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The next launch at the Cape is an Atlas-5 scheduled for March 27th.
https://spacecoastdaily.com/2017/03...from-cape-canaveral-rescheduled-for-march-27/
You're welcome. I did not follow SpaceX much until the plans for landing the Falcons using rocket power, for reusable boosters. Lots of plans for that thru the years. And the Delta Clipper did so, I followed that a lot, it made a lot of flights with controlled vertical landings, until the day one leg did not deploy. But an orbital version of it had already been cancelled. Space was already successfully launching payload into orbit, so it sounded feasible that the could do that. So I started following them more. And saw the "Grasshopper" test flight videos on Youtube, and later the F9-R videos also tested at McGregor. So, I've been following a lot of news mostly via the NASA Spacefiight Forum (NSF), and also the Reddit for SpaceX (reddit.com/r/spacex), and pick up other stuff here and there.
So, I'm a rocketeer VERY interested in what they are doing. But I don't drink Kool-Aid. So I don't hang on every word from Elon Musk, too much of it turns out to be inaccurate anyway. And I assume nothing long-term. I don't want to get into "ITS" to Mars in this thread, someone could create a separate thread about that. Just prefer to keep this thread about what is happening NOW with the Falcon and the Dragon spacecraft, and the near-future Falcon flights. And "Red Dragon" to Mars, well, that slipped from 2018 to 2020, so that'll be ripe to discuss in this thread in 2020 unless there's some specific testing or developments before then.
And now...... this cat on a Roomba.
In the last few weeks, the ASDS barge, Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) has had some interesting work done on it. For one, seems that some deck plates at the middle have been replaced…. speculated to be due to accumulated heat damage.
More interesting, the barge was modified, half of one of the Blast Walls at one end was rebuilt. And after rebuilding, it has what some have called a “Garage Door”.
Close-up:
So, here it is open.
May be a bit hard to realize, it is not like a real garage door that rolls up, and is not hinged at the top. Apparnetly it is hinged in the middle so it pivots to horizontal (sort of like a butterfly valve). That wastes a lot of room at the top, but is a KISS method of greatly reducing the force needed to mechanically open the door, the weight of the door is massive so by pivoting in the middle , the upper half balances out the lower half.
And now for this thing……
It had been speculated for weeks what the heck the “garage” was meant for. Then rumors of something being spotted being assembled near the dock, under a tent. And a lot of speculation. Some of it pretty wild, some of it more reasonable.
At this point it’s not 100% certain exactly what it will do and exactly how, but it was being tested on deck Monday and a person flying over in a helicopter got this shot:
I had not mentioned this before since, well, there was Echostar 23 coming up, being expendable, And so many rumors about this thing, which some have nicknamed “Roomba” (yes, that’s what the teaser pic with the cat was about).
So, AFTER a landing by a Falcon 9 booster, the garage door will pivot open and let the “Roomba” drive itself out. It has tank-like treads, apparently rubber, and can be steered to go under the Falcon. Perhaps a human remotely steering it, perhaps autonomously, perhaps a bit of both (SpaceX has not even acknowledged this exists).
Now that there is a good photo of it, speculations seem to be more narrowed down into likely or at least highly plausible ones than the wilder ideas, and over a week before the launch, this is a good time to introduce it into this thread.
It seems to have four jack stand type posts that can be automatically secured to the Falcon’s 4 hard points that it uses for support on the pad and also on the pedestals at Port and Landing Zone 1 when they remove the legs and prepare it to be lowered to horizontal by crane.
What is it’s purpose? A lot of speculation on that. Among the most practical sounding is to secure the Falcon from sliding along the deck, and also to structurally secure it from tipping/walking (I am thinking of the landing that damaged a leg where it was leaning pretty badly. Would have been nice if they could have had something like this to help hold it better).
The apparently rubber tank type treads still may not hold it well from sliding in rough seas or “walking”. I’m not going to look it up, but after one of the landings, the seas were choppy and the Falcon definitely slid or “walked” from where it had landed, all the way to one side, only stopping because the end of a leg hit the low I-beam railing (yellow) that runs along the outer edge of the deck.
This is reported to likely be very heavy. And the Falcon booster without fuel in it is not too heavy, so weight might be enough to help keep the Falcon from tipping to “walk”, but that might not be enough to keep it from sliding (the side forces on rubber treads might be enough to dislodge or even rip the treads). But, it has a long umbilical cord that in addition to providing electric power and perhaps hydraulic pressure for moving and steering, could potentially use a very interesting way to help anchor itself to the steel deck. Electromagnets. They certainly have electrical generators onboard and may have greatly upgraded that capacity for this (and perhaps more Diesel storage tanks if needed for keeping electromagnets on for days, if they use electromagnets.
Some also speculate that this would totally replace the need for crews to go onboard after a landing. Maybe reduce some workload, and maybe reduce the number of crew needed. But they have to send someone on board to hook up the towlines, and usually someone collects the GoPro cameras on deck so that the files/photos can be transmitted to SpaceX long before the ASDS would get back to port. I think perhaps that mission I mentioned with the rough seas may have been one reason they made this, for times it might be too rough for anyone to go onboard for a day or two, as well as a better way to secure it than to literally WELD steel "shoes" on the Falcon's feet, to the deck (So, if this worked as speculated then no need for a welder).
But so much of the above is speculation, and zero info from SpaceX.
So, to find out more accurate info on what it is supposed to do….. probably will require for the SES-10 booster to land safely so that the “Roomba” does come out and do its thing, whatever that thing is. Once that happens, and if it works, I figure SpaceX would say something about it, even if not a lot of info. Or maybe Musk will be in a big show-off mood and allow release of time-lapse video of it moving into place and securing itself to the Falcon.
https://spacecoastdaily.com/2017/03...from-cape-canaveral-rescheduled-for-march-27/
George, I'm not sure what your connection is to SpaceX and I admittedly have not read everything you've posted here but I just want to extend a big thank you for posting all of the pictures, information and videos. Every time I see the thread has been updated I always check it out. This is a nice service for the rocketry community. Thanks.
You're welcome. I did not follow SpaceX much until the plans for landing the Falcons using rocket power, for reusable boosters. Lots of plans for that thru the years. And the Delta Clipper did so, I followed that a lot, it made a lot of flights with controlled vertical landings, until the day one leg did not deploy. But an orbital version of it had already been cancelled. Space was already successfully launching payload into orbit, so it sounded feasible that the could do that. So I started following them more. And saw the "Grasshopper" test flight videos on Youtube, and later the F9-R videos also tested at McGregor. So, I've been following a lot of news mostly via the NASA Spacefiight Forum (NSF), and also the Reddit for SpaceX (reddit.com/r/spacex), and pick up other stuff here and there.
So, I'm a rocketeer VERY interested in what they are doing. But I don't drink Kool-Aid. So I don't hang on every word from Elon Musk, too much of it turns out to be inaccurate anyway. And I assume nothing long-term. I don't want to get into "ITS" to Mars in this thread, someone could create a separate thread about that. Just prefer to keep this thread about what is happening NOW with the Falcon and the Dragon spacecraft, and the near-future Falcon flights. And "Red Dragon" to Mars, well, that slipped from 2018 to 2020, so that'll be ripe to discuss in this thread in 2020 unless there's some specific testing or developments before then.
And now...... this cat on a Roomba.
In the last few weeks, the ASDS barge, Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) has had some interesting work done on it. For one, seems that some deck plates at the middle have been replaced…. speculated to be due to accumulated heat damage.
More interesting, the barge was modified, half of one of the Blast Walls at one end was rebuilt. And after rebuilding, it has what some have called a “Garage Door”.
Close-up:
So, here it is open.
May be a bit hard to realize, it is not like a real garage door that rolls up, and is not hinged at the top. Apparnetly it is hinged in the middle so it pivots to horizontal (sort of like a butterfly valve). That wastes a lot of room at the top, but is a KISS method of greatly reducing the force needed to mechanically open the door, the weight of the door is massive so by pivoting in the middle , the upper half balances out the lower half.
And now for this thing……
It had been speculated for weeks what the heck the “garage” was meant for. Then rumors of something being spotted being assembled near the dock, under a tent. And a lot of speculation. Some of it pretty wild, some of it more reasonable.
At this point it’s not 100% certain exactly what it will do and exactly how, but it was being tested on deck Monday and a person flying over in a helicopter got this shot:
I had not mentioned this before since, well, there was Echostar 23 coming up, being expendable, And so many rumors about this thing, which some have nicknamed “Roomba” (yes, that’s what the teaser pic with the cat was about).
So, AFTER a landing by a Falcon 9 booster, the garage door will pivot open and let the “Roomba” drive itself out. It has tank-like treads, apparently rubber, and can be steered to go under the Falcon. Perhaps a human remotely steering it, perhaps autonomously, perhaps a bit of both (SpaceX has not even acknowledged this exists).
Now that there is a good photo of it, speculations seem to be more narrowed down into likely or at least highly plausible ones than the wilder ideas, and over a week before the launch, this is a good time to introduce it into this thread.
It seems to have four jack stand type posts that can be automatically secured to the Falcon’s 4 hard points that it uses for support on the pad and also on the pedestals at Port and Landing Zone 1 when they remove the legs and prepare it to be lowered to horizontal by crane.
What is it’s purpose? A lot of speculation on that. Among the most practical sounding is to secure the Falcon from sliding along the deck, and also to structurally secure it from tipping/walking (I am thinking of the landing that damaged a leg where it was leaning pretty badly. Would have been nice if they could have had something like this to help hold it better).
The apparently rubber tank type treads still may not hold it well from sliding in rough seas or “walking”. I’m not going to look it up, but after one of the landings, the seas were choppy and the Falcon definitely slid or “walked” from where it had landed, all the way to one side, only stopping because the end of a leg hit the low I-beam railing (yellow) that runs along the outer edge of the deck.
This is reported to likely be very heavy. And the Falcon booster without fuel in it is not too heavy, so weight might be enough to help keep the Falcon from tipping to “walk”, but that might not be enough to keep it from sliding (the side forces on rubber treads might be enough to dislodge or even rip the treads). But, it has a long umbilical cord that in addition to providing electric power and perhaps hydraulic pressure for moving and steering, could potentially use a very interesting way to help anchor itself to the steel deck. Electromagnets. They certainly have electrical generators onboard and may have greatly upgraded that capacity for this (and perhaps more Diesel storage tanks if needed for keeping electromagnets on for days, if they use electromagnets.
Some also speculate that this would totally replace the need for crews to go onboard after a landing. Maybe reduce some workload, and maybe reduce the number of crew needed. But they have to send someone on board to hook up the towlines, and usually someone collects the GoPro cameras on deck so that the files/photos can be transmitted to SpaceX long before the ASDS would get back to port. I think perhaps that mission I mentioned with the rough seas may have been one reason they made this, for times it might be too rough for anyone to go onboard for a day or two, as well as a better way to secure it than to literally WELD steel "shoes" on the Falcon's feet, to the deck (So, if this worked as speculated then no need for a welder).
But so much of the above is speculation, and zero info from SpaceX.
So, to find out more accurate info on what it is supposed to do….. probably will require for the SES-10 booster to land safely so that the “Roomba” does come out and do its thing, whatever that thing is. Once that happens, and if it works, I figure SpaceX would say something about it, even if not a lot of info. Or maybe Musk will be in a big show-off mood and allow release of time-lapse video of it moving into place and securing itself to the Falcon.
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