What's interesting too is that the descent path of the rocket has an engine failure trajectory that will ensure the rocket will fall into the ocean if a failure occurs during the powered descent.
That's a function as much of physics and geography as planning, and one of the reasons Cape Canaveral exists---there's a lot of Atlantic Ocean in which to ditch a failing spacecraft on either the launch or landing vectors.
There's a reason the United States' launch facilities are primarily along the east coast of the country.
Hehe, me neither. This will be with me for days if not longer. I feel really terribly lucky. When I was 4 my dad got me out of bed to watch the moonshot and the landing, now many years later I get to watch the next real step in the humans-in-space saga.
They really poured on the PR, lots of people going "Hi, I'm lead mechanical engineer for this or that" and then delivering a perfect speech that would have taken a lot of prectice to deliver to a camera as smoothly like that.
It's nice to see a lot of the lessons from media training. :D
If you're referring to Trip's speech (guy with sunglasses and beard), that's one of my buddies and that's exactly what he's like. He's extremely personable and likely did that with very few takes.
I used to sell test equipment and software to SpaceX's launch ops, avionics, and calibration crews, starting between launches 2 and 3. It was touch and go back in those days. These guys have worked their tails off for over a decade and deserve every bit of congratulations they receive.
Walking into the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne was always a humbling experience. Instant "I am the dumbest person in this room" syndrome.
I watched it with my four year old daughter on my lap, and then we made a rocket out of a paper towel roll. So it's good outreach and great to see a variety of faces of people who put such an amazing accomplishment together.
If you look carefully at the YouTube live streams, you'll notice you can scroll them back all the way to the beginning - the "live" part is always at the very end :).
Completely amazing! I'm sure I heard a "holy shit" or two there in the audience. :)
EDIT: One question for the rocket scientists here: exactly how reusable do they expect these returned first stage rockets to be? What is the process of certifying that a returned rocket is fit to fly, and what components are most likely to need repairing/replacing with each launch?
> Musk said that a rocket's first stage accounts for three-quarters of its total price tag, so a vehicle with a reusable first stage can be produced at far less cost — assuming the hardware is fully and rapidly reusable.
~75% savings seems like a "best case scenario" number.
I think SpaceX is sufficiently motivated by their man at the top that they'll keep doing great things even in the total absence of competition. But it would still be great to see others go this way, to see different approaches tried and such. It sounds like some other launchers were looking at reusability plans before (Ariane had plans for some wacky thing that would fly back just the engines) but now that it's been demonstrated to work I imagine it will become much more serious.
ULA is already trying to imitate them with their announced 'Vulcan' concept, where the engines eject and parachute back, but that's (many) years away from actually happening.
Aside from the cost savings, the other goal of reusing boosters is to reduce the time between launches.
The challenge for SpaceX is to inspect the booster, integrate a new second stage & payload, and relaunch in a few weeks. With a few years of work, it should be almost like a cargo jet turnaround.
ULA's Vulcan plan is to parachute the engines and pumps back, catch the rope with a helicopter, inspect and reattach to a new set of tanks. That seems likely to be a little more complex to me.
The catching with a helicopter part is complex, but not time-consuming - either it works or it doesn't. The rest is probably if anything easier - I'd imagine SpaceX will have to tear down the booster entirely for inspection, at least for the first few hundred. These things are (or will be) built to be disassembled and reassembled, attaching engines and pumps to a new tank is not going to be a long and complex process.
The other important factor is how many times you get to re-use the stage, because that tells you the saving per launch. If you get to re-use it once, then on each flight you save 37.5% of the launch cost. If you re-use it again twice (3 launches of the first stage) you save 50% of the launch cost per flight (each flight costs you 1/3 of the first stage cost). And so on. That's not factoring in refurb and re-fueling costs, of course.
There's really not a lot of costs that can add up for reuse of these stages. It'll require a bit of cleaning up, a few new bits and pieces replaced and added, and a lot of inspection work. But most of the cost of the stage is in manufacturing the engines and tanks, so it should add up to enormous savings, even if it's relatively costly to reuse each stage compared to the theoretical limits.
Edit: the flip-side is that the reliability and robustness improvements from reusability may be as big a win as cost. Currently it costs tens of millions of dollars to launch a rocket to orbit, which means it's almost never done except as part of a paid launch. Moreover, despite the seemingly high number of launches very few of those launches represent expanding the test-envelope much, every single launch is typically straight down the middle of the performance envelope, to maximize the chance of success. That results in learning very little about these vehicles despite how much they've been flown. By introducing reuse and dropping the cost of flight it may become possible to do real test programs, which would make it possible to determine the flight envelope characteristics of vehicles and help lead to improving designs over time.
And with the amount of redundancy built in they might even go with 'acceptable loss' in terms of engines that cut out early in flight. Which makes you wonder how many engines they could lose and still complete a mission.
Falcon 9 is designed to withstand losing one engine and still make it to orbit.
Reusability makes it more interesting. There's a lot of extra fuel on board now which could be used to make up for lost engines if you're willing to throw away the first stage.
Good point. Orbcomm already paid off the booster. Now SpaceX can take it up for a joy ride for only a few hundred grand of gas and really fly the fins off it.
I bet they relaunch this booster on their own dime as a demo.
I have no inside knowledge, but I'd suspect Orbcomm paid next to nothing for this launch.
Between "You'll be the first launch since the last one... You know, that one with a small anomaly..." and fact that this was the first launch of a new version of the falcon 9 (with slightly different engines, cooler/more pressurized O2), I know that if I were negociating for Orbcomm, I'd ask spaceX to cross the last digit on their bill (and probably have a much more expensive insurance policy in return).
And to delay a _commercial_ launch in order to accommodate weather for the _landing_ ? AFAIK, that's another world's first in history and I think that tells a lot on the underlying story.
Don't get me wrong, this is an amazing achievement, and the economics of it don't really matter when it comes to the technical prowess
Not quite. These satellites were indeed originally supposed to go up on a Falcon 1, but not 11 at a time. They got a pretty big discount, but not quite a pittance.
Is was a substantial discount, but not "next to nothing". Something like $42 million for two launches, versus $65 million for one launch. And they've been patient with delays and such, which costs a lot of money too.
The launch service provider has the last say on the date of the launch. The customer provides orbital parameters, and the launch just needs to make sure that insertion happens. Delaying for weather is pretty common, and as long as the payload gets to where it's supposed to, everyone's happy. The Orbcomm contract wouldn't have had a launch date specified, except in terms of NET (no earlier than) or similar. The launch windows are decided by SpaceX based on the requirements, and are the other constraint, and there was a window on both days.
Depends on the procedure they ultimately decided to use for the prep. Originally the the shuttle main engines had to be taken apart, with every part inspected before the next launch. If they have to do something like that there's not much point.
But if they can get it to point where it's a matter of gassing it up for the next flight, that's a huge savings. Fuel is a few hundred grand for a rocket that costs sixty million dollars. It's nothing, basically.
Hopefully it won't be anything like the Shuttle. The Shuttle was bleeding edge in a dozen different ways. The engines were extremely high performance and that made them fragile.
SpaceX seems to build things a lot more low-key. They don't use fancy propellants, their engines aren't particularly efficient, and overall they seem to go more for robustness and simplicity.
(Simplicity doesn't really apply for a crazy-ass landing scheme. But aside from that....)
Obviously it remains to be seen, but I think it's likely to be a lot more gas-and-go than the Shuttle.
The first stage rocket doesn't go nearly as high or as fast as the shuttle though, no? AFAIK the shuttle had to have its heat shield replaced after each return trip, and it landed aerodynamically rather than via rocket power. I'd presume that the powered descent of the first stage means that it doesn't need any sort of heat shielding, at the expense of more stress on the engines, thus requiring a bespoke inspection process.
It doesn't have a heat shield because it simply doesn't go fast enough relative to the atmosphere to need one, it does not 're-enter' the atmosphere at nearly the same horizontal speeds the shuttle did (from full orbital velocity down to landing speed). Even so, the stresses from heating up, cooling down, launch and landing are such that they will likely magnaflux that whole thing from one end to the other just to be sure there aren't any defects, especially until they have more experience, they'll pick it apart and inspect each and every bit to see how well it performed. Later on when they have much more data they might decide to swap out parts only every so many launches if possible.
The Shuttle engines operate on hydrogen which burns very cleanly. RP-1 will leave the engine dirty with coking, so they definitely need to clean re-assemble each engine.
On the other hand, the solid boosters of the Space Shuttle were severely damaged by the impact and corrosion of the sea water, after "recovery" they were essentially a source of parts for new boosters.
Overall, I really hope they can improve re-usability above what the Space Shuttle achieved.
The first stage goes through at least one full mission duration burn and another ignition before finally launching. So they don't need to be reassembled completely between each firing. I assume they have been repeatedly firing engines for a while now to see how many relights they can get.
FWIW, SpaceX has launched stages after full-length (3 minute plus) burns on the test stand, on a schedule that wouldn't allow time for that kind of teardown. They'll need to do something to clean the engines out eventually, but if several minutes of operation were enough to cause serious gunking, then between those test runs and the multiple runs of the grasshopper test vehicle for landing sequences, they've seen it and know how to deal with it.
(Incidentally, SpaceX is known for keeping some aspect of their operations trade secret, rather than patenting. So, if they had some solvent that dissolved the gunk and simplified the cleanup process, or some such similar trick, it's likely that no one outside the company would know about it.)
The hydrogen in the Space Shuttle Main Engine creates embrittlement in the alloys of the engine. [1][2] The launch sequence also involved running the engines at 104.5% of rated capacity. [3] Before Block II of the engines, the turbopumps needed to be disassembled and rebuilt between flights. [4]
I have no real idea how significant coking of the Merlin engine is, but the SSMEs were hardly "clean".
That right. The 100% level was set at some point during the design process. Later they found ways to slightly increase the thrust. Rather than recalibrate all the numbers, they just kept using the original "100%" and called the new level "104%."
Basically, it's "104% of what the engineers circa 1975 thought the level would be," not 104% of what the hardware was rated for.
The shuttle's main engines were extremely high-performance. They were marvels of engineering but required a lot of work between flights. Just like cars can be optimized for performance or reliability (think Honda Civic versus Ferrari) rocket engines can be made more maintainable and tolerant to long use periods. Not saying Spacex engines are Hondas, but they are probably way less trouble than SSMEs.
Soyez has been flying nearly 50 years. It's the dump truck of space, with 1700 launches to date. Compare that to the much more elaborate Shuttle's 135. Elon would rather have the dump truck than the Ferrari.
How reusable this first stage is? They'll have to study it meticulously to find out. But what they're aiming for is to be able to just refuel it, mount new payload on top, and relight it in the span of hours.
That's an impressively ambitious goal. Has SpaceX mentioned any willingness to use returned first stage rockets to launch astronauts? That would be the ultimate expression of their confidence in this approach, though understandably it may be a long ways off.
Can't find any direct quote about it, but I imagine they're thinking about it and considering it in not-so-far future, given that the new Dragon, which is going to be certified to carry astronauts, is designed to be capable to perform an abort at any time during the mission - which means it's supposed to be able to escape from the blast of an exploding first stage :).
It's funny, with most vehicles you want to avoid being on a completely new, untested one. Think about it: would you be comfortable flying on a brand new 787 that had never been flown before, not even once? I sure wouldn't. Before long, maybe rockets will be like that too.
Depends if the first flight almost destroys the vehicle. It'll be very interesting to see how well this rocket stood up to the flight. Since orbital rockets are within epsilon of just blowing up every time any way!
Incredible project. Reusable rockets. It's science fiction coming to life again, like the 1960s.
Well you want to be in the middle of the curve - you don't feel particularly comfortable flying a 30-year-old plane either (at least I don't). It's just that so far the curve for rockets is more of a spike.
Would you fly passengers on the test flight of a new plane? Yet we do that with rockets. After they've done this a bunch of times to understand any fatigue and thermal degradation problems properly, it should be safer to fly a reused rocket than a new one.
This is in the "to be optimized" bracket. If they can get any kind of consistency landing even heavily strained rockets, they can reframe/readjust/redesign as necessary (like adding more support in areas etc).
Exactly. Now that they got one back they can actually start the process of figuring out what needs to be done to make the first stage as reusable as possible. It's a long road, but they can finally make some headway now.
Got my daughter out of bed at T-5 to watch the launch sequence and possibly history being made. Thrilling to watch it with her, tried to give her an idea of how momentous this is. Wonderful. Congrats to all at SpaceX!
We've reached some amazing heights since then - the flyby of Pluto, intercepting 67P/C-G - but I have to agree. It might not be the biggest step up - but it sure seems like the biggest step forwards.
Government space missions are limited by taxpayer interest/funding, and the high cost of access to space has mostly limited commercial interest to things like communication and surveying satellites. I'm really looking forward to what new opportunities open up in both spaces when we can do so much more for the same cost.
I called this arguably the biggest thing in space travel since 1969. I was thinking about those remarkable missions to Pluto and such, and I really think this is a whole different level. It's a multiplier.
Those missions are remarkable partly because they're amazing firsts, and partly because of what they've been able to accomplish with huge limitations and cost restrictions. They're amazing because of finesse, and if this whole reusability thing works out, you'll be able to brute force them instead. Visiting a comet is amazing. Making launches so cheap that it becomes practical to visit fifty comets would be astounding.
It's a bit like the invention of the steamship. It doesn't take you anywhere new. Sailing ships got the job done. But it transformed the world just the same.
I had to stay late at work to finish last tasks before my vacation time; I was worried I'll miss it, but I managed to tune in just few minutes before the landing. I have a huge grin on my face that won't go off easily. I've been waiting for this moment for a long time, and I'm going to be an insufferable person tomorrow, yelling to everyone in the earshot about it!
Many of us in other countries wouldn't think of chanting our countries name. I know I generally think of my work as "part of humanity" not for my country necessarily. The US is particularly nationalistic compared to others, which can be off putting for non-americans.
> Unless you're German, than that statement is almost certainly false.
What? Imagine a Scandinavian or a Briton chanting their countries names in any other place than a sporting event (with an opposing country). It just doesn't happen.
The only other country I can think of is the Australians. They would chant the "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi! oi! oi!" even at a pub having a beer in the afternoon.
That's no true. If you can obtain a green card SpaceX can hire you. SpaceX was also able to hire foreign national without green card, but it's very difficult.
Especially because of that. This nationalism is so weird. I mean, to me it’s mostly incredibly weird, nothing else much. I just cannot picture myself ever ever ever doing something like that, it’s just so incredibly alien.
But a good demonstration of the toxic virality of nationalism, I guess. It manages to wriggle itself into anything.
I'm somewhat floored. In what way do you find a bunch of Americans expressing pride in their country like that toxic? Good for them. I don't find it objectionable any more than us Brits signing Rule Britannia at the end of the Proms, but I know some do.
I have to admit though that once on holiday in Germany, while siting in the ruins of a castle overlooking the Rhine at night, myself and some Brit and American friends of mine burst into a rousing chorus of Deutschland Uber Alles, much to the dismay of our German friends. So perhaps I have an odd sense of humor in this respect. And no I'm not some kind of proto Nazi. I also once memorized the words to much of the State Anthem of the USSR, and knew how to use them, but alas it's since largely slipped my memory. Life's too short to spend it walking around with a stick up your arse about these things IMHO.
Well, it turns out that nations were better than what preceded them at keeping their citizens safe. I even suspect (but I am not a historian) that they were better at cutting down on wars (though the wars were more serious when they happened).
So if you want nations not to exist, the burden is on you to come up with something better. "No nations" can look like what used to be Somalia, or what used to be Afghanistan.
Bear in mind the video was a live stream. Unless the 'USA' chant was pre-planned and orchestrated by the company, it's just part of the background noise of the employees celebrating.
Amazing! Also an incredible joy to watch is the recent rocket landing from Blue Origin, and the reaction of the engineers who built it as they watch it happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igEWYbnoHc4
I live on the south end of Merritt Island, FL (~25 miles from the launch complex) and the sudden noise reminded me I wanted to watch this! For a second, based on the sound, I thought it may have catastrophically failed until I caught the live stream and people cheering.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadFirst flight since the failure on June 28
Attempt to land 1st stage on land near the launch site
First flight of an upgraded rocket
Launch infographic https://i.imgur.com/D9BdO86.png by /u/zlsa on reddit.
/r/SpaceX Orbcomm OG2 Launch 2 Official Launch Discussion & Updates Thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3xnoz5/rspacex_orbc...
What's interesting too is that the descent path of the rocket has an engine failure trajectory that will ensure the rocket will fall into the ocean if a failure occurs during the powered descent.
There's a reason the United States' launch facilities are primarily along the east coast of the country.
1: https://youtu.be/PuNymhcTtSQ?t=3m15s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRsufOoNOIQ
;).
I can't stop smiling!
It's nice to see a lot of the lessons from media training. :D
I used to sell test equipment and software to SpaceX's launch ops, avionics, and calibration crews, starting between launches 2 and 3. It was touch and go back in those days. These guys have worked their tails off for over a decade and deserve every bit of congratulations they receive.
Walking into the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne was always a humbling experience. Instant "I am the dumbest person in this room" syndrome.
Congrats guys!!
T-4 minutes and still zero actual mission audio...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5bTbVbe4e4
EDIT: and here's just the landing itself: http://www.gfycat.com/WeepyCelebratedAfricanaugurbuzzard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5bTbVbe4e4
EDIT: One question for the rocket scientists here: exactly how reusable do they expect these returned first stage rockets to be? What is the process of certifying that a returned rocket is fit to fly, and what components are most likely to need repairing/replacing with each launch?
~75%.
> Musk said that a rocket's first stage accounts for three-quarters of its total price tag, so a vehicle with a reusable first stage can be produced at far less cost — assuming the hardware is fully and rapidly reusable.
~75% savings seems like a "best case scenario" number.
Now for second stage re-use ;)
Seriously though, now I'm just waiting for updates on BFR / Mars mission development progress.
The challenge for SpaceX is to inspect the booster, integrate a new second stage & payload, and relaunch in a few weeks. With a few years of work, it should be almost like a cargo jet turnaround.
ULA's Vulcan plan is to parachute the engines and pumps back, catch the rope with a helicopter, inspect and reattach to a new set of tanks. That seems likely to be a little more complex to me.
There's really not a lot of costs that can add up for reuse of these stages. It'll require a bit of cleaning up, a few new bits and pieces replaced and added, and a lot of inspection work. But most of the cost of the stage is in manufacturing the engines and tanks, so it should add up to enormous savings, even if it's relatively costly to reuse each stage compared to the theoretical limits.
Edit: the flip-side is that the reliability and robustness improvements from reusability may be as big a win as cost. Currently it costs tens of millions of dollars to launch a rocket to orbit, which means it's almost never done except as part of a paid launch. Moreover, despite the seemingly high number of launches very few of those launches represent expanding the test-envelope much, every single launch is typically straight down the middle of the performance envelope, to maximize the chance of success. That results in learning very little about these vehicles despite how much they've been flown. By introducing reuse and dropping the cost of flight it may become possible to do real test programs, which would make it possible to determine the flight envelope characteristics of vehicles and help lead to improving designs over time.
Reusability makes it more interesting. There's a lot of extra fuel on board now which could be used to make up for lost engines if you're willing to throw away the first stage.
I bet they relaunch this booster on their own dime as a demo.
Between "You'll be the first launch since the last one... You know, that one with a small anomaly..." and fact that this was the first launch of a new version of the falcon 9 (with slightly different engines, cooler/more pressurized O2), I know that if I were negociating for Orbcomm, I'd ask spaceX to cross the last digit on their bill (and probably have a much more expensive insurance policy in return).
And to delay a _commercial_ launch in order to accommodate weather for the _landing_ ? AFAIK, that's another world's first in history and I think that tells a lot on the underlying story.
Don't get me wrong, this is an amazing achievement, and the economics of it don't really matter when it comes to the technical prowess
But if they can get it to point where it's a matter of gassing it up for the next flight, that's a huge savings. Fuel is a few hundred grand for a rocket that costs sixty million dollars. It's nothing, basically.
SpaceX seems to build things a lot more low-key. They don't use fancy propellants, their engines aren't particularly efficient, and overall they seem to go more for robustness and simplicity.
(Simplicity doesn't really apply for a crazy-ass landing scheme. But aside from that....)
Obviously it remains to be seen, but I think it's likely to be a lot more gas-and-go than the Shuttle.
On the other hand, the solid boosters of the Space Shuttle were severely damaged by the impact and corrosion of the sea water, after "recovery" they were essentially a source of parts for new boosters.
Overall, I really hope they can improve re-usability above what the Space Shuttle achieved.
(Incidentally, SpaceX is known for keeping some aspect of their operations trade secret, rather than patenting. So, if they had some solvent that dissolved the gunk and simplified the cleanup process, or some such similar trick, it's likely that no one outside the company would know about it.)
I have no real idea how significant coking of the Merlin engine is, but the SSMEs were hardly "clean".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement [2] http://www.tms.org/Superalloys/10.7449/1991/Superalloys_1991... [3] http://www.interspacenews.com/FeatureArticle/tabid/130/Defau... [4] http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/174534main_ssme.pdf
Basically, it's "104% of what the engineers circa 1975 thought the level would be," not 104% of what the hardware was rated for.
Incredible project. Reusable rockets. It's science fiction coming to life again, like the 1960s.
hah! Tears in my eyes here this is absolutely incredible to watch.
I stayed up for this, I hope I didn't wake up the neighbours and it will take days to wipe the grin of my face.
edit: haha, nice downvote, whoever it was. :)
Government space missions are limited by taxpayer interest/funding, and the high cost of access to space has mostly limited commercial interest to things like communication and surveying satellites. I'm really looking forward to what new opportunities open up in both spaces when we can do so much more for the same cost.
Those missions are remarkable partly because they're amazing firsts, and partly because of what they've been able to accomplish with huge limitations and cost restrictions. They're amazing because of finesse, and if this whole reusability thing works out, you'll be able to brute force them instead. Visiting a comet is amazing. Making launches so cheap that it becomes practical to visit fifty comets would be astounding.
It's a bit like the invention of the steamship. It doesn't take you anywhere new. Sailing ships got the job done. But it transformed the world just the same.
EDIT: To quote my friend's reaction,
"HAPPY FEET, WOMBO COMBO!
Let's Kerbal the shit out of Space."
Unless you're German, than that statement is almost certainly false. And even Germany is changing.
Your statement most likely reveals more about your political leanings then the levels of nationalistic fervour in different countries.
What? Imagine a Scandinavian or a Briton chanting their countries names in any other place than a sporting event (with an opposing country). It just doesn't happen.
Other than football I can't think of any other time I've ever heard anyone chant "England, England" or whatever.
Might be slightly more likely in Scotland as they are a bit more nationalistic.
Edit: foreign national working at SpaceX. If there were not foreign national's involved in today's success, then feel free to ignore me.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_...
I can't seem to locate the exact time, but this is most likely the interview where Elon Musk mentioned it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIDoTKMqwT4
But a good demonstration of the toxic virality of nationalism, I guess. It manages to wriggle itself into anything.
I have to admit though that once on holiday in Germany, while siting in the ruins of a castle overlooking the Rhine at night, myself and some Brit and American friends of mine burst into a rousing chorus of Deutschland Uber Alles, much to the dismay of our German friends. So perhaps I have an odd sense of humor in this respect. And no I'm not some kind of proto Nazi. I also once memorized the words to much of the State Anthem of the USSR, and knew how to use them, but alas it's since largely slipped my memory. Life's too short to spend it walking around with a stick up your arse about these things IMHO.
So if you want nations not to exist, the burden is on you to come up with something better. "No nations" can look like what used to be Somalia, or what used to be Afghanistan.
It's a commercial. What are they selling?
Bear in mind the video was a live stream. Unless the 'USA' chant was pre-planned and orchestrated by the company, it's just part of the background noise of the employees celebrating.
Are there any replay videos?