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

Post by baybal2 » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 8:36 AM UTC

jccooper wrote: post #70

ChuckMcM wrote: post #26

Obviously one of the things you don't want "too much of" is a pyrophoric fluid that you need to dump before you can let people near :-). Have they ever published their safeing procedure? I'm wondering if they recover more volattiles than the old shuttle did after it landed.

It doesn't have as much nasty as Shuttle. The TEA-TEB takes care of itself by combusting when vented, but that's the only hazardous material. Shuttle had hypergolics on board which F9 doesn't use (just kerosene, oxygen, nitrogen, and helium.) The rest of the passivation will mostly be purging the engines, closing valves, and releasing pressure in the various tanks and vessels. LOX venting might take a while as it all…

Post by bvm » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

cremp wrote: post #46

js2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It apparently ran out of TEA-TEB ignition fluid, not fuel: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/15403/why-is-tea-t... I can't find any info on how much TEA-TEB is carried on-board, only that it's ground supplied for initial launch with the on-board TEA-TEB being used only for restarts. (I'm not even an amateur rocket scientist: I just googled all this.)

If I'm not mistaken, the SR-71 and A12 had enough TEB for 15 restarts. After doing an aerial refueling, they had to use TEB to get back to afterburner.

Post by rcxdude » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 11:17 AM UTC

twostorytower wrote: post #153

Waterluvian wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I guess in space flight you can't just double the calculated requirement. That would be expensive.

Probably not as expensive as losing the entire booster, though.

Post by Mithaldu » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 12:49 PM UTC

0xTJ wrote: post #163

Stratoscope wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video feed didn't stop working, or if it did, it was only for a brief moment. If you watch this part of the YouTube stream, after it cuts back to the two hosts there is a monitor at the far right center of the video that shows the continuing camera feed of the drone ship landing pad. Only part of the monitor is visible, but after the smoke clears over the next few minutes you can see the empty pad: https://www.yo…

Although I understand why they would have done that for click-bait news outlets, it did really bother me that they were so slow in revealing what happened. What I like about SpaceX is that they're always been very open about their failures, even compiling that great video of their failures. Being able to seeing the full result would have been nice, and I spent a fair bit of time for the following hours refreshing Twi…

Post by 089723645897236 » Tue, Feb 13, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #68

olympus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going all in on the Culture ship names. I'd be happy if he just made 100(ish) more just to name them after every ship that Iain M. Banks named. They don't need to catch rockets, they can just link up and make a floating utopia.

They don't need to catch rockets, they can just link up and make a floating utopia. Well for that, you'd want to change the hull type from a barge to a spar buoy. Given that, there's no reason why they couldn't do both. http://www.technip.com/sites/default/files/technip/illustrat... (Permanent structures in the ocean need to be spar buoys, or some other architecture that are largely immune to Rogue Waves.)