Elon Musk has gotta be one of the happiest men on Earth right now, first the Tesla Model 3 pre-orders are off the charts and now SpaceX has successfully landed a first stage out at sea after several spectacular failures.
SpaceX finally nails a droneship landing!
- Thread starter jeshikat
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Elon Musk has gotta be one of the happiest men on Earth right now, first the Tesla Model 3 pre-orders are off the charts and now SpaceX has successfully landed a first stage out at sea after several spectacular failures.
U S A! U S A! U S A!
Seriously though, that is so damn amazing that they finally made it. Unfortunately, I didn't understand most of the commentary when the crowd started cheering.
Seriously though, that is so damn amazing that they finally made it. Unfortunately, I didn't understand most of the commentary when the crowd started cheering.
This is from the OG2 M2 landing (where the 1st stage landed back at the pad) but it shows just how big these things are: https://twitter.com/i/videos/tweet/679145544673923072
Man I remember when they did tests for this with the Grasshopper rockets. That thing was so cute compared to the Flacon.
Was great fun to watch live! Apparently the live aerial shots of the stage landing were from a NASA chase-plane, so we may not get that fantastic footage for non-CRS launches.
The first Grasshopper was a F9 ('v1') first stage with all but one engine removed, and some fixed landing legs added (and a bunch of ballast to keep the TWR down. And a cowboy). The next (sometimes called F9R) was an F9 v1.1 first stage with 8 of the 9 engines removed and the landing legs fixed in place. The final grasshopper, intended for high-altitude tests, was cancelled after the successes in high altitude stage manoeuvres starting with F9 V1.1. This triple-engined core is rumoured to have been mostly constructed, and may be used as the in-flight-abort boost stage during Dragon 2 testing.
Really glad to finally see a landing in the daytime! It looks beautiful. And those first stage tanks are HUGE compared to the truck. Kinda misleads you when you look at the launches from afar.
Btw I like how a forum as niche as SFF manages to get both a Tesla and SpaceX topic on here
Btw I like how a forum as niche as SFF manages to get both a Tesla and SpaceX topic on here
Haha, just watched the video and I love how the crowd at Hawthorne gets sad when the feed from the OCISLY goes white like the stage had exploded again but then it clears and there's the stage just sitting there
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Well, second try. First try with the triple-engine landing burn and no boostback burn was with SES-9, which left a hole in the ASDS.
The triple-engine burn is interesting: it starts with with all three engines ignited, then the outer two shut down so the final hoverslam is performed on only the central engine. The reason for doing a triple-engine burn rather than using just a single engine for three times longer is gravity loss: the longer you are firing for, the more time you are spending fighting gravity. This means you use less fuel burning harder for less time.
The triple-engine burn is interesting: it starts with with all three engines ignited, then the outer two shut down so the final hoverslam is performed on only the central engine. The reason for doing a triple-engine burn rather than using just a single engine for three times longer is gravity loss: the longer you are firing for, the more time you are spending fighting gravity. This means you use less fuel burning harder for less time.
Ah, this happened last time. I think they trim the video after the launch to get rid of the dead space before and after.
That, and they already have those three engines fitted with the additional TEA-TEB charges for relighting.
I wonder if we'll see any more development on the Merlin engine line in terms of performance, or if the uprated Merlin 1D will remain the standard for the Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy first stage now that recovery of a GTO injection stage has been demonstrated. SpaceX already have a partial-funding development contract with the Air Force for testing a Methalox upper-stage (presumable based on the Raptor Methane-Lox engine they're already developing for the BFR), so I can't imagine them chasing improvements to Kerolox engines other than production efficiency and improvements for reusability.
I wonder if we'll see any more development on the Merlin engine line in terms of performance, or if the uprated Merlin 1D will remain the standard for the Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy first stage now that recovery of a GTO injection stage has been demonstrated. SpaceX already have a partial-funding development contract with the Air Force for testing a Methalox upper-stage (presumable based on the Raptor Methane-Lox engine they're already developing for the BFR), so I can't imagine them chasing improvements to Kerolox engines other than production efficiency and improvements for reusability.
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