Watch the SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket Launch Today
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I remember back in 2012 where spacex was still a laughingstock. The idea of landing a rocket from a private company was a joke.
But SpaceX always did one thing right, they made many care about space again. They broadcast their launches, made a bit of a show of it, and they weren't ashamed of their failures.
Then they started breaking milestones. They increased their launch cadence in what felt like overnight. They were actually trying (and failing) to land rockets, but they were still broadcasting them! Then they landed the first one on land, then the first one on a barge, then they re-launched rockets (and re-landed them!). Now it's weird when a rocket is launched in "expendable mode"!
I wanted to start this comment saying this is the most excited I've been of any launch in a long time, but when I really thought about it, it's not. There have been half a dozen launches in the past few years from SpaceX that were just as exciting, and that's amazing.
I hope today's launch goes well, and I hope this is the start of the "new normal"!
I can't help but draw a parallel to how Tesla is considered by the old guard to be a laughingstock today. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16305520
Then there is the promise of taking humanity to "mars", which quite honestly, sounds a bullshit claim at this point. It wold have held more water, if they said it after making real tech breakthroughs (Ie not stunts like landing a rockets, which only guillable people finds magical because they were not tech savvy to know that it was possible with tech that is half a century old).
> It wold have held more water, if they said it after making real tech breakthroughs
Going to Mars is literally the only reason they're in the rocket business. Like everything behind their breakthroughs, which they had a few - including landing and turnaround times - is meant to enable the Mars mission. They've been explicit about this since day one.
> stunts like landing a rockets
This is not a stunt. It's the real, practical, working, cost-effective rocket reusability. For the first time ever. Not sure what do you expect; em-drive? Because SpaceX booster landing is exactly how a technological breakthrough looks like (as opposed to fundamental science breakthrough).
It's not so much a rocket company with a Mars objective, it's a Mars cult with a rocketry front operation.
Somehow, people get the idea that they're "not really serious" about the one driving goal that they've never deviated from.
The force of the idea of Mars keeps people focused on what really matters.
It's getting tiring, really - people seem to still believe they're bullshitting with Mars, even though it was the single constant thing about SpaceX since the very inception of the company.
Whether Musk gets to take humans to Mars or not remains to be seen, but in the meantime he's making a lot of progress that is going to be super useful to humanity.
Whether it was possible or not is irrelevant, what matters is that someone actually went and did it.
After all, the internal combustion engine could have probably been built in 1750 or so, but nobody did...
AFAIR the paper was technologically sound to the first approximation; the objections were mostly economical (I'm ignoring people who missed that Hyperloop was not a vacuum tube design and went on ranting how infeasible it is).
Also, for a paper-only design, there seem to be plenty of activity involving people building actual hardware to test components.
Also2, from the first day it was known that Elon is not going to pursue Hyperloop himself any time soon; he threw an idea for others to pick up, and didn't promise anything. Judging him by not having built the Hyperloop by now is... insane.
So much this. You just made me realize I don't know when this flipped for me. I remember having fingers crossed for successful landings. But few months back I was checking the launch schedule and found myself completely surprised by no landing plans. Like, "what do you mean you're not landing, because you need to get rid of obsolete reflown boosters?!".
The pace of progress they're making is incredible. It feels just like the early days of space race that I only read about.
I see the little blue lines, a few per year, then all of a sudden there are more than you can easily count!
On the other hand, a good demonstration of composites - and yes, electropumps are a good opportunity which now is on the list of "already done".
But it's their first launch from a new company. It's expected to cost some more to start with. I presume the price is going to come down quite significantly over the next few years.
RocketLab will never be as cheap, but the business plan isn't to compete on price. The business model is that with smaller rockets you can have much higher launch cadence, much higher throughput (i.e. you can book a launch and have it launched a week later), and more customisable orbits (since it's cheaper to book out an entire launch).
On a lighter note there's a Simpons line when Homer has to land a plane and is talking to someone on the ground
Colby: Okay Homer, I don't know anything about planes, but I know about you. You have what made America great: no understanding of the limits of your power and a complete lack of concern for what anyone thinks of you. So you'll land that plane. And do you know why? Because I heard some guy say you couldn't.
Homer: What! I'll show him. I'll show that guy!
The best way to get something great done is to tell someone it's impossible for them to achieve.
Before the sky crane we had the bouncy ball, and both had supersonic parachutes which is also a mind bender.
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, they are almost certainly right. When they state that something is impossible, they are very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Please share why you thought it was not possible. Just curious.
Since realizing that I became more wary of unconscious biases picked up from environment, and how they affect what I think is technologically possible.
The ascent into space looks like a massive show of raw power, and in contrast these vertical landings look so graceful and controlled.
Personally, I think both are a "massive show of raw power" - both literally and figuratively.
Literally goes without explanation. But what I mean of the word "figuratively" is that it shows our capability as a species to fully harness our intellect, knowledge, and emotions to do this kind of engineering, despite knowing it can all go horribly wrong (especially in the case of manned space flight).
Certainly there are many other drivers to why we do this (profit in the case of SpaceX certainly is a great one), but part of it is also to show ourselves we can push beyond what seemed or seems impossible at times, and make it routine, and eventually both practical and relatively "safe" (always knowing it might never be perfect).
If you think about it that's not really the case. Post launch the boosters are empty and must sustain their own weight and that of the payload sitting upright on the launch pad prior to fueling.
During the launch the full force of the engine is exerted on everything and it must withstand that force even as the tanks empty. If the boosters were not able to withstand these forces then as the rocket climbed into the sky you'd see it start to compress like a tin can the higher into the atmosphere it climbed.
- The wafer thin margin of actual payload that the booster put up now being shared with landing fuel
- Engine restart after launch
- Re-entry forces on the engines
- The fact (perhaps since addressed) that a single Merlin puts out more thrust at near minimum throttle than the dry mass of the booster itself.
Think about that last one. If you start the burn too early you'll miss the ground .. for a while. The lesson here is trust calculus!
It's addressed in the sense that they live with it. The rocket still does a suicide burn.
I mean, take a yardstick or short rod or something, and try to balance it upright on the tip of your finger. That's basically what they're doing, but with a -rocket-. It's amazing.
The magic is in a) ensuring the whole construct survives reentry, and b) timing the landing burn - even a single Merlin engine is too powerful for the almost empty rocket to hover, so they need to zero out their velocity at precisely the moment they're hitting the ground. There's no second attempt.
While you drop your hand toward the ground at mach 5.
Indeed. For their last launch, they decided to try landing the booster with three engines rather than one, which brings the whole 'hoverslam' concept to the next level.
This was considered so risky that they didn't try landing it on the barge, for fear of damaging it. Instead, they soft landed on the ocean.
But much to everyone's surprise, it actually worked! There's a picture of the Falcon 9 booster floating awkwardly. Musk said they'll try to tow it to shore.
And all that is really the core of why I love SpaceX: continuous improvement. It's a grand thing!
SpaceX also had that same opinion originally. I believe their first concept was to use parachutes for the first stage (and maybe splash down in the ocean for recovery).
They interviewed an engineer from Masten Space Systems (who have really cool test platforms). He was talking to them about VTVL (vertical takeoff, vertical landing) systems, and SpaceX basically just laughed at him.
Engineers are builders at heart. They want to put their effort to good use.
Alrighty, feel free to argue!
1: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/22652180#...
McDonnell Douglas was a private company when they demonstrated the VTOL DC-X launcher in the 1990s. They just had DoD money to help.
DC-X didn't make it to orbit before the money ran out, sadly. The DC-Y was planned for that.
SpaceX is increasingly serious about BFR, their next-gen rocket which is like an enormous, fully reusable hybrid of Shuttle and Falcon 9 using soot-free and higher performing methane (which can also be made on Mars in a fairly straightforward process) instead of kerosene.
Musk mentioned BFR multiple times in the pre-launch press conference yesterday: https://soundcloud.com/geekwire/elon-musk-discusses-the-laun...
They're cancelling lunar Dragon+FH to focus on BFR which is making more progress than they expected. They plan to start flight testing the upper stage/spaceship portion of it by next year according to Elon in the prelaunch press conference.
Falcon Heavy was originally supposed to fly about as often as Falcon 9, but they upgraded Falcon 9 so much that now they barely need Falcon Heavy, as amazing as Falcon Heavy is.
Super excited about all this.
The stresses involved are truly enormous, and the whole thing must be very well balanced to avoid putting even more stresses on the frame.
Something as stupid as fueling the rocket needs to be done with care, as they're dealing with super-chilled liquid oxygen: The cold temperatures make the rocket contract a little bit, you have to make sure all three boosters contract exactly the same otherwise you can break the attachment points.
With the Block 3/4/5 series of the Falcon 9 (5 is the final design and mostly focused on reusability upgrades, 4 is interim) they have a relatively stable base rocket to develop the Heavy variant against.
And of course, you can put more than one payload on a booster.
After all, we don't have a single 747 for each passenger, or for each package we fly.
Musk has said BFR is very much about Mars colonisation.
I'm stressed out because I need to get my thesis done soon, but he's worried because he needs to perfectly launch a Tesla Roadster into Solar orbit, and vertically land three first-stages so he can do it again.
Weather looks good so here's hoping for no delays!
I only wished it showed successful landings as well.
Best of luck to the spacex team -- we'll be watching!
There's also an artists rendition of the launch and payload on spacex's YouTube channel (titled: Falcon Heavy Animation)
I already missed the Saturn V going to the moon (wasn't born), there aren't that many positive, predictable historical moments like that in a life time
I was 4 years old when that happened and it is as far as I can tell my earliest memory. We had this incredibly small black-and-white TV and watching that really impressed me, the moon never looked the same afterwards.
Incidentally, that live broadcast was quite a thing to pull off:
https://www.popsci.com/how-nasa-broadcast-neil-armstrong-liv...
They were all once the kind of things that only nation-states could accomplish... Putting up massive payloads into space, building huge monuments, and killing thousands of people.
We've made all kinds of things easier to do - some good, some bad.
I hope we continue to grow into our capabilities a bit more smoothly than we seem to be, right now...
It was 19 people who led a coordinated attack that took hundreds of people, millions of dollars, and years to plan and execute. In the process, they brought down 4 airplanes, damaged the pentagon, and toppled TWO skyscrapers, killing thousands of people in the process.
Looking back at the 17 years since, they indirectly started multiple wars, toppled governments, inspired a generation of terrorists, and changed the geopolitical situation in the Middle East for decades, at least.
Again, it was horrible and we should condemn it, but it was also a lot more strategically impressive and impactful than you’re making it out to be.
Edit: Looks like delayed due to upper level winds.
Or, just wait until you get home tonight. I don't know if you've watched the webcasts in the past but the video footage frequently cuts out during the most exciting times(probably due to the fact that a big rocket is blasting them around). So, frequently, the replay footage is much better than the live event.
If this launch of Falcon Heavy becomes its last one then it would be so similar to the Buran shuttle.
BFR might be more like Buran/Energia.