fredinno Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Well, the next nest inaction for that thing will definitely be the junkyard... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wingman703 Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 "Ice buildup due to condensation from heavy fog at liftoff" Surely that would have melted away during reentry? Are the leg locking mechs really that sensitive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frybert Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Just now, Wingman703 said: "Ice buildup due to condensation from heavy fog at liftoff" Surely that would have melted away during reentry? Are the leg locking mechs really that sensitive? If you watch the video, there is something that to my eyes appears to be ice STILL on the the outside of the rocket. Remember there is still LOX in the tanks at landing, and if any of the plumbing from that is running near the mechanism, because those legs don't deploy until just before landing it very well might still have been frozen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelLestat Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Damm, they was real close, perfect landing perfect accuracy.. Is incredible how they are improving.. I imagine they will make corrections to prevent this problem in the future. The SWATH design sounds good, but it said that it has many drawbacks which directly impact in the cost. They need a barge cheap to operate, or their profits by re usability decrease. Not sure how big are the gyroscopes in the barge.. But a really big gyroscope should not have any problem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatastrophicFailure Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Has anyone else noticed a bit of... bias in the General media over this? Literally every article I've seen/read thus far is painting this as some big fail for SpaceX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fredinno Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 50 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said: Has anyone else noticed a bit of... bias in the General media over this? Literally every article I've seen/read thus far is painting this as some big fail for SpaceX. The logic is that they failed to do something they did a few weeks ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Yellow Dart Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 Aww man! That was a beautiful landing!! Darn you Leg number 3! You had one job to do. One job! *Be a leg* That's it. At least this time we didn't have to see the little thruster at the top being sad and impotent as it slowly tips and falls over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Rocket Scientist Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 I watched heard it in person, did anyone else? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nibb31 Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 I think they need to redesign that leg system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ringkeeper Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 meh... more reaction wheels would have fixed that Or someone forgot to press T ... Still, awsome landing and great achievement. Looking on the destroyed picture it looks like the engines didn't got that damaged and may be still usable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KSK Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 1 hour ago, Nibb31 said: I think they need to redesign that leg system. I read somewhere that they already did for Falcon 1.2 but I have no idea how reliable that is. In the meantime, At Least the Pieces were Bigger This Time, would make a splendid name for a third drone ship. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streetwind Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 (edited) The important part is that if the leg had latched into place properly, the stage would have remained standing. I consider this very good news, as fixing a latch is an easier job than writing software and designing hardware for a hypersonic flyback of a rocket stage. The hardest part is over, so to speak! Not sure how quickly they can redesign and produce new legs... both SES-9 and CRS-8 are going to fly with the current ones, I would wager. SES-9 needs a barge landing due to velocity and satellite weight, whereas CRS-8 can technically land back at the cape, if approval can be secured. Airforce sounded pretty optimistic about the prospect, and the FAA probably has no reason to complain either after the past two missions demonstrated perfectly nominal flybacks, so there's that. Maybe SpaceX will soon have two or three used cores in the new hangar at 39B... since that's a Falcon Heavy compatible hangar, it can store that many just fine. Though they'll have to start hauling them elsewhere come March or so, since the real FH demo flight hardware should (hopefully, finally) be arriving there in April. Edited January 18, 2016 by Streetwind Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KasperVld Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 The video from the drone ship is amazing, and I think that although the Falcon literally broke a leg, that is still a much better outcome than the hard landing that was reported at first. They'll get there, and I think that even though the rocket blew up SpaceX has proven the viability of barge landings with this mission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nibb31 Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 (edited) It looks like maybe the legs didn't have time to latch into place. The legs deploy really at the last second (if that!), so maybe deploying slightly earlier might fix the problem. This is the second time they have a landing gear failure. On the previous barge landing attempt, it looked like one of the legs failed because the rocket landed with some lateral motion. Something's wrong with the design. Edited January 18, 2016 by Nibb31 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomeGuy123 Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 All I can say is I see why stock KSP doesn't model random failures. Keyboards would be thrown at monitors if this excrements happened in the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnemoe Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 39 minutes ago, SomeGuy123 said: All I can say is I see why stock KSP doesn't model random failures. Keyboards would be thrown at monitors if this excrements happened in the game. True, still landing leg fails after hard landings is an common problem. The landing legs, engine and fuel tank worked well as crumble zone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoMorph Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, Nibb31 said: It looks like maybe the legs didn't have time to latch into place. The legs deploy really at the last second (if that!), so maybe deploying slightly earlier might fix the problem. This is the second time they have a landing gear failure. On the previous barge landing attempt, it looked like one of the legs failed because the rocket landed with some lateral motion. Something's wrong with the design. Elon said in a tweet that it may have been ice that caused the locking mechanism to not latch properly. But I have this thing going through my brain atm... *Leg fails to lock on rocket and it slowly falls over...* Elon Musk: "JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEBBBEEEEEDIIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" Jeb: "Oooooops!" EDIT: Ahh... it was on Instagram I saw it... Quote elonmusk Falcon lands on droneship, but the lockout collet doesn't latch on one the four legs, causing it to tip over post landing. Root cause may have been ice buildup due to condensation from heavy fog at liftoff. Ironic thing is that at the last moment you see the faulty leg latch back onto to rocket... moments before it all goes KABOOOM! Edited January 18, 2016 by NeoMorph Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Padishar Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 1 hour ago, Nibb31 said: This is the second time they have a landing gear failure. On the previous barge landing attempt, it looked like one of the legs failed because the rocket landed with some lateral motion. Something's wrong with the design. The first barge failure was nothing to do with landing legs. It ran out of propellant for its thrusters and came down at a large angle from the vertical with no way of correcting it. This landing was so much better than the first one. A little bit of work on the legs (which they may have already done for 1.2) and they'll be fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert VDS Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 4 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said: Has anyone else noticed a bit of... bias in the General media over this? Literally every article I've seen/read thus far is painting this as some big fail for SpaceX. They fail to see how many things did go right and how hard it is to actually land a rocket on a barge at sea. Also negativity sells. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert VDS Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 1 hour ago, Nibb31 said: It looks like maybe the legs didn't have time to latch into place. The legs deploy really at the last second (if that!), so maybe deploying slightly earlier might fix the problem. This is the second time they have a landing gear failure. On the previous barge landing attempt, it looked like one of the legs failed because the rocket landed with some lateral motion. Something's wrong with the design. I've heard that it could have been ice build up in the leg due to the thick mist. The previous landing leg failure was due to most of the weight being on that leg, which was caused by a valve not responding fast enough, which made the rocket readjust itself into an angle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nibb31 Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 1 hour ago, Padishar said: The first barge failure was nothing to do with landing legs. It ran out of propellant for its thrusters and came down at a large angle from the vertical with no way of correcting it. This landing was so much better than the first one. A little bit of work on the legs (which they may have already done for 1.2) and they'll be fine. I was talking about the second landing attempt (CRS-6), which was a bit of a hard landing, where the rocket also tipped over. The hard landing was the reason of the failure, but a sturdier design for the landing legs might have saved the rocket. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n.b.z. Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 (edited) 5 hours ago, Nibb31 said: I think they need to redesign that leg system. I would guess that only the locking mechanism needs work. Otherwise, the legs seem fine as they are. Even more speculative: I guess they will work on their video link. That stream cutting out *seconds* before landing must have driven Musk no less bonkers than the rest of us... Edited January 18, 2016 by n.b.z. added quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shania_L Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 8 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said: Has anyone else noticed a bit of... bias in the General media over this? Literally every article I've seen/read thus far is painting this as some big fail for SpaceX. The media loves a disaster, they forgot how to do praise many years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomeGuy123 Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 They keep having "random" failures with the landing hardware. Bad valves, running out of hydraulic fluid, leg locking failure. By comparison, think about how many things go right with their Merlin rocket and the dragon spacecraft? Thousands and thousands of systems working right the first try. I wonder if the cause is systemic - if this landing hardware was engineered a different way than the main rocket, or maybe they were trying to save kilograms to the point of making the solution unreliable? It could just be random chance, I suppose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 9 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said: Has anyone else noticed a bit of... bias in the General media over this? Literally every article I've seen/read thus far is painting this as some big fail for SpaceX. If you know actually something about a subject, and then read or hear an article done by reporters, you will pretty much always think the reporter is an idiot and doesn't know what they are talking about (because they don't). You will then read the next article about something you don't know that much about, and you'll believe it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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