The Thunderbirds theme tune would make the re-entry/landing sequence much more exciting.
Putting together SpaceX rocket landing blooper reel. We messed up a lot before it finally worked, but there's some epic explosion footage …https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/903333005527093248
I so want this to be a success.
When I was a kid I spent ages poring over "Spacecraft 2000 to 2100 AD" and it feels like SpaceX et al are finally starting to make things like that a reality.
http://www.terrantradeauthority.com/tta-books-2/spacecraft-2000-2100-ad/
Now put back until 20:05...
The boosters landing :thumbsup:2nd that. The pair of them plopping down together just like the computer simulations was very cool indeed. Hope the 3rd one made it, that's where the mods have been.
My one wish would be a live stream without the noise of a room full of Murican testosterone.
I'm not optimistic about the landing of the central core, but that was awesome.
We lost the centre core.
It would have been better if the boosters had landed inside a giant fucking volcano You Only Live Twice style...
He's bound to be evil right?
Live feed from the car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6M
It's going to coast for about 5 hours and then attempt another burn to line the orbit up with Mars. That's actually a serious test of the second stage's capabilities, as it hasn't spent anywhere near as long chilling in space before re-lighting the engine before.
The trouble with rockets is that they always look slow as they take off...but in the 1996 film "Apollo 11" there are library clips of the Saturn V a few minutes after launch, when it's almost horizontal against a blue sky, and moving like a very fast bullet.
Losing the feed from the droneship is normal, but it usually comes back within a minute or so unless something has gone boom and wrecked the comms gear. We'll have to wait until they can get a boat out to eyeball it.
ETA: Ah no we won't. It's on the mission control audio loop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B_tWbjFIGI&feature=youtu.be&t=2304QuoteWe lost the centre core.
I'm fairly certain that they have ships nearby with people observing the landing. I know that they usually get people onboard the landing barge fairly quickly to weld it down.
I mean this thing really picks up speed nicely.As the fuel burns the rocket gets lighter and the acceleration increases. This was particularly noticeable during the second stage, after the 3 first stage motors had detached.
I'm fairly certain that they have ships nearby with people observing the landing. I know that they usually get people onboard the landing barge fairly quickly to weld it down.
For values of 'nearby' that provide a reasonable degree of protection from being accidentally bombed from space, so they probably can't tell much more than "it went boom" until they've waited for the fire to die down and decided it's safe to approach and recover the wreckage / data loggers.
The third booster was due to settle on a drone ship stationed several hundred kilometres out at sea. Unfortunately, it had insufficient propellant left to slow the descent, missed the target vessel and was destroyed as it hit the water at some 500km/h.
By then, the upper-stage of the Falcon Heavy, with its Tesla cargo, was heading on a trajectory that would hopefully take it towards Mars' orbit.
That required the engine on the upper-stage to fire on three separate occasions, with the third and final ignition only occurring after a long cruise phase - something which was confirmed some six hours after the launch.
I like the fact that the Tesla has a copy of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in the glove box.Is that the edition with - or without - the Ford Prefect revisions?
Live feed from the car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6MRather eerie.
As the tail of the Space Shuttle passed the top of the gantry it was doing 125mph. That's a heck of a shove from a standing start.It looks slow because it takes so long for it to move through its own length. Our visual system isn't calibrated for fast-moving objects bigger than those found in nature, which realistically means a horse.
From the BeebQuoteThe third booster was due to settle on a drone ship stationed several hundred kilometres out at sea. Unfortunately, it had insufficient propellant left to slow the descent, missed the target vessel and was destroyed as it hit the water at some 500km/h.
By then, the upper-stage of the Falcon Heavy, with its Tesla cargo, was heading on a trajectory that would hopefully take it towards Mars' orbit.
That required the engine on the upper-stage to fire on three separate occasions, with the third and final ignition only occurring after a long cruise phase - something which was confirmed some six hours after the launch.
I like the fact that the Tesla has a copy of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in the glove box.Imagine if somebody had slipped Elon a few million quid to have their body stuffed in a spacesuit and strapped into the car.
I think the Beeb are oversimplifying. At the press conference Elon suggested the issue was a lack of TEA
What's its carbon footprint? Just askin'..
Assuming of course that Special Circumstances don't catch up with him first. :)
I’m a bit dubious about the launching a car into space bit. It’s a continuation of the sort of behaviour that has got us into the position of probably needing a new planet to live on sooner than ideal.Nah. It's just a lot more interesting (and, I hope, inspiring to young folk) than the lump of concrete that NASA used to use.
*party pooper*
I’m a bit dubious about the launching a car into space bit. It’s a continuation of the sort of behaviour that has got us into the position of probably needing a new planet to live on sooner than ideal.
*party pooper*
Shooting a lot more cars into space would solve many parking problems. I'm all for it. Let's not ask the owners first, though. I say we start with Audis and Range Rovers.
I’m a bit dubious about the launching a car into space bit. It’s a continuation of the sort of behaviour that has got us into the position of probably needing a new planet to live on sooner than ideal.
*party pooper*
They need to use something as a payload test. They sometimes have used actual satellites but that gets a bit expensive if the rocket goes bang rather than zoom. They could have used a lump of concrete or similar but a Tesla was a bit more whimsical. One of the smaller SpaceX rockets used a wheel of cheese as a test payload for some reason I cant recall. It's bit difficult to despoil space anyway as its already full of hard radiation and bits of rubbish left over from the formation of the solar system whizzing around everywhere. The worst you can do is become a navigational hazard and the Tesla is being sent way way out not left in orbit.
Could it be the corpse of David Bowie at the wheel ?
[1] This is as good a time as any to mention that Ignition is being reissued (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/02/the-funniest-most-accessible-book-on-rocket-science-is-being-reissued/).Indeed it is, noted ta :thumbsup:
And honestly, if you've got any interest in chemistry—particularly the branch of it involving violent, energetic, and occasionally explosive reactions—it's a book you need to read.Occasionally?
Maybe I should get out a bit more.Mars far enough?
When I was little (-ish, about 55 years ago) all rockets (in stories) landed like those 2 boosters. It's taken this long to actually see it become real. Absolutely fuckin' brilliant!
:) Yes, I may have had that in mind.When I was little (-ish, about 55 years ago) all rockets (in stories) landed like those 2 boosters. It's taken this long to actually see it become real. Absolutely fuckin' brilliant!
(http://puissancepixel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/On-a-march%C3%A9-sur-la-Lune-4.jpg)
I’m a bit dubious about the launching a car into space bit. It’s a continuation of the sort of behaviour that has got us into the position of probably needing a new planet to live on sooner than ideal.
*party pooper*
They need to use something as a payload test. They sometimes have used actual satellites but that gets a bit expensive if the rocket goes bang rather than zoom. They could have used a lump of concrete or similar but a Tesla was a bit more whimsical. One of the smaller SpaceX rockets used a wheel of cheese as a test payload for some reason I cant recall. It's bit difficult to despoil space anyway as its already full of hard radiation and bits of rubbish left over from the formation of the solar system whizzing around everywhere. The worst you can do is become a navigational hazard and the Tesla is being sent way way out not left in orbit.
And at this point, it's a navigational hazard that's interesting enough that one day someone might actually bother to recover it and put it in a museum. On Mars.
It seems wasteful that they didn't fill it with student cubesats, or strap an engineering model of Beagle 2 to the front of the Tesla or something, but that only seems like a missed opportunity because it didn't blow up. Otherwise it would have been wasted effort.
Could it be the corpse of David Bowie at the wheel ?I like the fact that it appears to have one elbow resting on the top of the door, which is de rigeur for roadsters. In fact, it's one of the must-haves on the Ishikawa diagram for the original MX-5.
I’m a bit dubious about the launching a car into space bit. It’s a continuation of the sort of behaviour that has got us into the position of probably needing a new planet to live on sooner than ideal.
*party pooper*
It's a good few years since I read that and yet his recommended method for dealing with a metal-flourine fire still has me giggling softly.
I’m a bit dubious about the launching a car into space bit. It’s a continuation of the sort of behaviour that has got us into the position of probably needing a new planet to live on sooner than ideal.Putting cars in space can only accelerate the need for a hyperspace bypass. And, given its orbit, if anyone else tries a stunt like that, Mars will be getting its first car crash.
Wobbly should-have-switched-off-autofocus footage from an angle that really shows how fast the boosters come down, then hang in the air in exactly the way bricks don't:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=Z_kfM-BmVzQ
https://youtu.be/Z_kfM-BmVzQ
IMHO we're still a long way off leaving this planet to colonise elsewhere onna permanent basis.
What I like is the sheer bollocks of the man. NASA spent a decade getting to the Moon (I understand they had to do all the R&D and that the USA system of contracting with top heavy management is clunky in the extreme) but this guy just thought it up and did it. In public.To be fair to NASA, they were using carbon based computers in the first moon shots and they had to invent a lot of the mathematics involved.
He is either the Messiah or a very naughty boy . . .
Apropos of not a lot, great quote fromAh, but if something goes wrong, Gene Kranz has retired.TonyStarkElon Musk I read yesterday.
'I want to die on Mars. Just not on impact...'
What I like is the sheer bollocks of the man. NASA spent a decade getting to the Moon (I understand they had to do all the R&D and that the USA system of contracting with top heavy management is clunky in the extreme) but this guy just thought it up and did it. In public.
He is either the Messiah or a very naughty boy . . .
It's John Aaron you really want when things go wrong, anyway. I'm sure you could lure him back with some spurious telemetry readings and a couple of roles of duct tape.
It's John Aaron you really want when things go wrong, anyway. I'm sure you could lure him back with some spurious telemetry readings and a couple of roles of duct tape.
There may be a room full of very tired engineers and techies armed with a box of NASA detritus and gaffer tape who might take exception to that....
Today, they're going to try recovering the fairing...
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfgHKDNAplx/
AIUI there was no Team Duct Tape as it's portrayed in the film. The astronauts had solved the square-peg-into-round-hole problem during simulations of the LEM-as-lifeboat scenario for one of the previous Apollo missions, so they just worked out a procedure that re-created that. Similarly, using the descent engine in the event of service module engine failure was part of the original design spec. NASA were (still are) very, very, good at "what could possibly go wrong?"The laughable thing is that Apollo 13 (the film of the events) has been shown at this locale <fx:looks out of the window and waves hand vaguely> as an inspirational example of "Disaster Recovery and it's mitigations". The irony being that when the time and money are asked for to do a) the deep analysis of WCPGW and b) putting in the systems and processes to mitigate against WCPGW we are repeatedly told that there isn't sufficient money and in any case those are all 1 in a million chances (even the ones we're able to quantify as once in a hundred years)
Missed by a few hundred meters, but fairing landed intact in water. Should be able catch it with slightly bigger chutes to slow down descent.
This launch vehicle is even capable of performing a rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD) when dropped onto hard surfaces.
Will an alien have sneaked on board? That would be a great prank from the ISS crew.
Will an alien have sneaked on board? That would be a great prank from the ISS crew.
Will an alien have sneaked on board? That would be a great prank from the ISS crew.
I'd have made a facehugger and stuck it to the dummy's head.
Will an alien have sneaked on board? That would be a great prank from the ISS crew.
I'd have made a facehugger and stuck it to the dummy's head.
Gosh: https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1114210401888100352
I genuinely thought that Falcon Heavy was never going to fly again.
Scott Manley covered that in passing yesterday.
Watching a Space X landing of any sort is just so surreal to this person brought up on Thunderbirds and the like.
Not a SpaceX, but a Soyuz launch today being hit by lightning. https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1133009699123662848That must've been noisy, between the bottom of the spacecraft, and where the spark reinstates its path to earth.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7lCQXmXkAEWVns.jpg)
Not a SpaceX, but a Soyuz launch today being hit by lightning. https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1133009699123662848
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7lCQXmXkAEWVns.jpg)
?Not a SpaceX, but a Soyuz launch today being hit by lightning. https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1133009699123662848
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7lCQXmXkAEWVns.jpg)
What's Russian for "SCE to AUX"?
It's a callback to Apollo 12 being struck by lightning shortly after lift-off, knocking out various systems including the telemetry.Thanks, I'm up to speed with the sayings of steel eyed missile men.
"Try SCE to AUX" was the advice given by one of the flight controllers, who'd remembered the telemetry failure pattern from an earlier test when a power supply malfunctioned in the CSM signal conditioning electronics (SCE).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_12#Launch_and_transfer
https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1138856722200649729
Jump starting a Lunar Module.
https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1138856722200649729
Jump starting a Lunar Module.
ETA - I love this:
Also worth noting that launch happens with the hatch open, and with the cables dangling out of the door until the crew unhooks them and tosses them out the hatch.
... The GSE connector will have been used to provide power to the systems prior to launch. ...
Pretty spectacular SN8 test today: https://youtu.be/ap-BkkrRg-o?t=6466
Pure Thunderbirds. Not sure what went wrong at the end - one engine appears to shut down just before impact, not sure if that's deliberate. But it crashed and burned right on target. :thumbsup:
Pretty spectacular SN8 test today: https://youtu.be/ap-BkkrRg-o?t=6466
Pure Thunderbirds. Not sure what went wrong at the end - one engine appears to shut down just before impact, not sure if that's deliberate. But it crashed and burned right on target. :thumbsup:
They've since said that the main engine header tank pressure was low.
AKA it ran out of fuel. Or a pump ceased topping up the header tank. (who knew that rockets have header tanks?)
SN10 flight test: In which they manage not to blow it up, while creating what is possibly the most Thunderbirds landing video in the history of rockery. The great advantage of clean-burning propellant is you can see what's going on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODY6JWzS8WU
https://youtu.be/ODY6JWzS8WU
Apparently SN10 went on to explode a few minutes after landing
https://twitter.com/spacex360/status/1367256299923247109
I'm sure I saw a longer version of that video where, some time after landing, flames emerge on one side of the craft...The fire starts at around 12:47 in the video that Kim linked.
You'd think an organisation that can make something as freakingly awesome as the Raptor engine, could sort out their camera telemetry. If only there were some kind of mass array of satellites to provide reliable data connections anywhere....
Popularising the term is possibly Elon Musk's main contribution to SpaceX.
I'm torn between listening to the SpaceX team witter on and listening to Public Sector Broadcasting (a popular beat combo, m'lud).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHIo6qwJarI&ab_channel=PSBHQVEVO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHIo6qwJarI&ab_channel=PSBHQVEVO)
That's them. I was close.I'm torn between listening to the SpaceX team witter on and listening to Public Sector Broadcasting (a popular beat combo, m'lud).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHIo6qwJarI&ab_channel=PSBHQVEVO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHIo6qwJarI&ab_channel=PSBHQVEVO)
Public Service Broadcasting?
Boo.
Scrub...
J
Isn't it supposed to be re-useable?Eventually but that was never the plan for this test article. Design wise it
Worth remembering that spacex is actually run by Gwynne Shotwell.
Doubt Lone has much to do with it, apart from providing cars to be flung into space.
I suspect they may need to add aerodynamic controls to the first stage, which (if large enough) would allow a degree of thrust failure without loss of control.They are looking at reducing the movable surfaces that cause the ascent instability in the first place. They cause other problems too, mainly they are complex shapes & intersections that require heat shielding. That's not to say they won't need some kind of aerodynamic control but it is very musk Musk's mantra to eliminate complexity first and only add more (in this case aerodynamic structures) where unavoidable.
As he says, they wanted to avoid having diverters as they need to show the rocket can lift off an unprepared site (moon or Mars) without damage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ZwElJpTTs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ZwElJpTTs)Is this also known as Kaboom?
Well the Starship got up. A pity about the Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of the booster.......
Is this also known as Kaboom?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ZwElJpTTs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ZwElJpTTs)Is this also known as Kaboom?
Well the Starship got up. A pity about the Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of the booster.......
Yes Rico, kaboom.
Watching it, it looked as if the Starship had also had a rapid unscheduled disassembly too, several minutes before they acknowledged that they'd lost it too. Big white flash, not as big as the Booster one, but still quite bright.
The Booster had two thirds of its engines running before it gave up. The other third were all together. I guess that would cause it to tumble violently. Falcon doesn't run all of the first stage engines at that point, so I wonder whether Booster was supposed to be running so many.
Watching it, it looked as if the Starship had also had a rapid unscheduled disassembly too, several minutes before they acknowledged that they'd lost it too. Big white flash, not as big as the Booster one, but still quite bright.
The Booster had two thirds of its engines running before it gave up. The other third were all together. I guess that would cause it to tumble violently. Falcon doesn't run all of the first stage engines at that point, so I wonder whether Booster was supposed to be running so many.
According to everyday astronaut, it was supposed to run 3 at that stage...
When will it carry a crew?
My limited reading about the apollo missions indicated that dealing with the 'lash', when cutting thrust between stages, was one of the most difficult problems to solve.Watching it, it looked as if the Starship had also had a rapid unscheduled disassembly too, several minutes before they acknowledged that they'd lost it too. Big white flash, not as big as the Booster one, but still quite bright.
The Booster had two thirds of its engines running before it gave up. The other third were all together. I guess that would cause it to tumble violently. Falcon doesn't run all of the first stage engines at that point, so I wonder whether Booster was supposed to be running so many.
According to everyday astronaut, it was supposed to run 3 at that stage...
Presumably it runs the central three at minimal thrust during staging to keep the liquid propellant at the firey end of the Starship.
That the booster lost several engines in a cluster immediately after staging suggests that perhaps the sudden deceleration had the opposite effect on the booster. Or it just broke something. The flip manoeuvre appeared to be going okay until that point. (I'm sure the re-light of the additional engines was intentional.)
My limited reading about the apollo missions indicated that dealing with the 'lash', when cutting thrust between stages, was one of the most difficult problems to solve.Watching it, it looked as if the Starship had also had a rapid unscheduled disassembly too, several minutes before they acknowledged that they'd lost it too. Big white flash, not as big as the Booster one, but still quite bright.
The Booster had two thirds of its engines running before it gave up. The other third were all together. I guess that would cause it to tumble violently. Falcon doesn't run all of the first stage engines at that point, so I wonder whether Booster was supposed to be running so many.
According to everyday astronaut, it was supposed to run 3 at that stage...
Presumably it runs the central three at minimal thrust during staging to keep the liquid propellant at the firey end of the Starship.
That the booster lost several engines in a cluster immediately after staging suggests that perhaps the sudden deceleration had the opposite effect on the booster. Or it just broke something. The flip manoeuvre appeared to be going okay until that point. (I'm sure the re-light of the additional engines was intentional.)