Shouldn't be that surprising. Military has been blowing up missiles and detonating bombs on land at military testing sites for decades.
Let's hope that the next cause of a rapid unscheduled disassembly won't be the rocket landing on a landmine.
SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground
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Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground
#32Land the rocket on some flame-proof air bags. It doesn't have to land vertically does it? Let it fall over gently if need be.
Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground
#33I don't think they can completely give up on the barge though. As I understand it they'll always need barge landings for the Falcon Heavy core? Maybe they're just itching to get a success on their pelt.
Why will they always need the barge for the Falcon Heavy core? I think they would be more likely to need it for a second stage than the Heavy's core, because SSECO occurs very far down range, and at such a high speed that the rocket cannot make it back to the launch pad without a great deal of fuel. Alternatively, they could be planning to launch from Texas, and recover some stage(s) in Florida. *edit: in another com…
Falcon Heavy boosters will be able to boost back and land at the pad. Falcon Heavy cores will be too far down range, and will have to land on a barge pretty significantly out to sea.
Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground
#34Land the rocket on some flame-proof air bags. It doesn't have to land vertically does it? Let it fall over gently if need be.
No flame-proof airbags are available on Mars.
AFAIK most of SpaceX's design decisions are based around this.
Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground
#35I don't think they can completely give up on the barge though. As I understand it they'll always need barge landings for the Falcon Heavy core? Maybe they're just itching to get a success on their pelt.
I agree, as others have said the dynamics of a barge is a necessary challenge to prove the technology. But they need some more positive press, maybe a gif that doesn't end in an explosion hehe. On a side note the colloquialism 'success on their pelt' is totally new to me, I've always heard it as 'success under their belt'.
I think he meant 'success under their belt'. If you google for both phrases, the belt wins has far more results and they're actually relevant.
Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground
#36I don't think they can completely give up on the barge though. As I understand it they'll always need barge landings for the Falcon Heavy core? Maybe they're just itching to get a success on their pelt.
I agree, as others have said the dynamics of a barge is a necessary challenge to prove the technology. But they need some more positive press, maybe a gif that doesn't end in an explosion hehe. On a side note the colloquialism 'success on their pelt' is totally new to me, I've always heard it as 'success under their belt'.
I don't believe there is any such idiom. The idiom is "under one's belt", meaning to succeed at something. I have never heard, nor can I locate via Google, any similar idiom using the word "pelt".
Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground
#37> "Just purely the boat moving, even in a low sea state, it's hard to imagine that vehicle is going to stay vertical," Shotwell said. "That vehicle is big and tall, compared to the itty-bity-greater-than-a-football-field-size ship." Is this a new development? This contradicts both a lot of things I read over the Internet (granted, those were not official SpaceX statements) and the apparently still ongoing plans to bu…
IIRC they're anticipating that some missions from Florida will have a performance profile preventing a return to land.
Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground
#38I think now that they have proven they can 'hit the hole', almost spot on, they'll be able to get approval to go for a try on cleared land space. It sounds like to me, landing on land would be ideal; less expensive and less risk with stabilization and rough waters.
They need to be able to stabilize the rocket's landing in all sorts of conditions if they want to have any hope of landing it on another planet. It's not like interplanetary launches will be able to schedule launches to choose optimal weather conditions for the landing. Maybe, if they're lucky, they'll be able to orbit briefly to avoid bad weather at the landing site, but moderate winds and wind gusts are going to be…
> They need to be able to stabilize the rocket's landing in all sorts of conditions if they want to have any hope of landing it on another planet.
Well, not really. Dragons (and Red Dragons, for interplanetary travel) are way, way less sensitive to the whims of weather. The issue with the first stage is that you have a very large, very fragile, very bottom-heavy tin can that you're trying to balance on a moving platform.
This is entirely different than trying to land a pod, which is what we'll be doing on other planets. Dragon v2 will be landing on land (though doing parachute recovery from water for initial CCS missions, as per NASA spec), and we'll see how stable it is then.
Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground
#39I just love the term "flight termination system". It sounds so much better than "self destruction system" :)
Anyone know how this flight termination system works? Obviously it self-destructs. But, under what parameters? Does Mission Control send the signal, or does the rocket determine this on its own?
Re: SpaceX Plans to Land Next Falcon 9 on Solid Ground
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, as others have said the dynamics of a barge is a necessary challenge to prove the technology. But they need some more positive press, maybe a gif that doesn't end in an explosion hehe. On a side note the colloquialism 'success on their pelt' is totally new to me, I've always heard it as 'success under their belt'.
I don't believe there is any such idiom. The idiom is "under one's belt", meaning to succeed at something. I have never heard, nor can I locate via Google, any similar idiom using the word "pelt".
Yeah I suspected it was a typo or something, but I kind of like it...