Congrats
Here's to the SpaceX peeps. very well done!
SpaceX has finally succeeded in landing the first stage of its Falcon rocket at sea – after blasting off more supplies to the orbiting International Space Station. Landing from the chase plane pic.twitter.com/2Q5qCaPq9P — SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 8, 2016 What you're seeing here is the lower stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket …
It was a really good day as far as clear skies go. So the launch footage was excellent. Also good that they placed a camera outside the barge this time around so that we could see the footage just in case the rocket landing interfered with communications like in previous landings.
It looks like the booster was actually "crabbing" into the wind to stay on target, and straightened up during the last two seconds. Landing aircraft do this during crosswinds, but they do it horizontally and they have a lot more time and leeway. They can also abort and try again.
I skipped to the logical conclusion and watched it in the pub :)
In fact, next time someone asks "where's my flying car?" I'm going to point out that I sat in the pub, and on a handheld computer I watched a wirelessly transmitted video of an unmanned rocket, launch a payload to a permanently manned spacestation, and then land on an autonomous barge.
The future is definitely here.
And thank you for a wonderful extra present on my birthday!
It was actually just more than a year ago that I posted a comment to say a successful landing would be a perfect present, as their next attempt would have been on the 8th of Aprilf, and now it happened! (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/11/spacex_launches_dscovr_satellite_into_deep_space_after_4_day_and_ten_year_wait/)
Lifting one to the geniuses at SpaceX!
CRS-8 T-18 minutes until landing. youtube-dl.
Err...
First and foremost: Tsiolkovsky - he did the math. The "Tsiolkovski equation" knows no mercy :)
The rest - Goddard, von Braun, Korolev and today Musk is engieneering.
By the way - all of Musk illustrious predecessors thought of this - rocket take off, rocket return. The reason they did not even try is that the control technology for doing that in atmospheric conditions was simply not there till about 20 years ago. The automated glided landing version was tested once for Buran and considered for the Zenit first stage. Glided is slightly easier than vertical as the feedback loops are not so strong and the differential equations describing the process are not so insanely stiff. End of the day it was dropped.
No kidding (and I speak as an American)
Neither NASA nor any of the other hidebound American rocketry firms could do this. They're only puffing their chests and announcing any sort of re-usability to simply keep up with Musk and not hemorrhage customers. I give ULA or Ariane maybe 20% chance to have something even partially reusable flying in TEN years.
> "If only they'd cut out that cringeworthy "USA!" chanting."
Hey all you rocket techies, stop feeling proud for your country! At least don't utter it out loud. Don't you know there are people in the world that find such pro-USA feelings offensive? We're not interested in your disgusting patriotism, so stop it!
as opposed to their only real competition who use russian build motors. A large part of the SpaceX culture is to bring back national pride and employment and not just focus on the bottom line. You did know that the USA hasn't lifted a human in nearly a decade? Next time you go to Walmart or Tesco ... try and find a toaster that's not made in China. Might be well all need a little more of that USA or UK chanting in our lives.
Even if someone of his calibre did, for some unfathomable reason, choose to live here in Blighty, they'd be so shackled by poor infrastructure, red tape (health and safety alone would be enough), bloated and second-rate local governance and a general lack of imagination that I'd be extremely surprised if they were able to produce a usable rocket, let alone a reusable one!
Even if someone of his calibre did, for some unfathomable reason, choose to live here in Blighty, they'd be so shackled by poor infrastructure, red tape (health and safety alone would be enough), bloated and second-rate local governance and a general lack of imagination that I'd be extremely surprised if they were able to produce a usable rocket, let alone a reusable one!
This being a problem that exists almost entirely in the management layer.
And is correct in the last three decades people like Richard Noble and David Ashford seem to have the right stuff and there are plenty of the right kind of engineering minds, but operating against the small minded cretins that creep and manipulate their way into control is like wading through treacle.
> "Yeah - especially as NASA were the first to show that for real rocket science, it's not enough to use Nazi technology, you need an actual Nazi..."
And who did the Nazis look to for guidance? A regular guy from the USA, Robert Goddard, that's who. So let's not have any more of this 'Nazi' crap, okay?
I don't begrudge them that, although personally I think they should be chanting 'SpaceX' rather than 'USA', This because for too long the US space industry has been blighted by the demands of politics causing what got built to be what was politically acceptable rather than what was technically best and financially cost-effective rather more often than not.
In short, Space X is a well-deserved kick in the arse for the ULA, and makes me wonder what NASA might have achieved had it been free from political oversight. If Space X had been around when the Apollo program was started, maybe I would've been knocking lumps off rocks on Mars in my 40's, instead of doing dreary office jobs.
But amyway - despite my distaste for the USA as a country, no I cannot begrudge the SpaceX folk their pride in what they have achieved, and if they wish to voice that as pride in their country, that's fine by me, it's a kind of nationalism I can get behind. Well done, SpaceX, it's folk like you that might make America great, not the Donald Trumps of the world!
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Top landing, well done.
On my boat the big pointy stick (mast) is secured by wire stays attached at the top, on unstayed masts it is set into a hole in the deck.
How do they stop the rocket from falling over the side once it has touched down and switched off, I didn't see a swarm of robotic deckhands come rushing out to secure it ?
Perhaps they use magnets or the rocket has a big suction cup on the bottom.
It's all about the base - apparently most of the mass is the bottom end after landing. I heard some hand-waving explanation about welding the feet to the deck afterwards. I seems more likely to me that they have some special fixtures that they put over the feet and tie down to hard points on the deck for the journey back. Wire stays - probably sensible to add once the structure is stabilised.
Welding things to the deck is standard practice for the offshore industry. It's fast, very strong, easy to do and doesn't need the item to be in an exact location. I dare say the legs are plenty strong enough (since they are sized for dynamic landing forces) to handle the wind and vessel movement forces involved given that most of the weight is in the base.
The base of the rocket where all the engines are is very heavy. Above that it's mostly a very thin skinned fuel tank so it's very stable up to angles of 10 degrees. Wind pressure however is a big issue as it's effectively a huge sail. As soon as the rocket is made safe they board the drone ship, put metal shoes over the landing leg feet and weld the shoes to the deck.
You could tell it was really just a matter of time before SpaceX succeeded. They were so close a few times now. I am still mightily impressed by the physics and engineering involved. The live coverage was good too. Surely we need more of this kind of thing.
Congrats to everyone involved.
The 5 stages of technology;
1) Impossible
2) Unbelievable
3) Amazing
4) Routine
5) Obsolete
We've gone from the original idea,(stage 1), to the drone footage of Grasshopper (stage 2), to this landing (stage 3).
With the speed things are moving on I have little doubt most of us will be around to witness the last two as well.
SABRE perhaps?
After testing, the ISS version will be detached and fired back to Earth so that it can burn up in the atmosphere.
Er, why?
Surely (a) they could do with the free space, if only to horse around in and (b) proving that the thing's up to the job long term would be rather useful (as in you wouldn't want to proceed with its planned use without that proof).
You can experience some of the reasons in Kerbal Space Program. They have a limited number of docking ports within reach of their robot arm. and this will be using one of them. I have had to do some very extreme Kerbalism to get around the problem,
And I am able to make game saves before risking an earth-shattering kaboom.
Did you neglect to note the nature of the space station's power? They only have enough power for ONE arm, and there aren't a lot of external power sources in outer space. One cardinal rule of USB is that you don't attach a bus-powered hub to another bus-powered hub.
"Presumably they could have more than one, as long as they only used one at a time. Not that another robot arm is a realistic prospect of course, but power wouldn't seem to be the problem."
Not possible in the situation described as you'd need to be able to do a hand-off, meaning you have to co-ordinate the two arms, meaning you'd need them both operating. I don't think one can rapidly switch power between the two in such a scenario, plus there's the risk that turning one off will allow it to drift, making alignment more difficult.
In any event, Canadarm2 (the arm aboard the ISS, officially the MSS) turns out to be self-relocatable, so it could maneuver itself into a port extension. But like with a tangle of USB hubs, I'd feel a little uncomfortable about the logistics.
"It can increase the number of launches possible in a set period as well?"
That's only useful if there are customers who want that capacity.
That only happens if a 30% price cut is big enough to offset the drop in SX revenues.
Some think it will be.
But that still means you throw away the 2nd stage which is around $15-20m.
While that continues a flight will still cost tens of $m.
"Reduce the price and demand will, for want of a better word, skyrocket."
It is hoped demand will skyrocket.
In reality there is very limited evidence for price elasticity in the launch services market. Hint. You can't buy a rocket, you buy basically a ticket on a rocket for ride at some (usually years) time in the future.
They will still be discarding the 2nd stage and that costs in the tens of millions and it's never not going to cost tens of millions
Will people be queuing up for launches at $40m in a way they are not at $60m?
My instinct says no. I don't think raising the money for a launch at $40m is that much easier for a project than it is at $60m.
But we'll find out.
Hopefully, Ian Banks is reading this from the orbital he resides in now, and smiling!
On a side note, the innuendo in the ship's name was only obvious to me when I saw the -ahem- erect rocket on the barge!.
"Is that a rocket in your deck or are you happy to see me?"
Oh come on!!! I've seen horses with nappies, a cat should be no problem. You can have a try getting it on the cat first though!
Just think how the Hubble Telescope was born in controversy, with mis-ground optics, and here we are some 25 years later, at a cost of USD$2,500,000,000, having provided the world with some of the most stunning photographs of the darkest corners of the universes.
And it's running on a 486 PC!
Born as a product of a Nasa that had grown too big too fast as a result of the Apollo race and was desperate for large projects to justify itself and put jobs in the right constituencies . Placed in a useless orbit 4 years late and at 3x the cost so that it could be launched by a vehicle which was itself the result of the same mindset.
A lot of the good HST did was funding students and postdocs to work on the data and creating a software and organisational (STSCI) infrastructure to process - the images from ground based telescopes got a lot better a lot faster. The VLT was built for the same money that a singe HST servicing mission cost.
And just think people, this utterly brilliant advancement in rocket science and possibly in our next phase of discovery has been funded by people using a certain payment service to buy random items of stuff - we can probably all claim to have contributed to this incredible achievement and I for one am incredibly glad of this.
There's a rather significant aspect to the achievement for SpaceX as a private company rather than a government agency.
As Musk has shown in his accumulation of wealth, he is a businessman out to make a profit.
Will this most recent success yield shared knowledge that benefits large swathes of mankind, or concentrate that knowledge for (his) corporate profit? Will it be used to further science? Will it be used to cater for a very small elitist clientele? And so on.
Undoubtedly a great technological achievement but where does the road go now? There must be a more balanced way for billionaire czars to direct human endeavour, methinks.
The benefit and knowledge will go where, and how, Elon Musk decides it should go. It is his. He's the one who decided to do this incredibly significant thing with his billions, so the fruits of his labours are his. And that is morally right, he has proved himself deserving of this, by achieving it.
I dislike left-wingers' insistence that politicians are the sort of people to whom we ought to give such decision making powers.In my view, such career politicians are a bunch of second hand car salesmen, the slimiest and most ruthless of which gets to the top. I can't think of a worse system to be honest. I can't wait for the day when the entire professional political class is disintermediated. Personally I'd much rather a good hearted, driven "doer" like Elon Musk was in charge of such things, than a load of "elected" politicians in thrall to donors, and their own political careers.
Now that SpaceX has proven it can be done - others will follow. I am sure there are many rocket scientist types that knew it could be done but the cost and risks got in the way. Now even the bean counters know it can be done so more investment should find its way into reusable systems.