CatastrophicFailure Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 (edited) Ninja’d. Kinda bummed about not seeing the test sats, tho. That’s the part I was looking forward to. Edited February 22, 2018 by CatastrophicFailure Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Baron Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Well done, SpaceX ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PB666 Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 23 minutes ago, sevenperforce said: PAZ is going to a sun-synch polar orbit. So does this mean...what exactly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultimate Steve Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Anyone know if the ship can catch both halves, or will they need two ships for that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 5 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said: Anyone know if the ship can catch both halves, or will they need two ships for that? There's been a lot of speculation about this, but two ships is the most likely solution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatastrophicFailure Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Scott Manley has quite the view from his house. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PakledHostage Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 19 minutes ago, tater said: My friend in LA could see it. He sent me a pic. Videos are starting to pop up online. Not quite as spectacular as the other time, but definitely visible: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatastrophicFailure Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Still no confirmation from Elon, wondering if that’s good or bad... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultimate Steve Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 (edited) https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/966682218411143169 Nooooo! So close, though. Soon... Edited February 22, 2018 by Ultimate Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 So close, so close. A bigger chute means more mass at launch, though I suppose it's not too terribly much. I want to see the video of the fairing in the water! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NSEP Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 I was in class when the launch happend, 13 minutes before school was out. Anyways, did the fairing thing go wrong? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technical Ben Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 18 minutes ago, sevenperforce said: So close, so close. A bigger chute means more mass at launch, though I suppose it's not too terribly much. I want to see the video of the fairing in the water! It can be balanced though. More weight to chutes, if recovered can allow more cost/recovery potential in lowering weight in other structural parts. If it can be recovered consistently, then investing in lighter materials becomes possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cypher_00 Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 close but no cigar... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StarStreak2109 Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Getting there... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Oddly, I see no chute at all. I guess they cut the chute just before/after impact so that the wind pulls the chute free of the fairing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAL59 Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 (edited) Still, they did something for the first time. Now, only the second stage is expendable. Edited February 22, 2018 by DAL59 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 I watched Gemini flights as a baby (which I don't remember). One of my first memories is Apollo 11 (nursery school age). I watched all the Apollo flights. I watched many Shuttle flights, and have had private tours of KSC years ago. The only real launch I saw was one of Deke Slayton's here in NM (got passes from him). I've been a space geek for a long time. Falcon 9, and SpaceX is by far the most interesting stuff I have seen in the development of space since the first Shuttle launches (when I had no idea it'd not match the expectations they painted). Smart people since the 1960s have said that reuse---full reuse---was the ticket to space getting really interesting. Phil Bono at Douglas, and even Boeing in the 1970s, McDonnell Douglas in the 1990s. This was not a rare, oddball opinion, this was what people in the know thought. We're finally making actual progress. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elthy Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 (edited) @Topic: I wonder how badly the fairing is damaged after the splashdown. Maybe its easier to design its with salt water contact in mind than to hit the boat out there to catch it... Edited February 23, 2018 by monstah Removed part that was replying to hidden off-topic discussion, left relevant part, unhid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Salt water is nasty. I think their goal is not to refubish them, but to just reuse them with almost no effort. Dry makes that far easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevenperforce Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 9 minutes ago, tater said: Salt water is nasty. I think their goal is not to refubish them, but to just reuse them with almost no effort. Dry makes that far easier. If you could pop a couple of airbags such that the whole thing was held out of the water, with a little water splashing up onto the outside but not the interior, would there be any damage? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YNM Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 2 minutes ago, sevenperforce said: If you could pop a couple of airbags such that the whole thing was held out of the water, I guess the mass penalty is still going to be larger than leaving some drops of fuel... In any case, does anyone know whether that was close to their limits of expendable SSO/Polar launch mass ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 (edited) 5 minutes ago, sevenperforce said: If you could pop a couple of airbags such that the whole thing was held out of the water, with a little water splashing up onto the outside but not the interior, would there be any damage? Good question. I'd imagine that aerodynamics result in it moving through the air in much the same way we see it in the water, outside down. The chutes, etc are necessarily inside, so on the "up" side. The problem with an airbag is that it would also deploy on the side where the chutes are necessarily attached. That seems like it would be non-trivial to deal with (or the airbags have to deploy out of the shell, which for strength is likely monolithic). Edited February 22, 2018 by tater Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YNM Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 3 hours ago, Kerbal7 said: It's not like we haven't been doing this routinely since the 1960s or anything. Not as routine as flying an aircraft or driving still... You'd still have problems trying to board one from statistics alone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tater Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 A reality check. Much has said that the fairings cost 6M. Call it 5M. If every launch this year reused fairings, they'd pocket almost 150 Million dollars. Their launch prices are about the same, reused or not. Every reused booster is 10s of millions they pocket. The whole point of this revenue is to develop the next gen vehicle. Fairing reuse is free money (minus dev costs, which seem to be fairly minimal), and once accomplished, moves BFR forward (since the composite people then partially move to making the grasshopper). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Baron Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 (edited) Yeah, saving a 150 megafunds is a word. Corrosion/delamination/alteration of plastic in salt water depends on the type of plastic and the care that was taken when making it. Inclusions and bubbles will accelerate the decay, but i doubt that these relatively basic things are a problem here. Plastic boats swim for decades, if taken care of. I would say that a short swim will have no negative influence on the structural integrity of the egg shells. Salt water is more a problem for metals, corroding them chemically and through electrolysis if a current is present. It astonishes me that the thing has no visible traces of reentry, like a burnt surface. Edited February 22, 2018 by Green Baron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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