51–60 of 216 posts
Could someone explain to me why they attempt this? Wouldn't inflating a set of floating devices when it goes down the ocean an easier way of retrieving it? Or something other than this REALLY HARD TO PULL OFF maneuver? Genuinely interested.
The landing could be made safer by something like cushioned walls that deploy towards the rocket after touchdown, to avoid such explosions. Think of a giant Christmas Tree stand like this: http://www.christmastreeland.co.uk/product_images/v/428/761_... . but with cushioned hooks on the barge. You can't always hope for all 4 legs to be in perfect condition, or that there aren't high waves in the ocean. That rocket is…
I don't think big, over-engineered solutions really look necessary with the amount of progress they're making. Plus, there aren't any cushioned walls on Mars, which is SpaceX's eventual goal - use this sort of tech to touch down there.
That was pretty much exactly what I expected to see from the video given the description of a broken landing leg yesterday. Elon's twitter comment about the ice is interesting because it adds some interesting twists. If the stage is icing up as it descends it would change the mass calculation, however it does not seem to shed ice when it lands in the video. He suggested that ice at launch may have interfered with leg…
SpaceX actually got very close to sticking this landing. Sea conditions were reasonably rough, with 3-meter waves. It's also the first time SpaceX launches in fog, IIRC. Everything about the landing except the stuck leg seemed to be perfect. So IMHO, the fact that the rocket exploded is not the most pertinent fact about this experiment. The main piece of news is that SpaceX is exceedingly likely to be able to recover…
>It's also the first time SpaceX launches in fog Musk said the "root cause may have been ice buildup due to condensation from heavy fog at liftoff."
Could someone explain to me why they attempt this? Wouldn't inflating a set of floating devices when it goes down the ocean an easier way of retrieving it? Or something other than this REALLY HARD TO PULL OFF maneuver? Genuinely interested.
Yeah, I don't understand why they won't keep landing them on the ground like everyone else does. It's not like there's not enough space on Earth.
No one else lands first stages. SpaceX is the first to do it.
The rocket exploded because it fell over, not the other way around. Had one of the landing gears not malfunctioned, it would have been fine.
SpaceX actually got very close to sticking this landing. Sea conditions were reasonably rough, with 3-meter waves. It's also the first time SpaceX launches in fog, IIRC. Everything about the landing except the stuck leg seemed to be perfect. So IMHO, the fact that the rocket exploded is not the most pertinent fact about this experiment. The main piece of news is that SpaceX is exceedingly likely to be able to recover…
And there's the issue: it only takes a tiny bit of imperfect to ruin a landing.
I do think that SpaceX is going to get to the point where they are recovering enough of their rockets to make it pay off. But there will probably always be a significant chance that some little thing will go wrong. Don't be fooled later by "we've landed 5 in a row" about that.
Is there a reason not to design the rocket with more legs, say 6 legs instead of 4?
Is there a reason not to design the rocket with more legs, say 6 legs instead of 4?