CatastrophicFailure Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 1 minute ago, cubinator said: I was fully expecting to see seabird roast in a few seconds there. Looked like the landing burn started, you could see it in the clouds. I wonder if the engine aborted or if it exploded in flight. Did anyone catch the “stage 1 FTS has safed” call? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brotoro Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 That light may have been the explosion when stage 1 hit the sea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cubinator Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Just now, Brotoro said: That light may have been the explosion when stage 1 hit the sea. I guess you could call that a 'landing burn'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 1 minute ago, CatastrophicFailure said: Did anyone catch the “stage 1 FTS has safed” call? Yeah, I heard it as usual. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanRising Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 (edited) 24 minutes ago, cubinator said: Oh my god, STAGE 1 SACRIFICED ITSELF FOR THE BIRDS My thoughts exactly! I thought something looked off during the end of the entry burn (flame only to one side), but my mind was taken off of that by the drone ship camera with the birds. A net loss for SpaceX with that, but definitely a net win for those birds. EDIT: Also, I’m surprised they said they lost the booster on stream, even though it was blindingly obvious from the camera views. I remember them bluffing about the center core on the FH test flight for a bit, then just dropping the subject. I guess media pressure was higher that time, though. Edited February 16, 2021 by RyanRising spelling Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zolotiyeruki Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Eh, I'm sure the birds would have been (safely) blown out of the way if Stage 1 had landed norminally. As always, it'd be interesting to find out what went wrong. It's odd awesome when *not* recovering the booster is the anomaly! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cubinator Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 5 minutes ago, zolotiyeruki said: (safely) blown away by the hot end of a giant rocket booster. I'm pretty sure they'd be killed by the sound alone and they were way too late to start flapping away from a rocket stage dropping out of the sky. I'm sure they're well prepared for regular falcons, but this Falcon is entirely different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geonovast Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Figures, the first one in awhile that I miss watching live.... I feel somehow responsible for this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brotoro Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Good orbit. I wonder if the Starlink satellites have enough delta-V to make good orbits in the case of a second burn failure of the Mvac. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clamp-o-Tron Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Just now, CatastrophicFailure said: Did anyone catch the “stage 1 FTS has safed” call? Yeah, they did safe the FTS. Just now, Brotoro said: Good orbit. I wonder if the Starlink satellites have enough delta-V to make good orbits in the case of a second burn failure of the Mvac. IDK if they have the thrust, I think the dV would be pretty trivial Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brotoro Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 60 Starlinks successfully dumped south of New Zealand. Huzzah. Dumped into the correct orbit, I mean. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Callouts didn't seem to line up with display... wonder what happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerbiloid Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 (edited) Spoiler 1. The Ancient Romans first asked birds for prophecy. Space-X didn't. See the result. (While birds were there and waiting.) 2. My last week post appeared to be prophetic. Partially. Spoiler Not the flipper (SN), but a Falcon. Anyway, it works. Also, SN is still going to fly. Let's wait a little. Upd. Got it. Falcon has intercepted the magic, by unexpectedly flying first. Edited February 16, 2021 by kerbiloid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RCgothic Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 At least it wasn't one of the flight leaders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clamp-o-Tron Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Watch at 26:49 (can’t embed at a timestamp b/c I’m on mobile ATM) for the call for entry burn shutdown, and visually the shutdown. Beginning immediately after that and lasting until the video and S1 telemetry cuts out 13 seconds later, there is a very large plume of sparks and something blue-ish originating from the bottom of the right side of the booster. Plasma I would suspect, which indicates either: The trajectory was too much for the booster to handle (extremely doubtful because the booster lands in the vicinity of OCISLY, and MECO seemed to occur on time) Entry burn somehow was not enough. I will have to go back and compare the Stage 1 telemetry with past Starlink launches, but because the callout was on time and the vehicle didn’t flip out due to asymmetric thrust I will assume the entry burn was mostly nominal. The booster came in at too high of an angle of attack. This is more convincing to me than the other possibilities, but it doesn’t account for how close the booster landing to OCISLY (we saw the light of either the Merlins or somehow an explosion in frame, and those lucky seagulls heard something and flapped about), especially when a large deviation at those altitudes and speeds would bring the booster farther away from the droneship than I imagine grid fins could bring it back from. Finally, my favorite explanation, that is a hardware problem with a Merlin. It needn’t be one of the landing burn engines, but if any of the engines somehow had an issue that would result in it breaking apart due to thermal and aerodynamic stresses, that would explain it. It explains to proximity to the ASDS, the apparently nominal ascent and entry burns, and the streak of plasma up the side of the booster that surely would cause a loss of signal. The only problem is why an engine would fail like that- B1059 has proven itself- would be an unpublicized engine swap, damage during refurbishment, or something during NROL-108. Anyway, just my two cents. Elon remains silent about the cause or any more details. We mourn the loss of B1059 and celebrate the survival of several seagulls. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RealKerbal3x Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 RIP B1059. That was definitely the largest amount of plasma I've ever seen coming off the engine cluster post-entry-burn. It's possible that an early shutdown might have screwed with the trajectory, leaving the booster too far off-course to maneuver to the droneship. Lucky birbs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricktoberfest Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Losing the booster may have saved them from the Sierra club though. We had a dozen ducks die due to an equipment failure and it took years and millions of dollars to “correct” the issue (propane noisemaker ran out of gas). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RealKerbal3x Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 1 hour ago, Ricktoberfest said: Losing the booster may have saved them from the Sierra club though. We had a dozen ducks die due to an equipment failure and it took years and millions of dollars to “correct” the issue (propane noisemaker ran out of gas). That sounds like a fun story but I cannot find tail nor feather of it anywhere -- tell me more! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeSchmuckatelli Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 So - they got 6 flights out of that one booster... any idea of how much they saved over single use rockets? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 ROCKET INTENDED FOR LAUNCHING ASTRONAUTS EXPLODES IN OCEAN Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clamp-o-Tron Posted February 16, 2021 Share Posted February 16, 2021 I don’t think this will delay Crew-2 or any upcoming CRS missions, but does anyone have an idea if the landing anomaly will push back some launches as they investigate? They obviously don’t want to potentially throw away boosters if they can help it. USSF-44 (Falcon Heavy) has been delayed to July, probably unrelated. Also, it seems like Starlink will be 75% of SpaceX’s manifest through Q1 and Q2 this year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricktoberfest Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 6 hours ago, sevenperforce said: That sounds like a fun story but I cannot find tail nor feather of it anywhere -- tell me more! it’s easy to google: oilsands tailings pond ducks numbers of ducks range from a dozen to 1600 seemingly depending on what the initial bias against the oilsands is in the reporting. as it relates to spacex though, it would be a huge PR bust- even for seagulls to be roasted live on camera. On the other hand they could probably try and spin this as the booster saving those poor birds on the landing zone. (Even though it’s not likely true) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 17, 2021 Share Posted February 17, 2021 Not a huge problem Spoiler Detail: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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