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

Wow. Just... Wow. It's amazing the footage they got. Clear like something from a movie. Amazing.

Sent from my LG-D851 using Tapatalk

Wow that was amazing footage of S1 coming back in, you get a good sense of the decent velocities in a few shots where you can clearly see the clouds go by. Just amazing ground footage!

Yeah, this flights' video coverage was a real step up. You could clearly see staging, second stage ignition, and booster flip from the ground. (Looks like Elon bought some nine foot long lenses :grin

Dang, I missed it. Is it posted somewhere for review?

Woody's Workshop said:

Dang, I missed it. Is it posted somewhere for review?

Click to expand...

Page 63, post 1887. I missed it too, just watched it, awesome!!!

Another great recovery.
It's hard to grasp how far they have come in my lifetime.

That was incredible! They are starting to make it look easy.

Did anyone notice how the speed when up after the entry burn (to be expected) but it then started to slow significantly before the landing burn started? I had never noticed that before. Was the slowing just do to air resistance as the booster enters the thicker atmosphere?

Woody's Workshop said:

Dang, I missed it. Is it posted somewhere for review?

Click to expand...

SpaceX has replay video up on their YouTube. I had alarm set to get up and watch live but apparently turned it off without actually waking up to do so, that happens from time to time.
Is 22 minutes 10 seconds.
Oh, guess it would help to tell you that liftoff is at 12 minute point in video.
https://youtu.be/EzQpkQ1etdA
#1 on Trending
NROL-76 Launch Webcast
SpaceX
Streamed live 7 hours ago

BDB said:

That was incredible! They are starting to make it look easy.

Did anyone notice how the speed when up after the entry burn (to be expected) but it then started to slow significantly before the landing burn started? I had never noticed that before. Was the slowing just do to air resistance as the booster enters the thicker atmosphere?

Click to expand...

Yep, the thicker air will slow the vehicle.

That was an awesome video.

This is Elon Musk's instagram page where he's posted a great short video of the landing.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BTjUcEYBqSQ/

I was up, just forgot about it. Was getting into the Hero's Channel. Had some stuff on there about Castro right after he took power and a 19 year old American female he got involved with, got her knocked up, forced an abortion, and then the Feds turned her, sent her back to kill him with pills, got scared, flushed the pills, etc etc etc.

One thing these multiple camera shots do, for me, is reinforce my belief that every time there is a catastrophic event and the cameras go blank they are just censoring the output. Before the half-glass crowd jumps on me, this is not a meant as a criticism on SpaceX, just what I believe is captain obvious and personally what I would do as a share holder of SpaceX. But I think we can all agree that there seems to be a lot of video sources, even just on the air frame itself.

Speaking of shots, I thing these two screen grabs I took of the re-entry and landing sequence are the money shots, so unique from what has been shown before.

To be fair, Mike, it seems like they add more and more cameras all the time. That's not to say that they don't cut the feed if some thing happens (I would too), but I wouldn't use that as an argument against earlier feed losses. I think that these extra camera views are being continuously added and might not have been available for earlier flights. It would be interesting if someone went through each launch and broke down when a specific camera view was used for the first time. I think in this case, they probably have watching the booster downrange from the Cape for a while, but didn't show it because they were spending time on the second stage flight (which wasn't an issue today). Of course, if they did have that feed previously, they still could have cut to it here and there. I just think that they're continuously enhancing the coverage and experience.

I just had the chance to watch the video on YouTube. So frickin' cool! Today's young whipper-snappers are proving their metal!

I never had the opportunity to see a shuttle launch in person before it was retired, or any other rocket for that matter, but I'm gonna have to make a point of seeing one of these before it's too late. With every other week off, there's got to be a chance somewhere in my future!

Others more knowledgeable that I can comment better, but about the "are they cutting the feed" question: Remember, last launch before this one was successful (barge landing), but we lost the video feed well before landing. They didn't have anything "live" to switch to, or they chose not to switch if they did have something. Much of the video requires links that are spotty during these maneuvers, particularly shots from the barge. Many of the best landing shots rely on drones that might not be streaming live, but rather we don't get the video until after landing and they can download cached video.

Also, when the landing is at the launch site (so, on land, not on barge), there's the opportunity for filming via great telephoto lenses from a fixed position, rather than from some boat that's pitching up and down.

Finally, today for sure the weather cooperated, so those telephoto lenses really earned their pay though the clear skies.

Marc

Amazing video today, as mentioned by everyone. The boost back was amazing and I loved when the outboard engines kicked in a few seconds into the entry burn. The up close shots were absolutely insane.

Did the legs deploy a lot closer to landing this time or is that just me?

mpitfield said:

Speaking of shots, I thing these two screen grabs I took of the re-entry and landing sequence are the money shots, so unique from what has been shown before.

Click to expand...

Now that you mention it, I think you have a point!

Mushtang said:

This is Elon Musk's instagram page where he's posted a great short video of the landing.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BTjUcEYBqSQ/

Click to expand...

To me that video has such an effortless feel to the event, sort of, "Eh, we do this five times a day every day, ain't no big thing."

For the early morning launches, the thing to do is to just wake up when you want to, don't look at your phone, and go to:
https://spacex.com/webcast

The SpaceX webcast page contains no "spoilers," and when you hit play it's not live, it plays from the very start of the broadcast.
So it's "live" to you.

P.S. (Humor) With regards to those shots above being "money shots," I think that's a term from a non-aerospace industry. Just sayin'.

Falcon Heavy center core static fire test May 9th.

[video=youtube;02d6EgUPAAM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02d6EgUPAAM[/video]

SpaceX just notched a big milestone in the development of the company's powerful new Falcon Heavy rocket, which is scheduled to fly for the first time a few months from now.

"First static-fire test of a Falcon Heavy center core completed at our McGregor, TX rocket-development facility last week," SpaceX representatives wrote on Twitter today (May 9), as an accompaniment to an 18-second video of the rocket test.

Click to expand...

Space.com article

I hope to God nothing goes wrong with the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy. If it did, that would be really, really bad for SpaceX and for the private space industry as a whole. I'm sure they realize that and will exercise due diligence. But still, maiden flights are always nail-biters. The only upside would be that they learned some valuable lessons. Let's hope any lessons learned will be learned the easy way - before flight.

Space-X fires the Falcon Heavy Core for the first time.

https://www.space.com/36782-spacex-test-fires-falcon-heavy-core-video.html

OK, I see Peartree posted this already.

If things go as planned, the Falcon-9 for the Inmarsat 5 S4 satellite will be static fired briefly on Pad 39A on Thursday.

If the results are good, then it is scheduled to launch Monday May 15th, window opening at 7:20 PM EDT.

Due to the satellite mass and orbit, this will be an expendable launch, booster will splash into the Atlantic.




Recently Tim Dodd, aka the "Everyday Astronaut", posted a video explaining why some Falcon boosters can land back near the launch site (RTLS), some land on an ASDS barge out on the ocean, and some are flown as expendable. Pretty good, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand it.

[video=youtube;jI4zOOYwHPM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI4zOOYwHPM[/video]

[video=youtube;1PAKpTDCvtw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PAKpTDCvtw[/video]

georgegassaway said:

If things go as planned, the Falcon-9 for the Inmarsat 5 S4 satellite will be static fired briefly on Pad 39A on Thursday.

If the results are good, then it is scheduled to launch Monday May 15th, window opening at 7:20 PM EDT.

Due to the satellite mass and orbit, this will be an expendable launch, booster will splash into the Atlantic.

Click to expand...

Any update?

Static test firing went well Thursday.

Launch still planned for Monday May 15th. Window opens at 7:20 PM EDT.

Static test photo at pad 39A:

That Monday May 15th is GMT, correct? Launch here in the US is Sunday night.

davel said:

That Monday May 15th is GMT, correct? Launch here in the US is Sunday night.

Click to expand...

Launch time is 7:20 PM EDT which is 23:20 Zulu

georgegassaway said:

Launch still planned for Monday May 15th. Window opens at 7:20 PM EDT.

Click to expand...

Monday the 15th. 7:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time ( 6:20 PM Central, 5:20 PM Mountain, and 4:20 PM Pacific).

I don't post GMT times (or if I had I'd have said GMT, not EDT). Most people (on this forum anyway) are not into that. And frankly neither am I except when forced for good reason to convert times posted in GMT only.

KSC's website lists it in Eastern (local) time, not GMT.

Click to expand...

This will an expendable launch. Next two after that are an RTLS landing (currently about June 1st, CRS-11) and ASDS barge landing. Then the next after that another expendable, which may be the last expendable for awhile.

I wonder why they do not use a recycled booster for the expendable flights. It would make more sense to throw away a used one, rather then a brand new one.

terryg said:

I wonder why they do not use a recycled booster for the expendable flights. It would make more sense to throw away a used one, rather then a brand new one.

Click to expand...

Probably because a previously used one is more valuable due to the information they can learn about it's experience of being launched again. The end goal is to reuse these boosters many times, so getting one back that had been reused and doing tests on it will tell them quite a lot about what happens to them on multiple flights. To throw that knowledge away would be foolish.

And I'm sure a throw away booster can be made cheaper because they don't have to include the landing equipment such as legs, grid fins, and I'm sure a load of internal stuff as well.