SpaceX Successfully Lands A Falcon 9 Rocket At Sea For The Third Time (theverge.com) 107
An anonymous reader writes: SpaceX has successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean for the third time in a row. The Verge reports: "It was the third time in a row the company has landed a rocket booster at sea, and the fourth time overall. The landing occurred a few minutes before the second stage of the Falcon 9 delivered the THAICOM-8 satellite to space, where it will make its way to geostationary geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). GTO is a high-elliptical orbit that is popular for satellites, sitting more than 20,000 miles above the Earth. The 3,100-kilogram satellite will spend 15 years improving television and data signals across Southeast Asia." The company landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship for the second time earlier this month. UPDATE 5/27/15: Frank249 writes in a comment: "Elon Musk just tweeted: 'Rocket landing speed was close to design max and used up contingency crush core, hence back and forth motion. Prob ok, but some risk of tipping.'" He went on to tweet: "Crush core is aluminum honeycomb for energy absorption in the telescoping actuator. Easy to replace (if Falcon makes it back to port)."
Congratulations! (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations to everyone at Space X who contributed to this awesome achievement! You have made space flight exciting again!
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Interesting)
I watched the live stream on this newfangled internet thingy and I must say, I felt a little bit of the old excitement I experienced as a kid when watching the Apollo missions on our old black & white TV back in the day. Sticking that landing (on a friggin drone ship fer Chrissakes) for the second time in a row is one heckuva feat of engineering,
Tell you what, those SpaceX kids are welcome on my lawn anytime.
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Too bad they always seem to have trouble getting us good live footage of the touchdown. On the first successful ocean landing, they switched from the excellent chase plane footage to the terrible local camera link from Of Course I Still Love You at precisely the wrong time, just as the rocket was touching down. All we got was a lot of fire and smoke, then they switched back to the chase plane when the rocket was standing still. We had to wait for the full chase plane video to be posted the next day, to see
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On landing attempts when they do have NASA's chase plane available, watch NASA TV simultaneously on another monitor. They don't cut to the barge view and you actually get to see the landing. Overall SpaceX's coverage is much better but they do screw up sometimes so having NASA's feed at the same time is a good backup.
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But the NASA missions are just to low earth orbit, with a single engine landing burn since they have plenty of fuel left. The three engine landing burn after a GTO launch must be even more spectacular, but I guess it will take a while before we get to see one. Can't they just put a gyroscopically stabilized camera onto a small boat in the vicinity?
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the Of Course I Still Love You
Who named that ship, Iain M. Banks?!
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Indirectly, yes [tor.com]. Elon Musk named the two drone ships "Just Read the Instructions" and "Of Course I Still Love You" in honor of Iain M. Banks, RIP. They were both names of spaceships in his book "The Player of Games".
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Bravo, SpaceX!
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But the real achievement I think they're aiming for is to go through exciting and reach the boring on the far side.
How Many Times Can You Recycle? (Score:2)
I'm interested to know that having recouvered the First Stage, how many times can it be refurbished and reused before failure rates effect the launch?
And, perhaps heven if it's not reusable as a whole, are there indevidual parts that can be reused? It's got to be made of top quality materials, so perhaps there is value in simply shredding it all up and recycling the basic material?
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Since you have yet to make a valid argument, you cannot make a valid argument at all.
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No, that's not the answer at all. Just because they haven't done something yet doesn't mean it cannot be done.
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The question wasn't "can it be done". The question was, "how many times can it be done".
Right now, it cannot be done. So the answer to "how many times can it be done" is zero.
Re:How Many Times Can You Recycle? (Score:5, Insightful)
Elon Musk has stated that their design goal is 100 uses. That's pretty ambitious and time will tell if this is feasible or not. I'm sure when they do reuse the stage for the first dozen times they will be doing a lot of structural analysis and look for cracks with x-rays until they completely understand the stage's failure modes.
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I think 100 uses is unachievable in the near future but even if they manage only 10-20, it'll be an enormous advantage over everyone else.
Re: How Many Times Can You Recycle? (Score:2)
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Congratulations to everyone at Space X who contributed to this awesome achievement! You have made space flight exciting again!
I agree with you. Completely.
And the fact that is being met with by a yawn from the popular press is a signal that the incredible achievements of SpaceX are "the new normal."
Now that is yet another Grand Accomplishment!
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Congratulations to everyone at Space X who contributed to this awesome achievement! You have made space flight exciting again!
I agree with you. Completely.
And the fact that is being met with by a yawn from the popular press is a signal that the incredible achievements of SpaceX are "the new normal."
I'm not ready for "the new normal". I made comments a few months back about how the Air Force range officers are completely unaccustomed to the operational tempo SpaceX will have to achieve in order to fill all their contracts. I didn't realize that I was completely unaccustomed to their new operational tempo. I've missed watching the last two launches live. I'm used to being able to look at the SpaceX site once every quarter and not missing anything. This is ridiculous.
*shakes fist* Damn you Elon Musk
Bit of a hard landing (Score:5, Informative)
Elon Musk just tweeted: 'Rocket landing speed was close to design max & used up contingency crush core, hence back & forth motion. Prob ok, but some risk of tipping.'
Re:Bit of a hard landing (Score:5, Informative)
Musk continues: 'Crush core is aluminum honeycomb for energy absorption in the telescoping actuator. Easy to replace (if Falcon makes it back to port).'
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Crush honeycomb leg used in the Apollo LM (Score:5, Informative)
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For interest's sake, the idea of a crushable hhoneycomb landing leg arrangement was used for the Apollo Lumar Modules. It was very light as it only needed to be used once, unlike a hydraulic or spring system.
Have a look at page 6 of the LM Structures document at http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a... [nasa.gov]
So? If a technology works, you keep using it.
Don't fix what isn't broken.
At any rate, these are not the spot-welded honeycombs of the Apollo days. I would wager that that they are extruded aluminum honeycombs.
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The original poster was not criticizing reuse of ideas. What's with the tone?
At the sound of the tone, the time will be 11:40 am GMT.
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The original poster was not criticizing reuse of ideas. What's with the tone?
OK. My tone was harsh – the opposite of what it should have been.
This was actually a textbook case of not fixing what isn't broken, despite SpaceX modding so much other stuff. They did not throw the baby out with the bath-water, so I should have been supportive of the "For interest's sake..." comment.
When will the Falcon 9 become reusable? (Score:1)
Is there a time line out there when the will actually reuse a Falcon 9 rocket? What type of milestones are they looking for?
If I understand correctly the rockets that they are recovering are for evaluating purposes only. That is, they are trying to figure out the type of stress and damage a rocket undergoes so they can design a rocket that is durable enough to be launched. The last one suffered so much damage that it could never fly again. That being said, that particular landing was a difficult one. The ro
Re:When will the Falcon 9 become reusable? (Score:5, Informative)
Is there a time line out there when the will actually reuse a Falcon 9 rocket? What type of milestones are they looking for?
The plan currently is for the first reuse to occur by the end of summer http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/09/falcon_9_rocket_reused_in_two_months/ [theregister.co.uk] but given SpaceX's general tendency to not do things on time, by November seems like a safer bet.
If I understand correctly the rockets that they are recovering are for evaluating purposes only. That is, they are trying to figure out the type of stress and damage a rocket undergoes so they can design a rocket that is durable enough to be launched. The last one suffered so much damage that it could never fly again.
Not quite. The first landed rocket was kept for evaluation purposes. The one that suffered damage seemed to be possibly reflyable but given the damage they decided that it was better to subject to it to very extensive testing. They are intending to relaunch (very likely it will be the second landed one which landed on the drone ship).
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To be fair, the first one they successfully landed was always destined to end up as a lawn ornament.
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I think you are being overly optimistic here. I think next spring is a lot more likely.
Very clear landing but a little hard (Score:5, Informative)
Elon's tweeted that the landing came down a bit hard but it shouldn't have done anything but impacted the crumple zones on the landing legs. Since the legs are replaced anyways, this shouldn't impact reusability. Right now, this is the fourth successful landing, and it looks like the basics of landing have been really worked out. Whether they can then actually reuse them is still in the air.
Also, there's been prior speculation that SpaceX was going to try to reuse the fairing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_fairing [wikipedia.org]- which is the nose cone around the payload which helps protect the payload and keep it aerodynamic during the first part of the launch. If they can do fairing recover and reuse that would be another avenue for serious cost reduction. They mentioned fairing reuse as something they were working towards on the broadcast which is as far as I know the most prominent time they've mentioned it. So it looks like they are going to be trying to seriously do that. How much this all actually reduces cost remains to be seen.
Right now, even without reuse, SpaceX is substantially cheaper than every other company for the medium size payloads. (They aren't launching the really small ones and until the Falcon Heavy is set up they won't be able to launch the really big ones). So even without reuse they are having a substantial impact on the market. The other major players, ULA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Launch_Alliance [wikipedia.org] (which is a joint Boeing and Lockheed company) and Ariane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Launch_Alliance [wikipedia.org] (the big French rocket launcher who is currently the biggest rocket launch company) are both planning on reuse programs, but they are essentially playing catchup. ULA has a plan for just reusing the engines which may be interesting. Ariane has a similarly interesting idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adeline_(rocket) [wikipedia.org] but neither imagines reuse any earlier than 2020, by which point, SpaceX will have been doing full first stage reuse and probably even doing reuse for the Falcon Heavy and will be working on their next generation Raptor rockets. That's not to say that ULA and the others aren't doing interesting things - their ACES proposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Cryogenic_Evolved_Stage [wikipedia.org] is really neat, but in terms of reducing cost through reuse, SpaceX is way ahead of everyone else.
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Nah. He posted the same kind of thing non-anonymously above. He's a jack of all trades Slashdot troll.
Fess up time (Score:5, Insightful)
So good work, Spacex! Landing pencils is quite a trick, and yer doin' it.
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Not quite yet, they still have to prove that these returned boosters can reliably be reused. However it seems extremely unlikely that will be a showstopper, the mere fact that they are reliably refiring after "reentry" for a precision landing sequence seems to prove that they come back in decent shape. At most they may require a few modifications, a few components strengthened, some extra insulation, a few extra sensors, maybe a few components moved. They've already blown the skeptics out of the water wh
honeycomb crush core? (Score:4, Funny)
so he's the boss of a company distributing solar panels, making electric cars and created reusable rockets which is all well and good but now he's beating so many levels in Candy Crush that's cleared entire areas I haven't even heard about?! but... that's my specialty. STAY IN YOUR LANE ELON! >:(
military tech in private hands (Score:1)
Re: A waste of effort (Score:2)
Interesting, so does that mean that non capitalist countries already have a cure for every condition he mentioned?
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Simple, none of those make anyone any money.
Or work.
Re: A waste of effort (Score:1)
I agree. We should take all that science money and use it to fund more research into the effects of Patriarchy on Transgendered Bathroom Ruotines and the role of disabled lesbian single parents in raising social conciousness with ever increasing revolutionary zeal !!
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Global warming and world hunger are both problems with direct benefits from cheap space access. Cheaper space access means better environmental modeling since we can have more weather and climate satellites. That also means that farmers and the like get better data which helps plan crops. Also, better weather reports along with GPS help reduce the cost of ocean and air travel making moving food and other goods easier, faster, and use less fossil fuels.
Moreover, in the long-run, not having all humans on o
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Global warming and world hunger are both problems with direct benefits from cheap space access.
There is no "world hunger," there is only local hunger, which is due to local governments who enforce low levels of economic freedom.
Global warming will react to widespread carbon taxes.
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> There is no "world hunger," there is only local hunger, which is due to local governments who enforce low levels of economic freedom.
Failure to keep the peace is not the same as "enforcing low levels of economic freedom". But it remains an ongoing fact of life for millions of people around the world. It need not even be caused by incompetence or malice. Take a good look at how AIDS has destroyed economies in Africa over the last few decades.
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Some African economies have been doing well. Sub-Saharan Africa is devastated by AIDS. Swaziland, Botswana, and Lesotho are the worst hit with over 20% infection among working age adults South Africa is a close follower in those numbers: that's not a surprise, it borders on or actually contains those countries. That information is roughly 5 years old: I'm afraid that if it's gotten noticeably better, it's because many of the AIDS victims have since died.
The chart at http://www.avert.org/professio... [avert.org], based
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The governance of these countries has far more to do with economic growth than AIDS. For example, here is a kleptocratic dictatorship with a closed-access economy and low economic growth, and another with a level of democracy, open-access economy, and a high level of economic growth:
Swaziland [heritage.org] 1.5% 5-year compound annual GDP growth, GDP $7,797 per capita. Economic Freedom Status: Mostly Unfree. "Swaziland's economy is mired in stagnation, destabilized by poor governance, ongoing social unrest, and a lack
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Botswana is doing well _for the wealthy_. They import 90% of their food, and the poor are starving to death. The middle class, whose income comes from unrenewable mineral wealthy, are spending roughly half their income on food. The poor are starving because they simply cannot afford the imported food.
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I'm sure it still sucks to be poor in Botswana, but it is better than in other sub-Saharan African countries with lower levels of economic freedom. Botswana is slowly growing out of poverty.
From World Bank Botswana Poverty Assessment 2015 [worldbank.org]
"Living conditions of Botswana have improved over the past decade and poverty has reduced significantly. This decrease was accompanied by a considerable decline in both depth and severity of poverty, indicating that consumption has improved among the poor. While rural area
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Cheaper space access means better environmental modeling since we can have more weather and climate satellites.
What's actually wanted is more high-resolution data, sensors in between the sensors. We need more weather stations. I am appalled that we don't have a standard for IoT weather stations yet. I want to make the data publicly available, though not directly from the device but through some kind of gateway. But I also want a cheap, good weather station, with just an ethernet connection and no other interface. I suppose I could build one, but I'd have to buy an anemometer for calibration anyway.
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We need more weather stations.
We need more weather stations in remote areas such as the Arctic. Areas where most people would be able to install an IoT weather station are already sufficiently covered by existing ones.
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Why are we doing things like this? They're a waste of time and money, which could be spent on things like curing HIV and cancer, ending world hunger, or finding a solution to global warming. Spaceflight solves none of these problems and is a complete waste of money. It's also a waste of talent because these scientists could be putting their effort into solving so many more important problems. Why go to space when we need to solve our problems here on Earth? I'll be censored to -1 because this is unpopular with Slashdot users, most of whom don't care about solving the real problems in the world.
Because we could put every available cent into solving the world's problems, and we'd end up broke, and still with all the world's problems.
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They launched a communications satellite into orbit. It's not a "waste" of anything. They aren't "exploring space." They are a company that was hired to perform a task for a company and they did it. By doing it the way they did they can reduce the cost of launches by 30%. It's no different than hiring a trucking company to haul produce to market.
Re:A waste of effort (Score:4, Informative)
I can't tell if you're trolling or doing a sarcastic piss-take of an SJW. However. "We" aren't doing it, Elon Musk and SpaceX are doing it. They are doing it because it's Musk's money and Musk's company, so they're going to be doing what's important to Musk, not what's important to you. If you disagree, feel free to earn a few billion of your own dollars and and start your own company and then go ahead and try to solve whatever problems are important to you. Best of luck in your new endeavors. You're welcome.
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Social Justice: When an SJW gets punched in the face.
Hell of a sig there, Hanzo. Advocating violence. What are you, twelve years old?
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AC trolling is a waste of time and money. Discuss.
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but don't forget that Science is not Just One Thing
these folks are most likely complete rubbish in doing things like assembling Bikes or Cooking 9 course dinners or raising children (without using lots and lots of drugs).
besides this kind of thing makes the 0.001% crowd need to Prove Their Manhood (which can be done via giving pallets of money to Other Causes).
Re:A waste of effort (Score:5, Insightful)
Why pay for an internet connection to bitch on slashdot when you could use that money to feed a starving child somewhere in the world? How dare we allow mindless entertainment like sports, movies, or video games to exist when the money from any one of those industries could pay to keep people fed across the globe?
The truth is, there are far more useless things out there than telecom satellites and research spacecraft, and in fact, the satellites you dislike so much contribute directly to solving those issues you complain about (like collecting data about icecaps to better inform climate scientists). You're either trolling or completely ignorant.
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Why are we doing things like this? They're a waste of time and money, which could be spent on things like curing HIV and cancer, ending world hunger, or finding a solution to global warming.
Yet another person unfamiliar with diminishing returns on single investments...
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What do you mean "we"? We are not doing things like this. A communications company in Thailand is doing this because it has the odd idea that people in Thailand deserve to have a modern communications infrastructure and will be willing to support it financially.
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Why are we doing things like this? They're a waste of time and money, which could be spent on things like curing HIV and cancer, ending world hunger, or finding a solution to global warming. Spaceflight solves none of these problems and is a complete waste of money. It's also a waste of talent because these scientists could be putting their effort into solving so many more important problems. Why go to space when we need to solve our problems here on Earth? I'll be censored to -1 because this is unpopular with Slashdot users, most of whom don't care about solving the real problems in the world.
It is not a waste of time and money! Spaceflight is a frontier in science and engineering, which is cross pollinated with all other fields of science. From agriculture, environment, communications, astronomy, medicine, meteorology. and so on. Which in turn is about having easy, cheap access to information and education for all humans. Including poor people in remote areas. And tracking and understanding global warming.
And that is only the start. One of Space X's goals is to make access to space real chea
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I resent your trivialisation of all ACs
I'm all out of fucks to give on this one.
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You fuckwits make posting as AC seem like something only masturbating pinheads do
I resent your trivialisation of all ACs
Cowards trivialize themselves by posting as cowards. Ignoring the spellcheck built into your browser just adds to it.
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You fuckwits make posting as AC seem like something only masturbating pinheads do
pretty much
I resent your trivialisation of all ACs
Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself an account.
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You do realize those huge breakthroughs were the result of material science, and studying strange effects.
We have realized that the next group of strange effects are on the quantum layer were practical effects for daily use are harder. Programming languages have changed greatly, modern software isnt written in rust,but c#.
Cars, appliances, are lots more energy efficient. Sure the basics haven't changed. But they work. A hammer isn't a lot different either but today there are 40 different types of ham
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This trend is really apparent when we look at programming languages. Most important software today is still developed in C, which dates from the 1970s, or C++, which dates from the 1980s. There has been some refinement, but K&R C isn't all that different from C11. Newer programming languages meant to replace C and C++ have been total failures. Look at Rust. It's a total joke! Technological progress has stalled. We no longer make the huge breakthroughs we used to make.
Bad example. That's just people being lazy. You can use whatever you want. As to the lack of huge breakthroughs, well, all the low hanging fruit has been picked already - note that most industries are like that. As to the fact that C/C++ hasn't even reflected many of those huge breakthroughs (automatic memory management, usable code-as-data, etc.), that kind of doesn't prevent you from using other embodiments of those breakthroughs. Of course, there's still a lot to be done to complete the basic computing b
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automatic memory management
Usually poorly managed. Leading to performance hits and/or exaggerated memory requirements. Which can be fixed by using manual memory management like the one in C.
usable code-as-data
Polymorphic code? This is usually considered as a vector for injecting exploits in a C program. Ideally you want the code segment to be read-only and non-modifiable at runtime.
A lot of times something that is defined as a breakthrough or a great idea is in fact a terrible idea in practice.
Not to say th
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Usually poorly managed. Leading to performance hits and/or exaggerated memory requirements. Which can be fixed by using manual memory management like the one in C.
Performance is best achieved by means of an elegant architecture, not by means of a thousand and one special cases. Whatever you "win" by having a primitive language model, you lose, e.g., by inability to perform useful algebraic transformations such as loop or stream fusion across large pieces of your program (or don't you consider redundant memory accesses as "exaggerated memory requirements"?). It's not entirely clear that the C way wins in modern very large applications - at least not without an excessi
Re:Big fuckin deal (Score:5, Insightful)
He said, on the Internet.