Steel Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 [quote name='Mitchz95']I wonder if this is exactly what SpaceX needs. Someone they can compete with on near-equal footing. Should be quite the motivator to keep things moving. :)[/QUOTE] The issue here is that BO are neither a competitor nor on equal footing. BO is all about tourism, SpaceX about commercial contracts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camacha Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 [quote name='Red Iron Crown']I guess we're not counting the Space Shuttle or X-15. :)[/QUOTE] The Space Shuttle never did such a thing. Even the boosters made something that can be called a controlled crash, and needed extensive rework and repair to be flown again. People insist on comparing the two, while there is very little to actually compare. As a system, the large tank and other parts never even made it back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Armchair Rocket Scientist Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 [quote name='Cirocco']I made a thread about this in the space lounge as well and I'll repeat the same arguments here: this landing has almost nothing in common with what SpaceX is trying to do. The falcon 9 is designed to boost a payload + upper stage halfway to orbit. It's far, far, FAR bigger, heavier, more flexible, its engines don't allow it to hover like the New Shepard, etc. SpaceX has to overcome a whole lot more difficult problems. That being said, this [I]was[/I] a historic event: it was the first rocket that passed the Karman (I swear I almost typed Kerman there) line and come back down to land safely. The team behind it definitely deserves all the recognition and credit for that. And I definitely agree that the civil response from musk would have been to say "hey, good job on achieving your goal. Now we're going to go back to work on ours". I have great admiration for what Elon Musk has done and continues to do to drive technology forward to a more sustainable future, but I really dislike how he reacts to these sort of things, or to people investigating technologies or things he considers not worth researching.[/QUOTE] It was the first rocket that passed the Karman line and safely performed a propulsive landing. Sounding rockets (and amateur ones) have made safe parachute landings from beyond the Karman line. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
razark Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 [quote name='magnemoe']Common use of suborbital maximum height above 100 km, yes some extend this downward towards 60 km or so as you can not use control surfaces efficiently that high. Grasshopper never went higher than some km. Yes it might have been able to go suborbital fully loaded but this was never done.[/QUOTE] So, as I said, Musk was technically correct while being an ass about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nibb31 Posted November 25, 2015 Share Posted November 25, 2015 (edited) [quote name='magnemoe'] Grasshopper never went higher than some km. Yes it might have been able to go suborbital fully loaded but this was never done.[/QUOTE] By that measure, DC-X beat Grasshopper 20 years ago, and so did Armadillo and Masten. Edited November 25, 2015 by Nibb31 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wumpus Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 V2s (and many sounding rockets) made propulsive landings. Ok, maybe they relied almost entirely on lithobraking (except for the V2s in London, which used explosive braking). Come to think of it, did any V2s use air bursts? That presumably involved considerable braking (followed obviously by considerable breaking of both the rocket and parts of London). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motokid600 Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 [quote name='wumpus']V2s (and many sounding rockets) made propulsive landings. Ok, maybe they relied almost entirely on lithobraking (except for the V2s in London, which used explosive braking). Come to think of it, did any V2s use air bursts? That presumably involved considerable braking (followed obviously by considerable breaking of both the rocket and parts of London).[/QUOTE] Thats a terrible analogy... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kryten Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 [quote name='wumpus']Come to think of it, did any V2s use air bursts? That presumably involved considerable braking (followed obviously by considerable breaking of both the rocket and parts of London).[/QUOTE] Proximity fuses were all needed for flak at that point in the war. Some later V-2s didn't even have real warheads, just concrete. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Rocket Scientist Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 [quote name='wumpus']V2s (and many sounding rockets) made propulsive landings. Ok, maybe they relied almost entirely on lithobraking (except for the V2s in London, which used explosive braking). Come to think of it, did any V2s use air bursts? That presumably involved considerable braking (followed obviously by considerable breaking of both the rocket and parts of London).[/QUOTE] Technically, no suborbital rocket has ever not landed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wumpus Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 [quote name='Motokid600']Thats a terrible analogy...[/QUOTE] Sorry, I just came from the deltaV of a human thread. At least I was able to try to move that one to human jumping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rtxoff Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 I just don't understand the recent hate against Musk here. Jealousy? There's no need to tear apart every of his tweets analyzing it into the smallest details. One would call such a thing stalking and stalking is a typical behavior of fanboys. :-D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rakaydos Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 [quote name='gpisic']I just don't understand the recent hate against Musk here. Jealousy? There's no need to tear apart every of his tweets analyzing it into the smallest details. One would call such a thing stalking and stalking is a typical behavior of fanboys. :-D[/QUOTE] Musk's problem is that the achievements are closer than he's like but the differences arnt one he can easilly copy. Falcon 9 is a bigger, better rocket. But that's because it's a 3 stage rocket, where Blue Origin is only a 2 stage. The Falcon 9 -first stage-, after it's boostback burn, is then on a very similar trajectory as the New Shepard Booster stage after capsule separation. The falcon 9, being a bigger better rocket, doesnt have enough mass left at landing to hover even on minimum engine settings of 1/9 of their engines- it's just too powerful. The New Shepard has a mass fraction poor enough that a single engine capable of lifting fuel+rocket+ payload to the karman line can throttle down low enough to hover on just the rocket dry weight, which makes correcting to a landing far easier, as shown in the Blue Origin video. Elon cant get that hover capability with a falcon 9 booster because of the power the Falcon needs, which means he needs to get a soft landing on a crash burn, unlike New Shepard which can correct onto target and set down smoothly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitchz95 Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 I feel like Musk isn't really hating on Blue Origin, he's just trying to clarify some misunderstandings people might have about reusable rockets and it's being taken the wrong way. I just read his biography and it seems he does that a lot. He has this constant urge to correct misinformation, and almost refused to let Ashley Vance write the biography unless Musk could write corrections in the footnotes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophet_01 Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 (edited) Since when is dropping a part that free falls back to earth a seperate stage? Is a fighter jet a staging vehicle because it drops a free falling payload at a target? BO did achieve something great here, no doubt. Any comercial company that gets a launcher to space is already impressive just by doing that. However, it's not rly comparable to what spacex does, not rly because spacex is better (they have yet to get it done), but because the problem is a different one. The falcon9's first stage HAS to operate on vastly stricter margins in order to be somewhat efficient and of any use for an orbital launch with a payload. NS is more like an oversized lander and is build to be reliable, but not to be as efficient as the first stage of launcher that goes to orbit. Again, they did something cool here (and say that they are the first ->comercial<- company to do that kind of thing; they never compared themself to NASA on any source I saw). For the task at hand NS is a pretty good vehicle from what it looks lile. However, BO would be facing a vastly harder challenge if they were trying to build a similar craft, but with falcon9's margins. NS can easily get away with a heavy multi-purpose engine, any orbital launcher would have bigger problems with that. Edited November 26, 2015 by prophet_01 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nibb31 Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 [quote name='prophet_01'] However, it's not rly comparable to what spacex does [/quote] Which is why nobody here should be comparing with SpaceX. Only the ignorant media and the SpaceX fanboys are. BO is competing against Virgin Galactic, not SpaceX. They have beaten SpaceShipTwo to the "Karmann Line and back" competition. It's Branson who should feel the butthurt, not Musk. I don't think the market can support two suborbital joyride providers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rakaydos Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 [quote name='Nibb31']Which is why nobody here should be comparing with SpaceX. Only the ignorant media and the SpaceX fanboys are. BO is competing against Virgin Galactic, not SpaceX. They have beaten SpaceShipTwo to the "Karmann Line and back" competition. It's Branson who should feel the butthurt, not Musk. I don't think the market can support two suborbital joyride providers.[/QUOTE] To be fair, you dont really think the market can support anything, to judge by your other posts... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
More Boosters Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 [quote name='Rakaydos']To be fair, you dont really think the market can support anything, to judge by your other posts...[/QUOTE] Well, keep your expectations low and the surprises will be all that more pleasant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nibb31 Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 [quote name='Rakaydos']To be fair, you dont really think the market can support anything, to judge by your other posts...[/QUOTE] Well, I think we have yet to find the "killer app" that will increase the demand for spaceflight, and I don't believe in "build a bridge to nowhere and they will come". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kerbal01 Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 [url]https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3udj5s/looks_like_part_of_a_f9_first_stage_was_found_off/[/url] some redditors found a falcon 9 interstage off the coast of the UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CptRichardson Posted November 26, 2015 Share Posted November 26, 2015 [quote name='DarthVader'][url]https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3udj5s/looks_like_part_of_a_f9_first_stage_was_found_off/[/url] some redditors found a falcon 9 interstage off the coast of the UK.[/QUOTE] Oooh! DATA! Maybe not quite the data he was looking for, but they can still learn a lot about what the water landing did to it. It's almost certainly one of the 'soft' water test lands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Streetwind Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 Personally I don't believe that that thing will be usable for anything. It probably spent more than 1.5 years underwater... and rockets really don't like saltwater. Also, just look at the barnacle infestation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nibb31 Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 I don't see what data they can get out of that. Anything pertinent was downlinked as telemetry. The number of barnacles on it isn't going to help much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kartoffelkuchen Posted November 29, 2015 Share Posted November 29, 2015 Falcon 9 1.1 users guide was published: http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/falcon_9_users_guide_rev_2.0.pdf Though no word on performance "ask SpaceX for information" Confirms that M1D can throttle down to 70% Though it's a bit strange that some numbers clearly are for F9 1.1 FT...like first stage thrust Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B787_300 Posted November 29, 2015 Share Posted November 29, 2015 Tis Silly that they dont publish the numbers. Even ULA publishes them (and ULA has to publish a lot more because of SRBs) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kerbal01 Posted November 29, 2015 Share Posted November 29, 2015 Falcon 9 is not a 3 stage vehicle, well it would be if it was equipped with a kickstage for a mission but not normally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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