SpaceX Tuesday...

[Eric Mc]

I bet the astronomy community won't be thrilled with "hundreds of thousands of micro-satellites" in orbit.

And the risk of creating an even greater space junk problem then we've already got doesn't bear thinking about.

[Einion Yrth]

Eric Mc said:

I bet the astronomy community won't be thrilled with "hundreds of thousands of micro-satellites" in orbit.

And the risk of creating an even greater space junk problem then we've already got doesn't bear thinking about.

Don Kessler gave some thought to that back in the 70s. It's a worry and no mistake.

[Toaster]

Micro satellites are in service now they get fired out as an array from cassets such as

And much smaller than this old BBC news bulletin http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6902800.stm

in fact they are only about 18in -24 in long http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/1280212397...

I saw one on a desk at a earth station I enquired if it was a model and was swiftly told no it was the real thing

And here is a video of some being launched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mrOmjFrEPE

Just one thing they are disposable so in LEO they just burn up after a shortish time

Oh and what you can do with a Cube sat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0WVQIypAMM (before it lands in you back garden)

Edited by Toaster on Tuesday 20th January 23:41

Edited by Toaster on Tuesday 20th January 23:41

[Eric Mc]

I'm not against micro-satellites per se. It's the NUMBER of the things that they seem to be talking about which I find a bit worrying.

In the early days of the space race the American military released tens of thousands of small "needle" satellites into low earth orbit - as a radar target I think. There was an outcry from the scientific community because they were concerned that it would cause problems for astronomy and other scientific research.

[SpeedyDave]

Was vid of the crash posted yet? Didn't spot it in the thread

https://vine.co/v/OjqeYWWpVWK

[scubadude]

SpeedyDave said:

Was vid of the crash posted yet? Didn't spot it in the thread

https://vine.co/v/OjqeYWWpVWK

Its hard to tell because of the darkness which way the rocket comes from, hopefully the next attempt will be in daylight hours. It looks like it comes from overhead then reverses course towards the barge before impact- after the explosion the rest of it exits stage left rather rapidly!

[Eric Mc]

Sort of "I'm outa here".

[vescaegg]

Wow. 'Close but no cigar' is lot more explosiony (technical term) than I was expecting. I assume it just landed hard and broke a couple of fins or something.

[Eric Mc]

Once a rocket topples over when it's engines are firing the result tends to be a big boom -


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk-gGtC7xZ4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuCRVx9CYRw

[CrutyRammers]

scubadude said:

Its hard to tell because of the darkness which way the rocket comes from, hopefully the next attempt will be in daylight hours. It looks like it comes from overhead then reverses course towards the barge before impact- after the explosion the rest of it exits stage left rather rapidly!

Looks like it's still trying to get on target, despite having lost attitude control because of the hydraulic failure.

[J98]

Credit to them for releasing the footage, hopefully they can get it right next time, does anyone know if they've said how it'll be anchored to the deck? Even with a low CofG, still imagine it would be a bit precarious on rougher seas.

[RobDickinson]

J98 said:

Credit to them for releasing the footage, hopefully they can get it right next time, does anyone know if they've said how it'll be anchored to the deck? Even with a low CofG, still imagine it would be a bit precarious on rougher seas.

This is only as a trial. Once they have perfected and prooved the process it will be landing on ground.

[J98]

RobDickinson said:

This is only as a trial. Once they have perfected and prooved the process it will be landing on ground.

I know it's a trial.
However, I thought the plan was to first land on the barge and ship it back. Allowing them to see how reusable the first stage actually is, what the turn around time is and to then test relaunching a first stage.
Wasn't the next step to use the barge to partially refuel the stage, use it as a launch pad to fly it back to Cape Canaveral?
Then finally they'd fly them straight back to the pad?
I could be making some of this up, I'm fairly sure that's what I'd read though. So presumably they must have a system for anchoring the booster once landed?

Also (again could be made up/hear say) isn't the Falcon Heavy core always going to be barge landed (if they decide to not just reuse the boosters) due to being further down range?

[Toaster]

J98 said:

I could be making some of this up,

Heaven forbid thats never happened on piston heads before

[scubadude]

J98 said:

I know it's a trial.
However, I thought the plan was to first land on the barge and ship it back. Allowing them to see how reusable the first stage actually is, what the turn around time is and to then test relaunching a first stage.
Wasn't the next step to use the barge to partially refuel the stage, use it as a launch pad to fly it back to Cape Canaveral?
Then finally they'd fly them straight back to the pad?
I could be making some of this up, I'm fairly sure that's what I'd read though. So presumably they must have a system for anchoring the booster once landed?

Also (again could be made up/hear say) isn't the Falcon Heavy core always going to be barge landed (if they decide to not just reuse the boosters) due to being further down range?

I have a mental image of a near constant stream of boosters returning to florida, some refueling mid Atlantic on Barges, others diverting to Africa then taking a sub orbital trip home, 2nd stages de-orbiting and flying back to their Texas base and Dragon modules queuing up to land.

I wonder if you could get de-orbiting Dragon capsules to recouple with the second stages then park themselves on a returning first stage and land back on the launch pad? :-)

Fanciful I know but once you get things to be as clever and reusable as they intend it does beg the question what else you could use them for- like can you get a first stage to make an intercontinental delivery while dispatching a 2nd stage and capsule to orbit en-route, then return a used 2nd stage and capsule from the west to east coast of the USA on its return?

[MartG]

New Falcon Heavy animation - landing core & boosters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ca6x4QbpoM&fe...

[London424]

MartG said:

New Falcon Heavy animation - landing core & boosters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ca6x4QbpoM&fe...

I saw that too...utterly brilliant when they get it to work.

[SpeedyDave]

J98 said:

I know it's a trial.
However, I thought the plan was to first land on the barge and ship it back. Allowing them to see how reusable the first stage actually is, what the turn around time is and to then test relaunching a first stage.
Wasn't the next step to use the barge to partially refuel the stage, use it as a launch pad to fly it back to Cape Canaveral?
Then finally they'd fly them straight back to the pad?
I could be making some of this up, I'm fairly sure that's what I'd read though. So presumably they must have a system for anchoring the booster once landed?

Also (again could be made up/hear say) isn't the Falcon Heavy core always going to be barge landed (if they decide to not just reuse the boosters) due to being further down range?

I saw a response from Musk that the plan was to place 'shoes' over the ends of the legs and weld in place.

I hadn't seen mention anywhere of plans to relaunch from the barge, I understood they would sail back to port with it.

The first (few?) successfully barge-landed rockets would presumably have to undergo a detailed teardown and analysis. If they aren't yet allowed to attempt a ground landing it's doubtful they'd be permitted to attempt it with one that's had the extra stress of a land & launch at sea. I suppose they'll first need to present a detailed account of successful barge landing, condition of the returned rocket etc.

[Eric Mc]

The animation shows all three boosters landing within a few hundred yards of each other. That looks extremely risky to me. It would be a shame if two landed safely - one didn't - toppled over, exploded and took out the other two.

[SpeedyDave]

Eric Mc said:

The animation shows all three boosters landing within a few hundred yards of each other. That looks extremely risky to me. It would be a shame if two landed safely - one didn't - toppled over, exploded and took out the other two.

I'm sure that's just a bit of artistic license in the video to drive home the point of recovering all the bits. I wouldn't be surprised if they were landing at completely different bases let alone pads. SpaceX are already launching from multiple sites and if all this comes off I suppose they'll have a decent fleet of them cycling around those locations.