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Blue Origin Thread (merged)


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2 hours ago, PakledHostage said:

I heard that one of the SpaceX technicians who last worked on the rocket is missing his Galaxy Note 7...

Weird. I would have taken SpaceX for an "Apple exclusively" kind of company...

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8 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

It's desperate in the sense that they seem to now be relying on amateur footage from miles away to find the cause of the mishap, while they  should have actual close-up footage and telemetry. They supposedly have data from instruments (including accelerometer data, pressure sensors, valve positions, etc...), on board the rocket and GSE, as well as their own cameras, and monitoring equipment from CCAFS (including sismological and meterological data, radar...). Unless maybe that is another area where they cut corners to save money, and don't record data for tests, only for launches...

I agree that they clearly are at a loss right now, which is a really bad thing for any return to flight attempts. If they cannot isolate it to a specific GSE issue, then future launches are just a dice roll, other than perhaps being extra vigilant about GSE risks in the future, and adding far more data collection in case of a failure. Maybe they should replicate the strong back as it was, and test second stages to destruction on it (meaning do launch loading cycles on it until something breaks).

 

8 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

The fact that the data they have isn't helping them figure out what happened when an anomaly did occur makes you wonder what use there is to actually do these static-tests in the first place.

It's important to also note that all US LVs do a "static test" before liftoff---they spool up the engines with the hold-down clamps, then launch. If they detect a problem, they can shut down before releasing the hold-downs.

The static tests are a bit odd, frankly, and including the payload as they have recently done is just, well, dumb.

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6 hours ago, magnemoe said:

What was the event 58 years ago?
The purpose of an life fire test is to check that the engines and their system works well. They might not use launch telemetry but it would be weird if its not all running just to see that it works. 
I have an feeling this is an oxygen leak, would the oxygen tube in detect an leak? Could it be an internal leak in the rocket, as they are pumping oxygen in an smaller leak would be hard to detect. 

 

The last time a test fire exploded on the pad in the US.

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8 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

It's desperate in the sense that they seem to now be relying on amateur footage from miles away to find the cause of the mishap, while they  should have actual close-up footage and telemetry.


Re-reading the message...  They're not relying on amateur footage.  The message called for assistance from three professional organizations and "everyone else".  It's still odd, but not as odd and desperate as it's being made out here.

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8 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:


Re-reading the message...  They're not relying on amateur footage.  The message called for assistance from three professional organizations and "everyone else".  It's still odd, but not as odd and desperate as it's being made out here.

This. When there's an airliner crash or the like, the NTSB and other authorities always put out a similar call for outside information. At this point, @Nibb31's suppositions are no more valid than the whackjob conspiracy theories floating around. At this point, that doesn't necessarily mean either is wrong, too. 

On 9/9/2016 at 9:12 AM, DerekL1963 said:

"Not telling us anything" != " they don't the slightest clue about what happened".

 

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41 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:


Re-reading the message...  They're not relying on amateur footage.  The message called for assistance from three professional organizations and "everyone else".  It's still odd, but not as odd and desperate as it's being made out here.

I found that extremely odd too. You would think that Elon has folks from NASA, USAF, and FAA on speed dial. He shouldn't have to use Twitter to request their help...

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3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Or just a curtsey to the target audience of SpaceX publicity: internet dwellers. Geeks, nerds, other ones who don't have a nasaphone, but in real time follow twitter.

Why would they want the publicity of effectively saying "we have no clue, do any of you have a video we can look at?"

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2 hours ago, tater said:

No, that's exactly what they are saying. That it's even a possible reading would make it a terrible PR move. 

It's only what they're saying in your head. There is no actual statement whatsoever one way or another, and saying 'they asked for any additional information that can be provided means they're helpless schmucks' is rather baseless given people have already pointed out that everyone does this if there is a chance someone has more information to provide, because more data points almost always helps to narrow down the problem quicker than trying to solve on internal data stores.

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There could not be a less serious medium than Twitter. As such, it's aimed at the kind of people who follow actors. I doubt many had HD cameras trained on a static test.

Its entirely plausible to read it as desperation, and it even being plausible gives a possible appearance of desperation. That's bad PR.

I heard Columbia break up over my house, and there was a call to keep an eye out for possible debris in the mountains. That's vastly different than what was a TEST under controlled conditions that should have been observered better that spacex obviously did. I guarantee that future tests will have more data collection than this one obviously did---they certainly had many better cameras trained on it than the video we have all seen, right? They should presumably have cameras where we could pinpoint rivets, right? If not... Wow. Cameras are dirt cheap.

Edited by tater
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6 hours ago, tater said:

Why would they want the publicity of effectively saying "we have no clue, do any of you have a video we can look at?"

Because people like to feel themselves generous and important. And they like to forgive somebody who subdues to them.
Especially when their cult-figure asks them for help in their "native" scenery, where they feel comfortable and self-reliant.
Kinda "damsel in distress" trick.

(Do you really believe that testing a 1/4 billion USD rocket they had only one puny camera?

"Today sat in traffic. Right after Bentley."
"And?"
"Learned to sneeze with opened eyes.")

Edited by kerbiloid
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No, I'd assume they have high framerate, HD cameras covering every angle such that nothing useful could possibly be learned from a camera several km away (any possible camera held by anyone other than them, in other words)

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14 minutes ago, tater said:

No, I'd assume they have high framerate, HD cameras covering every angle such that nothing useful could possibly be learned from a camera several km away (any possible camera held by anyone other than them, in other words)

I agree it is unlikely, but ya never know. They don't have an infinite number of cameras.

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33 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

I agree it is unlikely, but ya never know. They don't have an infinite number of cameras.

If they have a bunch of data, then the tweet is just this notion of what, trying to make their fan base feel included?

If they don't have a bunch of data, and they actually need camera data from many km away---they are pretty desperate.

I'm not saying anything one way or another, but I am certainly saying that the implication of the tweet is basically a coin flip between those 2 choices, so it's a bad idea from a PR standpoint (because it can certainly be reasonably interpreted as "desperation.")

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Where did you find that info ?

It all depends how those 3000 channels were transmitted. The info could be buffered somewhere on the pad, or it all could have happened much faster than the time resolution of their sensors...

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40 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

The info could be buffered somewhere on the pad

If the info can be buffered somewhere on the pad, it can be buffered somewhere out of the pad. Probably bottlenecks are between the rocket and the pad, not between the pad and the out-of-pad.
Don't they get real-time telemetry in the command center?

Edited by kerbiloid
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1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

If the info can be buffered somewhere on the pad, it can be buffered somewhere out of the pad. Probably bottlenecks are between the rocket and the pad, not between the pad and the out-of-pad.
Don't they get real-time telemetry in the command center?

It all depends on what you call "real-time". Telemetry has resolution in the ms range, and that timestamp metadata is important when you are dealing with an event that takes lasts less than a second. If they have 3000 channels, that is a lot of data to transmit in real-time.

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If their command center is, say, 30 km far from the launchpad, this is 30/300000 = 0.1 ms delay. No difference if data have already exited the rocket.
So,

  • either almost almost data are stored only on board (and either the launch was successful and data are useless, or the data disappeared with the rocket and still are useless)
  • or almost all data are transmitted from the rocket to land and there's no reason to keep them on a launchpad rather than in data-center.

STS-107:
https://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/timeline/

Quote

Communications and navigation systems in the forward fuselage were performing normally. RSB, body flap, main engine and right wing temperature sensors appeared active. The flash evaporator system had shut down. Life support systems were operating normally.

In-flight radiotelemetry, btw, even without data cables. And on a spaceship of 80s.
What's difference between on-board optical cable and board-to-spacecenter optical cable? Probably they are even faster than HDD.
Otherwise, what's purpose of the fire test: just to look, bang or not bang?

Edited by kerbiloid
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8 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Where did you find that info ?

It all depends how those 3000 channels were transmitted. The info could be buffered somewhere on the pad, or it all could have happened much faster than the time resolution of their sensors...

It was released shortly after the incident. Musk said they have 3000 channels of telemetry AND VIDEO and they're focusing on only 35-55 milliseconds of it. He later said they decided to reach out to the public because their data shows no reason for a failure. They haven't ruled anything out yet, including some outside cause. Good articles:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/spacex-with-a-manifest-of-70-missions-vows-to-safely-return-to-flight/

http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/09/09/musk-no-answers-so-far-in-difficult-failure-investigation/

 

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13 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

I'm starting to wonder if they had even one rolling at the time of the test.

One issue might be the first bang, they probably don't have audio at the tower, if they have recordings from multiple locations they could know it the bang was a car or it was something breaking or ripping on the rocket a second before the explosion. 
Yes they also have to investigate the wreck however this is slow and any leads help them here. 
 

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