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SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines

latimes.com

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Re: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines

#91

Post by mulmen »

vkou wrote: post #48

This is one of the reasons why space travel will never be 'routine'. A million and one things can go wrong, and any one of them can destroy the spacecraft. Compare that to commercial air travel - where a number of unlikely events have to happen, to down an airplane. Some time ago, there was a HN discussion about traveling from continent to continent in minutes, using a sub-orbital hop. I don't know about anyone else,…

An airliner is on a building scale and carries a slightly less refined petroleum fuel. RP-1 and Jet Fuel are both refined petroleum fuels. Rockets only carry LOX because they go into space where there is no atmospheric oxygen to burn the fuel.

Airliners are fully capable of turning themselves into fireballs. It doesn't happen often because we have a lot of experience operating them. The same safety levels are possible with rockets over time.

Re: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines

#92

Post by SubiculumCode »

msumpter wrote: post #21
SubiculumCode wrote: post #16

So, I wonder why the side boosters won't be used again? Was that explained. I'm curious, but I barely have internet on this hill.

I believe the two boosters were previously flown and were of an older block/generation (block 3 and 4 if memory serves me) where they are focusing on block 5 as the final revision and all future Falcon rockets would be this same standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Block_5

So, from that reasoning it might be less that they couldn't fly those rockets again, but that maintaining multiple versions of the rockets might not be in their financial interest. Thanks for the input.

Re: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines

#93

Post by jmts »

meteor333 wrote: post #25

> Those two boosters, which were used in previous launches of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, will not be reused again, Musk said in a post-launch news conference last week. Why did SpaceX spend resources to get them to safe landing then? I presume, they rather maintain their routine and maintain the success of landing the booster. It would probably be expensive to change their standard procedure. Does any know h…

These are the first two boosters used to launch a Falcon Heavy. They are modified Falcon 9's. They already know much of the wear and tear that Falcon 9's endure in flight from previous launches. They didn't yet know how their boosters are affected by the modifications required, and the stresses involved in launching a Heavy. Now they have two pristine pieces of data they can tear down and analyse for potential improvements.

Re: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines

#94

Post by hardly_a_mirage »

tuna-piano wrote: post #82
std_throwaway wrote: post #19

I bet it didn't randomly lack fluid due to some stupid miscalculation. It's probably more like: "Due to unforeseen circumstances it needed more fluid than expected. But we adjust our numbers and next time we expect more (in the hopes that it will be enough, which it will probably be)."

Two big aerospace companies ran out of fluid recently. Southwest airlines cancelled basically all their flights from Chicago yesterday because they ran out of Deicing fluid. They can use your same excuse! Something tells me Southwest failed at a much easier task, though. "Southwest has 'multiple glycol deliveries' scheduled for Monday and expects to resume 'close to normal operations' at Midway, she said." https://ww…

SpaceX fluid issue is likely a calculation / estimation error.

Southwest fluid issue is likely a logistics failure.

I don't see them as related.

Re: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines

#95

Post by SubiculumCode »

zrail wrote: post #27
msumpter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the two boosters were previously flown and were of an older block/generation (block 3 and 4 if memory serves me) where they are focusing on block 5 as the final revision and all future Falcon rockets would be this same standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Block_5

Whoa, so not only were the boosters landed, they were actually reused from previous launches! That's doubly awesome.

Yeah. I'd say even more than double awesome. The falcon heavy launch was super important for Space-X, PR and investment wise. Trusting two used rockets for THAT launch shows real confidence in the re-usability of their rocket tech. Bravo.

Re: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines

#96

Post by fma »

delecti wrote: post #81
vkou wrote: post #48

This is one of the reasons why space travel will never be 'routine'. A million and one things can go wrong, and any one of them can destroy the spacecraft. Compare that to commercial air travel - where a number of unlikely events have to happen, to down an airplane. Some time ago, there was a HN discussion about traveling from continent to continent in minutes, using a sub-orbital hop. I don't know about anyone else,…

One big flaw in your argument is that the payload was delivered safely and successfully. They're making great strides towards making components reusable when they never really were before. That they're not perfect right out of the gate isn't reason to give up hope it ever could be.

Actually...the payload was put on the wrong trajectory, so OP's argument still stands.

"Elon Musk’s cherry red Tesla sports car and its dummy test pilot Starman were on a new course hurtling towards the asteroid belt on Wednesday after overshooting their planned trajectory."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/elon-musk-sp...

Re: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines

#97

Post by rory096 »

Footkerchief wrote: post #53
Cacti wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says right there in the article that it used up the fuel while attempting to re-lights the engines (without success).

> Musk said Monday that there wasn't enough ignition fluid to light the outer two engines of the booster "after several three engine relights." I don't see a mention of whether the previous relights succeeded or not. I'm guessing they did succeed, but the center booster had to perform a higher number of relights than a Falcon 9 booster due to its higher speed.

It's the same amount of relights - boostback burn, re-entry burn, and landing burn. It's possible the re-entry burn used more TEA-TEB than usual because of the high speed, but it's also possible that non-boostback GTO missions re-entered at higher speeds (this is the case at least in flightclub.io's model of the mission). Remember that this wasn't a particularly challenging flight profile for Falcon Heavy, which allowed it to boost back to reduce speed and landing distance from shore.

The excessive TEA-TEB use may have been caused by an unrelated engine issue. In any case, Musk reported the fix is 'obvious'.

Re: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines

#98

Post by StavrosK »

toufka wrote: post #44
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #18

He also announced the 3rd drone ship's name on twitter as "A Shortfall of Gravitas".

That's a great name to add to the stable of Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ships: - Of Course I Still Love You - Just Read the Instructions - A Shortfall of Gravitas (and doubly great for you, u/ZeroGravitas)

Here's the whole list:

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

My all-time favorite is "Ultimate Ship the Second".

Re: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy center booster lacked ignition fluid to re-light engines

#99

Post by btian »

tuna-piano wrote: post #82
std_throwaway wrote: post #19

I bet it didn't randomly lack fluid due to some stupid miscalculation. It's probably more like: "Due to unforeseen circumstances it needed more fluid than expected. But we adjust our numbers and next time we expect more (in the hopes that it will be enough, which it will probably be)."

Two big aerospace companies ran out of fluid recently. Southwest airlines cancelled basically all their flights from Chicago yesterday because they ran out of Deicing fluid. They can use your same excuse! Something tells me Southwest failed at a much easier task, though. "Southwest has 'multiple glycol deliveries' scheduled for Monday and expects to resume 'close to normal operations' at Midway, she said." https://ww…

Well, it's probably a lot easier to store fluid at an airport than on a rocket
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