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2 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

SpaceX has done soft landings before, and every other time the booster tipped over and broke up upon impact. No one expected the booster to survive the tipover.

This time they used a better water mod.

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10 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Today’s SpaceX launch has been Kitty Approved™️

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:D

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The Soyuz... not so much.

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It surprises me that even Elon Musk possibly sparks the imagination of other animals too! Maybe we will see the first dolphins fly their own supersonic planes soon! Cats on the Moon? Octopi on Mars?

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56 minutes ago, Jaff said:

I suppose it is impressive but if it had blown up wouldn’t the bits and pieces just be junk in the sea? Now they have to recover this one?

Pretty much. They were expecting the booster to be lost, mostly because it’s an old model that would never fly again anyway. They were, essentially, attempting to throw it away. Now they’re obligated by numerous laws to retrieve it. Might glean some data from further analysis, but it’s still heading to be scrapped. 

Unless they think up some other “creative” way to dispose of it.

Spoiler

Opening to divers next spring, just off the Florida coast: new SpaceX Artificial Reef!

 

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2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

SpaceX has done soft landings before, and every other time the booster tipped over and broke up upon impact. No one expected the booster to survive the tipover.

So, does it mean they are testing a new method of landing the first stage, in the ocean instead of on a barge?

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1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Pretty much. They were expecting the booster to be lost, mostly because it’s an old model that would never fly again anyway. They were, essentially, attempting to throw it away. Now they’re obligated by numerous laws to retrieve it. Might glean some data from further analysis, but it’s still heading to be scrapped. 

Unless they think up some other “creative” way to dispose of it.

Hey, i'm sure there are Aeronautics Museums around that would love to have such piece in exhibition :D Soot and all, to add authenticity.

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9 hours ago, YNM said:

Well if that's the case your country has a pretty good maritime law then...

Some other country doesn't recognize your rights if it wasn't listed or continually kept. I think in the UK they had this problem for a sunken boat which has gone for very long, but because there wasn't anyone who continually kept it it's open to finders. The restorer had to kept the precise location secret - it's now a museum piece (I really forget the name). However, for registered boats with registered accidents and known end locations, there's a "receiver of wreck" which continues to own the ship.

This is all under maritime international convention (1910 and amended in 1989).  In your case, the UK probably has something similar to the US.  US passed the Abandoned Shipwrecked Act in 1987 which gives title to the United States of any finds within U.S. territorial waters (typically three miles from the coastline) and not the discoverer.  With regards to nation ships, it codifies that no governments ever abandons the S&R efforts for their own vessels.

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11 minutes ago, garwel said:

So, does it mean they are testing a new method of landing the first stage, in the ocean instead of on a barge?

No. 

They are testing a new method of landing first stages: specifically, a 1-3-0 landing burn, rather than the 1-0 and 1-3-1-0 landing burns they've done before. But there is no plan to land stages in the oceans and then recover them; this probably could not be easily replicated. In fact, it may have been that this particular burn had engine shutdown a bit late (or residual velocity at engine shutdown), causing the stage to dip a meter or two underwater while the engines were still firing and thus cushion the tipover.

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A klew as to the differences between the three different landing burn types...

Due to the ignition system plumbing used by SpaceX, only three of the nine Merlin 1D engines on the first stage are restartable in flight, and the core engine must be lit before the other two restartable engines. Thus, all inflight restarts begin by the ignition of the core engine, followed optionally by the ignition of the other two engines.

  • In a "1-0" burn, the core engine is lit, burns for a while, and then is shut off. This produces the lowest thrust and is most often used in RTLS landing burns where the rocket has plenty of propellant margin for landing. It is least efficient, because the extra time spent firing causes gravity drag losses, but it produces the lowest stresses on the rocket and is the most reliable.
  • In a "1-3-1-0" burn, the core engine is lit, followed immediately by the two adjacent engines. After some time, the two adjacent engines are shut down while the core engine continues to fire. Subsequently, the core engine is shut down. This is more efficient, because a lot of velocity can be canceled quickly by the high thrust of all three engines, while the single-engine termination gives finer control over the gentle touchdown.
  • In a "1-3-0" burn, the core engine is lit, followed by the two adjacent engines, and then all three are shut off simultaneously. This is significantly more efficient than the 1-3-1-0 burn, but extremely difficult to control, because it is hard to predict transient thrust curves for three engines at the same time, so it's hard to be certain of exactly when you'll hit zero velocity and zero altitude.

1-3-1-0 burns have been used for almost all the more recent lower-margin ASDS landings.

Edited by sevenperforce
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I love how 'human' and not 100% serious Elon Musk is, especially on Social Media. Usually when i think of spaceflight i think of extremely well planned out, mission where everything has to go right or else everything will explode. Meanwhile Elon here suddenly jumps up saying Im going to send a Tesla to Mars lol. and Oh hey look one of our rockets that looks intact, lets fish it up and see what we can so with it! He does not behave like a robot, just posting announcements on twitter and sending concrete blocks as dummy payloads to space.

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1 minute ago, NSEP said:

I love how 'human' and not 100% serious Elon Musk is, especially on Social Media. Usually when i think of spaceflight i think of extremely well planned out, mission where everything has to go right or else everything will explode. Meanwhile Elon here suddenly jumps up saying Im going to send a Tesla to Mars lol. and Oh hey look one of our rockets that looks intact, lets fish it up and see what we can so with it! He does not behave like a robot, just posting announcements on twitter and sending concrete blocks as dummy payloads to space.

He's trying way too hard if you ask me. The people seem to love it, the question is if potential costumers appreciate this attitude.

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8 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

I bought boat tickets to watch the launch from just south of the port.

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Youre braver than I. I’d never risk actual money on SpaceX doing stuff on time like that. I know, I know, oh me of little faith... :P

4 minutes ago, Canopus said:

He's trying way too hard if you ask me. The people seem to love it, the question is if potential costumers appreciate this attitude.

Well, given their backlog... <_<

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13 minutes ago, Canopus said:

He's trying way too hard if you ask me. The people seem to love it, the question is if potential costumers appreciate this attitude.

That human touch also includes a fair amount of candour. I think potential customers would appreciate that even if they might do a bit of eye-rolling in private at some of Elon's playing-to-the-crowd tweets and such.

Low costs, decent and steadily improving reliability figures, and a good track record at pulling out all the stops to diagnose and fix the problems they have had, won't hurt either.

 

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43 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

I bought boat tickets to watch the launch from just south of the port.

Don't be wayward boat. :D

 

2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Twice faster than ICBM? This would reach escape speed and fly away.

ICBMs do not take 50 minutes to get anywhere. 20-30 is typical.

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latest?cb=20130315115546

Forget flamethrowers, if Musk wants to drum up some funds for BFR development, he should start selling old used rocket bits!

And I know just where he could get some... might be a bit salty tho...

Edited by CatastrophicFailure
Wow, that thing is REALLY cooked...
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12 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

 

We’ve got our first weather report for the big day, looks promising.

Nobody blink... :o

And keep those butterflies from flapping their wings.

22 minutes ago, flart said:

Why SpaceX has their translation telemetry at km/h?

I had expected it would be m/s or mph, where did km/h come from?

The current webcast is derived from the "hosted webcast" of days gone by. They used to have a technical webcast, without commentary and with all values in m/s, and a hosted webcast with commentary and with all values in km/h. Now they only do the latter.

Most of the world uses km/h. The US is rather an exception.

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