SpaceX lands rocket at sea second time after satellite launch
phys.org
phys.org
This mission was to launch JCSAT-14 to geosynchronous orbit which requires the falcon 9 to move the already heavy satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. That meant the first stage had to do a lot more work and was left with a lot less fuel as a result. Therefore, the re-entry burn was less aggressive, the first stage came in with twice the speed, and SpaceX needed to do a far harder landing with three engines lit in the quicker and riskier suicide burn. Somehow, despite playing down expectations, they managed an even more precise landing than last time.
That said, I have no idea where he got that number, whether 40 m/s or 40 m/s^2; both are incorrect.
The best estimate available for the flight dynamics can be found at flightclub.io, specifically for JCSAT-14: https://flightclub.io/results/?id=eeaf889e-f3d8-4f9b-be98-b7...
This shows the landing burn starting at a velocity of 269 m/s and experiencing a peak deceleration of 12.3g = 121 m/s^2
I don't know how accurate these numbers are, but some fans put quite a bit of effort into getting the flightclub.io profiles as close to reality as possible, so they tend to be pretty good.
The approximation I had is almost certainly less reliable than flightclubs, not sure why it was so low, will have to look at the math I did and figure out what I screwed up.
The actual force would have been closer to 5.1G
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/4htenu/rspacex_jcsa...
Ugh sorry, there's a bug of some sort in Flight Club there. There's no way it was that large. A constant deceleration down from terminal velocity over 6 seconds is
a = (300 - 0)/6 = 50m/s2 = 5.1g
I'll need to look into that
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/4htenu/rspacex_jcsa...
So it looks like that peak is due to the sudden increase in drag during my landing legs deployment. I deploy them at 500m altitude which is a time when the stage is probably still moving a bit too fast. It's a really large increase in cross-sectional area, but I'm probably not treating it correctly. I'll revise before Thaicom-8
Tack-welding fixtures to a steel deck is apparently SOP in big shipping, so it's not as radical as it sounds.
Maybe they still weld it this time, but that is done by having someone go to the barge and do it.
Discussed here: http://space.stackexchange.com/q/6403/574
Instead, coming in very hot, the rocket had to use three engines (instead of one) to slow for landing. The last time this was attempted, the first stage put a nice hole in the deck of the drone ship.
Seeing the rocket dead-center on the barge was quite a sight!
This means that it must slow to a standstill, cut the engines and hit the platform at exactly the same time or it will either start going up again or be dropped onto the platform from a less than ideal height.
And the guy said emphatically "Rocket engineer, there is a big difference"
I'm sure this particular task probably was a little bit of both. After all, they had to run several real world experiments to prove their calculations.
The most interesting work is right in the intersection of the two disciplines, though. :)
I guess "purity" is just another word for "lack of immediately applied practicality"
Scientist: Studies and uncovers mysteries of the universe and natural world
Engineer: Applies what scientists discovers
Scientist: Unknown outcome (e.g. hypothesis -> experimentation)
Engineer: Known (or should be) outcome
Sciencing: Uncovering mysteries about the world. Engineering: Applying such discoveries.
Scientist: Predominantly sciences. Engineer: Predominantly engineers.
There's so much overlap it would make sense for C.V.s of either to include a % science/engineering to suss out their own feel for both history and preference of activity.
Landing at 38:18mins https://youtu.be/L0bMeDj76ig#t=38m18s
Great info on the thrusters on the first stage at 19:37. https://youtu.be/L0bMeDj76ig#t=19m37s
Edit: Thank you and sorry about the time stamp link, I posted quickly from my phone. Hopefully it works on shortlinks.
First stage landing is just after 38 minutes - https://youtu.be/L0bMeDj76ig?t=38m
Doing it twice in such a small window of time is a logistical/programmatic leap.
https://oeaaa.faa.gov/oeaaa/external/searchAction.jsp?action...
The second recovered rocket, F9-023, will be relaunched. It has already been static fired with no announced problems. Elon said it'd be a few months before a customer was announced, but the general feeling is that it will be an SES satellite as SES has already publicly expressed interest.
In all seriousness though, I'm not sure how I feel about this monument. It's going to be really crammed next to the main building and I don't think it will have a very strong visual presence with a giant grey wall directly in the background. There isn't really a good vantage point for viewing either. I suppose it will look ok from the opposite corner of Crenshaw.
Are they also testing similar things but we aren't hearing? Or they aren't threatened by the advances?
Ariane 6 is going to be built with a cost effective approach and trying to focus on market needs (3D printing of parts, reusability of the first stage, etc.)
At first, concerning SpaceX, his group of experts told him that the design of the rocket wasn't going to work and was going to explode at high altitude due to fluctuation. They also told him that the first stage would just go through the barge, sinking both the first stage and the barge. Now they are taking new entrants way more seriously.
I hope this is one of those "lost in translation" things, because otherwise I fear for that group of supposed experts.
The energy amount the rocket impacts with is dominated by its speed, not its mass. A small, fast-travelling projectile can make a hole in just about any kind of armour. The terminal velocity is quite low, but that's in part because of the way it is engineered — an ICBM would probably be able to put a hole through a ship deck with ease.
There is a lot of reasoning by analogy vs. reasoning from first principles going on, and the latter seems to be winning. But the main driver of the space industry is governmental funding, not commercial. Much of those statements were probably political; SpaceX have prevailed, and indeed found some champions of their own (John McCain is rabidly behind them, and some of the statements he comes up with are ludicrous in their own right, for example), though not before enduring some setbacks.
While what you've said is true, in practice it isn't a problem.
If the F9 first stage is out of control and going too fast, it will almost certainly miss the barge to begin with. The barge is small, the ocean is big, and the F9 has to maneuver very precisely to reach it.
If it does reach the barge, it will likely be moving relatively slow, and thus is less likely to sink the barge, even it things go crazy at the last moment.
Either way, the relative masses matter. It takes a lot more effort to punch a hole through something much more massive than your projectile! It doesn't make much sense that a light, nearly spent rocket stage would punch all the way through a massive barge. And even if it did, the hole still wouldn't be big enough to sink it.
Would any "expert" really believe SpaceX didn't run the numbers millions of times, and do millions of simulations to confirm they could slow it down before actually spending the money to buy and outfit drone ships, build landing legs onto their rockets, etc. etc. ?
I mean, honestly, while the devil is in the details for an actual landing, they must have been pretty damn sure they could at least slow the thing down sufficiently.
There are several orders of magnitude there.
Otherwise, I fear it'll be much too little, much t0o late.
(ITYM 2020)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth
[2] http://spaceflight101.com/spacerockets/falcon-9-v1-1-f9r/
[3] http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/8842/what-is-the-sp...
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/dreamingadifferentapollo/
NASA became boring because they were ordered to become boring and were defunded.
The Chinese have mentioned an effort to recover and reuse first stages by landing them with parachutes.
So far, the Russians seem to think the effort isn't worthwhile.
Closer to home, ULA's new Vulcan rocket is supposed to recover the first stage engines (but again, not the fuel tanks) using a parachute and helicopter.
It remains to be seen whether any of these schemes will work or how long they'll take. They have a lot of catching up to do in any case.
Meanwhile, SpaceX plans to launch a Mars mission in 2018.
Compared to that, Arianeespace's target of 2025 (in nine years!) for Adeline is almost ridiculous.
Just checked: Stephane Israël just raised concerned after SpaceX's latest success: http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/05/05/face-a-spa...
I know SpaceX is doing it all more cost effectively, because we have better technology, but have they actually accomplished anything tangible that NASA didn't a generation ago?
The shuttle was the first attempt at re-usability but was far too expensive to be viable. Only the space station is genuinely long term re-useable infrastructure. It's something you can actually use as a platform for further missions beyond it's initial purpose but it also has been excessively expensive. We can't go on like this. Nobody is talking about a replacement space station, the appetite just isn't there. Unless somebody does something, the space station might be the last long term repeatedly occupied human habitat in space.
SpaceX is doing something about that. If they really can reduce launch costs by a factor of 100:1, it will change the fundamental economics of everything we do in space. Suddenly going to the moon stops being a pointless gesture and becomes an economically viable long term proposition. Human habitats in space of the scale of the ISS or bigger become affordable. They're even talking about colonizing Mars and plan to do what's effectively a tech demo of that in 2018.
For the first time the rocket man dreams of the 1970s look like they could actually happen. For a lot of people, that's pretty exciting.
P.S. Downvotes for this question? Really? I'm as much a fan of SpaceX as anyone but it's a fair question, SpaceX haven't even launched one of their recovered rockets yet.
Skylab, not Spacelab.
As you can tell count me excited.
And well, can the "materials" really be recycled without loss of security/quality?
Is the metal more expensive than the carburant/comburant?
>And well, can the "materials" really be recycled without loss of security/quality?
They aren't going to recycle rockets, they're going to refly them. They are aiming for around 100 flights per airframe.
>Is the metal more expensive than the carburant/comburant?
The cost of the metal isn't the major concern, it's the cost of shaping the metal into a working rocket. But yes, fuel costs are a couple hundred thousand, rockets are tens of millions.
SpaceX is exciting because they're doing launches and landings right now, reliably and successfully.
SpaceX (and others) are accomplishing amazing engineering feats aiming at sustainable, repeatable use of their technology, and improving as they go.
Both are amazing accomplishments. But just because "landing a rocket on a barge" is not as sexy as "landing a ship with humans on the moon" doesn't mean it's that much less of an accomplishment. Remember vertical rocket landing is something NASA chose not to attempt because they thought it was going to be too hard. And that's just what SpaceX is doing.
(The exciting part will be much cheaper refurbishment than the STS. But SpaceX haven't actually delivered on that component yet)
it is an important difference when you look beyond earth
the moon, mars, and any future site that has yet to send robots to pave a runaway that is: 4,500 meters long, 91 meters wide, and 40 centimeters thick(o); will necessarily be vertical take off and landing
SpaceX took their landed first stage directly over to the test pad to fire the engines multiple times. It's not really apples to apples.
Red Dragon (assuming goes ahead as planned) will be the heaviest payload ever landed on another planet - an incremental improvement to be sure, but a real one. Mars sample return will be a concrete new thing that NASA never managed. Watch this space.
Nailing down the remaining operational workflow and they'll be able to achieve reusable rocketry, and bring down the cost of spaceflight significantly. It truly is the dawn of a new space age.
That's the number of times we landed men on the moon.
Let's not try to downplay NASA's previous successes as "lucky" and "adventurous" in order to make SpaceX seem more advanced in an engineering sense.
Luck did play a pretty big role in Apollo. This is not to discount the huge amount of work and skill that went into making most of those missions a success, but there was sometimes not a whole lot separating them from failure. Apollo 11's landing site ended up being covered with boulders and they nearly had to abort before they found a suitable landing site. Apollo 12 got hit by lightning on the way up, knocking out computers and nearly causing an abort. Apollo 13 came within seconds of exploding on launch, and was saved by a false fuel alarm shutting down the misbehaving engine.
Of course, this is only to be expected when you're doing something so big and new. SpaceX has the benefit of all that experience.
Recovering the second stage is difficult because it's coming in from a much higher speed. The first stage came in doing about 2km/s. The second stage would come in doing 8km/s or more. That means 16x more kinetic energy to deal with and 64x more heating. You need a proper heat shield, not just clever engine burns. There's much less extra margin to play with as well. The second stage does most of the work but is much lighter, and one pound on the second stage is worth ten pounds on the first stage.
SpaceX definitely believes second stage recovery to be feasible at some point, but not on the current Falcon 9.
The dry mass of the first stage is approximately 25,600kg. At 2km/s, its kinetic energy is 51.2 terajoules. The dry mass of the second stage is approximately 3,900kg. At 8km/s, its kinetic energy is 125 terajoules.
So the KE of the second stage is actually about ~2.4x that of the first stage.
Here is were I found the masses of the stages: http://spaceflight101.com/spacerockets/falcon-9-v1-1-f9r/
The Space Shuttle did reuse SRB casings and the orbiter, it was a bit different but a great achievement too.
However this time there is more potential for cost savings. It can still happen that they can't be realized because of some details or even fundamentals we don't understand from the outside.
Does it use fins, or simply engines and whatever those little jets are that, say, the space shuttle had around its nose...
How does the falcon manage to physically orient its body?
Also, is that process completely autonomous? Is there a remote flight engineer steering this to the barge - or is it completely self-guided
I am impressed - but I want to know how this works.
Wow.
That being said, would you want to be in the nearby path of the rockets if they were going to be ditched?
You also can't land on a ship with parachutes. You don't have enough control. You can still land at sea, but then you have to actually land in the water, which means getting seawater on all your rocket hardware. That causes lots of problems when you want to use that hardware again.
SpaceX did experiment with this approach. Here's a picture of the second Falcon 9's interstage with parachutes packed inside:
http://i.imgur.com/PGXIqKX.jpg
But it turned out not to work so well.
NASA had some success with this approach on the Shuttle SRBs. It's easier with solid fuel rockets, because they're less efficient and built tougher. Even then, the cost of recovery and refurbishment ended up roughly breaking even compared to just building new ones each time.
As far as "wasteful" goes, that depends on what you're looking at. Saving fuel for the landing subtracts from payload capacity, which is wasteful in theory... but in practice, many payloads are smaller than the maximum anyway. If you suffer a 30% payload penalty, but you're launching a satellite which is 40% smaller than your maximum, then who cares? The only waste is some extra fuel, which is super cheap. The full fuel load for a Falcon 9 launch is something like $200,000, compare to the total mission price of around $60 million.
But fragile fuselage is certainly spot on. Parachute-landings still have quite some impact velocity. Strengthening an object the size of a Falcon 9 first stage to survive that impact would require a much stronger and thus prohibitively heavy structure, even if the parachute itself was free. The nice thing about powered upright landing is that all the forces involved are pretty much the same as during launch so that there is little (if any) additional strengthening required.
Note also how the ULA plans for the use of parachutes to recover first stage engine blocks require the parachute to be caught in-flight by a helicopter to avoid any uncontrolled ground contact.
With the powered landing, you already have the engines there, it's just a matter of leaving a bit more fuel. It's not a lot of fuel because you've already dropped a bunch of mass (the whole second stage and a bunch of fuel), and air is helping instead of hindering.
There's also the fact that, unlike parachutes, you can use a powered landing on Mars and the Moon.
But also because a parachute landing actually does a lot more damage than you might expect, and sea water is the last thing you want in your million dollar rocket engine.
They don't want to use cranes, or parachutes or helicopters or complex landing structures, because none of those things will work on Mars in such a way the rocket just needs to be refueled and can fly again.
Airliners could certainly land with parachutes. They could even glide in for unpowered landings. And doing so would save a lot of fuel in either case. But that fuel savings would come at the cost of adding huge operational complexities, and risks. Powered landings are more precise, more predictable, and more reliable. They reduce operational complexities, even if they are costly, and for that reason they are more than worth the fuel costs. An airplane could carry more weight a farther distance if it glided into landing unpowered, but effectively all landings would become emergency situations, and it's just not worth the small benefit of increasing payload.
The same is true in orbital rocketry as well. Parachutes may seem like a good idea, but they increase recovery complexity and costs, they increase the likelihood of damage to the rocket, they reduce predictability, and so on. Powered landings are the most dependable way of ensuring the stage can be returned and of doing so within an operational profile that can be streamlined and optimized until its very reliable and efficient, just like landing a plane. The fact that it comes at some cost of payload capacity is comparatively inconsequential, as it substantially increases the likelihood of recovering the tens of millions of dollars worth of launch vehicle hardware (which over its lifetime will service launches worth hundreds of millions of dollars).
http://www.space.com/32811-spacex-rocket-landing-jcsat-14-la...
Hopefully we won't have the typical hacker news discussion about why the employees chant USA.
There. See. No harm, no foul.
Anyways, as a non-American living in the US since 2001, I fail to see an issue with chanting USA, one way or another.
It is an American company, with majority US employees, running this project (mainly) for an American entity (NASA), on US sovereign territory (or ocean?), using a significant chunk of US resources. So, it is their company and their country. I say, let them do what they want with it. And if chanting USA is what they wish to do, I have no problem with that.
Whether the USA is worth praising for this particular success, I'm not as sure. But damn, congrats to everyone involved. You just landed a fucking space ship. Good job.
The company embodies everything that makes America great. Chant away.
I know, I know - Americans have a right to be proud, and they do. But expressing it with a cult-like mechanism that is, essentially "our group is great, nobody else can/has done this" is just .. revolting.
I say this, knowing full well I'm going to get down voted for it, but I really do wish you Americans would think about it from the other side of your dark mirror. Can't we come up with a chant that includes all of humanity? After all, America wouldn't be the nation it is today without all other nations on Earth, including the ones that America has invaded, and destroyed completely, wantonly, for decades.
EDIT: Feel how this post detracts from the main article, and is a distraction from the feel-goodness of SpaceX's accomplishments? For us non-Americans, thats how the USA-cult chant feels - a total distraction. I wish I could down vote the chanting when I see it on TV, too.
That would really do justice to this kind of historic event. A chant like this would celebrate progress and claim this for what it is, an accomplishment of/for humanity. After all, space travel does focus our attention on how we are all humans and on earth.
In that context, the below seems at least somewhat relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalism_(politics)#Mo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_citizenship#World_citiz...
NASA is the largest customer but so far they account only for about 50% of the launches. This one in particular was for JSAT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSAT_Corporation), a Japanese company.
I'm a little uneasy with the chant mostly because I (want to) perceive it to be largely a commercial enterprise and this win should belong firstly to the company and people working there. Too bad that "SpaceX" just doesn't sound that great as a chant.
It reminds, a little, of certain systems where the state is held above all else, where patriotism is a requirement and a virtue in itself, and where there's no division between government and economy.
WATTENBERG: I got to think a lot of illegals add a lot of value to the United States. You have been quoted as saying that you are nauseatingly pro American.
MUSK: Yes, that’s true.
WATTENBERG: What do you mean?
MUSK: Well, I mean, I think the United States is the greatest country that’s ever existed on earth. And I think that it will be difficult to argue on objective grounds that it is not. I think the facts really point in that direction. It’s the greatest force for good of any country that’s ever been. There would not be democracy in the world if not for the United States. We’re obviously falling in the recent few occasions -- maybe three separate occasions in the Twentieth Century -- democracy would have fallen with World War 1, World War 2 and the Cold War, but for the United States.
WATTENBERG: And perhaps the threat of terrorism would be much greater if it were not for the United States.
MUSK: Yeah, absolutely. I think it would be a mistake to say the United States is perfect, it certainly is not. There have been many foolish things the United States has done and bad things the United States has done. But when historians look at these things on balance and measure the good with the bad -- and I think if you do that and -- on a rational basis and make a fair assessment -- I think it’s hard to [unintelligible] that the United States -- is there anything better [speaking over each other]
WATTENBERG: I have a reputation of interrupting my guests. But when they say exactly what I believe, I just let them talk and talk. I think you’re 100 percent right.
MUSK: And -- you know I wasn’t born in America -- I got here as fast as I could.
By saying this, you have now guaranteed that there will be. Well done.
(And my own, being a third-order effect, is too weak to affect the outcome.)
Makes much more sense, should be good for years. You saw it here first. :D
It's the same reason why foreigners are baffled by, for example, the Pledge of Allegiance.
Maybe it's just a cultural difference but there is something unsettling and cringey about seeing those employees act so enthusiastic.
Is it genuine? Maybe for some employees. But the camera setup makes me think there is some expectation placed upon the employees that they will be there to cheer. It's not natural.
How many years out is that?
Unmanned failure doesn't bring much press.
Kill a few people and it will set back the whole program years.
Note that the manned Dragon has an abort capability. If the launcher blows up that doesn't necessarily spell doom for the astronauts.
Here, listen to Linus talk about him a bit:
https://youtu.be/o8NPllzkFhE?t=17m24s
Linus: "I'm more of an Edison..." (TED2016, Feb. 2016)
There are always people on HN who love being contrarian and trying to diminish amazing things. It's like they hate seeing people excited for something and want to point out that this isn't that big of a deal.
We're literally watching things happen for the first time ever, and this person's response is "what's so great about this?" while implying that people who are excited about this are fanboys. I can understand the downvotes honestly.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
Not that I agree with that at all.
Sorry. We are living in a period where mediocrity and even complete fraudulent stuff is hailed as profound and "amazing". People with differing opinions matter, and I would say they matter more than ever.
And I don't think people love being a contrarian". It is quite easy being a fanboy, but it is hard to go against popular opinion, and be a "contrarian". There is no love in being a contrarian, there is only hate and ridicule.
It's adolescent, not contrarian.
Easier? How? Because you said so?
>promote one's own superiority via dismissal
How come I haven't noticed that it isn't working, then?
>sneering at the efforts of others..
This is where you show your fanboy colors. The GP said something along the line "I don't think that is as amazing as you say", and you overreact, saying that they are, "sneering at others efforts". Another commenter said SpaceX is facing "incredible" criticism in HN. All signs of over reaction, typical of fanboys when their need and expectation of unquestioning acceptance and praise from everyone, for their object of worship, are not met..
>You probably see yourself as sophisticated, remarks are no different than a 7 year old putting down somebody for throwing like a girl, It's adolescent, not contrarian.
More typical, hurt fanboy reaction. Stop for a moment and and think about what exactly in my comment have provoked you to attack me in this fashion.
Like what? Even the transistor is pretty damn amazing.
It's fine to be critical, but let yourself get excited sometimes too.
Look around. If you don't see it already, I won't be able to make you see. And what does the transistor has to do with the period we live in? I mean, right now, not 50 years earlier.
>It's fine to be critical, but let yourself get excited sometimes too.
Do you know why landing a rocket in salt water is bad. I mean, do you really, really know?
From Spacex subreddit..
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/219sow/how_signific...
What is up with that?
Much the same as sports fans cheering for their teams or extreme nationalists at a political rally, chanting such as this is symtomatic of an "us versus them" and/or a "we are better than them" mentality.
I feel pride in SpaceX accomplishments even though I have in no way contributed to their success because I see them advancing the state of the art in spaceflight for humanity. And I am a human.
I hear Elon's stated goal of "making life multi-planetary", and perhaps it sounds idealistic or corny, but I genuinely belive in that goal; I think it is important and I am proud that there are other humans on this planet who are making a concerted effort to see it happen.
I do not object specifically to what they chant: chanting "SpaceX" would be very much just as bad. I follow SpaceX not for its own sake or because I think SpaceX is "good" and others are "bad", but because of what they do and what they plan to do. Chanting "SpaceX" would be showing support for the SpaceX-tribal-team as opposed to the ULA-tribal-team or NASA-tribal-team. It is not the team itself that is special, the team is not better than other teams due to intrinsic virtues, it is what the team has accomplished that is important. Let the accomplishments speak for themselves.
There is at least one chant I would have no problem with: "Humanity! Humanity! Humanity!". Perhaps it's not quite as catchy, but at least it would put things into the proper perspective.
I think it's quite catchy.
If they were doing it out of tribalism they'd probably be chanting 'homegrown', which is common after a big win over competitors who recruit mostly foreigners as a way of sticking it to them.
Instead my guess is that they're doing this out of acknowledgement of the infrastructure and regulation that makes this possible.
I've come across it in a few other contexts and I take it like a football chant.
We're so saturated with American culture that we do this naturally. We know all about the constitution. We care more about American politics than our own. We feel put out that we can't vote for Bernie.
Every so often I get reminded I'm not actually American, and it's a bit jarring.
That would be great fun.
Finally, someone who fucking gets it.
HN is such a Mecca of sperglords that the can't even understand a sports chant.
As an American (and specifically, a 16-year-old Software Engineer), growing up in the United States, this is normal, and is sometimes patriotic, sometimes an automatic response to excitement. I understand why some people might find it odd.
I don't really believe that the act of chanting "USA" is meant to alienate people. I guess you could equate it to the cultural oddities, sort of like when you travel to a different country. Some people bow, shake hands, etc for greetings, just the same way that Americans show excitement by chanting "USA", while other countries may not.
Space started out as a national effort. Most space travel is still a national effort, both here (NASA) and abroad (national space organizations). Even though it's a private company, and the stakes are well beyond a single country, I can imagine a sense of pride for representing your country well at such huge scale. For these engineers and other staff, this is the Olympics.
In short, people have all sorts of reasons for feeling prid. These folks certainly earned it. Watching others describe variations of hand wringing and alienation seems silly in comparison.
The chant may be a quirk of the US, the nationalism it represents is absolutely not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwHFm3pBA90 ("TAE HAN MIN GUK!" "Great Korean People's Country")
Here's a show giving fun lessons on how to properly do the chant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wli6OrUhNU
Here's the history of it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-S-A!
I've heard a bunch of Brits chant something similar "UK! UK! UK! UK!" before.
Here it is in Uraguay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nub526rufzk
In Canada https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiK3f-fEDdY
In Chile, I've heard the chant is something like "CHI CHI CHI! LE LE LE! EN EL MAPA NO SE VE!", here's a comedic routine around it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gigjq9GExuE
Here's the Mexican equivalent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1ips57oLX0
Here's Sweden after a sports win https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkfqHCwB4aY
If France had a SpaceX equivalent that did something as amazing as this, it would be completely appropriate for the French people who spent years of their lives achieving something thought impossible to suddenly break out and start singing La Marseillaise or chanting.
If it happens for something as unimportant as a sporting goal, it's probably okay for it to happen for something that advances the entire species.
I'm kind of surprised by all the people from different countries that aren't even aware it happens in their own country or that they might have a similar national chant.
Are you sure they weren't just mocking Americans? :) c.f. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyHSjv9gxlE
Obviously the SpaceX staff can do whatever they want when they're celebrating a successful launch and landing. But all non-Americans who are watching and also feeling a lot of pride in what the company has achieved instantly feel alienated when the chant gets going because it's exclusionary. Whether the staff care about this alienation is another matter, but it's real. If you browse the /r/spacex subreddit you constantly see comments about the chant whenever it happens. And that is a community made up of almost total SpaceX supporters.
To give maybe a shallow analogy, it's like a group of men achieved something and then celebrated by chanting “Men, Men, Men!”.
Yes, it is, and yes, as an non-American I feel alienated. But I suck it up. Because I'm just a supporter. A fanboy, for a lack of better world. In reality, this is not my success, but the success of men and women working there, almost exclusively American. They have the right to chant however they like and I don't see the reason to make a big deal out of a bit of national pride. Not compared to what they're doing.
Also Musk, who's the driver of the culture there, doesn't seem very nationalistic, so I'm not worried they'll try to turn this into USA space hegemony.
The more space launch companies there are in competition, the better we are as a species. The chant is a call to you to get to work.
For us, and possibly other European countries, that kind of patriotic expression is taboo because it's associated with football hooliganism and extreme right wing politics. I suppose there are certain circumstances where you might sing 'God save the queen' in some kind of particularly old fashioned formal ceremony but it would never happen spontaneously and makes plenty of people feel a bit awkward. Out of all my friends and family I can think of perhaps one or two people that would even know the words.
I would never identify my own or my company's achievements as evidence that the UK was great as a nation. I'd be doing the same in whatever country I lived in. In some ways, we achieve things despite being in the UK rather than because of it. Crushing inequality, expensive education, corrupt politics, lack of housing. These are not very business or tech friendly and are less of a problem elsewhere.
Aside from that, feeling proud because of other people's achievements just because you were born in the same country as they were is not really very common in Europe as far as I can tell.
The UK is still working out empire guilt, in the same way the Germans tend to tamp down nationalism because of WW II. I don't find it surprising, but I don't think it's healthy either. A little bit of nationalism is good for a country.
I work at SpaceX. I was not born in the US and although I now hold US citizenship and consider myself thoroughly American, I usually refrain from taking part in these chants. I do this not as a kind of silent protest against them, but because I simply don't like showing such outward exuberance as I have an extremely reserved personality. I’m the kind of person that would prefer to sit quietly during a sporting event rather than shout or clap. With that being said, the U-S-A chants don’t bother me and it's somewhat disheartening to see them consistently brought up as reflecting poorly on the employees at SpaceX.
I will also add that as an American even I have sometimes, particularly during my childhood living in Texas, felt uncomfortable with some of the more boisterous ways Americans tend to express feelings of national pride, so I can understand why others may find this troubling. It took me some time to realize that in the overwhelming majority of cases, there is no malice or jingoistic sentiment behind these expressions, and in fact I don’t even view them as exclusionary. It may be difficult for someone who hasn’t spent a lot of time living in the US to understand just how innocuous and widespread things like the USA chants are. Its simply something that is easy to say and catchy, while declaring pride in your country.
There are many employees here who aren’t natural born US citizens whom I see join in the chants. In fact, I’ve seen non US citizens working here join in as well.
I understand that I say this having adapted to American cultural norms, and I’m trying my best to be understanding of the opposing views. I personally don’t find it difficult to feel a sense of wonderment, respect and admiration towards the accomplishments of other countries, even when those countries view said accomplishments as matters of national pride and I am finding it hard to understand why so many others seem to be bothered by this.
It’s also important to note that the space program is, in my opinion, one of the few things that still elicit a strong sense of national pride and achievement across political lines here in the US. The American public still today seems to be aware of the broad national policies that have led and continue to lead to the achievements of our space program and rightfully feel a sense of pride in their successes. The accomplishments of SpaceX don’t exist in a vacuum and many of us working here realize a shared sense of gratitude that we owe the American taxpayer.
I also find it a bit strange that in my experience other nationalities, in particular those from Europe, tend to view Americans as rather close minded and without much understanding of foreign cultures. While I agree that in general this is definitely something that Americans need to work on, in this case I’m struck by the irony of the commenters here singling out a cultural “quirk” as has been described by others, and subsequently drawing negative conclusions about it despite the fact that I can see no way in which the U-S-A chants can possibly be misconstrued as denigrating of any other countries.
I'll gladly take a big paycut and live in bumfuck nowhere, California to do it (my wife is another story but that's a different discussion).
But every time this USA chant comes up I just imagine what it would be like to be in that crowd and be absolutely exhilarated at each success - not just for the company but for HUMANITY (which I already do through the webcast), and feel nothing but cringe and exclusion when the USA chant started.
They really gotta reign that in because you just KNOW it's a couple of aggro-patriotic douchebags that start it and everyone else joins in out of excitement and tribal cohesion not because it's the thing that everyone feels in that moment.
You are certainly free to disagree with the chants or the overall tone that celebrations like this set within the company, but I don't think that resorting to personal insults is the best approach to having a nuanced discussion on the topic.
What a complete load of utter tripe. Its a bunch of people getting excited and happy and celebrating success. That's it. Are England supporters chanting after a soccer match aggro-patriotic douchebags? The SpaceX crowd aren't even celebrating a victory over anybody, it's purely about achievement. Good for them.
Yes
Aggro-patriotic douchebaggery isn't exactly unheard of when it comes to football stadiums. For some it's a feature, for most others it's a very well known bug.
Also, you seem to have completely missed his finer point: a nuanced distinction between those who start and those who just sing along because they are in the mood for making noise, any noise.
PS: of all the stadium noises, the "god save the queen" of England supporters is by far the most enjoyable (and I say that as a german)
There are ways to obtain ITAR exceptions for non US Persons but the process is long and very expensive so it is only utilized rarely. I will say that SpaceX does employ a fair amount of Permanent Residents as well as a few non US Persons.
(Warning: contains strong language. Hilarious strong language, from The Onion)
You may find this surprising but there are in fact many foreign born employees working at SpaceX. Some of us even have accents and unusual names to go along with certain cultural quirks.
I don't consider them, or myself, any less American.
He wouldn't pay you any mind.
I'm a other-than-singular national as well and I certainly don't care to hear I'm not American.
I understand this is a place for intelligent discussion, but sometimes I feel like I can't find a single thread on this site without someone in the comments presuming they are smarter than someone else.
There are a lot of commenters here, so there will a bell curve (or some distribution) on any topic at all. Picking negative comments from a tail is always possible, but it misrepresents the community, in this case completely. Posting indignant comments about it just adds to the problem and takes the thread off topic.
This has to be the funniest comment I have seen today. There are more than one post regarding this event with 300+ votes. Still the level of criticism for Spacex on this site is "incredible", Really?
They can't hover at all, since the throttle doesn't go low enough. They need to do the landing perfectly, on a single try.
I'm thinking a system with a pillar at each corner of the barge, pairs of cables between opposite pillars, and puller cables to open out the main cables into an iris-type aperture which can be rapidly closed on the rocket after it lands to keep it upright. Do that at 2-3 heights above the barge and it'll cradle the rocket even in heavy seas.
All that to solve a problem that doesn't seem to actually exist. A scheme like this might have saved the Jason-3 landing, where the rocket fell over due to a leg that didn't lock, but none of the other barge landing failures would have been helped by this.
I think there's a fundamental failure to understand the scale of this hardware, too. This is a massive machine (50 meters tall or so) built to weigh as little as possible, and therefore to only be strong where it's needed. It has approximately zero ability to withstand lateral forces from things like cables pulling it upright.
They may add some means to secure it if it needs to travel through rough seas on the way home, but if the conditions are calm enough to land, they're calm enough for the stage to be stable. Watch the CRS-8 landing and look at how much the barge is rolling while the stage is parked on it...
Think of it like a very long can of soda with a ton of lead at the bottom. Any kind of attempt to keep it upright only at the top will most likely end up damaging the shell.
That's why their method of securing it after it lands is to weld the feet, the bottom of this thing is pretty much the only part that's solid, the rest is flimsy as hell in every direction but one.
However, I accept the comment that perhaps they are really practising for landings on Mars, where fair number of probes have overturned on landing.
I'm not sure you realize just how fragile the stage is. The side walls are made of _very_ thin aluminum. Any landing support mechanism must put the impact force on the 'octaweb' structure that supports the engines. That's the advantage of the legs. They can be engineered to distribute the force exactly where they want it.
A significant problem with any sort of "catching" mechanism is that the load on the stage is far less predictable.
While I agree with your overall sentiment, I imagine that people building rockets make complexity tradeoffs to save tiny amounts of weight all the time.
The landing legs aren't all that heavy, are on the first stage (where the mass penalty isn't as bad), and can be engineered to distribute the force through the structure of the stage that can handle it.
The question to ask is, why are they bothering to land at sea?
And, if you had done any cursory research instead of just announcing that SpaceX is making a PR grab because it sounded good to you, you would have read in the abundantly available explanations that this launch was to geostationary transfer orbit, rather than low earth orbit. GEO is a lot, lot higher than LEO, which means the rocket has to be going a LOT faster to get there. This uses up a lot of fuel, leaving them very little to slow down from an even higher speed than the normal mission. Decelerating from a much higher speed takes MORE fuel than decelerating from a low speed, and they have less fuel available because so much got used up in getting to that speed.
So it's not plausible to get all the way back to the launch site. Instead they position a droneship way downrange so the rocket doesn't have to go as far back to land. But it's still going EXTREMELY fast, and managing to slow down all the way and land is an incredible accomplishment.
I never said return to the launch site. I said return to land.
> if you had done any cursory research instead of just announcing that
Unnecessary to speak that way in order to make your point unless you are trying to specifically make someone feel bad for voicing their thoughts.