SpaceX launch webcast: Orbcomm-2 Mission [video]
spacex.com
spacex.com
I also want to commend them for a few minor things:
- a real-time stream from landing (as opposed to holding it and releasing footage few days later, as before)
- a real-time stream from satellite deployment, with a camera placed so that we could see everything (as opposed to the typical low-quality stream of the engine nozzle)
- a launch timeline visible on the stream
This mission looked an order of magnitude better than anything they did before. It's like, before they were just playing around, and now they're doing serious business. Keep it up, SpaceX!
But they really upped the PR game this time, that's for sure. I assume somebody must have had a look at the viewer count numbers from the last few and put 2 and 2 together on the opportunity they were missing out on. A nice job of it overall.
Presumably the sting of the term is now entirely gone. Nothing succeeds like success.
They want to reuse rockets similar to planes in the future. It's mind blowing and super exciting!
Agreed, though. It was masterly done. Loved the timeline.
It's amazing to me how much power SpaceX has to both re-activate so (comparatively) soon after a failure and to delay the launch by a day solely for its own purposes (perhaps it's launch client gets a discount?).
I was working on a signal distortion problem with a colleague when I heard the rumble of the launch. "Rocket just launched", I said. He was on Google chat with me and said, "It did?". He lives a few miles south of me and so he gets the sound waves a few seconds later ;).
A couple of minutes later I did a double-take. "THAT's a new sound!". I've heard rockets blow before, but I've never heard one come back to land.
Then I checked the internet to confirm what my ears had already told me.
Congrats to SpaceX and thank you for not landing it on my house!
But perhaps more importantly its the first "first" for SpaceX which has not been done by NASA or anyone else. Launch a payload in to orbit and recover the booster back to the launch site. The SRBs from the shuttle were essentially shell refurbs, SpaceShip 1 and Blue Origin sub-orbital hops. This was, in my estimation, the real deal. It has to be an amazing feeling being on the team that made this possible. Congratulations, that is one way to write yourself into the history books.
Edit: I was so excited I couldn't even multiply 9 by 5!
One of the huge differences (and there are many) is that Falcon 9 was doing 6,000 Km/hr (~4,000 mi/hr) when the first stage separated and turned around to come back.
The path was not straight up, but rather one to launch the second stage into orbital flight (which reached 26,000 Km/hr and 600 miles of altitude).
Then Falcon9's first stage FLEW a curved return path; fired three engines to slow down from holy-crap miles-per-hour, shut them down and then, at exactly the right moment in time, fired one engine to land.
The Bezos rocket went straight up to zero velocity and came straight back down.
It's like throwing a bottle straight up in the air compared to throwing one in a parabolic path to the top of the Empire State building and having that bottle then turn around, fly that same parabolic path to return and land at your feet.
Not sure why Bezos feels the need to try to imply his effort (which IS significant) is on the same league as SpaceX other than to potentially try to leverage the fabricated parity for publicity and external funding.
1995, DC-X, and it's pyramidal
Is that correct? Amazing that this was achievable 20 years ago. Why no other re-usable rocket since 1996 if this was doable?
> Why no other re-usable rocket since 1996 if this
> was doable?
The problem with SSTOs, in general is that while getting them to take off and land isn't a big hurdle, getting them into orbit with more than a nontrivial payload is pretty difficult.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/SSX.html
It's a concept with its supporters, but there's a pretty large program risk - the numbers are so tight you may get to the end of your development and realize your rocket works but can take only, you know, 25 pounds of payload to LEO. Or maybe a few tons. Or maybe you can't get to orbit at all.
SpaceX's plan to land each stage individually probably makes a lot more sense from the risk perspective.
Sure in 140 characters.
when SpaceX launched 1000m and landed? Just because it was higher? It seems like SpaceX has Bezos beat on both sides - they launched and landed a rocket before Bezos, and now theyve launched and landed a rocket higher than Bezos. So all Bezos did was launch his rocket higher than SpaceX's at the time. Is that right?
EDIT: One question for the rocket scientists here: exactly how reusable do they expect these returned first stage rockets to be? What is the process of certifying that a returned rocket is fit to fly, and what components are most likely to need repairing/replacing with each launch?
> Musk said that a rocket's first stage accounts for three-quarters of its total price tag, so a vehicle with a reusable first stage can be produced at far less cost — assuming the hardware is fully and rapidly reusable.
~75% savings seems like a "best case scenario" number.
Now for second stage re-use ;)
Seriously though, now I'm just waiting for updates on BFR / Mars mission development progress.
The challenge for SpaceX is to inspect the booster, integrate a new second stage & payload, and relaunch in a few weeks. With a few years of work, it should be almost like a cargo jet turnaround.
ULA's Vulcan plan is to parachute the engines and pumps back, catch the rope with a helicopter, inspect and reattach to a new set of tanks. That seems likely to be a little more complex to me.
There's really not a lot of costs that can add up for reuse of these stages. It'll require a bit of cleaning up, a few new bits and pieces replaced and added, and a lot of inspection work. But most of the cost of the stage is in manufacturing the engines and tanks, so it should add up to enormous savings, even if it's relatively costly to reuse each stage compared to the theoretical limits.
Edit: the flip-side is that the reliability and robustness improvements from reusability may be as big a win as cost. Currently it costs tens of millions of dollars to launch a rocket to orbit, which means it's almost never done except as part of a paid launch. Moreover, despite the seemingly high number of launches very few of those launches represent expanding the test-envelope much, every single launch is typically straight down the middle of the performance envelope, to maximize the chance of success. That results in learning very little about these vehicles despite how much they've been flown. By introducing reuse and dropping the cost of flight it may become possible to do real test programs, which would make it possible to determine the flight envelope characteristics of vehicles and help lead to improving designs over time.
Reusability makes it more interesting. There's a lot of extra fuel on board now which could be used to make up for lost engines if you're willing to throw away the first stage.
I bet they relaunch this booster on their own dime as a demo.
Between "You'll be the first launch since the last one... You know, that one with a small anomaly..." and fact that this was the first launch of a new version of the falcon 9 (with slightly different engines, cooler/more pressurized O2), I know that if I were negociating for Orbcomm, I'd ask spaceX to cross the last digit on their bill (and probably have a much more expensive insurance policy in return).
And to delay a _commercial_ launch in order to accommodate weather for the _landing_ ? AFAIK, that's another world's first in history and I think that tells a lot on the underlying story.
Don't get me wrong, this is an amazing achievement, and the economics of it don't really matter when it comes to the technical prowess
But if they can get it to point where it's a matter of gassing it up for the next flight, that's a huge savings. Fuel is a few hundred grand for a rocket that costs sixty million dollars. It's nothing, basically.
SpaceX seems to build things a lot more low-key. They don't use fancy propellants, their engines aren't particularly efficient, and overall they seem to go more for robustness and simplicity.
(Simplicity doesn't really apply for a crazy-ass landing scheme. But aside from that....)
Obviously it remains to be seen, but I think it's likely to be a lot more gas-and-go than the Shuttle.
On the other hand, the solid boosters of the Space Shuttle were severely damaged by the impact and corrosion of the sea water, after "recovery" they were essentially a source of parts for new boosters.
Overall, I really hope they can improve re-usability above what the Space Shuttle achieved.
(Incidentally, SpaceX is known for keeping some aspect of their operations trade secret, rather than patenting. So, if they had some solvent that dissolved the gunk and simplified the cleanup process, or some such similar trick, it's likely that no one outside the company would know about it.)
I have no real idea how significant coking of the Merlin engine is, but the SSMEs were hardly "clean".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement [2] http://www.tms.org/Superalloys/10.7449/1991/Superalloys_1991... [3] http://www.interspacenews.com/FeatureArticle/tabid/130/Defau... [4] http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/174534main_ssme.pdf
Basically, it's "104% of what the engineers circa 1975 thought the level would be," not 104% of what the hardware was rated for.
Incredible project. Reusable rockets. It's science fiction coming to life again, like the 1960s.
hah! Tears in my eyes here this is absolutely incredible to watch.
I stayed up for this, I hope I didn't wake up the neighbours and it will take days to wipe the grin of my face.
edit: haha, nice downvote, whoever it was. :)
Government space missions are limited by taxpayer interest/funding, and the high cost of access to space has mostly limited commercial interest to things like communication and surveying satellites. I'm really looking forward to what new opportunities open up in both spaces when we can do so much more for the same cost.
Those missions are remarkable partly because they're amazing firsts, and partly because of what they've been able to accomplish with huge limitations and cost restrictions. They're amazing because of finesse, and if this whole reusability thing works out, you'll be able to brute force them instead. Visiting a comet is amazing. Making launches so cheap that it becomes practical to visit fifty comets would be astounding.
It's a bit like the invention of the steamship. It doesn't take you anywhere new. Sailing ships got the job done. But it transformed the world just the same.
EDIT: To quote my friend's reaction,
"HAPPY FEET, WOMBO COMBO!
Let's Kerbal the shit out of Space."
"Congrats @SpaceX on landing Falcon's suborbital booster stage. Welcome to the club!"
Blue Origin was first, and Bezos can quite rightly welcome SpaceX to 'the club' as the second company to achieve this, without being accused of being classless, surely?
Today, history was made. Blue Origin: not so much. Nice but nowhere near in the same league (or the same club, to stick with Bezos).
Actually, the "pop-up" 1st stage trajectory is interesting from a space applications perspective. You can think of it this way: a SSTO spaceplane is just beyond the cusp of possible for technology made out of normal matter and fueled by chemical rockets. But what if you could somehow cheat and launch an SSTO at very high altitude? Then it's just below the cusp of possible. So you wind up with a completely reusable TSTO craft.
So how is that more interesting than a high altitude blimp? You get the craft back faster, directly to the facility. Recovery is more straightforward. The equipment and technology is the same sort of equipment and technology as in the orbiter craft. Also, if you're able to get up to a "mere" 600 mph or so downrange velocity, due to the mathematics of the rocket equation, you're still saving a sizable chunk of vehicle weight in fuel.
If you want to say it's about VTOL rockets, SpaceX was first by a long way. If you want to say it's about reusing an orbital launcher, BO is nowhere close. You have to torture the categories into uselessness to say BO did anything first.
Who cares whether BO or SpaceX was first, or whether China or America was first? We should be happy that humanity is closer to Mars.
Competitive people are competitive. Film (and Twitter fight) at 11...
Someone should totally do rap battles while pretending to be some famous figure. The possibilities are endless. Faux Bill Gates vs Faux Steve Jobs.
It's a bit silly, but entertaining. It doesn't get too technical, but usually gets the generic facts right.
I can't give the exact answer but if I had to guess, I'd say it's a consistently argumentative attitude under the guise of asking questions. The commenter has asked the same question "what makes this SpaceX thing so special?" at different points of this thread and has gotten many different answers providing a bunch of different view points. They're not trying to get clarity, they're trying to convince people that this isn't an accomplishment, and there seems to be a hint of accusation ("you only think this is better than BO because HN loves Musk and hates Bezos") in the questions.
That's my guess.
I actually agree that SpaceX did an awesome thing, and really do understand that its more complicated, and difficult, and challenging, and so on, than what Blue Origin managed to do; yes. My point was more of a "HN loves SpaceX and cannot acknowledge that they might not be the best in the world at everything, ever" thing, rather than any technical breakdown. I would also maintain that the 100km altitude flight is important - it's the internationally recognised boundary of space - and that the 'first' that Blue Shepherd claimed was valid, since the SpaceX Grasshopper did not cross the 100km Karman line.
The important parts are that the flight is of a 1.) reusable, 2.) VTOL, 3.) rocket after a 4.) 100km altitude space flight. Since all four points are valid for SpaceX's Falcon 9 first stage booster, I think it's technically correct to place its landing in the same category as Blue Origin's New Shepherd landing. SpaceX's achievement is more technically interesting and useful, but that should not detract from what Blue Origin managed to do with a much smaller team and budget.
Having a flight control mechanism that function outside the atmosphere is valuable/important. Landing a rocket without relying on atmosphere is valuable/important. Gluing those two things together is much less so - like being the first person to climb Everest and swim across the Channel.
Honestly the F9 landing isn't much of a "first" - landing a rocket vertically has been done, and landing the main engines of an orbital launch vehicle so that they can be reused has also been done. What makes it exciting is a) the technical difficulty b) the potential for making things there's actual commercial demand for (satellite launches) much cheaper - and in both those regards Blue Origin's landing isn't comparable.
I suspect the main region for the popularity is that SpaceX has done a lot of community engagement, webcasts and all the rest of it, while Blue Origin has done everything in secret. But I'm fine with that - if it encourages companies to be more open then that's all for the good.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/by-making-a-historic-...
https://i.imgur.com/D9BdO86.png
http://www.flightclub.io/results.php?id=eb627cc3-ffab-43a3-9...
It's the difference between slowing your car down gently to stop at a red light, and having your car going at max speed and slamming on the brakes as hard as you can at exactly the right moment so that you will eventually stop at the lights. One is easy to do, the other will most likely get you killed.
They're in the same club like a general aviation pilot landing his Piper Cub on a giant runway and a navy pilot landing his F-14 on a carrier are "in the same club". While it's technically true, pointing it out would be pretty tacky...
The achievements are comparable, despite the fact it makes SpaceX come second. Blue Origin was first with a VTOL rocket stage, as part of a space system.
It gets a whole lot closer (and is _much_ larger).
I really can't emphasize enough how much of a difference the ability to hover makes for New Shepard. SpaceX has been doing "New Shepard" type flights for a long time now (they didn't bother going that high, but 'high' isn't really that interesting, it's 'fast' that matters). However, Grasshopper (like New Shepard) was able to throttle down to a TWR less than 1. That makes landing so much easier (the rocket can 'stop' and get settled before it proceeds to land).
http://i.imgur.com/RVOKED2.jpg
Blue Origin's achievement is nice; just as older prototypes that achieved suborbital landing (Grasshopper, DC-X), but it's unclear yet what it meant for the industry (hope they keep going though, they're a good track). SpaceX's landing is a landmark for space travel, rapid reusability is now much closer. I'm much more confident now this will change the cost structure of the whole industry, seeing how launch is a dominant factor.
But it's not what matters, in fact it's irrelevant, was not a disputed trophy, and won't be mentioned 50 years from now.
Getting to space is just getting high off the ground, its not very useful unless you can achieve orbit.
In fact, didn't they do it on the moon several times?
At any rate, John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace managed it long before Bezos did. But wait, he didn't get to space? Hair-splitting.
Now, if you want to invent an extra category of 'first VTOL landing for a first stage booster for an orbital rocket system that uses boost-back to change trajectory mid-course' or similar, they SpaceX are first with that, and of course it's an awesome achievement.
Landing the F9 stage is not even the first "reusable part of an orbital launch system", the Space Shuttle was that. It just wasn't very effective in terms of lowering the cost, which is where F9's true claim of being a game changer is going to be. Let's hope that pans out.
That assertion is ridiculous. The rocket is optimized to do one thing, push it's payload into orbit, this is a very strict restriction, especially on a two stage rocket. On the other hand, the designer of a suborbital vehicle has ample design space to play.
It's like comparing your practice free throw, in your back yard, with a slam-dunk in the NBA.
Who said that was the achievement? What is important about that achievement?
The important achievement is dramatically reducing the cost of sending things into space (such that they will stay there). SpaceX's rockets achieve this, Blue Origin's don't even attempt to be in that league. Using your Everest analogy, Blue Origin was the first to climb some lesser peak nobody cared that much about (still, nice job), then SpaceX climbed Everest, and Bezos said "welcome to the tall mountain club."
Anyone who understood what was being achieved. That doesn't mean that a single achieve or being first in itself is that meaningful, but it's still an achivement.
Just like anyone who understands mountaineering knows that climbing Everest isn't the greatest norvthe hardest achivement among tall mountains i.e. the eight-thousanders.
F9 will significantly reduce the cost of putting things in orbit.
NS will reduce the cost of space tourism (momentary views of earth), but would require new engines and a different design and landing style to put things into space, something like F9.
Hence implying they are the same is a bit tacky and inappropriate as it will mislead lots of people.
Not to remove any merit to Blue Origin's achievement, but it's nowhere near what SpaceX just pulled off.
EDIT:
Musk: "Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster"
Musk: "It is, however, important to clear up the difference between "space" and "orbit", as described well by https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/"
http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/24/news/companies/elon-musk-jef...
EDIT2:
NASAWatch: "Gee Jeff @SpaceX just put a bunch of stuff into orbit - again. Something you have yet to figure out how to do."
https://twitter.com/NASAWatch/status/679126712295120896
I'm not sure if they're all joking around, or are there serious ego issues at play here.
Think we can get Gates or Buffet into it as well maybe?
This is not a complaint; inquiring minds want to know.
That's not even fun banter. Just a squeaky voice trying to get a sucker punch in.
EDIT: Here's a video that compares/contrasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8c7RUjNFDo
- SpaceX rocket goes really fast horizontally; it has to flip around and boost back, and then correct from horizontal to vertical orientation.
- Falcon 9 is an actual space launch system; it has different (i.e. much stricter) engineering constraints than a suborbital rocket. In particular, this affects the engine design.
- Most importantly, the first stage of Falcon 9 does what's known as "suicide burn" - it waits until the last possible second to fire back the engine, so that it reaches exactly zero velocity relative to the ground as it touches down. It does so, because it can't hover - even the single one one of the nine Merlin engines, throttled down to minimum, still generates more thrust than the now almost empty booster weights. On the other hand, Blue Origin's rocket can slow down to a hover, and then take its time to stabilize and land.
Rockets that can reach orbit have very bad weight to payload ratios (Falcon 9 is ~2.5% takeoff weight to LEO) so there isn't much room for dead weight.
Is that true? Doesn't the landing have to use the center engine - any other single engine would be asymmetric, and multiple engines would have too high a thrust.
But the great thing about SpaceX's system is that it starts with a cheap expendable rocket, then makes it recoverable. You lose one? Who cares, build another one. They could have a 50% success rate recovering the first stages and it would still make things amazingly cheaper.
I don't think that the software is enabled yet -- SpaceX usually press forward with the main objective first, and flesh out the contingencies later (for example, abort hardware was present during the last failed launch, and it had been tested before, but the software wasn't enabled, and they lost the vehicle).
So from what I've read, the returns are immense; the amount of learning they can do from examining their own rocket is the real initial treasure. Their rocket design should advance considerably based on this trove, and I suppose the source of many papers, publications, and public-sourced patents. Reusable rockets seems not quite a glorious enough term? There's a massive dividend any time this actually works, and imagining the future of this tech is joyous.
We can guess how much this will bring down the cost. How much will it bring down the price? Say it's just following the supply/demand curve to get more customers. If landing was reliable and the rockets were durable, what would it really take to scale? If you actually got 10 of these going full-duty. How close can you back-to-back launches? The scale of that operation in terms of engineers to manage the workload... The return-on-automation (in other words, software) is immense the first few billion dollars you spend on it. That means they need to hire a fuck-ton of very good developers. Cool!
But what if it's more of a binary market and the only new customers are only at a much lower price point? In that case it's just serving the existing market at much higher margin. I believe this will make space more accessible -- cost savings ultimately flow through.
BTW, one of the advantages of pledging your patents for free use is you can really show off the right way to write a patent. The whole point is forcing disclosure in return for a benefit, so now make that disclosure top-notch. In theory, what if patent applications were examined by the top-of-the-field peers and only real advancements in the field which were fully and properly documented by the patent would be granted? I hope not all software patents are evil. The "provisional patent" is an interesting form of self-publication at least, but it does create a pesky 1-year ticking clock.
As a talent/recruiting event this is pretty much about as good as it gets.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-real-reason-spacex-is-h...
Seriously, if a position interests you, apply. There have been plenty of ITAR exceptions.
They might end up offering lower cost launches, reducing the margin, but discounts on Nth-launches don't make sense.
Note: The never before been re-used part is probably the most important factor here. Once they have re-used rockets a few times they'll have a reliability factor for these situations.
... but if I understand correctly, one of the points of the reusable rocketry experiment is to be able to lower the price point to allow new customers who couldn't afford to launch at the previous per-pound cost. To give a terrible but not inaccurate analogy: Think similarly to how the Nintendo Wii found itself in entirely new markets of game players by droppping a $200 console onto the market alongside competition that was nearly double that price-point.
Does anyone know what specifically changed to allow a landing attempt on land as opposed to barge? Was it just that they gained enough confidence with the barges that they would at least be able to hit the target (and not crash into a building or something), or was some regulatory clearance received or something? Or something about this launch (ie lighter payload?) made a return to land feasible?
I suspect even as this becomes routine most landings will still be on the barge. Every ounce of fuel you use to reverse your direction is an ounce you could have put toward a larger payload.
I believe the main concern was not putting what amounts to an ICBM into Disneyworld. Hitting the barge (even though they hit a little hard each time) proved they could hit within a few feet of where they planned reliably.
It's nice to see a lot of the lessons from media training. :D
I used to sell test equipment and software to SpaceX's launch ops, avionics, and calibration crews, starting between launches 2 and 3. It was touch and go back in those days. These guys have worked their tails off for over a decade and deserve every bit of congratulations they receive.
Walking into the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne was always a humbling experience. Instant "I am the dumbest person in this room" syndrome.
Congrats guys!!
EDIT: and here's just the landing itself: http://www.gfycat.com/WeepyCelebratedAfricanaugurbuzzard.
Link : http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/12/21/background-tonights-la...
I went back and recorded the release speed (km/hr), altitude (km) for each drop:
25960 626
25954 627
25950 628
25944 630
25937 632
25935 632
A circular orbit at that height is about 29000 km around; 25 km/hour of difference between release 1 and 6 would give them a separation of 6 degrees longitude/day, or ~50 days until the faster satellites 'lap' the slowest one.
Not any sort of rocket scientist, but I gather the strategy with these kind of LEO satellites is to just throw a pile of them up there semi-randomly, and count on at least one being in the neighborhood when you want to talk to it.
edit: Last paragraph is wrong. See my comment two levels down for the answer.
>Because OG2 satellites are launched in groups of several spacecraft, they require propulsion systems to place the satellite into different nodal planes to begin operations.
There's the answer, courtesy Orbcomm.
Say one satellite's orbit is a bit smaller. That means that, over time, they will naturally drift farther and farther apart, until they end up on different sides of the globe. At that point, just raise the smaller orbit slightly.
Kerbal Space Program is really good for understanding stuff like this.
Only mid-launch I figured out I could just put three of them on Kerbisynchronous Equatorial Orbit at 120° phase difference :/.
Yes, KSP is absolutely amazing for learning this stuff :).
[0] - useful if you're playing with RemoteTech mod, which prevents you from operating unmanned spacecraft if they don't have a radio connection back to a proper command centre.
I too am confused about the utility of launching 11 satellites into virtually the same orbit.
1) The companies pursuing this, SpaceX, Blue Orgin, etc., can't be the first to think of it. If the first stage accounts for 75% of the cost of a launch, as one article I read says, I'm sure many have considered, going back to the first launches decades ago, how to reuse it.
2) The technology to land rockets vertically has existed for a long time, going back to the lunar lander at least.
Additionally, Blue Origin and SpaceX have different goals from traditional aerospace firms that requires them to drive costs down below what a government would require. Blue Origin want to offer rides to space to tourists; for that, their costs need to be low enough for a person to buy a ticket. SpaceX wants to land their rockets on Mars, and then take off again. Being able to land the first stage of the Falcon 9 allows them to perfect the landing and reuse of rockets on Earth, before taking that knowledge to Mars.
Usually changes like this result from a technical or economic development.
And they have a drive, too. Mars is not a marketing story, Elon seems to really believe in doing it, and a lot of people at SpaceX buy into this vision.
This development trajectory leads to a capable launcher, but one that is wholly unsuited for reuse. Reusing the first stage is now extraordinarily difficult, extraordinarily costly, and has little advantage (since most of the cost is in the upper stage anyway). You see the effects of this design pattern in most expendable launchers. Both the Delta IV and Atlas V boosters use a single engine in the first stage, and both use an RL-10 LOX/LH2 engine for the 2nd stage, an extremely expensive engine on its own, let alone when it's integrated into a high-tech stage (such as Lockheed-Martin's legendary Centaur line). The Ariane 5 has gone through 5 different generations of upper stage advancements, and it too has only one engine on its first stage. India's GSLV uses a solid first stage with hypergolic boosters and second stage and a LOX/LH2 3rd stage.
Meanwhile, there hasn't been much pressure on rocket designers to be hard headedly pragmatic. Often times winning government contracts or even private investment meant convincing people of your beyond state-of-the-art designs that would leap frog the competition, rather than rely on common sense engineering and iterative advancements. That's how we got the Shuttle (which was supposed to be about 2 orders of magnitude cheaper to operate than it turned out to be), the X-33/VentureStar program, the NASP/X-30 program, Rotary Rocket, Pioneer Rocketplane, and all the other programs and startups that were cancelled when they ran out of money, ran into engineering problems, or both.
The sensible thing is to try reusing some of the rocket and make the most of that from a cost perspective. Something that saw a bit of attention with the old DC-X program over two decades ago. One problem with that program was that it envisioned a new launcher that was mostly an SSTO, and aimed at building up from small scale rather than building toward reuse from full orbital scale.
The genius of Musk and SpaceX has several facets:
1) Begin with expendable, but design with reuse in mind (high throttle ability in the first stage, most of the costs in the first stage), and work towards there iteratively. That way you get experience in a lot of the most important bits of the business: building orbital rockets, building rocket engines, building spacecraft, launching rockets. And you get cold, hard cash flowing into the company from launches. Cash that keeps the company in business, and finances further innovations.
2) Build reuse not as a different vehicle but as a "feature flag" on a common design. The difference between a reusable launcher and an expendable launcher for SpaceX is a mode selection, not an architectural difference. This means that you get operational testing of the vast majority of your flight hardware for your vehicle with every single expendable launch. This is a well-known risk mitigation strategy in software and other industries, and here it works marvelously. Prior to today's launch SpaceX had 14 previous launches of substantially the same hardware (counting only the v1.1 version).
3) Opportunistically use the first stage after stage sep. for experimenting with boost back and landing. From the very first v1.1 launch SpaceX has been aggressive at testing aspects of the landing and reuse flight mode, equipping stages with landing gear in many cases. This is a fantastic cost saving method as it takes what would be trash and transforms it into test vehicles being operated in typical flight profiles. This takes advantage of hundreds of millions of dollars of flight hardware to conduct an R&D test program on the cheap.
Combine all of that together and you end up with a way to get from A (expendable rockets) to B (reusable rockets) without having to take on a ton of risk, without having to spend insane amounts of money, without having to design and operationally prove a brand new reusable vehicle design, and to build a revenue earning and self-sustaining business before being able to finish reusable vehicle development. It took a significant amount of foresight and savvy to be able to see that route and to execute on it.
And yes, knowing what we know now it would have been easy to do this sort of stuff in the past, more so if we wanted to just throw money at it. But it wasn't obvious until being proven.
The fact that the Falcon 9 is deliberately designed for less efficiency with 9 engines on the first stage, but still ends up cheaper than the alternatives is even more impressive given that insight.
Landing the Lunar Lander on the moon is completely different to landing a tall, thin high-centre of gravity rocket full of explosive fuel, using AI because there's no crew onboard.
Or did you mean something else?
I'm pretty sure the first vertical landing of a rocket was only achieved in the last few years.
Interest question about safeing it once it is landed. You can't just dump excess liquid oxygen are you'll end up starting fires. Fortunately it isn't like the shuttle which had Hydrazine in the OMS tanks that had to be managed post landing.
I can't wait until they land one in the daylight, and on the west coast so I can watch in person.
It's quite interesting that their biggest competitor ULA is having to rely on tiny Blue Origin to develop a replacement for the Russian RD-180 that ULA uses on their big money maker Atlas V.
Looks pretty close.
First flight since the failure on June 28
Attempt to land 1st stage on land near the launch site
First flight of an upgraded rocket
Launch infographic https://i.imgur.com/D9BdO86.png by /u/zlsa on reddit.
/r/SpaceX Orbcomm OG2 Launch 2 Official Launch Discussion & Updates Thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3xnoz5/rspacex_orbc...
What's interesting too is that the descent path of the rocket has an engine failure trajectory that will ensure the rocket will fall into the ocean if a failure occurs during the powered descent.
There's a reason the United States' launch facilities are primarily along the east coast of the country.
The first stage is pretty stable though. The engines are by far the heaviest part, and they're at the very bottom. The legs are also a fairly wide base.
EDIT: On rewatching the broadcast, "Procedure 11.100, section 3" is what they do (I have no idea what that is, but it's what the LD told the landing pad crew to "proceed with")
(Becomes clear 25~ seconds in)
http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/12/21/background-tonights-la...
Also, what happens to the mass-adapter (i.e. the balancing 12th non-satellite)?
(Also, is it fair to say that while this is an achievement, it is only more-so when they can reliably repeat it; I mean it's not exactly safe yet for people, who knows what a gust of wind could do?)
T-4 minutes and still zero actual mission audio...
I can't stop smiling!
I can't wait for this to fuck over Comcast and every other last-mile monopoly acting like jerks to their customers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRsufOoNOIQ
;).
However, having watched this just now, I could have really done without all the bro-nerd whooping and faux prime time personality-presentation. The latter's awkward and naff and just got in the way for me - the former was simply irritating in the extreme.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I'd rather have a bit of restraint and less of the infantile gesticulation and cursing in the background where this sort of thing's concerned.
grumble
Anyway, onwards and upwards (and back again), SpaceX!
I'm sure some people are less bothered by it than we are, though.
If I were to make a suggestion, it would be to house the loud employees in a large sound-proof booth, but I suspect that would only lead to yet more downvotes here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZZv5Z2Iz_s
I'm serious!
Ultimately they're limited by available manpower and production capacity.
(And if you're interested, search YouTube for many, many attempts to simulate what SpaceX did in KSP, including barge landing attempts.)
Are there any replay videos?
More interesting stuff on the Falcon 9 rocket: http://www.spacex.com/falcon9
Unless you're German, than that statement is almost certainly false. And even Germany is changing.
Your statement most likely reveals more about your political leanings then the levels of nationalistic fervour in different countries.
What? Imagine a Scandinavian or a Briton chanting their countries names in any other place than a sporting event (with an opposing country). It just doesn't happen.
Other than football I can't think of any other time I've ever heard anyone chant "England, England" or whatever.
Might be slightly more likely in Scotland as they are a bit more nationalistic.
Edit: foreign national working at SpaceX. If there were not foreign national's involved in today's success, then feel free to ignore me.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_...
I can't seem to locate the exact time, but this is most likely the interview where Elon Musk mentioned it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIDoTKMqwT4
But a good demonstration of the toxic virality of nationalism, I guess. It manages to wriggle itself into anything.
I have to admit though that once on holiday in Germany, while siting in the ruins of a castle overlooking the Rhine at night, myself and some Brit and American friends of mine burst into a rousing chorus of Deutschland Uber Alles, much to the dismay of our German friends. So perhaps I have an odd sense of humor in this respect. And no I'm not some kind of proto Nazi. I also once memorized the words to much of the State Anthem of the USSR, and knew how to use them, but alas it's since largely slipped my memory. Life's too short to spend it walking around with a stick up your arse about these things IMHO.
So if you want nations not to exist, the burden is on you to come up with something better. "No nations" can look like what used to be Somalia, or what used to be Afghanistan.
It's a commercial. What are they selling?
Bear in mind the video was a live stream. Unless the 'USA' chant was pre-planned and orchestrated by the company, it's just part of the background noise of the employees celebrating.
So how high does the first stage fly?
Epic.
http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/7949/why-does-the-s...
So before we all thank Elon for taking our money, let's pat our selves on the back.
Really we should thank the amazing spacex engineers, who worked tirelessly. Not just Elon. Sure he worked hard too, but not much more than anyone else at spacex
I'm just tired of the Elon worship. Nobody acknowledges the amazing people who actually made this happen. As an engineer it pisses me off. Sorry if this is an unpopular opinion.
That is true of engineers as well, I've met engineers who, under a great manager, have achieved results that they themselves didn't think they could achieve. And I've known engineers who were superstars and unable to perform well at all under poor management.
The point is you need both, the talent to do the work and the leadership to inspire the talent to do their best work. Without both you don't make the playoffs and you don't advance the state of the art in rockets.
And it's hard to argue that a guy fired from his job deserves respect. Shkreli deserves no respect (for example) and was recently fired. The coach who doesn't having a winning season gets no respect.
In my experience I found a huge difference in organizations with good leadership and those with poor leadership (and I've been in both!) And I've been both the engineer and the leader in my career.
You can imagine other organizational forms, but as you experience them you may find, as I did, that the people make the difference, not the form. And that every position has its advantages and challenges. The more senior you are, the more leverage you have in screwing things up. If a line manager makes a bad call, the schedule slips, if the CEO makes a bad call, the company can cease to exist and lose all those jobs. Sort of like in a Viking longboat the oarsmen do the work but if the guy on the tiller falls asleep they are all dead.
It took me a while to understand the roles everyone has to play in getting something done, and the stakes involved for everyone involved. Of course I've really only known organizations which have operated in the environment of US laws and customs, (of which SpaceX is one) but in those organizations I've found that people don't arbitrarily "get to the top", and understanding the difference between what it takes to operate at that level, versus at the level of getting the stuff done that you're told to do. There is a big gulf.
One of the more interesting things a CEO I respect and admire told me about being a senior leader was this, "Chuck the good thing about being in this role is you get to make some of the important decisions, the bad thing about being in this role is that you have to make the important decisions."
So we disagree on what is disproportionate and what is unjust. Perhaps one day we'll be more in agreement.
I disagree that people make make the difference over the form. The role of CEO or product manager, or whatever, is a human invention. We as people created these roles.
Roles are designed to limit or enhance your skills. A senior role is an artificial multiplier and therefore a person's praise, or pay, or whatever, is artificially enhanced.
Imagine Musk, same as he is, in a different role, like a mailman. The FORM limits how we can contribute. LIMITS what he gets paid. and LIMITS who listens to him.
The workers of SpaceX don't listen to musk because they like the guy, they listen to him because he will fire them otherwise.
There are organizations that have different roles, and the idea of someone having so much power is a really stupid one. We decided this to be true in politics, why not other places?
To put it another way, if Elon Musk hadn't founded SpaceX in 2002, how many of the engineers currently working there would right now be celebrating working at a company having successfully recovered a first stage from an orbital rocket?
Let's try looking at it from a third angle. Lets suppose a random employee other then Elon Musk had been unable to join the company during it's history and had to be replaced with another job candidate. What are the chances such a substitution would have prevented SpaceX from achieving a stage recovery?
Finally, I'll address your proposed scenario directly. How likely is it that having the wrong mail man in that position would lead to the failure of the company? In contrast, what are the chances that having the wrong CEO might lead to the failure of the company? I can imagine Elon Musk might make a pretty decent mailman. But if we took the best mailman in the country and put him or her in charge of SpaceX, do you think that would be likely to have a positive or negative effect on the prospects of the company?
But Why? It has nothing to do with Musk but everything to do with organizational form. He has an invention at his disposal called "Role of CEO". It is a magical invention that gives you the power to control what thousands of people do everyday. A mailman doesn't have this invention and obviously won't be able to decide what thousands of people do everyday.
There is nothing magical about Musk here. Since so few people get a chance at being CEO, it is hard to say if most people would be good or bad at it. And it is also hard to say how hard the work really is.
IMO, the statement is not as absolute as it first seems. At one point, Rome held that title, about 100 years ago it was Britain, in another 100, it probably will be China.
"Greatest" in what sense? Isn't that a value judgement (but without any qualifying arguments)?
If we just talk about numbers, then it's not best in many categories, not even financial ones. Heck, not even in infant mortality (57 other countries fare better).
As for quality of life and actual democracy (as opposed to two parties alternating in power forever and a crazy vote transfer system - gerrymandering), there are several candidates far better in one or the other, and some even in both terms. Switzerland, for one.
Maybe we should just call it "the country with the biggest idea for itself".
I would have hoped this thread would be a reprieve for you. I'm seeing tons of respect for SpaceX as a whole here. Ditto for the video, where they thank their partners at NASA, The FAA, etc. - and customer, Orbcomm - for making all this possible. I don't recall Elon being mentioned once in the video. Elon's mentioned a few times in thread for the purposes of citation about the plans of SpaceX, and some silly twitter drama - that's about it. No Elon worship I can spot.
> Sorry if this is an unpopular opinion.
I think pretty much everyone is on board with appreciating the hard work of everyone at SpaceX, NASA, The FAA, Orbcomm, and all the engineers and taxpayers who made it possible. Elon's one of those people though. This... jealousy of him? That's probably not the right phrasing. But if it's poorly received, I suspect it's because it comes across as appreciating the hard work of everyone but him. Or put differently: It's not appreciating the hard work of everyone.
You know he said recently that he was going to give less interviews. I'm sure he likes and uses his public persona to help his endeavors...but that's just being smart.
Steve Jobs did the same thing with Apple.
And as for thanking the American people. Hogwash. Did you personally make a choice in this matter? Sure you voted in the officials that did...that's where the money went...and they made the choice to spend it this way.
You know why? Because it's a smart move. A move towards a future where space travel can expand and grow because it will be more economical and feasible to accomplish.
So...yes, of course the engineers should be applauded! And THEY know this! And I'm positive they are celebrating this monumental event.
You should too! :)