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

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So George, what’s the plan for landing FH? On a barge? On the beach?? Do all boosters come down as 1 or 3 separate LZs??


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Nytrunner said:
Outboards back on land, core out at sea.
Click to expand...

Should be very cool when and if we get to see the attempt, Heck just hitting 2 on land at once and getting the payload underway would be awesome, nailing the barge would be icing on the cake :wink:
 
Probably the most impressive thing will be video of the two outer boosters coming in to land a two different landing pads at LZ-1 at the Cape, about 1200-1400 feet apart. Although I'm not so sure how well they'll get ground-based camera footage real-time, the best will probably be released later, such as a Drone camera view. Here's a photoshopped image I made up from a previous RTLS landing, showing what the two would sort of look like.

VpGiv4H.jpg


And no, pretty much zero chance of a collision. If any booster hits anything, it'll be during the outer booster sep from the core. I'm not that worried about the sep.... but among my top two unproven things are the booster sep, and how it'll handle up to then regarding vibration and Max-Q aerodynamic loads. I don't worry about 27 engines igniting and working on one flight, any more than I worry about 9 engines igniting and working for three flights in a row (27 = 27). They only ever lost one engine and that was flight #1 (where it made orbit anyway, albeit a bit lower orbit). They are stagger-igniting the 27 engines, 2 at a time, and the Static Firing should show how well that works out or if they need to make changes before flight (could be more than one Static Firing).


The center core landing on the ASDS anding barge (OCISLY) will be "yet another landing on a barge". But never one with such a historical launch , and record setting thrust/payload capacity associated with a re-useable booster. The center core will throttle the engines down some time after launch. Saving fuel so that after the outer boosters sep, it can go to full thrust for around 30 seconds or so before the second stage takes over. It will land farther downrange than any other ASDS landing, since it will burn out farther downrange than ever, and follow a mostly ballistic path until the re-entry burn. So the ASDS will be stationed a lot farther out, and will take an extra day or more to get back to port.
 
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georgegassaway said:
The center core landing on the ASDS anding barge (OCISLY) will be "yet another landing on a barge". But never one with such a historical launch , and record setting thrust/payload capacity associated with a re-useable booster. The center core will throttle the engines down some time after launch. Saving fuel so that after the outer boosters sep, it can go to full thrust for around 30 seconds or so before the second stage takes over. It will land farther downrange than any other ASDS landing, since it will burn out farther downrange than ever, and follow a mostly ballistic path until the re-entry burn. So the ASDS will be stationed a lot farther out, and will take an extra day or more to get back to port.
Click to expand...

In the case of the test launch the center core may not necessarily land much further down range. The Tesla they're using as a dummy mass is much less massive than even the Falcon 9 v1.2 rated mass to mars of 4,020 kg. Assuming the second stage of the FH has similar performance to the second stage of the F9 v1.2 then the second stage could actually do most of the work leaving the first stage at a similar trajectory as normal F9 launches. Though they may plan for the first stage to do most of it, I'm not sure exactly how they figure that out.
 
Payload capacity to Mars is apparently [FONT=&quot]16,800 kg (37,000 lb) and the roasters weighs in at [/FONT][FONT=&quot]1,305 kg (2,877 lb). Not sure how much extra they’ve added to it but it will still be many times under capacity. It will be interesting to see what orbit they choose and if they will do additional burns for a circular orbit etc.[/FONT]
 
Hmmmmmm, Roasters.

:hot:


[video=youtube;TKVMo0K9u_s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKVMo0K9u_s[/video]

[video=youtube;glVkl1GOaHI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glVkl1GOaHI[/video]


SpaceManMat said:
Payload capacity to Mars is apparently [FONT="]16,800 kg (37,000 lb) and the roasters weighs in at [/FONT][FONT="]1,305 kg (2,877 lb). Not sure how much extra they’ve added to it but it will still be many times under capacity. It will be interesting to see what orbit they choose and if they will do additional burns for a circular orbit etc.[/FONT]
Click to expand...
 
SpaceManMat said:
It will be interesting to see what orbit they choose and if they will do additional burns for a circular orbit etc.
Click to expand...

I don't think there will be a circularization burn when it arrives at the aphelion. From what I can gather, the Tesla will leave Earth on top of the second stage, which is likely unable to operate for much longer then launch operations require (evaporating LOX, drained batteries, etc.). If SpaceX currently had the operational capability to operate deep space missions, they would likely have announced this already. A Dragon capsule with its store-able propellants and solar panels could stay active for a longer period of time, but it is unclear to me if this would be long enough for a Mars mission.

Reinhard
 
Watching the live feed of the Static Fire on the spaceflightnow.com site is for members only. Does anyone have a free source for being able to watch the live feed?
 
An update. Firing window pushed to 12:30 PM EST.

@ChrisG_NSF

#FalconHeavy static fire update. The window has been amended to 1230-1800 EST (1730– 2300 UTC).
Click to expand...


ChrisG on NSF is supposed to be "live tweeting" it. https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF

Here's the link to his live stream, which started at 12:00 EST:

https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/956209243799080960

But apparently there will be no countdown, no notice. Just sometime between 12:30 PM and 6 PM, it'll be fired (or not). SpaceX has never provided a live feed for static firings, IIRC, only for launches (though of course the live video feed will exist to be seen at all SpaceX facilities, but not publicly).

Some have suggested not to try to catch a live feed , but to watch a video posted after it happens. Certainly the better quality videos will be done that way, shot on scene then posted later. I have ChrisG's on in the background, with the sound up, and will open the window if I heard a rumbling. Hmm, they're talking. Which is good for info, but not for possibly waiting for 5.5 hours of talk "filler".
 
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FIRED!

Saw it on ChrisG's live tweet

Now found this by AmericaSpace on Youtube,which was live. Oh if only the image was as good as that misleading "teaser" static photo. Go to 28 minutes.

[video=youtube;_EAhy4ZHkDE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1680&v=_EAhy4ZHkDE[/video]
 
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Pretty good view
[video=youtube;NuXHriwQB9g]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuXHriwQB9g[/video]
 
That's awesome. Too bad there weren't better views. I suppose if anything went wrong, they didn't want it broadcast live in HD. I bet they took great footage that will be released later now that it's been successful.
 
SpaceX posted this video of the static firing to YouTube:

[video=youtube;sNgByUWwFKU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNgByUWwFKU&feature=youtu.be[/video]
 

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