Hmm, take those couple thousand? pound landing legs off and you could still have a small but usable LEO payload there.
Why?
I don’t acknowledge that all worthwhile things must have a legitimate reason for them. “It would be pretty cool” is completely sufficient.
I agree with, **Dr Strangelove. **From my deep love and fascination of all things outer-space, I personally feel being first SSTO would make a hell of a bullet point for SPace-X and employees/contractors, etc. Bragging rights, i guess.
Almost certainly, imho, it’d not make sense dollar-wise by a huge margin, especially if Space-X doesn’t want to repurpose a core on-hand w/the possible increase in the need for all of their eqpt back for reuse.
But, yeah, I’d selfishly love to see that SSTO become factual for ANY reason. Any ‘first’ is something to learn from, good or bad (like the various first-failures that enabled a fix on the still-not perfect record they have. But it sure looking like that workhorse is being tamed 
Another launch in ~5.5 hours.
It’s another high-energy landing on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You, so a non-trivial chance at failure, but they seem to be getting pretty good at these. Supposedly they have some new technique to reduce thermal/aerodynamic damage. Dunno if it’s to do with gimbaling the engines in some direction, releasing propellant for cooling, or something else.
I will never get tired of hearing Kate Tice say that of course she still loves me. 
That was fun to watch again… Suspense then WHAM! A landed rocket.
The September Mars press conference is going to be very interesting. It will be a lot like hearing the Kennedy Man On The Moon speech I do believe.
Edit to add: I have found listening to the hosted feed but watching the technical feed works better. I like the commentary but the pictures are better on the other feed IMHO.
That was an astonishingly well-centered landing. Couldn’t be more than a couple of meters off.
Definitely some exciting stuff in September. They’ve just shipped a scaled version of Raptor to be tested–I anticipate hearing about the results at the Mars conference.
I wonder if they expected to have this many landed cores? They’re gonna have a lot of employees with nothing to do once they start reusing them. I guess they can work on the BFR!
Thanks, Bumbershoot.
Shit.
Being a fan of SpaceX is sure exciting, though not always in a positive direction.
Fortunately, no one was hurt in the accident. I hope this turns out to be a problem with the pad and not the rocket, but that’s just blind hope. Not enough details yet (and already a huge amount of misinformation) to even remotely narrow down the cause. It happened 3 minutes before the scheduled static fire, but that’s all we know. Could be propellant loading or a million other things.
I assume by “a problem with the pad and not the rocket”, you mean “the cause of the incident was something about the pad or other support facilities, and not the vehicle itself”. Because there was most definitely a “problem” with the vehicle: it blew up. Took its payload with it.
Reports are confused, unsurprisingly. A few things I’ve gleaned from sources:
[ul]
[li]This was not a reused 1st stage. This was a new 1st stage that was going to be the first to be reused in its next mission.[/li][li]SpaceX has minimal commentary, other than the event was an “anomaly”. (Duh.)[/li][li]Apparently, a full-up test firing? They do that? With payload and everything?[/li][li]The payload was a Facebook satellite. So, nothing of value was lost? :D[/li][/ul]
The early reports are that the explosion occurred during or just following propellant loading, which is a semi-autonomous operation (no personnel on pad during the loading operation). Those familiar with the vehicle will note that supercooled liquid oxygen (SLOX) is used to increase propellant density to achieve better total impulse performance for high inclination/orbit or heavy payload missions, and so SLOX loading has to be done just prior to test or launch in order to maintain temperature. It is unknown if the failure is related to the SLOX loading system but it has been a challenge for SpaceX and the additional complexity and hazard with supercooled cryogenic fluids is why the rest of the rocket propulsion industry has generally avoided propellant densification.
SpaceX does perform a pre-launch “static fire” to verify the Stage 1 propulsion system workmanship and function at a system level. While they do perform hotfire operations on the individual engines and on the Octaweb assembly, the only time to perform a full up functional test including the tankage and propellant feed system is once the Octaweb is assembled to the stage. This is typically done for a few seconds to allow the engines to get up to full liftoff thrust. This is actually an old practice that harkens back to the early days of rocket launch vehicles. Most launch vehicle operators today do not perform this because of cost, risk, and feasibility, and SpaceX has discussed eliminating this test as well.
SpaceX is correct in not commenting on the cause of the explosion because they need to perform a root cause investigation and determine cause and corrective action, especially since this clearly represents a public hazard and impacts the use of the Falcon launch vehicle for planned crewed operation. Releasing information before completing an investigation or making unsubstantiated comments encourages unqualified speculation which may impact both the budget and the industry confidence in SpaceX.
Stranger
It’s really sad to see the payload fall down from the rocket and break up into bits.
I’m not sure about it being a 2nd stage explosion. It looks like the explosion originated near the umbilical. Though I’m not sure if a hydrogen leak would create such a bright initial explosion?
It isn’t hydrogen. The upper stage is a single Merlin 1D Vacuum+ engine, an RP-1/LOX engine.
Guessing from the video, the explosion started in or just outside of the Stage 2 tankage area. See Figure 2-1 on Page 10 of the SpaceX Falcon 9 Launch Vehicle Payload User’s Guide (warning: PDF). Hard to say what happened, but that could have been oxygenated kerosene detonating (in open air).
Tool late to ETA, but Elon Musk’s twitter has the following tweet
Which is where the first Falcon 9 failure (Flight 19) occurred, although the circumstances were different.
That’s just tough. I wonder how much flak SpaceX will take for their reasoned risk acceptance of doing static test firing full-up? It was a gamble, after all.
That video was pretty nuts. I can’t believe how fast the initial explosion was. You can step the 60 fps video frame-by-frame, and it goes from (apparently) nominal to a 25 m long fireball over a single frame. Unless I’m misjudging things by a lot, that’s >700 m/s, which is >mach 2. So it seems like a detonation as compared to deflagration (the later fireballs are clearly deflagration).
Not sure what could cause this. If there was a leak and kerosene and LOX pooled together or otherwise mixed, could they detonate?
It’s hard to be sure, but the source certainly seems to be outside the vehicle; maybe at the fueling connection point.
Neither the vehicle nor the payload use liquid hydrogen as a fuel. However, while a hydrogen flame is not as bright as hydrocarbons combustion, it would still make a very bright flash, albeit not with the red and black smoke seen in this incident.
SpaceX was not performing a static fire test at the time of the incident. If they were, the plume from the first stage would be very apparent. This is more likely a result of their vehicle fueling system and the need for densified propellants for the F9v1.1 Upgrade vehicle.
One of the problems with LOX, and especially SLOX, is that by virtue of being so cold they actually have a lot of latent thermal energy; that is, by being at such a temperature differential to the ambient environment they can undergo radical state change which can result in instabilities. In the case of LOX, if is heated it will rapidly evaporate and disperse when heated, creating an oxidizer-rich environment in which anything combustable will burn with the slightest impetus. If you’ve ever ‘played’ with liquid oxygen you’ll understand what I mean.
Although the explosion was visually impressive, the first event does not appear to be a detonation (e.g. there is no characteristic detonation shock wave, and the event does not appear to have immediately destroyed the downstage or ejected the payload fairing upward). It looks more like a thermobaric event (you can see LOX vapor being pushed outward by the combustion wave), followed by rupture of the upper stage RP-1 tank which created the downward red streamers, and then failure of the first stage LOX and RP-1 tanks which splash and then mix (the big flash). A few seconds after the initial explosion (starting at 1:20) you can see the payload fairing pitch over and fall, which does appear to have partially detonated the hypergolic fuel in the payload.
Stranger