https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588076749562318849 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/58807674956231884...
- ggonweb 12y agoAscent successful. Dragon enroute to Space Station. Rocket landed on droneship, but too hard for survival. - @elonmusk https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588076749562318849 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588076749562318849
- ggonweb 12y agoLooks like Falcon landed fine, but excess lateral velocity caused it to tip over post landing -@elonmusk https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588082574183903232 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588082574183903232
- david-given 12y agoScott Manley did precisely this in KSP the other day, trying to replicate the barge landing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9I55o8hQgs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9I55o8hQgs Admittedly, he also replicated all the other possible failure modes too. Turns out landing on barges is hard.
- swamp40 12y agoI wonder how much of the rocket is steel? Perhaps a barge full of Tesla batteries and electromagnets could grab and hold it as it comes in?
- Already__Taken 12y agoIf that's the idea then just land it into a big sunken tube filled with netting.
- InclinedPlane 12y agoIt's almost entirely aluminum.
- clebio 12y agoThat's really fun to watch. Thanks for the link!
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- tsotha 12y agoHopefully that means there wasn't too much damage to the barge.
- sylvinus 12y agoIncredible photo of S1 almost landing on the barge! http://livestream.com/spacex/events/3959775/images/83962965 http://livestream.com/spacex/events/3959775/images/83962965
- 51Cards 12y ago@elonmusk - "Looks like Falcon landed fine, but excess lateral velocity caused it to tip over post landing"
- spikels 12y agoPics of landing - landed on target then fell over https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/588082574183903232 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/58808257418390323...
- fit2rule 12y agoI have an idea for how to improve the landing of the rocket stage: instead of fold-out landing-legs, why not fold-out wings? Or, a combination of both - legs with wing-like features - they function as wings until close to touch-down and then feather to support the rocket laterally upon landing?
- david-given 12y agoThey'd be on the wrong end of the rocket. The centre of mass is close to the engines, but not that close; the landing legs have to go at the bottom for obvious reasons, but any aerodynamic surfaces have to go near the vehicle's stern, as it moves through the air. Since it's descending vertically, this means the top. This is what the pop-out grid fins way up are for. Fun fact: if the F9 first stage had traditional fins at the bottom, they wouldn't be able to do this. The vehicle would tumble in the upper atmosphere and end up either nosediving into the ground or breaking up. Don't believe me? Go get the KSP demo and try it for yourself! The demo is pretty ancient, but it is free: https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/demo.php https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/demo.php
- fit2rule 12y agoI believe you and I understand the problem (I make planes for fun, so know a little bit about aerodynamics and CG) .. but what I think is that the wings could indeed be mounted to the rocket higher up the frame, over the legs - so when the legs deploy at the bottom, the wings deploy as well over the top - they'd be part of the same leg structure, only extended all the way to the top of the rocket body. Actually they'd need to be rotors, a kind of mini-wing, to spin the rocket body on descent, for drag .. like maple seed wings that flip out in the last stage of the flight envelope. Well of course all this sounds easy, but KISS principles apply I suppose. Still, I could see this happening at some point in the future ..
- krallja 12y agoThere are already grid fins on the F9, which provide aerodynamic control.
- jkrejci 12y agowell at least it didnt blow up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- rebelidealist 12y agoStupid question but why can't the rocket drop horizontally from a close altitude to a soft floating area? Do they really need it to land vertically?
- NeutronBoy 12y agoThe structure of the rocket is designed to support itself upright. It would likely fall apart (or at least get damaged) if you lay it on it's side, without a whole lot of (heavy) re-enforcements to the structure.
- cryptoz 12y agoSpaceX is preparing the technology to land on Mars. While this particular rocket will not go to Mars, the next iteration will. There are no soft floating areas on Mars, therefore that solution will not work. This is also the reason there are no parachutes, etc. Vertical rocket landings work on Earth, Mars, the moon, pretty much all surfaces in the accessible solar system. So having a rocket that can land vertically, refuel, and take off again is important for space travel, and that's the primary goal here. You can think of the Falcon 9 rocket and its tests to be like a revenue-generating prototype, so they're testing a bunch of future technology when they do these landings.
- BinaryIdiot 12y agoIt wasn't a stupid question and thanks for asking it; I was curious of this as well.