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

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It's not clear what the FAA situation was and is about. Seems like too much of a rabbit hole to get into. On NasaSpaceFlight Forum, things got so out of hand the moderators had to delete a bunch of garbage.
 
I just read an article that the FAA launched a formal investigation after SN8's flight because of the failed landing and a violation of the flight certificate. Until that's cleared up, flights from Boca Chica are unlikely
 
swfa said:
Here is something I found. It doesn't really give any specifics. It doesn't really make sense to me why a failed landing was a problem, but apparently that was just part of it.
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I read that same article.
SpaceX's "Do it live" approach may not mesh with the FAA's approval process. If they said they were going to XYZ, but then did XYK in controlled airspace......?

Example: Roadster on Falcon Heavy 2nd stage was planned to go near Mars right? Then during the mission they burned the full stage and punted it out further.
Did anyone approve that? Did they ask for permission? Is there even jurisdiction outside of earth orbit? I don't have the answers for that.
 
Nytrunner said:
Example: Roadster on Falcon Heavy 2nd stage was planned to go near Mars right? Then during the mission they burned the full stage and punted it out further.
Did anyone approve that? Did they ask for permission? Is there even jurisdiction outside of earth orbit? I don't have the answers for that.
Click to expand...
You are among the masses who fell victim to Elon Musks' playing loose with words that obfuscate the truth too often, and many stories based on "What Elon Said" came to the wrong conclusions of either what he said, or the inaccuracy of what he said,

He claimed it was "going to Mars", but it was to "Mars' orbit", NOT Mars. Some even interpreted that to mean into orbit, around Mars. Or, at least to fly CLOSE to Mars (some even took it to mean it was going to land on Mars).

No, it went so far from Earth, that it reached an apogee that got as far away as Mar's orbit is from the sun....and actually the apogee ended up even farther out than that.

Nowhere near Mars.

But it is an elliptical orbit, so it will swing back to a perigee that is close to Earth's orbit (not Earth, the orbit the Earth has around the sun), and go back back to apogee, and so on, for hundreds/thousands of years depending on eventual close encounters that might fling it in a different orbit (like a slingshot maneuver). It is supposed to be near Earth in about 2091. In the image below, the green orbit is the Falcon Heavy second stage, that has the Tesla bolted to it (some even think the Tesla is all by itself).
whereisroadster2020.jpg
 
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Greg Furtman said:
So you crash on your own landing pad on your own property with injury to no one and you get "pulled over" by the FAA??? :mad:
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From what I'm seeing, no one has said exactly what it was that violated their agreement with the FAA but it doesn't seem to be the landing/crash. It may be that the flight itself went beyond the airspace (vertically or horizontally) that was reserved in the approval.
 
georgegassaway said:
You are among the masses who fell victim to Elon Musks' playing loose with words that obfuscate the truth too often, and many stories based on "What Elon Said" came to the wrong conclusions of either what h
Click to expand...

It doesnt matter what I interpreted, or what Musk tweeted. What matters is the flight plan and sequence they file, and whether or not they adhere to it.

I agree, Musk's twitter isnt that reliable a source of info. Just ask the SEC
 
How high did the last test flight go? Most airspace in the USA above 1200ft AGL is controlled by the FAA for IFR flights. You can fly VFR in most places without talking to a FAA controlling agency, but an experimental unmanned aircraft filled with explosives would probably need some kind of airspace waiver, a NOTAM at least.

The FAA is all powerful, they can do pretty much what they want until congress calls them to task (The Bob Hover incident comes to mind), but they are generally reasonable.

EDIT: Just a note, you can own the property your house is on, but you don't own the airspace above it. The Government does.
 
mach7 said:
How high did the last test flight go? Most airspace in the USA above 1200ft AGL is controlled by the FAA for IFR flights. You can fly VFR in most places without talking to a FAA controlling agency, but an experimental unmanned aircraft filled with explosives would probably need some kind of airspace waiver, a NOTAM at least.

The FAA is all powerful, they can do pretty much what they want until congress calls them to task (The Bob Hover incident comes to mind), but they are generally reasonable.

EDIT: Just a note, you can own the property your house is on, but you don't own the airspace above it. The Government does.
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@mach7 SN8 flew to 12.5KM, 41,000'. The same is planned for SN9.
 
Still no FAA approval for launch.

SN-9 is not going anywhere (on rocket power) until there is.

Ad yes, they have a TFR for Tuesday. They also had TFR's thru last week. To keep away aircraft, NOT approval for launch (Which a week ago I thought was the same thing but clearly not. Seems analagous to waiver for an air show, but not allowing a specific aircraft to fly at that airshow if there is some outstanding safety issue to be resolved).

I'm not wasting any time looking for a launch Tuesday unless I hear the FAA has granted approval for launch. The fanbois and Space media that makes money on live streams regardless of whether a launch is really going to happen or not can take part in the Circus, not me.

BTW, there is a Falcon-9 launch also scheduled for tomorrow, at 5:57 AM EST. It got pushed from Sunday.

EDIT - scheduled for Wednesday, Feb 3rd. At one point was going to be the 2nd.

https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/...021/february/rocket-launch-spacex-starlink-17
 
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georgegassaway said:
BTW, there is a Falcon-9 launch also scheduled for tomorrow, at 5:57 AM EST. It got pushed from Sunday.
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It was going to be too early Sunday for me to watch it, now it's too early on Tuesday for me to watch it. There's also one at 1:30am on Thursday which is also too early/late to watch.

2 launches in 3 days and I'm not going to see either of them. Rats.
 
Mushtang said:
It was going to be too early Sunday for me to watch it, now it's too early on Tuesday for me to watch it. There's also one at 1:30am on Thursday which is also too early/late to watch.

2 launches in 3 days and I'm not going to see either of them. Rats.
Click to expand...
While it's "nice" to see them live, it's not a big deal to watch them later. I won't stay up extra-late, or get up early, just to see a live launch of routine stuff. A live landing of a crew on the moon or Mars, yes.

I was lucky to see SN-8's flight "Live" by total coincidence of a 15 minute break at work. I logged in about 1 minute into the flight and saw everything else live. I had expected to see it only on replay later.
 
NOTE: The Falcon-9 launch is now scheduled for Wednesday, Feb 3rd. At one point was going to be the 2nd.

As for SN-9, it looks like there is actual FAA approval for launch TODAY (Tuesday Feb 2nd), in the afternoon. Although neither SpaceX nor FAA have actually announced anything.

If it turns out FAA has not granted approval, I'm not going to trust Eric Berger at ARS Technica, nor the team at NASA Spaceflight again (They say "GO" for today like it's true. Some other sources had indicated "likely" approval in time to launch today, which is NOT the same as "GO"). Teslarati also trumpeted FAA approval, but they are totally biased towards everything "Elon", so I didn't put any faith in their reporting, checking more trusted sources after seeing that (I did not go to their site first, but was following on a forum report that linked to them).

The good thing is that if they do have FAA approval, the weather looks pretty good.
 
This morning I saw the FAA's official explanation for their previous denial/holdup in Twitter:

 
Currently doing Final Checkouts - whatever that means.

Then there is:
Tank Farm Activity (if I'm reading that correctly)
Recondenser
Propellant Loading
Engine Chill

And then Launch.

So who knows when or if, but it doesn't look like it'll be in the next hour or two. I think loading the propellant takes hours all by itself?
 
45 to 90 minutes once tank farm activity starts based on SN8 and other pad tests. Tank farm activity is pre-chilling the lines and pressurizing them to prep for LOX and CH4 loading. Since this is only a 10km flight, prop loading doesn't take very long.
 

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