Spacex Falcon9 getting ready to launch here at The Cape. Pretty cloudy and breezy and am hearing upper atmosphere winds might be high so we will see. 1st daylight launch here in 6 months. Also, assuming this launch takes place it will be the 18th Spacex launch this year. 18 launches in under 11 months. Not bad. 1st stage is returning to the barge so no visual from here today but Dec 4th’s launch should return to LZ1 at The Cape. A sight to behold if you’ve never seen a 22 story building flying straight down and stick the landing.
SpaceX did something unique this morning, even for them: they re-used a re-used rocket (third launch for this core). Still waiting to hear if the 64 satellites deployed successfully and if they caught the fairing.
Got a friend with a payload on there (actually mentioned on the webcast, the LACMA project), so it’s good to see everything go smoothly.
And definitely cool to have a third use of a booster. I wonder if Spaceflight got an even bigger discount for this mission. In the long run, SpaceX will want to charge the same price regardless of its used status (like pretty much every other vehicle), but in the short term they still have to prove that they’re just as reliable on mission N as they are on the first.
It’s funny - we call them ‘used’ rockets instead of ‘tested’ rockets, with the assumption that a ‘used’ rocket is somehow less reliable.
However, when a new aircraft is built, it is test flown before being released to service, and if it’s flown many times it is considered to be more reliable. Just a shift in perspective.
At some point, SpaceX might be able to convince people that ‘flight proven’ rockets are even more reliable than ones doing their first flight. Maybe they’ll have to offer a discount when using an ‘untested’ booster…
Our assumption that a reused booster is less reliable than one that has never flown just shows how screwed up rocket economics have been for a long time.
While I agree with a lot of this, the forces a rocket is exposed to during an orbital launch and landing are many times more severe than those of a typical airplane during flight.
Clearly so, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be less reliable. In almost any complex mechanical device, failures can be plotted on a ‘bathtub curve’, with the first few hours of operation having the highest failure rates due to design and manufacturing errors, then the error rate drops and goes low and flat for a long time before it starts to rise again as parts wear out normally.
As SpaceX gathers more operational data, we should learn where those points on the grah are, and at some point a booster that has flown two or three times may be demonstrably more reliable than a fresh one which may have hidden manufacturing defects. Time will tell.
This afternoon’s SpaceX launch was scrubbed. Was scheduled for 1:38 PM with no window. Is now scheduled for tomorrow, 12/5 at 1:16 pm. Seems the food bars that were packed for the 40 rats making the trip to the space station were noted to have mold. Can’t have rats eating moldy food bars now, can we? This is probably better since it’s quite overcast here in CB this morning and should be much clearer tomorrow.
Will try again tomorrow going to my super secret location to watch the launch and the landing due 8 minutes after the launch. BTW, this will be the 1st landing on land here since the February Falcon Heavy and it’s dual rockets landing.
Didn’t know there was such a thing as rat food bars. Wonder if there’s rat size Tang containers as well just to wash it all down.
I saw most of the landing. I was south and west of LZ1 and slightly blocked from seeing just the last few (50-100ft,) I’m guessing. I’ve seen several of these landings including the Falcon Heavy’s twins last Feb. Noticed the rocket today was swinging side to side much more than any of the previous I’d seen. The last 20-30 seconds of drop were very different. I assumed the high ground winds (20+ knots) were the reason for the 1st stage movement. I didn’t know it went swimming until I returned home.
Go to Spacex website and watch the 1st stage descend. It starts spinning and the SpaceX eomployess all gasp. Then the shut off the vid of the landing…
Seen some nice vids of the landing offshore probably on Wakeupcocoabeach. It landed up right just off shore. Stood up with have the rocket above the water surface then with a bright flash, broke off at the water’s surface.
The first stage didn’t crash. It was just an off-design landing mode.
Pretty impressive that the descent was as controlled as it was. The stage was spinning like a mofo for much of the way down. Apparently the hydraulic pump went out and they lost all grid fin authority. Pretty nifty that you can see how the spin rate goes down dramatically when the legs deploy (ballerina effect).
Finally, it’s good to see their fail-safe descent trajectory in action. The stage first targets a landing point in water, and only at the last moments retargets to land when everything is going nominally. It actually made quite a soft landing and they may be able to recover some components at least (the expensive grid fins if nothing else).
Titanium is pretty resistant to salt water corrosion. Assuming there was no structural damage, I’m sure they can reuse those at least. Maybe the avionics, too. I’d guess the airframe and engines are a writeoff, though Musk says they “may” try to reuse the stage for an internal mission.