totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Nightfury]

1 minute ago, tater said:

Same ground track and time (that was old post, but still applies to you people in that part of the world). 

Lets look if the clouds like me today, maybe I can get pictures of the burn

[Ultimate Steve]

And hopefully, 24 hours and 4 minutes after this launch, we'll see CRS-16!

[CatastrophicFailure]

 

 

[DAL59]

How long will it take for the fairings to glide down?

[tater]

1 minute ago, DAL59 said:

How long will it take for the fairings to glide down?

They should already be back... the question is, wet, or dry?

 

Wet.

[IncongruousGoat]

14 minutes ago, tater said:

Wet.

That's promising. I had been wondering why they weren't doing that previously. Saltwater corrosion is a problem for boosters, with all their steel fittings, but the fairings are composite and should be much more saltwater-tolerant.

[cubinator]

I guess the saltwater isn't such a concern after all? Maybe all that analysis they did on the other wet fairings showed there wasn't really anything wrong with them.

[Nightfury]

 

[KSK]

Pure speculation but could be they landed and floated, so the outsides got damp but all the important stuff on the inside stayed relatively dry?

On a different note - loved that landing footage! Three times down - land it again and that 'ten flights before major refurbishment' thing starts to look a whole lot less fanciful.

[tater]

1 minute ago, KSK said:

Pure speculation but could be they landed and floated, so the outsides got damp but all the important stuff on the inside stayed relatively dry?

On a different note - loved that landing footage! Three times down - land it again and that 'ten flights before major refurbishment' thing starts to look a whole lot less fanciful.

They're making it look routine.

There's no way it costs more to reuse a booster than to manufacture one either.

[Ultimate Steve]

5 minutes ago, tater said:

 

There's no way it costs more to reuse a booster than to manufacture one either.

Unless you're talking about the refurb costs for the RS-25s that will be used on the SLS.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I got to see this launch in person! It looked great, I was able to track the booster almost all the way down with binoculars. It went behind a hill during the landing burn, but I heard the sonic boom a minute or two later.

[CatastrophicFailure]

11 minutes ago, KSK said:

On a different note - loved that landing footage! Three times down - land it again and that 'ten flights before major refurbishment' thing starts to look a whole lot less fanciful.

Aaaaaaaaaand right here I run out of likes for the day, figures. 

They've picked up soft-landed fairings from the water before, maybe they finally decided to tweak what needed tweaking to make them waterproof? I can't imagine the structure needed much, and the metal fittings would be pretty straightforward, it seems.

Also wonder if this means they're having second thoughts about ol' Steve.

[sh1pman]

6 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Also wonder if this means they're having second thoughts about ol' Steve.

It’s still needed to fish the fairing halves out of the water.

[tater]

 

 

 

Edited December 3, 2018 by tater

[Ultimate Steve]

26 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Also wonder if this means they're having second thoughts about ol' Steve.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!

[tater]

 

To be clear from listening to him: They want to be able to look in detail at every aspect of whatever the last launch was to make sure there is nothing wrong that could have any impact on the next launch. Mission can be nominal, but they might still see something that they find concerning, and they need daylight hours to analyze it. Typical abundance of caution stuff.

 

That related to the fact there might be a couple day slip from the current January date for operational reasons at SpaceX, since it would be better for them to only have to deal with 1 spacecraft at a time on this first D2 flight.

[cubinator]

48 minutes ago, tater said:

They're making it look routine.

There's no way it costs more to reuse a booster than to manufacture one either.

I'm wondering if they even have to do anything at all to the booster besides move it around and refill it's fluid tanks. Maybe they are already at that point - the booster certainly looked untouched enough.

[tater]

So that booster has been fired at least 7 times, right? They test them all at McGreggor, then each gets a static fire before flight then the flights (assuming it didn't then get a test fire later at McGreggor between flights).

If we look at relights, it's 7 plus 3 entry and 3 landing burns, and at least one boostback (today). Can't remember the other flights. So 14 relights for this booster alone (at least).

[sh1pman]

54 minutes ago, tater said:

If we look at relights, it's 7 plus 3 entry and 3 landing burns, and at least one boostback (today). Can't remember the other flights. So 14 relights for this booster alone (at least).

We don’t know if the engines are same or not. They might’ve swapped some between the flights.

Edited December 3, 2018 by sh1pman

[Xd the great]

Will spaceX do an abort test for dragon 2, or has it been done?

[tater]

7 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

Will spaceX do an abort test for dragon 2, or has it been done?

They still have to do max-Q abort.

[tater]

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

So after today, not landing a rocket will officially be abnormal! 

And then they're gonna go an do it anyway in a month with GPS-3, which isn't even that heavy.... 

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

19 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

So after today, not landing a rocket will officially be abnormal! 

And then they're gonna go an do it anyway in a month with GPS-3, which isn't even that heavy.... 

I still don't get why the Air Force asked for this, there isn't any extra risk involved on their end... if they still want to be picky about reused cores, then that's fine, but what difference does the landing make if the payload is so lightweight?