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Blue Origin Thread (merged)


Aethon

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2 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Wow that made quite a mess of the deck. Quite the apt name for the boat, if it still loves Falcons after that. But it doesn't look like Falcon loves the barge very much

I am actually surprised how little damage and debris there is. Rocket landings are pretty binary. They go well, or they do not go well at all.

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Well, you can see they've been cleaning it up, I can see a pallet jack on there. An earlier pic had more stuff on it. From this link

On 3/8/2016 at 8:55 AM, sgt_flyer said:

nasaspaceflight forum has some high resolution images of the OCISLY barge back into the port :) - with the stage's debris on it. (when can even see 1 grid fin on one image)

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36326.6300

VCPRuJE.jpg

Zoom in!

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7 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Well, you can see they've been cleaning it up, I can see a pallet jack on there. An earlier pic had more stuff on it. From this link

VCPRuJE.jpg

Zoom in!

yup, people on nasaspaceflight forums also seemed to think that the barge was tilted a bit more than normal (by checking the visible waterline at the left of this picture) maybe there is a bit more damage than what's visible :)

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19 minutes ago, sgt_flyer said:

yup, people on nasaspaceflight forums also seemed to think that the barge was tilted a bit more than normal (by checking the visible waterline at the left of this picture) maybe there is a bit more damage than what's visible :)

Yeah, now that you mention it, something does appear off-kilter there. Also, is it SOP to have a containment boom around docked vessels?

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9 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Yeah, now that you mention it, something does appear off-kilter there. Also, is it SOP to have a containment boom around docked vessels?

i don't know if is for spaceX - maybe they are just cautious (after all, while the lox would have evaporated, there might be some RP-1 leftovers that did not burn during the crash - or the barge fuel tanks (for the stationkeeping engines) could have received some damage.)

still, guess it would be required if they intend to wash the deck - there's more than likely hydrocarbons residues on the barge's deck :)

maybe if we can find similar barge images from previous attempts for comparison :)

Edited by sgt_flyer
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6 hours ago, sgt_flyer said:

guess we're overdue for a falcon punch joke ? ;)

falcon-crunch.jpg

 

29 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

With all the video feed cutting off at the worst moment, I always wondered why they don't have cameras on a boat that follows the barge. Surely, the barge is not all alone out there.

It's probably to avoid immediate bad press.

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1 hour ago, fredinno said:
1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

With all the video feed cutting off at the worst moment, I always wondered why they don't have cameras on a boat that follows the barge. Surely, the barge is not all alone out there.

It's probably to avoid immediate bad press.


That and the manned boat is a good long way clear of the barge for safety reasons.

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@fredinno @Kartoffelkuchen

i think he meant what took the video where we see the 1st stage landing from afar. :) not sure if it was a drone though. could have been a plane or an helicopter with a stabilised camera (and could also have been from Nasa instead of SpaceX, given CRS-6 was for Nasa).

even if SpaceX has such a drone, it wouldn't be really meaningful to use it at night :) (go and try to land a drone at night if the barge's floodlights are out of order (because of vibration or impact) - the support ships would likely be a bit too far for reaching such a drone before it runs out of power :) (and if the support ships are beyond the horizon, it would be even worse to try and remotely pilot this drone :p)

Edited by sgt_flyer
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7 minutes ago, Kartoffelkuchen said:

Haha, no, you misunderstood me. I meant that I thought that there's always a camera drone / quadrocopter / however at the barge, filming the first stage landing.

There is a camera, probably not a drone.

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Hey !

Something occured to me... Maybe the reusability argument for landing the 1st stage back is only an excuse to fund the development of the landing autopilot, much more useful than reusability for the future of SpaceX to me. I'm thinking about the autopilot needed for Mars precision landings (supplies, crew...) that might happen in the future.

What do you guys think ?

 

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35 minutes ago, grawl said:

Hey !

Something occured to me... Maybe the reusability argument for landing the 1st stage back is only an excuse to fund the development of the landing autopilot, much more useful than reusability for the future of SpaceX to me. I'm thinking about the autopilot needed for Mars precision landings (supplies, crew...) that might happen in the future.

What do you guys think ?

 

No, I don't think they are pretending to get reusability for the sake of secretly practicing autopilot for Mars missions that may not ever happen.

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8 hours ago, grawl said:

Hey !

Something occured to me... Maybe the reusability argument for landing the 1st stage back is only an excuse to fund the development of the landing autopilot, much more useful than reusability for the future of SpaceX to me. I'm thinking about the autopilot needed for Mars precision landings (supplies, crew...) that might happen in the future.

Surely same technology can be used to land on other bodies, at least after they establish some kind of positioning system around the planet. But I can not see any sane reason why it should be kept secret. I think there is not much competition in these days or in foreseeable future. It is clear that landing of first stages gives economic advantage to SpaceX in relatively short period and developing costs are quite cheap because they can experiment with paid commercial launches. It is very obvious reason to develop it. However, it is very uncertain when the system will be used on Mars and what kind of business is related to such projects. It may take 25 or 50 years or even more. It is far too long time to develop business. It will be bonus, it if happens, but actual profit comes from reusing of expensive rocket stages.

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Yeah, OK, I admit that was a wild guess :D ! My bad...

3 hours ago, Hannu2 said:

Surely same technology can be used to land on other bodies, at least after they establish some kind of positioning system around the planet. [...]

The 1st stage is using GPS to aim for the barge ? Isn't there some sort of radio beacon on the target ? Like ILS for the planes ?

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Well hopefully they can start to ramp up their launch rate as advertised.  The number of flights for SpaceX this year is a lot based on the SpaceFlightNow schedule.

Apr 4th - CRS 8 flight (there are three re-supply flights to ISS going up within a 2-3 week period starting next week, one Dragon, one Cygnus, one Progress)

Mid-April - JCSAT-14

May 3rd - Eutelsat 117 West B & ABS 2A

Jun 24th - SpaceX CRS 9 (I expect this one to slip if CRS 8 is okay, seems like the CRS flights get pushed back repeatedly)

July - Iridium Next 1-10 (similar to the orbcomm launch in December, 10 sat deployment)

July - Amos 6

Aug 1 - SpaceX CRS 10 (I'd guess this will probably move dates)

Aug 15 - SpaceX CRS 11 (yeah, no way will two CRS flights happen within 2 weeks of each other...)

Sep/Nov - Falcon Heavy • Demo Flight (SpaceFlightNow launch schedule still says September)

Oct - Iridium Next 11-20

Dec - SpaceX CRS 12

Dec - Crew Dragon Demo 1

Mar 2017 - Falcon Heavy • STP-2

 

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But they need to if they're ever going to catch up on their backlog. That accident really set them back because I imagine they had to rebuild all their rockets, since they use that suspect strut all over the place. Once they have an inventory of ready-to-fly rockets again, they should be able to pick up the pace, especially if they use Vandy more and once Boca Chica comes online.

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