SpaceX successfully launches and recovers second Falcon 9 in 48 hours

https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/25/spacex-successfully-launches-and-recovers-second-falcon-9-in-48-hours

by janober • 9 years ago

507 201 9 years ago

agumonkey2• 9 years ago

The frequency is quite staggering. Will Musks replace Hertz?

ygra4• 9 years ago

This was only possible since the two launches were on different pads. Otherwise they're on a good path of having one launch every two weeks this year.

Klathmon3• 9 years ago

And they have quite aggressive goals of 24 hour turnaround on the same pad with the same first stage eventually.

apendleton• 9 years ago

Next year they should be going from two launch facilities to four, though, so if each one takes two weeks to turn around, they could still conceivably maintain an every 3-4-day cadence.

frozenport• 9 years ago

Sounds like you got a ragging Elon

valuearb8• 9 years ago

As in our entire development team turned over at 1/2 Musks rate?

agumonkey2• 9 years ago

Exactly

vermontdevil2• 9 years ago

And the second launch with the updated grid fins made out of titanium alloy. Elon Musk said it went well and they want to reuse them indefinitely.

dtparr• 9 years ago

Your wording makes it sound like there have been two launches with the new grid fins. For clarification, I believe you meant the second of this weekend's launches was the first to use the new grid fins.

olex7• 9 years ago

This was the first launch of the titanium fins. The BulgariaSat booster from two days ago was an older block 3 first stage with the "original" aluminum fins. They did glow quite a bit during the very hot re-entry, visible on the last few video frames before the feed cut out: https://youtu.be/Y8mLi-rRTh8?t=1405

nialv7• 9 years ago

That was probably not just glow. That was the shielding material actually burning.

vermontdevil2• 9 years ago

I misphrased it. I meant the second launch of the weekend. Not the second launch of the fins.

snovv_crash2• 9 years ago

Did anyone else notice that the engines shut off while the rocket was still a small ways up, after which it fell quite heavily onto the landing legs?

preben• 9 years ago

Might be an artifact of the weather conditions, which was said to be less than ideal.

olex7• 9 years ago

Yes. Probably due to pitching drone ship deck due to heavy seas, the stage reached zero vertical velocity above the deck and had to shut down. Even at the lowest throttle setting the first stage still has a TWR > 1 and cannot hover without accelerating upwards again, so calculating the "suicide burn" timing is really crucial.

edit Corrected "TWR > 0" to "TWR > 1".

winslow2• 9 years ago

Is that TWR (Thrust to Weight Ratio) for when all 9 Merlin engines are lit? Landing burn today had 3 lit if I recall correctly.

syngrog662• 9 years ago

they call it a "hover-slam" landing

olex7• 9 years ago

The idea of the hoverslam is to arrive at zero vertical velocity at exactly zero altitude. This is complicated, but can be done fairly reliably when "zero altitude" is stationary - on land landings or drone ship in calm seas. In heavy seas as today, the drone ship deck is pitching up and down, and it's really hard to predict the altitude it will be at the exact moment of touchdown. If I had to guess, I'd say the calculations are done against the highest possible or average position of the deck, and during today's landing it was at its lowest point at the moment of arrival, causing the stage to drop the last meter or so. This is what the crush cores in the landing legs are for :)

yincrash• 9 years ago

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/878828849722671104

Probable wind gust right before landing.

nicolapcweek94• 9 years ago

He's talking about friday's landing that came down very hard and used up pretty much all the emergency crush core in the legs, because it came down on the side of the ship, then overcorrected to the other side, then corrected again and touched down (speculation, but pretty obvious when you look at the scorch marks on the ship)

Yesterday's "jump" for the last few feet was probably due to the ship going up and down with the waves and the rocket not expecting it

TheAlchemist3• 9 years ago

This is becoming really astonishing. It's more and more fitting the quote “They did not know it was impossible so they did it”

I mean, the company was founded only 15 years ago, they started (with success) launching stuff into space only 10 years ago and now it feels like they are able to launch rockets into space every week. Reusable rockets should we add.

Musk very often sets impossible deadlines, but in this case, even if you take a step back, it's scary to make 10 years predictions based on this company track record !

lettergram• 9 years ago

I mean, NASA helped them a ton based on their previous research to this point.

Going forward I'd expect some slowdown.

But yes, very impressive IMO that he won all the necessary investments and contracts. My bet is his buddy Theil (idk not really buddy, but collegue) helped out with that.

ryanmarsh• 9 years ago

Going forward I'd expect some slowdown

Slowdown in funding or launch pace?

SpaceX is cutting launch costs significantly. I suspect that many satellite projects that weren't viable before will become viable now, thus increasing launch pace.

boznz• 9 years ago

SpaceX have several thousand of their own satellites to launch in the coming years, if anything it will speed up.

hyperbovine• 9 years ago

This--there's a reason they are headquartered where they are. What they've managed to accomplish in such a short time is amazing but let's not forget that it was massive US gov't investment in NASA and SpaceX's neighbors Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, etc. that made this all possible.

gozur884• 9 years ago

I mean, NASA helped them a ton based on their previous research to this point.

I'm not sure that's true. What did NASA help them with, exactly?

oxymoron• 9 years ago

Thiel ousted Musk from Paypal, and even though they don't seem to be antagonostic these days, I don't see them doing each other a lot of favors.

sillysaurus32• 9 years ago

This perception will change the moment one of the rockets explodes, though. It's ~impossible to ride an explosion into space hundreds of times without a catastrophic failure, so I'm just hoping the consequences won't be too bad.

Armisael16• 9 years ago

One of 'em already has. Look up Amos-6.

neolefty• 9 years ago

They've had many notable failures, from the first 3 attempts to launch a Falcon 1, to two different Falcon 9 failures -- including destruction of payload -- with major consequences and delays that resulted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

Each did diminish their reputation, but they have kept going. They can weather more failures, and every launch is still pretty nerve-wracking.

The stakes will be higher when they start carrying people, perhaps next year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon#Crewed_developme...

babyrainbow14• 9 years ago

Exactly this.

Funny that very few people see this and instead are already cheering them for doing the "impossible"...

Klathmon3• 9 years ago

they started (with success) launching stuff into space only 10 years ago

They really didn't start off with success. Their first 3 launches (on the Falcon 1 platform) were failures. If I remember correctly it nearly bankrupt the company and Musk himself ended up pouring a ton of money into it to keep them afloat.

It was a pretty rocky start for them as a company, and in my mind that makes it an even cooler story. They started with nothing, failed their first 3 attempts at launches but just kept at it, and they are now consitered at the top of the field less than a decade later.

TheAlchemist3• 9 years ago

Yeah they actually started a bit sooner (2006) but the first 3 launches failed. And yeah - it makes it an even cooler story in my mind too.

AH4oFVbPT4f8• 9 years ago

It reminds me of how close to the edge Fedex was before the Vegas trip to save the company.

http://www.businessinsider.com/fedex-saved-from-bankruptcy-w...

kiba• 9 years ago

This is becoming really astonishing. It's more and more fitting the quote “They did not know it was impossible so they did it”

More like, they know it is possible so they did it.

TheAlchemist3• 9 years ago

Indeed, given how Musk operates, you're right. (however, there's no quote in that sense :) )

babyrainbow14• 9 years ago

It feels like they are able to launch rockets into space every..

Not it doesn't. Stop trying to spread false impressions. This site is a discussion platform, not an advertising one...

smsx• 9 years ago

Are you saying that his opinion was a false impression? Seemed like he was discussing the topic at hand.

Ajedi32• 9 years ago

They've been doing about 2 rockets a month now for the past 2 months, and there's [plenty of indication][1] that they're going to maintain that cadence well into August. The idea of them stepping that up to 1/week sounds pretty plausible to me, especially once they have a few more pads available to launch from.

[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/

Tade02• 9 years ago

I like how SpaceX has a "pricing" section on its webpage as if space flight was something mundane and pedestrian like an oil change in your car or something.

JshWright8• 9 years ago

https://www.rocketbuilder.com/

(Granted, SpaceX did it first)

TeMPOraL3• 9 years ago

I watched the three promo movies on their website; it's interesting how much they focus on the "cheaper price tag != better" angle, by highlighting savings coming from better reliability ratings (= better insurance) and more reliable launch schedules. Feels like an obvious dig at SpaceX ;).

toomanybeersies• 9 years ago

Someone a while ago wrote a blog post comparing the pricing sections on various startup websites and how some startups don't have actual prices on the site, and made a comment about how if SpaceX can put a pricing section on their site, your startup can surely manage it too.

bluGill2• 9 years ago

Your startup can, but should you? Your competition wants to know what you charge so they can undercut you - or if they choose not to undercut you know how much they have to spin that they are better to account for the higher costs. Either way the competition will use your pricing information against you.

Now there are other considerations. SpaceX has a number of good PR reasons to want to be upfront about their costs (their competition is regularly accused of cheating the government every election cycle). If you sell retail your customers will ignore you if you don't have pricing information.

snowman311• 9 years ago

It may be not that long before we see: "Create an account to reserve your spot for our space tours!" followed by a form to fill in your information and a Checkout with PayPal button. Reserving a spot for a space tour. No big deal.

zer00eyz2• 9 years ago

Those fins are awesome:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/878821062326198272

Cast and cut titanium. They are about 4x5 feet and some of the largest (if not the largest) titanium castings in the world.

Titanium is an amazing material that is super hard to work with (special furnaces), and has its own sets of risks (titanium fire any one). I would love to see what goes into making those things because it simply has to be impressive.

snovv_crash2• 9 years ago

I'm curious why they didn't go the laser-sintered 3D printed route. For low volume items like these I'd imagine that the cost of the moulds and machining would be prohibitively expensive, and printing would let them try some different designs as they lead up to a Block-5 design freeze.

2dollars27cents• 9 years ago

There are a few reasons I could think of:

1 - Most industrial DMLS/EBM systems have a build envelope far too small for this. A system like the Norsk Merke IV might have the required size, but parts built that that process still require post-machining. 2 - Tolerances. Casting -> Machining still offers greater control over the final geometry than additive processes, especially at that scale. 3 - Casting is a bit more design-agnostic than additive processes. 4 - QC processes for casting + machining are far more defined than for additive processes.

None of these are insurmountable challenges, so I'm sure in the future a laser-sintered/EBM/plasma-deposition process will be used or at least heavily-considered.

zer00eyz2• 9 years ago

As I understand it (and I am not an expert I just enjoy the field) sintered materials retain some degree of porosity (and loose some strength due to this and how the particles are adhered).

This is OK for the average power drill in your house. It isn't critical, and they can compensate for the porosity with extra materials.

If we were replacing a steel part with at TI one, then sintering might make sense, the extra strength, and lowered weight would compensate for the differences in materials.

mabbo3• 9 years ago

The launch on Friday used the old fins. During re-entry, one set was glowing from the heat. I really thought it was going to cause a landing failure.

kl4m• 9 years ago

That was just the paint burning off, I think.

JshWright8• 9 years ago

They have always done that. Up until this launch the grid fins were coated with an ablative material that was designed to burn off.

zeep• 9 years ago

not as big of a mold, but here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXFRRg8YMT0, they cast a bunch of titanium hammers at the same time

schiffern3• 9 years ago

Incredible time-lapse of the landing, from Elon Musk's instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BVxysOlA04j/

The yawing motion at the beginning of the video is because they moved the drone ship to avoid stormy seas, so the stage had to thrust sideways to retarget. In calm weather SpaceX positions the ship right along the ballistic path, so the stage only needs to pitch up and "flip."

You can also see the grid fins "pulling up" through the atmosphere to bleed off as much speed as possible. I described the optimization a while back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14288431

Fantastic job to everyone at SpaceX!

vvanders• 9 years ago

That comment is worth a read, I had no clue they were actually generating lift on the body to reduce fuel/etc. Incredible stuff.

JshWright8• 9 years ago

The new and improved grid fins debuted on this flight allow them even greater capabilities in that regard (greater control authority means they can achieve a higher angle of attack).

schiffern3• 9 years ago

Thanks. I made a mistake in that comment, saying the lift/drag of the Shuttle was 1. The hypersonic L/D was 1, but during subsonic approach it was 4.5. In hindsight it kinda makes sense that wings do something. :)

The maneuver is more noticeable with the new titanium grid fins (needed because the old aluminum ones caught fire from aerodynamic heating). Not only are they larger, but they use a "sawtooth" leading edge that increases control authority. New: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/879065552060260352 Old: http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12...

They also happen to be the largest titanium forgings in the world. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42544.340#...

azernik2• 9 years ago

Saying in aviation: If you put a big enough engine on it, even a brick will fly.

In this case, it's "given enough initial velocity and control authority, even a brick will glide", but the spirit is the same.

Lorenzo45• 9 years ago

By "pulling up" do you mean tilting? I read your other comment but had trouble understanding the effect. Do you think you could draw a quick diagram?

schiffern3• 9 years ago

First off, the perspective is confusing. The camera is located on the right side of the rocket (I'm treating the zenith as "up" and the direction of flight as "forward"). So when it pulls to the left shortly after the engine shuts off, the vehicle is really pitching up while in a steep dive.

The goal of this maneuver to lengthen the descent path, which in the absence of an atmosphere would be a pure parabola (or more accurately, a suborbital ellipse). Passing through more air means shedding more velocity due to drag, and therefore less fuel is needed to land. Geometrically the best way to do that is to pitch "nose up."

No drawing skills except shitty MSPaint, but that's never stopped me before. https://i.imgur.com/VLYXDOf.jpg

ClassyJacket• 9 years ago

It's sad to click on that video and see conspiracy theorists claiming that it's poor CG. Seems no matter how great your achievements there will always be people there to try to bring you down.

9to5isdead• 9 years ago

It always happens, but really, they're just trying to hook anyone they can. When it comes down to it, there is everyone, and they are the else.

goshx• 9 years ago

I love how Elon Musk feeds the trolls like saying launches are done at night because "it's much easier to do the CGI that way"

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/832480331496185857?lang=...

nkrisc• 9 years ago

There will always be some who slip between the fingers of education lifting us up.

app4soft• 9 years ago

Take TLE of all Irridium-NEXT satelites... http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/iridium-NEXT.txt

... and import it to Stellarium http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Satellites_plugin

P.S.: Stellarium 0.16.0 released few days ago! https://sourceforge.net/p/stellarium/news/2017/06/stellarium...

antgiant• 9 years ago

Any idea how I could get a copy of Stellarium 0.16.0 compiled for Raspberry Pi?

lostdog• 9 years ago

To deploy 10 satellites, does the rocket do a series of burns, or do the satellites have enough propulsion to deploy themselves to separate orbits?

olex7• 9 years ago

The satellites do it themselves. The deployments from second stage are staggered with pauses of 100 seconds between each to allow them to safely drift apart from the initial separation jolt. After that, the sats do their own thing.

mikeash5• 9 years ago

The required propulsion is minimal. They're all going into the same orbit, just spaced around it. A tiny speed difference is enough to do that, since it adds up over time.

InclinedPlane2• 9 years ago

The deployment from the dispenser just puts the satellites in the same orbit with a little bit of offset between them, enough for comfort. The satellites then raise their orbits just a hair using their own propulsion and then use phasing to adjust their positioning so that they are equidistant along the orbit. That part takes a long time (hours) but it doesn't require a lot of propulsive capabilities so the satellites do it themselves.

ChuckMcM2• 9 years ago

Per Elon's tweet those grid fins were much better behaved than previous versions. Nothing got hot enough to start showing up in the visible spectrum (good). And what was interesting for me was the lack of gunk landing on the camera. (presumably from the fact that the covering of the fins wasn't burning off like it had in previous flights). What is particularly impressive for me is the slow and steady progress on the 'landed' F9's. The first one successfully landed looked really beat up, and the next couple marginally less so, Friday's went through a part of flight regime that SpaceX had deemed "un-recoverable" and an this one came through looking quite good. Still feels like science fiction to me ...

JshWright8• 9 years ago

Nothing got hot enough to start showing up in the visible spectrum (good).

The new grid fins undergo the same amount of heating, they're just better able to cope with the heat. The reduced heat in this case was due to the much lower energy entry profile (the partial boostback burn killed a large chunk of the stage's velocity prior to reentry, combined with the fact that it was a lower energy orbit in the first place).

ChuckMcM2• 9 years ago

Thanks Josh. I went back and reviewed the Iridium 1 footage and saw that even the Aluminum fins had no trouble with this particular launch and recovery option. I am looking forward to seeing the first GTO launch with a booster that has them.

Animats• 9 years ago

Nice. SpaceX is finally getting their launch rate up.

As a business, that's been SpaceX's biggest problem. Customers like the pricing but not the long delays. Finally, SpaceX seems to be getting past that.

Getting pad time at Canaveral is a bottleneck. SpaceX is still building their own launch site at Brownsville,, TX, but that's going slowly.[1] All SpaceX has there right now is some fill that's settling (the location is on sand maybe 2m above sea level) and a dish antenna. Next to be built, the fire station. First launch is now supposed to be no earlier than 2018.

[1] http://www.krgv.com/story/35550679/3m-road-project-underway-...

mabbo3• 9 years ago

Today's launch wasn't from Canaveral. It was a polar orbit launch, so it went from Vandenberg near LA.

It's still around a two-week turnaround to get a launch pad ready in Canaveral.

mschuster91• 9 years ago

Why? Because the exhaust fire burns everything in its path down to the core?

InclinedPlane2• 9 years ago

If they achieve this launch rate through the rest of the year they should hit about 20 launches.

deegles• 9 years ago

Looking forward to articles complaining about SpaceX launching too often. :)

gsmethells• 9 years ago

I'm reading his autobiography right now. Fascinating life of both the man and his companies if you are interested: https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/...

naedish• 9 years ago

That's a biography, not autobiography. And Musk ended up refuting some aspects of the book.

dewski• 9 years ago

As someone who read the book, do you know which parts he refuted?

babyrainbow14• 9 years ago

There seems to be a reason that more companies are not attempting to reuse rockets [1]

So considering that, SpaceX has not proved anything, yet. Because the impossible or hard part is not launching and landing rockets. Hard part is to do it..

1. With same or more reliability than using completely new rockets.

2. Launch with enough frequency to justify the reusing procedure..

So yea. A couple of launches and reuses does not prove anything. It is a start, sure. But they have not yet proved others who didn't attempt this yet..

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14626183

ttandon• 9 years ago

Does anyone know why a side-view of the actual touchdown (like they usually release after) hasn't been posted by SpaceX yet?

sidcool• 9 years ago

Some mornings when I am unable to get out of bed, such news act as an Adrenaline shot for me. I kick myself out of the black hole and go ahead to launch my rockets (metaphorical).

If Elon can, I need to, as his protege (again metaphorical)

esseti• 9 years ago

wondering if all this tech is only for rockets or he has a plan to build the next generation of "airplanes" for traveling.

ygra4• 9 years ago

I guess from Elon's POV travelling long distances is already fairly efficient with airplanes for people and ships for cargo. As evident from projects like Hyperloop and The Boring Company he tends to tackle the shorter distances where things like trucks, cars, or planes are rather wasteful (and trains seem to be not good enough, but maybe that's also due to the US' bad train infrastructure with virtually no high-speed rail at all).

So, no, I don't see anything like that coming. Based purely on speculation and observation, of course.

bluGill2• 9 years ago

US' bad train infrastructure with virtually no high-speed rail at all

The US has the best train infrastructure in the world. What is lacking is passenger rail, which gives the false impressions that the infrastructure is bad. Trains are not a very good fit for moving people for the most part. Other countries have stretched those limits to the max which means that they can give the impressions of good train infrastructure.

chaosbutters314• 9 years ago

I had always hoped that they would use giant versions of these pin toys to land rockets.

https://www.amazon.com/Toysmith-Classic-Pin-Art-Black/dp/B00...

peki• 9 years ago

I'm wondering what would be the flight time for a transcontinental flight on a SpaceX falcon9?

How about London to NY?

SpaceX successfully launches and recovers second Falcon 9 in 48 hours

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