SpaceX Falcon 9 booster 'tipped over' into the ocean during landing

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/28/24230383/spacex-falcon-9-booster-first-stage-crash-starlink-launch

by mikro2nd • 2 years ago

14 38 2 years ago

theverge.com

cherioo• 2 years ago

It’s amazing how this is now the news, not when it successfully lands!

gregoriol• 2 years ago

"This was the booster's 23rd launch." that's the thing I'll remember from the article

grecy• 2 years ago

Think about who stands to lose the most if Tesla and spacex dominate (answer: old money)

Think about who controls the media (answer: old money and friends of old money)

It is very easy to see why they want everyone to think spacex and Tesla are collapsing

Arnt• 2 years ago

"Old money" is one way to put it. It seems to be dominated by pension funds and people's savings. Please don't put your savings into Vanguard's famous index fund — Vanguard currently has 7.47% of the shares and you don't want to ruin that by forcing Vanguard to increase its stake to 7.48%.

raverbashing3• 2 years ago

As much as I think the FAA response might be a bit unfair, I think the issue here is what is promised vs delivered

Even with a disposable booster you want it to follow a certain flight path and be discarded at a given area.

If you promised that it will land and it doesn't, even if it is inconsequential to the rest of the mission, well...

Sakos• 2 years ago

I just don't understand the repeated takes that this is unfair. There was a failure, it should be investigated and a fix found. Once SpaceX has done that, they can continue launching rockets. I'm not sure where the problem is. This is what we expect from every plane crash too, or did I imagine the existence and purpose of the NTSB?

The same thing happened with the last explosion and the Falcon 9 was eventually allowed to fly again once it was determined there was no public safety issue: https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/spacexs-falcon-9-cl...

They were even allowed to fly again before SpaceX finished their investigation as soon as the safety question was answered.

This isn't a punishment.

krisoft2• 2 years ago

There was a failure

There are failures which only cost the company money and there are failures which risks lives.

By all indications this is the first kind. It would be entirely different situation if the rocket thumbled out of control and hit the sea in the wrong spot. Then a grounding would be warranted. Here by all accounts they flown to the right spot but did not stick the landing.

This is what we expect from every plane crash too, or did I imagine the existence and purpose of the NTSB?

We would not ground the whole fleet of an aircraft model if something adverse but expected happened to one of them.

saberience• 2 years ago

It is kind of ridiculous though, every other rocket launched by any other company or country basically just blows up in the sea or the air.

Penalizing SpaceX for being the most successful company seems silly. Are they grounding other companies whose rockets cannot land at all?

raverbashing3• 2 years ago

There was a failure, it should be investigated and a fix found.

Yes but you don't need to delay other missions because of this specific failure

krisoft2• 2 years ago

you want it to follow a certain flight path

It followed the promised flight path all the way to the drone ship and then tipped over.

I would understand the consternation if it left the keep out zone and landed in an entirely different area of the sea. But it sounds like that was not the case.

even if it is inconsequential to the rest of the mission, well...

Could you finish your sentence please? The job of the FAA is to keep everyone safe. There is no indication that something unsafe happened here. What happened here is the reason why the recovery people are standing-by outside a declared safe zone and not chilling on the drone ship. (In other words this is the reason why the droneship is a drone ship.)

bryanlarsen• 2 years ago

The FAA needs to know that if the same failure would have happened at a different point in the sequence, that all human lives would be safe.

So if Scott Manley was right and it was a landing leg strut failure, SpaceX could quickly report that and close the investigation. A landing leg strut failure would never threaten human lives so that's all the FCC cares about.

OTOH, if it was an engine failure leading to the rocket coming in hot (like others have speculated), it's possible that the same problem at a different point in the flight path could threaten lives. But SpaceX has redundancy in basically all systems for the "going up" portion of the flight so it could just say "yup, if that had happened at a different time the redundant systems would have had to take over".

During landing the center engine is a single point of failure. Going up they have 8 other engines and can get to space on just 8.

firesteelrain9• 2 years ago

FAA is doing their job. If the investigation turns up nothing then that’s fine. If they find something like SpaceX didn’t follow their quality processes then that’s time to pause before someone gets hurt.

curiousObject• 2 years ago

This is the second recent glitch in a SpaceX mission. The other, more serious, was the failure of a Starlink Falcon 9 to quite reach a viable orbit because of an oxygen leak on an engine.

These minor blips only stand out in the context of SpaceX’s unprecedented consistency, which surpasses anyone else. But, if they have another snafu soon, maybe it could hint at a slight decline in their normal technical excellence?

Edit : OTOH, this was launch 23 of that booster, as mentioned by @gregoriol, so I for one might see that as a successful test discovery of the reuse limits of the structure. And also, the F9 that didn’t reach orbit probably wouldn’t have threatened the lives of a human crew, although it would have scrubbed their mission.

quartesixte• 2 years ago

The industry has been poaching a lot of talented technicians away. And the OGs are starting to retire...

h_tbob• 2 years ago

I watched Jeff bezos’s tour of blue origin facility with everyday astronaut.

He gave the reasoning for why New Glen has more than three legs (I think 6)

He said that the more legs you have, the smaller each leg has to reach out to give the same probability of tipping over. So there’s a formula to pick the best number of legs given their weight etc.

Interestingly he said they picked their number not just for that but also because it went well with the engine distribution.

SpaceX Falcon 9 booster 'tipped over' into the ocean during landing

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