SpaceX Falcon 9 historic landing thread (1st landing attempt & most recent missions)

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Anyone else notice the burning deck. I have not seen the deck material burn like that before, I wonder if they had a fluid leak and there is another fuel source for the fire. Also after the reentry burn it appeared to me that the booster pitched up a bit, I am not sure if this is normal but it seemed a bit off to me.

George any thoughts?
 
Anyone else notice the burning deck. I have not seen the deck material burn like that before, I wonder if they had a fluid leak and there is another fuel source for the fire. Also after the reentry burn it appeared to me that the booster pitched up a bit, I am not sure if this is normal but it seemed a bit off to me.

George any thoughts?
My name isn't George but I saw the deck fire as well. My guess would be excess kerosene from the F9, maybe what was in the fuel lines when the engines cut out.

Luckily the "modular construction" that everyone was complaining about means it won't be expensive to fix.

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Link to the video, for those who missed it:

[video=youtube;RUjH14vhLxA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1725&v=RUjH14vhLxA[/video]

I didn't see it till over an hour after the flight.

After the landng b, it did seem to "up" a bit, in a relative sense. Alhough for an ASDS landing, they don't really need to do that AFAIK. For an RTLS landin,g they absoultely have to do that, the landing burn leaves the booster in a ballistic path that would impact miles out at sea, the grid fins have to crudely "glide" it (in relative terms) to extend the path to cross the coast and align with the landing pad. So, they may be doing the same thing for ASDS landings.

After landing, what little live video there was, it looks like RP-1 from the Falcon booster spilled onto the deck, during shutdown. I will say as I think about it, they do not want the engine to shut down oxygen-rich, they'd want it to shut down oxygen lean. So the flow of liquid oxygen is proablt stopped a tiny bit before the RP-1 flow is stopped. But the previous landing, apparently a lot of RP-1 came from the Falcon booster after shutdown.... somehow, allowing that fire to flow across the deck to the "Roomba" corner. Today, seems a bit of a fire but hopefully it ends soon after the video went away. IIRC there are water cannons pre-aimed to spray water to combat fires.... which now brings to mind what happened last time, or if they have not been using them for some reason (BTW - the water would be fresh water from the ballast tanks, not seawater).

So, Koreasat 5A was launched successfully, on its way to an eventual geostationary orbit. SpaceX's 16th flight of the year.
 
Thanks everyone for posting video! Can anyone point to where they saw the fire on the deck? The link George sent cuts out during the landing, like a lot of the barge video has.
 
Also, I ran numbers on how much Roomba would make the barge heel or trim, and the answer is not much. If it weighed 10 tons, it would make the barge heel a couple of hundredths of a degree and trim an hundredth of a degree or so and it moved from the center of the pad to its garage. For scale, that's about an inch of trim over the length of the barge and an inch and a half of heel over the width. Since Roomba probably weighs less than 10 tons, reality would be less.

Either way, it doesn't have much impact. It's hard to make a barge roll.
 

This article explains a significant point in George's timeline skepticism, which has again proved right that November was a pipe dream, however George has regularly maintained that they need 60 days between the last launch from 39A and the FH launch. This article clearly states much of this work is already complete and only a week and a half is likely to remain after the Zuma launch. This seems to make the most recent estimate much more plausible that previous ones.
 
Falcon Heavy hold downs in place?

HSBPTw+


fhholddown.png
 

From the article:
The Falcon 9 east/west hold down clamps have to be removed as their presence overlaps with the positioning of the Falcon Heavy side-mounted cores’ engines.

Those east/west hold down clamps are currently installed on inserts to the TEL reaction frame, and once removed will create the needed exhaust holes for the side-mounted FH cores.

This is a really nice piece of engineering to reduce timeframe to convert the pad. I'f I'm understanding the article right, some time ago, they cut out the east/west hold down clamps for F9 to make holes for the outer FH engines. They then bolted/welded the clamps back into the holes for the last F9 flights. When it comes time to convert to FH, they just have to unbolt/cut free the insert foundation and the holes are already there.
 
OCISLY and Falcon made it back to Port Canaveral Thursday.

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Really nice close-up showing the "garage door" that Roomba stays behind for storage (no info on Roomba fire damage repair status). Remember it pivots horizontally, hingeline at about the middle so it is apparently somewhat counterbalanced.

At the top, above the two men, is a red water cannon which has what may (?) be a video camera attached to it to show where it is pointing. No idea if it is remotely steerable, figure by default they'd be aimed at the "X". Also along the top, to the right of the Shamroc, is a video camera on tripod. That's probably the main camera used for the "live view" of the landings (or, the live approach, the exhaust vibration induced loss of uplink signal, and the live view after the landing.....)

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Next launch NET Nov 15th, the "Zuma" flight from 39A at the Cape. Planned to be an RTLS landing
 
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The small black thing on top of the fire monitor/water cannon is a control. When it's retracted (as it is in the pic), the monitor shoots a solid stream. When it's hinged into the flow of water, the monitor shoots a spray or fog. A solid stream can take out wood pilings, so they'd probably have it on the fog setting for firefighting near the booster. The monitor is steerable--you can see two red cylinders on the vertical pipe up to the monitor. The top one changes elevation, and the bottom one changes direction.
 
The small black thing on top of the fire monitor/water cannon is a control. When it's retracted (as it is in the pic), the monitor shoots a solid stream. When it's hinged into the flow of water, the monitor shoots a spray or fog. A solid stream can take out wood pilings, so they'd probably have it on the fog setting for firefighting near the booster. The monitor is steerable--you can see two red cylinders on the vertical pipe up to the monitor. The top one changes elevation, and the bottom one changes direction.

"Well, the rocket landed safely, but it was on fire and the water cannon punched a hole in the Octaweb,,,,,,,,"
 
A couple of recent images of OCISLY, after returning to Port Canaveral and offloading the booster that launched Koreasat 5A.

First one, from Twitter user @NASANate. At the right, there is the burn-damaged Roomba/Octagrabber, and a curious object being assembled next to it, with the same shape but a bit taller. It's been suggested it may be a replacement (If so, due to the visible design changes, this was probably planned long before the original was damaged).

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And this panorama by NSF user MarekCyzio, originally was HUGE. Nearly 30,000 pixels wide. Here, it is shrunk to "only" about 7,500 pixels wide. Open the image in a new window or new tab to enable seeing it much larger than visible in this message.

SlnS5XI.jpg


Here is the link to the original image which is 4 times larger, INCREDIBLE detail:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=39766.0;attach=1458084;image


The next planned use of OCISLY is for Falcon Heavy, late December or early 2018, for the center core to land on. The "Zuma" mission (still set for Nov 15), and CRS-13 (set for Dec 4th) will be RTLS landings.
 
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It looks to me the second roomba is up on stands, so it may not be taller. It's robably for access to the underside for assembly.

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It looks to me the second roomba is up on stands, so it may not be taller. It's robably for access to the underside for assembly.

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My first thought was that it was a rotating upper portion, similar to a tank turret or track hoe, that had been lifted off the lower part (tracks) for maintenance.
 
My first thought was that it was a rotating upper portion, similar to a tank turret or track hoe, that had been lifted off the lower part (tracks) for maintenance.
Could also possibly be a lifting jig I suppose, but definitely not a real "Roomba". They are hardly going to construct a new one at the port are they.

edit - take a look a to the original Roomba picture there's nothing like a rotating upper section on it https://www.rocketryforum.com/showt...p-most-recent-missions)&p=1679254#post1679254
 
There is no need for a rotating upper section. Due to the existing rubber tank-like treads, the whole thing can rotate itself.

Nobody publicly knows how it is navigated. Possibilities such as remote human operation with sensor assist, semi-automated with remote human in the loop, or fully automated.

A possible set of maneuvers to final-adjust its positioning - Once it gets under the booster and stops, if it is off by a distance of say 2.38 inches from dead center of the booster, at a bearing of +36.8 degrees from whatever zero azimuth reference to the booster (Not ASDS, the booster), that it would be rotated +36.8 degrees, stop, then move 2.38 inches, stop, and then re-assess its position, and make more tiny adjustments if needed until within an acceptable margin of error. There probably is a bit of tolerance for physical self-alignment once the "grabber" arms are raised up, and the "claws" are moved inwards (sideways) to grab onto the pad attachment hardpoints. So it would not have to be dead-perfect in alignment but close enough to the ballpark.
 
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Launch set for tomorrow, Wednesday Nov 15th, for the Falcon-9 launch of the "Zuma" satellite.

Window opens at 8 PM, EST. Weather forecast is 70% "GO".

No link for webcast yet. I won't be online again till late Wednesday afternoon.

The default SpaceX Webcast page is at: https://www.spacex.com/webcast

But it has not been updated from the Koreasat launch yet.

Booster will do an RTLS landing at Landing Zone -1, at the Cape.

Below - official photo of the secretive Zuma Satellite:
Nothing-to-Display.png

(yeah, don't expect to even see second stage onboard video, as per previous secretive satellite launches)
 
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Yep, 24hour delay to 8 PM EST Thursday the 16th.

Weather 90% favorable for launch

From NSF , by jacqmans:

SpaceX is now targeting Thursday, Nov. 16 for launch of the Zuma mission. Both Falcon 9 and the payload remain healthy; teams will use the extra day to conduct some additional mission assurance work in advance of launch. The launch time and window remain the same for Thursday, opening at 8:00 p.m. EST and remaining open until 10:00 p.m. EST.
 
No launch today.
Here is what SpaceX posted on Thursday, which addressed why the launch had been delayed and indicating not to count on "tomorrow" (Friday):

SpaceX Statement:

“We have decided to stand down and take a closer look at data from recent fairing testing for another customer. Though we have preserved the range opportunity for tomorrow, we will take the time we need to complete the data review and will then confirm a new launch date.”

Now the launch is off for today (Friday), and no new date set yet.

The recent fairing testing indicates some issue that might also exist with the fairing for the Zuma mission. That's the sort of thing where a failure of the fairing could ruin the whole mission.

As for the launch date for FH, the Dec 29th date seemed pretty tight all things considered, and over 2 months out when they announced it. And Dec 29th was based on Zuma launching Nov 15th, so FH would in theory launch 44 days after the Zuma launch. It's not launching today, so that means that even if it launched tomorrow, 44 days later would be January 1st, 2018.

Of course there are a lot of things about how long it might really take to launch FH once Zuma launches. Some speculated they could launch earlier (not needing 44 days). I didn't have a feel for how much of that was pure aerospace expert opinion, vs SpaceX Fanboi-ism (somewhere there's still some probably expecting FH to launch this month, "because Elon said so....").

Whatever this fairing issue is, the more days the launch is delayed, the less likely that FH flying in 2017 is, for those who didn't already expect it to slip to early 2018 even if Zuma had launched on the 15th.
 
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