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

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Was I watching the wrong feed? Looked like a hose was leaking on the 2nd stage burn and then let loose. The engine immediately stopped glowing and the feed stopped very shortly thereafter.

I guess the 2nd stage was already done since SpaceX says the Dragon made orbit.

David


Sent from my iPhone using Rocketry Forum
 
Was I watching the wrong feed? Looked like a hose was leaking on the 2nd stage burn and then let loose. The engine immediately stopped glowing and the feed stopped very shortly thereafter.

I guess the 2nd stage was already done since SpaceX says the Dragon made orbit.

David


Sent from my iPhone using Rocketry Forum

The second stage does vent some gas, nothing I saw seamed different. I wounder if the NASA feed stops at seco? Anyway there’s not much more after that. Dragon seperation and array deploy, takes a few days to actually get to ISS so they don’t show that.
 
The second stage does vent some gas, nothing I saw seamed different. I wounder if the NASA feed stops at seco? Anyway there’s not much more after that. Dragon seperation and array deploy, takes a few days to actually get to ISS so they don’t show that.

Hmmm, I never noticed the venting before, but maybe I just didn't pay enough attention. It did look to me like some hose blew off right at the last second and that hose was venting something. My thought was it was one of those flame tubes that makes sure the engine stays lit.

Anyway, fun and successful launch

David
 
Some photos by Brady Kenneston, posted on NSF:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=44452.0

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Cropped and rotated to more clearly show the aerodynamic angle of attack that the grid fins were doing to steer the booster from a ballistic impact in the Atlantic to stretch the path across the coast and to the center of the landing pad.(trail is from re-entry heating effects and probably also some moisture condensation like a jet contrail).

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And just before touching down.

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For those who missed it, the SpaceX webcast of the launch.

[video=youtube;OPHbqY9LHCs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPHbqY9LHCs[/video]
 
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I forgot to set my DVR to record NASA's feed of the CRS launch. i highly suspect the great downrange launch views we saw on the SpaceX webcast were NASA cameras. IIRC, years ago for Shuttle flights, NASA set one of their long range cameras to be tilted on its side to get a better "widescreen" view of launches. So that's why the orientation looked sort of odd going up, compared to most Falcon launches you've seen.

Anyway, I wanted to point that out, same camera angle thing coming back. Because on Youtube I found NASA's feed of the landing and holy (bleep) did SpaceX BLOW it by using the onboard camera and NOT NASA's! Indeed I'd been waiting for them to have a CLEAR SKY (in daytime) to get a landing view like this, all the others were at least partly obscured by clouds, or night. And when the sky was nearly perfect.... SpaceX treated this like an ASDS or cloudy landing.

I do wish this video clip started earlier, at least before the Re-entry burn. It starts just at the end of the re-entry burn. This is probably the same camera that showed that fantastic staging view of the booster turning around and thrusting away from the 2nd stage.

BTW - during that staging turn-around in the launch video, you can see the center engine ignite, it starts to move away, then some "smoke/vapor" near the tail which was two more engines starting up (3-engine burn). At which point it REALLY started accelerating a lot more from the 2nd stage (technically, slowing itself down a lot more from its downrange velocity, and eventually to push back the other way with enough velocity and upward "lob" to ballistically almost make it back to shore (always want it to fall short of land and impact in the ocean in case something went wrong with the guidance later. It's the grid fins that do most of the work to steer it across the shoreline towards the landing zone).

[video=youtube;SI191lMGmMk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI191lMGmMk[/video]
 
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That was a great video! And I agree, the video of the staging at ~75 km was one of the coolest rocket-related things I've ever seen. Thanks for posting.
 
So, what's NEXT for SpaceX?

Yes.

Indeed.

That's what's NEXT.

ru16HrB.jpg


OK, so what's next, is NEXT.

Iridium-NEXT 4.

Launch planned for Friday the 22nd, at 5:27PM PST (Pacific), from Vandenberg. Being so late in the day, the sun will have set, then the Falcon will fly into the sunlight when it gets high enough.

Here's a link to an article about the mission, written Nov 28th.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2017/11/iridium-next-4-december-launch-vandenberg/

The booster is the same one that launched the Iridium-NEXT 2 mission.

News came out just today (Tuesday) that this booster will NOT attempt a landing. It will be an expendable launch, no legs, no grid fins. It seems that it could have done so, but that it is a Block 3 booster, SpaceX is now flying Block-4, soon to be Block-5, so there are compatibility issues. Also the fact they've not planned to make a 3rd flight on any block 3 booster (probably no 3rd flights until Block 5, which are supposed to be good for 10 flights before major refurbishment).

It is a bit odd though that they would not even recover it for the engines for re-use. But Block 5's engines are upgrades, so again compatibility issues. With this being such a late bit of news, it may also involve other non-rocket issues. As it is, SpaceX has more than one recovered booster just sitting out in the open, they don't have enough storage space (yet). I do not know if all of the ones left outdoors are 2-flight boosters that would not be flown a 3rd time anyway, or if any are single flight boosters that may never be planned to fly again (You'd expect any 1-flight booster they wanted an option to fly a second time, would not be left outdoors for an extended period of time).

There is some speculation on Fairing Recovery possibly trying something new.

Here's a patch by Iridium, for the mission:

index.php


Back to CRS-13, someone posted the NASA video of the launch. over an hour long. Launch is at about 36:30 in. I was surprised to see that the staging video where the booster turned around, was a different camera than the SpaceX video used, and not as good. BUT, the NASA video follows the booster, (after cutting back over to the 2nd stage for awhile). From 40:52 onwards, they follow the booster ALL THE WAY DOWN. you can see a lot of RCS thruster firings as it points itself the correct way for re-entry and the re-entry burn. At about 42:37, the re-entry burn beings . First the center engine, then the outer two ignite and the round flame pattern becomes oblong.

[video=youtube;xt95QweMo0s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt95QweMo0s[/video]
 
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I just read online that the two outboard boosters on the Falcon 9 Heavy configuration are used boosters but I'm wondering how that can be. I had thought that there was some plan to cross-connect the fuel of the three boosters so that when the outer two detached, the center booster had a "full tank" of fuel. Is that not being done on this first launch (or at all) or have they found a way to retrofit old boosters to add this capability?
 
I just read online that the two outboard boosters on the Falcon 9 Heavy configuration are used boosters but I'm wondering how that can be. I had thought that there was some plan to cross-connect the fuel of the three boosters so that when the outer two detached, the center booster had a "full tank" of fuel. Is that not being done on this first launch (or at all) or have they found a way to retrofit old boosters to add this capability?

I can't comment on the exact booster integration here, but I can tell you for a fact that X-space has had a Lot of "plans" that end up being modified (or dropped) over the years.

Falcon Heavy is going to be a show to watch no matter what happens!
 
So, Elon Musk Twittered some photos:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/943420026593337344

A2raSLP.jpg


And here's the pics one by one:

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The outer boosters are using the new Titanium grid fins, the inner core with the original Aluminum fins. That'll probably be changed to Titanium fins for later FH flights.

All things considered, to me, likely realistic No Earlier Than launch date would seem to be late January. I don't go by the last "official" words, since those are weeks old and imprecise on purpose. Indeed the last official words implied the first Static Firing would have happened by now. Also, IIRC, they had said that the launch would be "a few weeks" after the LAST static firing, implying more than one firing. If I bet money, I'd say launch in mid-February. I love to think that maybe they could roll it out to 39A next week (50-50?), even try for a static firing before Jan 1st, but would not bet on that.
 
25289277_10210754095065472_7611904291239942524_n.jpg 25353739_10210754094105448_6249769881387334049_n.jpg25353696_10210754094025446_1940784652741689717_n.jpg

A friend of mine was a chaperone on a class trip to the Cape last week and not only saw the launch but got this pic. I suspect the core for the Heavy.
 
The cross-feed of fuel to the central core was dropped a while back. Either to keep it simple or because of some other constraint that it made better, or both, I suspect.

As I understand it the central core will be throttled down and the outboards will be at max, which will give the central core a longer burn time. After releasing the outer boosters the central core will throttle up.
 
The cross-feed of fuel to the central core was dropped a while back. Either to keep it simple or because of some other constraint that it made better, or both, I suspect.

As I understand it the central core will be throttled down and the outboards will be at max, which will give the central core a longer burn time. After releasing the outer boosters the central core will throttle up.

My guess is that it's just complexity. Any good KSP player knows that "asparagus staging" (w/ crossfeed) is better :wink:

Also, if I don't post on TRF for a few weeks, it's probably because I can't bring myself to look away from those pictures...
 
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A friend of mine was a chaperone on a class trip to the Cape last week and not only saw the launch but got this pic. I suspect the core for the Heavy.

I read today on NSF that sometime before the FH photos were made, that the Zuma booster (and 2nd stage) were moved out of the HIF building at 39A and taken to the assembly building at LC-40 (Zuma launch date NET Jan 4th).

So, most likely that was the Zuma booster. AFAIK all three Heavy boosters have been in the HIF for weeks/months, just not assembled to each other.

An article in a Santa Barbara, CA news site about the Iridium-NEXT 4 flight:

https://www.noozhawk.com/article/recycled_rocket_ready_to_fly_from_vandenberg_air_force_base

Dec-2017-Iridium-Next3-cont_300_400_c1.jpg


Launch tomorrow (Friday the 22nd), set for 5:27 PM Pacific time.

Presskit: https://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/iridium4presskit.pdf

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Webcast:

[video=youtube;wtdjCwo6d3Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtdjCwo6d3Q[/video]
 
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Just found this:

K9eL4qV.jpg


So, this is Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, mounted for launch on FH’s 2nd stage (well, on the adapter that goes on top of the 2nd stage).

If things go well, it will go into Solar Orbit, with an apogee about as high or higher than Mars’ distance from the sun (not Mars Orbit).

Meanwhile, still counting down for Iridium-NEXT tomorrow, Friday a 5:27 PM PST
 
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Im in El Mirage, AZ and I have been trying to post a picture of it. The coolest thing I have ever seen. I have a cell phone pic of the smoke, the rocket was already gone.
 
"Constellation FALCONA"

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It is a screenshot from this video that was made by an amateur from their yard.

[video=youtube;iyKAJsQngIc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyKAJsQngIc[/video]

The Falcon booster DID make some type of "boostback" maneuver, but a partial one. In the SpaceX webcast you could see it flip around , then the center engine light up and the exhaust plume shock waves rippling. It stayed lit by sunlight for a lot of the way after the engines would have shut down.

The booster DID have grid fins (no legs), and there was a reference before launch to it making a "Water Landing" (a precision controlled landing but without an ASDS under it). Could barely make out in the background of the webcast some key words such as the re-entry burn, and that it had gone subsonic (which is shortly before the landing burn begins. The host was talking a lot about the 2nd stage at the time the booster would have been landing. Of course it had no legs, and the ASDS was not sent out, so it seems whatever they did was for R&D for re-entry maneuvering and landing. Also BTW, some word that the ASDS JRTI had some custom gear cannibalized to be sent to quickly repair OCISLY after that fire that toasted Roomba and some equipment on the aft end. So the decision to not recover this booster may have involved that issue as well - JRTI was not operational.

Back to the video above. Can also see the fairing halves come off, and someone on NSF noted what seemed to be some RCS thruster action on one of the fairing halves (uppermost of the two).

And then some other news of recent days. A ship named "Mr Steven" has been involved with SpaceX for some time, apparently in retrieval of a fairing half (while doing the Fairing recovery R&D, SpaceX only bothers to test it on one half. Makes sense till they perfect it.).

It has had four additions that were spotted this week, and even though it's 4 big long arms, not 8, some are referring to it as "Doc Ock" (Spiderman reference)

index.php


Seems like those may be for holding a landing net (or something) to catch a fairing. The fairing tests involve the use of automated steering gliding parachutes. This ship can go faster than a tug does, at least. So it seems what the ship may be doing is to act like an aircraft carrier, point itself into the wind , plus its own speed on the water, to reduce the relative speed between the gliding parachute with fairing, sort of like a plane coming in to land on a carrier but with a much steeper relative descent angle.

Whatever they are doing, the Mr. Stevens went out downrange for launch. SpaceX hasn't been very forthcoming with info on fairing recovery attempts after the first try. But rumors are that some fairings have landed under control and sometimes intact in the water, but even if intact the seawater ruins them. Therefore the need to "catch" them in some way that keeps them dry. At a cost of at least 3 million dollars per half, and the lead time and production rate to make the fairings, well worth trying to retrieve them intact (and dry) for later re-use.

Given that it was pretty much dark where the fairing would have landed, even if SpaceX was very forthcoming, probably not much to see in the way of video when it would have landed in the net (if that is what they tried). But still would make for a great photograph tomorrow. Indeed, unless they have worked out how to pick the fairing out of the net, the most practical thing might be to just leave it there for the trip back. Though they could perhaps slowly lower the net to the deck, and then throw a big tarp over it like they've done to hide the fairing's condition on other occasions.
 
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