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SES-10 Mission

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Re: SES-10 Mission

#91

Post by jacquesm »

mikeash wrote: post #89
jacquesm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but overall their failure rate is really not all that bad. Only the Russians are doing better and they're doing better because they are not innovating at all. I could 3 out of 33 as failures, one of those is a partial failure. The only area where SpaceX really can't compete yet is manned flight, everything else looks quite rosy.

10% is pretty bad. ULA has launched over a hundred times with no failures. The much-maligned Shuttle had two failures in 135 flights (and, strictly speaking, only one of those failures would have prevented a payload from getting to orbit). I'm pretty sure the Russians are the only ones doing worse right now.

But you'd have to compare their first thirty launches with these to compare. Anyway, notice has been served today I think, now let's see what it leads to.

For comparison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlas_launches

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thor_and_Delta_launche...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

Of course the beginnings of what is now ULA were much more innovative than what SpaceX is doing because we simply had not launched any rockets of that size at all and so there were many more failures.

It probably won't be the last SpaceX failure either because they plan on making fairly big changes soon and those will come with new failure modes, the best way to get to very high degrees of reliability is to stop making changes other than to fix problems but that does not square with SpaceX's way of doing business.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#92

Post by vkou »

ericcumbee wrote: post #46
r00fus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Blue Origin count?

I'm not sure how valid it is, but i read somewhere that Blue Origin and SpaceX are both shooting for the same target, but taking different paths. Blue Origin is doing Reusability first and orbital second. SpaceX went Orbital first and Reusability second. although to me it seems spacex is clearly ahead.

The difference between launching something to space and to orbit is roughly the difference between a bicycle, and a motorcycle.

Blue Origin can go to space. They are nowhere close to going to orbit.

We've sent things to space and back a long time ago. We call them airplanes. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

Re: SES-10 Mission

#93

Post by rrmm »

Taniwha wrote: post #40

So they are supposed to be trying to recover the two fairing halves this time around - any news of that?

I haven't heard anything about it. They were also going to be testing the 'Roomba' robot contraption on the recovery ship. Best place I know of for news is probably the reddit r/SpaceX subredit.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#94

Post by remarkEon »

Question:

Will future SpaceX clients now want to put their payloads in orbit on a "flight proven" booster, instead of one that hasn't flown before?

Re: SES-10 Mission

#95

Post by karyon »

david-given wrote: post #24
aidos wrote: post #13

They've landed it too! Amazing!

Although when the technical webcast went black just at the moment when I'd expect the vehicle to come into sight, I was sure that something had gone wrong and they'd pulled the plug.

In the hosted webcast they explained that the droneship is on a satellite link and expected to loose connection as soon as the first stage closes in due to vibrations. Edit: someone else here said the exhaust fumes might also disrupt the satellite link.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#96

Post by JshWright »

jacquesm wrote: post #8

History was being made today. Super, congratulations to all of SpaceX. Now let's see the landing :) STUCK THE LANDING :) :) :) Apologies to my neighbors who I surely woke up. Hah :) Incredible! Now, will they fly this one again?

> Now, will they fly this one again?

Probably not. For starters, Elon has said they only intend to get a few flights out of the Block 3 rockets. Additionally, the CTO of SES said Gwynne promised them some bits of the rocket for posterity.

The Block 5 rockets (to fly later this year) are the ones Elon expects to fly more or less indefinitely, with regular servicing and part replacement.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#98

Post by nickik »

vtange wrote: post #4

Does SpaceX have any real competitors in the private sector? Would be a bummer if people decided they were a monopoly of some sort and demanded a break up.

At least in the US that is not possible anymore. The wild inconsistency (arbitrary enforcement) of Anti-Trust Law has been replaced by a consistent definition thanks to the activities of many judges and legal theorists. The new definition is basically that one needs to prove abuse of consumers to make Anti-Trust law effective.

I don't think SpaceX is in danger of being accused of that.

They really don't have any competition on price anymore, but they are yet unable to actually do as many flights as they need to. To solve that they are building even more launch sites and thanks to the re-usability they will be able to do more flights without further increasing their engine output.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#99

Post by Flame »

david-given wrote: post #55
hwillis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That cut to black nearly gave me a damn heart attack haha. Satellite connection lost because rocket exhaust is basically a giant ionized cloud of noise. Elon looks like he hasn't been getting enough sleep or showers, and like he's about to back flip and start happy crying.

My heart attack moment was during the launch when I started seeing flame flickering around the tops of the engines... and then I thought to look at the altitude indicator, and realised they were at about 10km, and it was just the plume expanding as the atmospheric pressure dropped.

I got extremely worried when I saw that happen too. I didn't even think to look at the altitude indicator.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#100

Post by gallerdude »

Cyph0n wrote: post #78
eliaspro wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just depresses me seeing how many people don't have the slightest clue why this is something incredibly remarkable - the complexity behind each and every component, process, research and engineering making this possible - and then start bitching about the new Emoji set on their smartphone

And when, say, an amazing archeological artifact is uncovered, we probably won't appreciate the complexity that went into that, and the folks at ArcheologistNews will be pissed. There are so many fields and so many complex processes. I can assure you that any one of: the world of power transmission, or offshore oil drilling rigs, or commercial shipping, or chemical process design and optimization, or tons of other st…

I've always pondered that I'd love to read in on these other fields, see what they find interesting and new.
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