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@tgibbs I know you can't talk about the crash, but I hope everyone at SpaceX is keeping their spirits up. This sounds like a difficult problem, with no clear evidence of what happened, and I don't think Elon or his team are the type to make assumptions if the evidence doesn't support it.
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A good wiki on Falcon 9, but unless there is only one of each revision, I still don't have an understanding for how many Falcon 9's are in rotation flying.
@Big Mike thanks for the thoughts. With as large as the company is it's still a little surreal from my position as it hasn't really affected what I am working on at all. The end of the day it really sucks to fail a rocket, but like the team did in the early days when Falcon 1 went through its failures we will pick up the pieces, figure out what went wrong, and keep flying vehicles.
As for vehicles flying, every vehicle we launch thus far has been a brand new one fresh off the factory floor. Same goes for Dragon capsules although I think that is going to change soon. There isn't really any direction from the top as to when we will begin reflying the same 1st stage vehicle other than as soon as we can (with the general assumption we have to be comfortable with it). If I had to guess I would say post flight 30 though for a customer reflight mission. We still use a lot of traditional aerospace parts that don't have the reliability needed for multiple launches along with still trying to figure out exactly how to land this beast back at the launch site.
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That's an interesting article. Got me thinking, I assume SpaceX has better video of the incident than what people were shooting from the ground. From some sort of aircraft or satellite tasked for this?
I'm actually not even sure how long it takes to fully build a vehicle. The rate is increasing weekly as well, each vehicle that gets built means the process becomes more streamlined and easier to build. The reduction of man hours witch hunt has been huge. My guess though from when the first piece of raw material hits a machine is at least 8 months, probably closer to a year though ahead of launch though. Raw material orders are being placed in huge lumps for some of the more exotic materials we get; years ahead of actual need dates. The entire production process is still very amazing to me ... I look at a launch vehicle that we build and its very simple ... couple tanks, some valves, vents, bolt on an engine and you go light the match. Look at an airplane and the production line they go down theres lots of different videos, this one popped up first in a search Anyways getting off track
One thing about that laser thingy that a co worker pointed out was had it actually been a laser then that would have also given an ignition source for the LOx in the 2nd stage tank. From the videos I have seen the vehicle purely crumpled with very little explosion (relatively ... for example thats a Boeing Delta II that a solid rocket booster strap on blew up not far above the pad).
Even after this issue if the entire launch service industry isn't shaking in their boots yet then they will be out of business soon enough. You can see the repercussions already of us just hitting a barge with a rocket not even being able to make it stay upright and now all of a sudden ULA and Arianne are working on "reusable" sections of their vehicles. I am glad they are seeing the light though and making moves in the same direction, competition is good for everyone. To sit back idly and not admit that the aerospace industry can change is foolish.
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Elon's always stated that his companies were a means to an end. They need to be profitable, but only to encourage others to change their ways for the benefit of mankind. I am glad Elon exists.
Each of his projects have a very specific goal to better humanity. Very few companies can say the same, with a straight face.
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@verge: A failed strut in the liquid oxygen tank caused the SpaceX rocket explosion theverge.com/2015/7/20/9004463/space-x-falcon-9-rocket-explosion-cause-explained?utm_campaign=theverge&utm_content=article&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter# pic.twitter.com/kvyKGclPNo
I don't understand how SpaceX can expect to survive the deaths that it will take to get humans to mars.
Apollo cost a few people's lives in accidents. Mars is another order of magnitude compared to the moon and you don't have the will of the people involved in a cold war to sacrifice for this.
It is such an obvious "billionaire takes too much acid at Burning Man" idea.
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Only skimmed the article, but did they give a reason for the change of venue? I assume water based would mean less damage, so maybe they are confident enough the next test will be successful?
Being in international waters has zero regulations which is the main reason. The amount of paperwork and testing to be able to launch a vehicle from an Air Force base is amazing. Now think about a vehicle that is now headed towards land at an incredible speed and has never been tested before. The Air Force hasn't even thought up paperwork for all that haha! If you can do it on a barge than your case is really good for landing on land. If you can hit a barge then your case is better than nothing I suppose lol.
The vehicle actually has zero care about land or water as the vehicle is purely hitting a single spot. Whether the barge can hold position and the swells are low enough for the landing to happen is where luck of the weather will come in. Otherwise there isn't much difference. Well one more difference is the fuel to burn in order to head back the direction you came vs just float it down range ...
My bet though is the barges aren't going to be put out of service any time soon. Some missions that are really heavy will require it to land down range instead of at the launch site
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That was something I was thinking about, the difference between landing downrange and back at launch site. To me it would almost be easier to orbit once and land instead of burning fuel to come backwards. Reminds me of the aborts for the shuttle. (Return to launch, Transalantic Abort, Abort Once around and the Abort to Orbit.)
Unfortunately the 1st stage isn't high enough or fast enough to abort and orbit. The 2nd stage does a lot of work. The barge position is basically where the stage would hit if it were just left alone. The only reason the engines light is to orient the vehicle tail end first, to keep the vehicle from oscillating and then finally to slow down prior to landing (or impact )
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That's a sweet picture. Everything that I could see looked awesome. The VPs were jumping around like little kids in the front of mission control so you know it had to have gone really well
Space X made history again, every other rocket company had to have muttered some unpleasant words when the 1st stage landed, and if they didn't they should be as the entire rocket industry just changed.
Very cool stuff!
About the stage coming in hot, it's easier from a propellant utilization POV. If you try to come in slow you use a lot of time and prop in order to slow down and stay slow. As opposed to lighting the engine at the last second with barely enough prop onboard means you can take more weight to space or better trajectories etc.
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Which one is which? Assuming the left is blast off, why does the landing have a break in the thrust/engine in that picture, was it literally not burning during that time?
The angle also looks really steep, but I suppose the aircraft can be upright relatively easy despite the landing arch?
Yeah @tturner86 nailed it with regards to the breaks in th engine light. The arc is normal and depends on a couple factors, trajectory you are launching towards meaning are you going to an orbit that is near the equator or polar orbits or whichever. I'm guessing part of the reason that orbcomm sats were switched to this flight was because of trajectory. Orbcomm sats go into polar orbit which means they circle the earth vertically over the poles (sorta). Think GPS satellites and also spy satellites. As opposed to the SES sat that was supposed to go into a comm position which is normally geosynchronous. Think direct tv receiver. Those sats sit out at a spot that allows them to rotate at the same angle as the earth. So once you position it then it covers the same part of the earth all the time. In contrast a full orbit for a polar orbit sat is something on the order of 90 minutes.
So the reason for switching those missions is GEO orbits require a lot more speed so the arc change from launch site is large. What that means is your down range velocity is higher, and if you want to hit the launch pad with the 1st stage whatever speed your going down range with you have to stop and have some speed the opposite way. Polar orbits the 1st stage can keep a relatively straight up trajectory and then let the 2nd stage do a lot of the horizontal speed work.
But the problem is you can't go straight up because if something were to blow up 10 miles up and the vehicle was straight over the launch pad the debris field would be huge and casualties could almost be guaranteed to a small extent. If you want to watch something scary YouTube search delta 2 explosion. Happened in the 90s and the barrage of molten metal that rained down on everything was amazing. So to cap this off the vehicle will arc over the ocean to minimize the debris field. If you were launching like sea launch from the middle of the ocean off a platform then going straight up wouldn't be an issue.
All this comes back to stocks though ... And the unfortunate detail that I doubt space x will go public any time soon. 5 years minimum would be my best guess. Problem is it's not in elons best interest to go public.
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Dragon is on its way to the International Space Station, and capture by the station crew set for early Sunday morning. The first stage of the Falcon 9 landed on our Of Course I Still Love You droneship in the Atlantic.
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Very impressive.
Any idea of the wind during the "landing"? According to the sea aspect I'll say around 25 knots, which is perfect for wind-surfing but quite high for a rocket!
The sea was not very calm either, that's really an amazing performance!
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Not sure exactly but the feeling I got is the waves were at the upper limits with possibly some excedences. Winds I would think have less of an overall effect on the landing because the vehicle descends so rapidly. The waves and ocean currents are much more an issue as that drives deck angle, ability of the platform to stay in place etc.
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I had a dream the other night that SpaceX and Nasa had started daily launches to and from Mars. In my dream it was about a 28 day journey. It was kind of like the old west. The government was deeding plots of land on Mars to families willing to travel and colonize it. SpaceX was supplying all of the habitats and materials. In my dream Elon was giving a safety meeting on the surface of Mars. I don't remember the details but it was about Martian weather and that there had already be settlers who had died.
It was a great dream. I was sad to awake.
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What a misleading title ... The price difference has been known all along, not a surprise. I sure hope ULA is doing some serious sole searching though to figure out what niche they are going to cater to
If things go perfectly performance wise there is a good chance of hitting the barge. Be very cool if they can stick the landing with a high performance required payload
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SpaceX is such a cool company. If only there was an IPO...
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Its odd that Andy Griffith was the original Elon Musk with the tail-landing reusable spaceship in Salvage 1. As a kid I built a scale model of the Vulture.. and blew it up.
Video of them loading the Falcon 9 up on a flatbed via a crane at about 4:40. Also, a youtube user commented that this is the CRS4 and not the JCSAT... for what it's worth...
I worked for some major corporations but the closest parallel for slicing through fat, bloated & outmoded competition would have been Dell Corp. in the 90s. Tech stock of the century next to Microsoft depending how how you counted it. I was at a level where I occasionally heard the private thoughts of Michael Dell and he knew what was going to happen (Apple's current dilemma).
The superlative quarter results after several years of kicking ass got not-so-amazing, expansion began to saturate and the shareholders became an increasing anchor. It was not just the dot com bubble burst, that was an opportunity but Dell was bogged down in crap and could not exploit it sufficiently.
Things change from hey were all young and crazy, dontcha just love it! to 'big company syndrome' really fast. All they could do was buy other companies to introduce innovation as the straight jacket of corporate conformist behavior tightened.
I worked for another private company that similarly took over its market but never lost its vision.
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from the FiveThirtyEight Newsletter
More than $350 million
According to the Government Accountability Office, Department of Defense space launches from the United Launch Alliance (ULA) — a collaboration between Boeing and Lockheed Martin — cost more than $350 million each, compared to the less than $100 million per-launch cost SpaceX has promised. Politico reported: “Even the Pentagon’s acquisition chief grants that the creation of ULA — a monopoly criticized by the Federal Trade Commission when it was formed at the government’s behest a decade ago — may have been a mistake.” [POLITICO]
Amazing, the landing seems to work all the time now!
I click on the youtube link and was not sure it was live, that was 20 secs before landing .
Thx @tturner86 !
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Chump change in reality but all the little stuff adds up.
Exciting how the landings are becoming more routine nowadays. From talking with some buddies still there they are all on a huge push to ramp production up even quicker than it is today. Everything consists of doing things more efficiently and not cutting corners. In the last 6 months approx 3 weeks has been shed off the time that a vehicle sits in Texas (current bottleneck). That's almost in half if I'm not mistaken.
Current stock price hasn't reflected the excitement level around landing the vehicles which is interesting. At this point just have to be patient I think.
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@tturner86 ya I believe it's still going but at a snail pace in comparison. The business model needs high rate of launches to keep going so that is the huge focus. And reliability. The Texas launch center is mainly so they don't have to deal with the Air Force for every rock you turn over and pee they take. Some of their requirements are good, some are just dumb.
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I was back there to watch one of the grasshopper tests and talk about surreal ... When the engine passes the horizon into the blue sky the entire thing looks fake, then you remember that the vibration is shaking the heart out of your chest! Some of the videos show the same thing too.
I have some buddies in temple. Still think about moving out that way
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I think this video was posted a ways back but the go pro was working until just before it hit the dirt. It was a very awesome video to watch all the way through. It gives a different perspective as to how the atmosphere affects an object like that. It started out tumbling just a little bit and then got so fast you were sick just watching it
theres 
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