Where would the booster have landed?
What if the Russian tug boat, that was chilling outside of Florida, stole the booster? That would be an interesting turn of events.
SpaceX Successfully Soft-Landed Booster Rocket in the Atlantic
91–100 of 147 posts
Re: SpaceX Successfully Soft-Landed Booster Rocket in the Atlantic
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
They'll still need to verify all systems and components before a second launch That. You need to re-qualify the engine after each launch. The cost of labour far exceeds the cost of materials, you need to strip and re-build the thing, and you ask yourself just how much money you can save through re-using the first stage. I don't think it's much.
> you need to strip and re-build the thing That's how politically-designed boondoggles like the shuttle work. It's not inevitable, if you actually spend the engineering effort on reliability and repeatability. If NASA operated an airline, they would probably be tearing down and rebuilding every jet engine after every flight, and a ticket would cost $100,000.
I said this in another thread, but part of the issue is failure intolerance.
Sure - for human payloads I'd want to be damn sure my process is good, like, hundreds to thousands of missions deep before I trusted it.
But that's totally unnecessary for an unmanned payload! If the cost of launch drops enough, you can fully justify launching 2x the payloads if you expect maybe 1 in 10 failures due to the mode of launch.
I suspect it's possible to do a damn site better then that, but for NASA its never been an option. If it's reusable, they can't let a mission fail because they'll only get punished and funded according to the failures, even if they specced everything expecting 1 mission to possibly not go off right.
Re: SpaceX Successfully Soft-Landed Booster Rocket in the Atlantic
#93This may be a dumb question, but why are they test landing in the ocean instead of on land? Flight paths preclude it?
They can't assume the test will work. (The first attempt, at the Cassiope launch, didn't.) Crashes at sea are a lot less consequential than crashes on land.
(Flight paths are not an issue; they eventually expect to recover boosters from other space station cargo runs, which will follow the same trajectory.)
Re: SpaceX Successfully Soft-Landed Booster Rocket in the Atlantic
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
ULA uses engines manufactured from many different sources. Some rockets fly with engines manufactured in Russia, and as far as I know these aren't necessarily new engines but re-used from the 60's. But other programs use engines manufactured in the US. Atlas V rockets have engines made by Aerojet Rocketdyne which is based in Sacramento California. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V Also to match costs, you have to…
All Atlas V first-stage engines (RD-180) are manufactured in Russia. That the second stage engines are made in the US doesn't change the fact that you're dependent on Russian supply. In response to your edits: >but they can't get more flights because of their record The Air Force required 3 successful flights in the exact configuration the Air Force would fly. SpaceX provided the "record" as stipulated by the Air For…
I've heard it's a common practice in defense contracts to carefully write the requirements such that you are in effect pre-selecting your desired vendor, while providing the appearance of impartiality and neutrality.
Re: SpaceX Successfully Soft-Landed Booster Rocket in the Atlantic
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
The strongback does a lot more than legs ever would: resistance to winds when awaiting the launch window, fueling, data connections, etc. Not to mention you need some sort of tower to lift the rocket upright after payload integration and servicing -- unless you do vertical integration, which they will need to do to win USAF contracts. But then you need a crane, anyway.
Genuinely curious, why would USAF (or anyone) need vertical integration?
These requirements seem to apply mostly to "national security" payloads (e.g., spysats), so the exact nature of the requirements is classified. It's easy to come up with a plausible guess about what the requirements might be (optics going out of alignment if you tip the spysat on its side?), but those who know don't say --- and those willing to venture a guess, like me, are showing they don't actually know.
Re: SpaceX Successfully Soft-Landed Booster Rocket in the Atlantic
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
ULA uses engines manufactured from many different sources. Some rockets fly with engines manufactured in Russia, and as far as I know these aren't necessarily new engines but re-used from the 60's. But other programs use engines manufactured in the US. Atlas V rockets have engines made by Aerojet Rocketdyne which is based in Sacramento California. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V Also to match costs, you have to…
This catch-22 applies across the government-aerospace interface surface. I used to intern for a company trying to break into aerospace software---not hardware, just tracking and modeling. At the time, they faced a nearly-vertical climb into the market to get around the big names in aerospace; they couldn't sell to them directly (the people involved in the purchasing decisions were the people who would be getting down…
Funny you should mention ... that nasaspaceflight forum has commenters saying the same thing:
I guarantee there will be a congressional committee hearing about this very soon. Reminds me of what Howard Hughes had to go through to break Pan American Airways' legal designation as the United States' sole international carrier. Most portray Elon M. as a the new "Steve Jobs"; wrong I live in Nevada and an early study was of Howard Hughes. Elon M. is a modern day Howard Hughes. Once you understand that, things fall into place.
Re: SpaceX Successfully Soft-Landed Booster Rocket in the Atlantic
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
... especially if, as he said, he can reduce his current launch costs by 30% by re-using rockets.
It seems likely the the USAF would specify first-run rockets for the best chance of success, so the USAF would not see a cost reduction unless spacex were to re-purchase the recovered booster or similar (or offered a credit that equated to the same).
True, but then in that situation SpaceX would just not give the 30% cost reduction for the launch. The 30% figure he mentioned was after giving the "under $100M" price point.
Re: SpaceX Successfully Soft-Landed Booster Rocket in the Atlantic
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is "the ocean was wavy" really a justifiable reason for losing the rocket? Surely sea conditions are something they'd take into account when planning and executing the mission.
You clearly have not been at sea, close to the water. A cylindrical object, without a sea anchor, in moderately rough seas, would naturally turn sideways to the waves and be destroyed very quickly in the breaking waves. I don't know whether SpaceX has fitted their boosters with sea anchors yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see this addition after the present loss. In windy conditions, a sea anchor provides some dra…
How much weight would be such an anchor to hold down something as large as a rocket? Wouldn't you have to launch that into space, too?
Re: SpaceX Successfully Soft-Landed Booster Rocket in the Atlantic
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calling for NASA to stop working with Roscosmos and the ISS over Putin is nuts. Space research and exploration is more than petty flag waving.
Somehow I think taking over Crimea is more than petty flag waving to the people who live there. I'd ask for more empathy for those whose lives may be irrevocably damaged by the actions of the Russian Head of State.
Having empathy doesn't mean we should fall into the politician's fallacy. Unless you can demonstrate how would stopping the collaboration actually help the Crimeans, it's nothing but demagogy.
Re: SpaceX Successfully Soft-Landed Booster Rocket in the Atlantic
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you need to strip and re-build the thing That's how politically-designed boondoggles like the shuttle work. It's not inevitable, if you actually spend the engineering effort on reliability and repeatability. If NASA operated an airline, they would probably be tearing down and rebuilding every jet engine after every flight, and a ticket would cost $100,000.
I said this in another thread, but part of the issue is failure intolerance. Sure - for human payloads I'd want to be damn sure my process is good, like, hundreds to thousands of missions deep before I trusted it. But that's totally unnecessary for an unmanned payload! If the cost of launch drops enough, you can fully justify launching 2x the payloads if you expect maybe 1 in 10 failures due to the mode of launch. I…
This is true for a sub-set of unmanned payloads.
Space-X is great for the sub-set of things that don't require insurance, and don't therefore need to use corner-case mil-spec stuff with the corner case pricing.
For others, the cost of losing a $1-2B bird on top of a $100m/cheap rocket is shitty math. Nobody is going to insure the top of it, so ultimately the "waste" is akin to a form of insurance.
Everybody knows this already, so I'm not sure how sympathetic a hearing it is going to get. It will be great PR though to hopefully spurn that fit the new framework...and thus expand the market for space-x and hopefully limit the superflous use of corner-case technology for mundane/run-of the mill applications (at the tax payer's expense).