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

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georgegassaway said:
Also, interestingly, either the camera is mounted on a stabilized gimbal, or the video was post-processed to keep the background (horizon) level.
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The camera is moving relative to the boat, which would not happen if it was stabilized in post. Looks like a (very nice!) stabilized mount.
 
Marc_G said:
And it's my understanding the central core will be abandoned, due to the launch profile and fuel requirements.
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Correct, no landing for the core booster. Burns up in the atmosphere? How quaint! LOL One would think you'd use a "seasoned" booster for the center core too - maybe 10+ flights under it's belt?
 
OverTheTop said:
The customer is likely paying the $30million or so that the octoweb and motors cost, plus more. Throwing the core away is a trade the customer must expect.
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The customer is the US Space Force. They surely didn’t blink at the added cost of throwing away the booster. A drop in the bucket for what the government spends on things.

From what I’ve read, both the boosters and the core are new.
 
Go for launch in less than 1 min.
...
Edit: Textbook flight and landing.
 
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...and to think this thread started before they'd ever done it, and on Tuesday we'll likely see — simultaneously — #150 and #151. Seriously cool.
 
jmattingly13 said:
SpaceX has publicly stated that they are weaning themselves off holding a webcast for every launch, as they intend to make launches fairly regular and, for lack of better term, mundane. They pull engineers and managers off their normal jobs to do those webcasts, so the plan is only to do live webcasts of major milestone launches (Dragon v2, etc.). I would guess they might have a webcast for landing on a barge, but I cannot say for sure. If they do, it would be spacex.com/webcast. After all, their job is launching rockets, not broadcasting launches.
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The above was posted very early in this thread, before they'd successfully landed one. Tonight's web cast for the Starlink launch out of Vandenberg was pretty short - from about T-7 minutes to just after the booster landing....but they're still doing them for every Falcon 9 launch, anyway. But I do wonder if we're not far from "another successful Starlink launch and booster recovery" tweets only. (@Spacex tweeted five times about tonight's mission)

Starship, on the other hand, is a whole different thing. (now).... but maybe a few years from now they, too, will be so routine as to not merit more than a quick blurb on "the socials"...
 
Falcon Heavy should be launching this Tuesday morning from 9:41 am EDT.

 
BEC said:
The above was posted very early in this thread, before they'd successfully landed one. Tonight's web cast for the Starlink launch out of Vandenberg was pretty short - from about T-7 minutes to just after the booster landing....but they're still doing them for every Falcon 9 launch, anyway. But I do wonder if we're not far from "another successful Starlink launch and booster recovery" tweets only. (@Spacex tweeted five times about tonight's mission)

Starship, on the other hand, is a whole different thing. (now).... but maybe a few years from now they, too, will be so routine as to not merit more than a quick blurb on "the socials"...
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Depending on how many views they get, it might still be worth it. For the cost of basically a half time or quarter time webcaster (probably normally assigned to the PR department), they reach a lot of people with a half-hour commercial.
 
boatgeek said:
Depending on how many views they get, it might still be worth it. For the cost of basically a half time or quarter time webcaster (probably normally assigned to the PR department), they reach a lot of people with a half-hour commercial.
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The presenters are usually engineers or engineering managers, or at least that's what they say they are, rather than PR types.

I am at least going to make an attempt to get up to see the FH launch in the morning. It will be cool to (hopefully) see that simultaneous booster landing again.

added right after the webcast was ended: This morning’s presenter was Kate Tice - quality systems manager. She is probably my favorite of the rotating cast of folks who draw webcast duty. Only a little too much chatter in her presentation these days….
 
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So, the landing of the two boosters was more like I had expected originally. Spaced apart by a few seconds. Seems like the re-entry burn of one began a few seconds before the other. And that mismatch also allowed the higher booster to get a view of the lower booster's landing burn.

I figure there must be less risk of landing damage from the two landing simultaneously. Or at least reducing the risk of landing damage on the one that landed last. I refer to Foreign Object Damage (FOD), when the exhaust plume splatters outwards when it impinges on the ground. Also reducing the peak acoustics/pressure during landing, by them landing seconds apart rather than "clustered".

UPDATE - I have since read that the boosters landed that way to reduce interference with each other's landing radars.

Those radars are critical for landing at just the right moment, with just the right throttle changes the last few hundred feet, considering the altitude and velocity moment by moment. Because even minimum throttle is greater than the weight of the booster at that point. So if it reaches zero velocity above the ground.... it will end up going back upwards, then crashing when it runs out of fuel.
 
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Marc_G said:
Yup ...
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Oh man was I ever confused the first time I saw it. So now I'm extra careful. There is so much hype around these companies I had to block a bunch of sensationalist channels on my YouTube settings.
 
It was cool, but too bad about the foggy launch and the crap on the booster cameras. It was still worth getting up for it.
 
kuririn said:
I wonder if you could add two more boosters for heavier loads, like a Delta rocket.
Maybe a wider payload fairing as well.
Call it Falcon Obese.
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Theoretically possible? Probably.
Easy? No.
Practical? Almost certainly not.

The problem with multi-core rockets like Delta IV Heavy and Falcon Heavy is that the inert mass fraction ends up higher than just building a bigger core. The theoretical advantage is that you save on the expense of actually developing a bigger core. However, the more cores you add, the worse your mass fraction becomes. I can't imagine more than three cores would be worth it.

To say nothing of the problems involved with syncing even more engines on those other cores or the structural problems.
 
kuririn said:
I wonder if you could add two more boosters for heavier loads, like a Delta rocket.
Maybe a wider payload fairing as well.
Call it Falcon Obese.
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The Chinese launched something just yesterday that had 4 boosters. I want to find some good photos and make a scale or semi-scale model of that. I might actually cluster that sucker just to see how it works out.
 

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