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Falcon Heavy core booster lost at sea

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Re: Falcon Heavy core booster lost at sea

#11

Post by Klathmon »

hodgesrm wrote: post #8
Klathmon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video feed drops like that on every droneship landing.

Do you know why that happens? This is the first time I've seen it live.

They use a satellite link on the barge, and the vibrations and pressure from the landing booster almost always cause the link to drop until things calm down.

They have said in the past that it's "solveable", but it's not exactly a high priority by any means as they can always retrieve the footage when they get to the barge.

Re: Falcon Heavy core booster lost at sea

#12

Post by imjasonmiller »

hodgesrm wrote: post #2

I kind of figured that happened when they lost the video. Still a really amazing accomplishment--the video of the boosters landing was like something out of a sci-fi movie. It's the best space launch since the first Space Shuttle in 1981.

In a press conference an hour or so ago, I think Elon mentioned that, if he had to pick one core that would experience “rapid unscheduled dissassembly”, it would have been the center one. I think he mentioned it was due to the boosters having the expensive titanium grid fins and also being reusable for future flights.

Regardless, it was absolutely wonderful to watch! I think the Youtube stream had 2,500,000 viewers at one point. I can’t wait for more footage of the launch the coming days.

Re: Falcon Heavy core booster lost at sea

#13

Post by derekp7 »

Klathmon wrote: post #6
eatbitseveryday wrote: post #5

And the article does not say / make apparent where this information is from.

There was just a press conference where he went into some detail, with the caveat that it's all still very early information. Basically he said that 2 of the 3 engines didn't start up correctly, and caused the booster to hit the water at a few hundred miles per hour. I'm guessing the dive into the water was purposely missing the barge when it detected the problem, as they have spoken about this capability in the past…

I previously thought that the middle core on a Falcon Heavy was expendable. So it not landing (while needing 3 engines) makes sense, as it was only a week or two ago that they tried a fast/hard landing with 3 engines over open water (as they weren't sure then that it would work). I would expect this landing mode to need at least a couple more tries to get working reliably.

Re: Falcon Heavy core booster lost at sea

#15

Post by ygra »

craftyguy wrote: post #10
vermontdevil wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk elaborated this during the press conference. Said the core booster hit 100m from the barge at almost 500kph.

That's actually a good time to miss the barge. Fortunately the booster didn't score a barge hit at 500kph!

The booster's trajectory points to water until pretty shortly before landing. Precisely so that when things go wrong the expected result is to miss the drone ship (or landing pad).

Re: Falcon Heavy core booster lost at sea

#17

Post by Klathmon »

derekp7 wrote: post #13
Klathmon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was just a press conference where he went into some detail, with the caveat that it's all still very early information. Basically he said that 2 of the 3 engines didn't start up correctly, and caused the booster to hit the water at a few hundred miles per hour. I'm guessing the dive into the water was purposely missing the barge when it detected the problem, as they have spoken about this capability in the past…

I previously thought that the middle core on a Falcon Heavy was expendable. So it not landing (while needing 3 engines) makes sense, as it was only a week or two ago that they tried a fast/hard landing with 3 engines over open water (as they weren't sure then that it would work). I would expect this landing mode to need at least a couple more tries to get working reliably.

Well that test was unrelated. They only reason they tried that with an ocean landing was because they wanted the barge for the FH demo flight.

This should have been a 1-3-1 style landing burn where it lights up one engine, then 2 more to slow it down, then drops down to just 1 again at the end. In this case it sounds like the the outer 2 engines didn't start up right, so it came in way too hot.

They also have said that the center core of FH is basically a new design from the ground up, so it makes sense that they had some problems on it's first landing.

Re: Falcon Heavy core booster lost at sea

#18

Post by jlmorton »

imjasonmiller wrote: post #12
hodgesrm wrote: post #2

I kind of figured that happened when they lost the video. Still a really amazing accomplishment--the video of the boosters landing was like something out of a sci-fi movie. It's the best space launch since the first Space Shuttle in 1981.

In a press conference an hour or so ago, I think Elon mentioned that, if he had to pick one core that would experience “rapid unscheduled dissassembly”, it would have been the center one. I think he mentioned it was due to the boosters having the expensive titanium grid fins and also being reusable for future flights. Regardless, it was absolutely wonderful to watch! I think the Youtube stream had 2,500,000 viewers a…

The unspoken point in Musk's comment is that SpaceX doesn't actually care if they get these particular rockets back. They want to prove reusability, of course, but no matter the outcome they never plan to re-fly these cores. They will focus on the not-yet-flown Block 5 cores, and standardize on that going forward.

In this flight, the side boosters and center core were Blocks 3 and 4. So SpaceX definitely wants to recover the boosters, to perfect reusability, but they never intend to re-fly any of these boosters, so better to get back the one with the expensive and reusable titanium grid fins.

Re: Falcon Heavy core booster lost at sea

#19

Post by bpye »

ygra wrote: post #15
craftyguy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a good time to miss the barge. Fortunately the booster didn't score a barge hit at 500kph!

The booster's trajectory points to water until pretty shortly before landing. Precisely so that when things go wrong the expected result is to miss the drone ship (or landing pad).

Wonder if it would have been >100m away had all the engines failed. One engine working may have resulted in it attempting an approach?
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