SpaceX (Vol. 2)
Discussion
I was looking back at how long it took SpaceX to land & recover a Falcon 9 booster for the first time. That was 8.5 years ago now
They went from the first supersonic retropropulsion to the first successful landing in less than 2 years. They didn't fly so often back then, so that was only 8 attempts and two design revisions.
1 - First ocean landing attempt. No legs or grid fins. Hard impact with the sea. First flight of the Falcon 9 Version 1.1. Only the 6th overall F9 mission. (29th Sep 2013)
2 - First booster to fly with landing legs. First successful controlled ocean touchdown of a liquid-rocket-engine orbital booster. (Apr 2014)
3 - Second flight with legs. Soft landing into the ocean. (Jul 2014)
4 - Fourth attempt of a soft ocean touchdown, but the booster ran out of liquid oxygen. (Sep 2014)
5 - First Drone ship landing attempt. First use of grid fins. Ran out of hydraulic fluid a minute before landing. Crashed on the recovery ship's deck. (Jan 2015)
6 - Booster made a test flight descent to an ocean landing within 10 m (33 ft) of its intended target
7 - Booster legs contacted the landing ship, but it tipped over due to excess lateral velocity caused by a stuck valve that delayed throttle down at the wrong time. (Apr 2015)
8 - First successful booster landing (22nd December 2015). Now on display outside SpaceX's HQ in California.
There were also some flights between these landing tests, but either no landing attempt was made, or in the case of CRS-7, the rocket disintegrated during ascent due to a failure with the second stage.
Attempts 1-7 were all done with the second Falcon 9 version, the V1.1. This had stretched tanks and more powerful 1D engines in the now usual circular layout
Successful landing number 8 was the first one with the revised Full Thrust model, which had 30% more powerful engines. It incorporated the lessons learned from the previous landing attempts.
Of course it took them longer to finesse the process to what we have now, but the fundamental process had been worked out.
Most of those attempts are in their blooper reel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ
They went from the first supersonic retropropulsion to the first successful landing in less than 2 years. They didn't fly so often back then, so that was only 8 attempts and two design revisions.
1 - First ocean landing attempt. No legs or grid fins. Hard impact with the sea. First flight of the Falcon 9 Version 1.1. Only the 6th overall F9 mission. (29th Sep 2013)
2 - First booster to fly with landing legs. First successful controlled ocean touchdown of a liquid-rocket-engine orbital booster. (Apr 2014)
3 - Second flight with legs. Soft landing into the ocean. (Jul 2014)
4 - Fourth attempt of a soft ocean touchdown, but the booster ran out of liquid oxygen. (Sep 2014)
5 - First Drone ship landing attempt. First use of grid fins. Ran out of hydraulic fluid a minute before landing. Crashed on the recovery ship's deck. (Jan 2015)
6 - Booster made a test flight descent to an ocean landing within 10 m (33 ft) of its intended target
7 - Booster legs contacted the landing ship, but it tipped over due to excess lateral velocity caused by a stuck valve that delayed throttle down at the wrong time. (Apr 2015)
8 - First successful booster landing (22nd December 2015). Now on display outside SpaceX's HQ in California.
There were also some flights between these landing tests, but either no landing attempt was made, or in the case of CRS-7, the rocket disintegrated during ascent due to a failure with the second stage.
Attempts 1-7 were all done with the second Falcon 9 version, the V1.1. This had stretched tanks and more powerful 1D engines in the now usual circular layout
Successful landing number 8 was the first one with the revised Full Thrust model, which had 30% more powerful engines. It incorporated the lessons learned from the previous landing attempts.
Of course it took them longer to finesse the process to what we have now, but the fundamental process had been worked out.
Most of those attempts are in their blooper reel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ
Edited by Beati Dogu on Thursday 6th June 23:13
Tim Dodd released a clip of his upcoming interview with Elon where he talks about the "gap" in the fins and how it could be an issue on re-entry. Turns out he was right 
Would've been amazing if they could've recovered that flap and put it pride of place at SpaceX HQ!
They will have this nailed for the next flight which I hear could be in July
Would've been amazing if they could've recovered that flap and put it pride of place at SpaceX HQ!They will have this nailed for the next flight which I hear could be in July
The interesting thing for me is that, even though the craft was very badly damaged during the re-entry, it still managed to be under control, survive the ordeal and lower itself gently into the ocean. If there had been any humans on board - they would have survived.
Pretty amazing really.
Pretty amazing really.
Eric Mc said:
The interesting thing for me is that, even though the craft was very badly damaged during the re-entry, it still managed to be under control, survive the ordeal and lower itself gently into the ocean. If there had been any humans on board - they would have survived.
Pretty amazing really.
Indeed, it was a real shock when the tattered, half-melted flap started moving again with such vigor!Pretty amazing really.
I have to admit to being quite shocked at how well the Starship entry worked.
Superheavy - they’ll have that nailed as they really know what they’re doing in that regime.
But the re-entry and belly flop just seemed totally off the wall. It basically worked first time (you can’t really count the last one due to the rolling). And the Raptors plainly re-lit. It’s just astonishing.
I can’t wait til we start to see ground/air based footage of these things returning- it’ll be nuts.
There aren’t enough superlatives to describe what we saw yesterday.
Superheavy - they’ll have that nailed as they really know what they’re doing in that regime.
But the re-entry and belly flop just seemed totally off the wall. It basically worked first time (you can’t really count the last one due to the rolling). And the Raptors plainly re-lit. It’s just astonishing.
I can’t wait til we start to see ground/air based footage of these things returning- it’ll be nuts.
There aren’t enough superlatives to describe what we saw yesterday.
Dog Star said:
I have to admit to being quite shocked at how well the Starship entry worked.
Superheavy - they’ll have that nailed as they really know what they’re doing in that regime.
But the re-entry and belly flop just seemed totally off the wall. It basically worked first time (you can’t really count the last one due to the rolling). And the Raptors plainly re-lit. It’s just astonishing.
I can’t wait til we start to see ground/air based footage of these things returning- it’ll be nuts.
There aren’t enough superlatives to describe what we saw yesterday.
It's such a shame the fin camera got damaged. The footage would have been amazing. I'm assuming the other external cameras were also damaged by debris.Superheavy - they’ll have that nailed as they really know what they’re doing in that regime.
But the re-entry and belly flop just seemed totally off the wall. It basically worked first time (you can’t really count the last one due to the rolling). And the Raptors plainly re-lit. It’s just astonishing.
I can’t wait til we start to see ground/air based footage of these things returning- it’ll be nuts.
There aren’t enough superlatives to describe what we saw yesterday.
Eric Mc said:
The interesting thing for me is that, even though the craft was very badly damaged during the re-entry, it still managed to be under control, survive the ordeal and lower itself gently into the ocean. If there had been any humans on board - they would have survived.
Pretty amazing really.
I imagine that is a testament to the sophistication of the software as much as anything. As an 'aircraft' it must have been extremely unstable.Pretty amazing really.
It looked like the parts of the flaps which were actually melting were the thin skin and framing at the extremities. The larger structural members appear to have stood up to the heating for as long as necessary. It didn't help visibility that it was night time in the location it came down.
SpudLink said:
Eric Mc said:
The interesting thing for me is that, even though the craft was very badly damaged during the re-entry, it still managed to be under control, survive the ordeal and lower itself gently into the ocean. If there had been any humans on board - they would have survived.
Pretty amazing really.
I imagine that is a testament to the sophistication of the software as much as anything. As an 'aircraft' it must have been extremely unstable.Pretty amazing really.
jimothyc said:
As the craft appeared to be in a stable orientation, It's possible that all the flaps suffered similar levels of degradation, so it might not have been all that unstable. Still it's an incredibly impressive performance from both a hardware and software perspective.
Good point.I think one of her big positives is that despite the damage to the fins, the heat shield system itself appears to be doing the job. Temperature and protection of the starship body sounded to have been fine, just a weak point around the flap swivels allowing a point to be picked away at?
Ian974 said:
I think one of her big positives is that despite the damage to the fins, the heat shield system itself appears to be doing the job. Temperature and protection of the starship body sounded to have been fine, just a weak point around the flap swivels allowing a point to be picked away at?
Elon also said they lost some tiles, and in any case have many iterations to go until they can achieve zero-maintenance heat shield re-use.Beati Dogu said:
Getting signal out during the reentry was something else too. Thanks to Starlink orbiting above and the ship's big size blundering its way through the ionisation I suppose. Normally, spacecraft, lose comms for several minutes during reentry.
They have been able to get voice Comms and telemetry out via TDRS satellite since the 80's. The Shuttle certainly used it, not sure if Dragon and Starliner can during re-entry.HD video needs Starlink.
Talksteer said:
They have been able to get voice Comms and telemetry out via TDRS satellite since the 80's. The Shuttle certainly used it, not sure if Dragon and Starliner can during re-entry.
HD video needs Starlink.
That’s true. Challenger was carrying a TDRS satellite when she blew up. Dragon has a six minute comms outage during reentry but they are looking at ways around this apparently. The diminutive site of capsules makes it harder for them. HD video needs Starlink.
I'm a strong believer that some aircraft just want to fly. Somehow it is baked into their design DNA. The engineers worked hard, designed out as many bugs as they could think of, built in resilience, good and fundamentally strong design, and enough hardware / software headroom that it turns out to be capable of much more than the initial design document ever stated. I'm not sure the Shuttle was one of these...
The old saying about "what matters is not how you fall down, but how you pick yourself up"? That.
When they lost signal just as the flap was getting attacked by a massive plasma cutter, I felt sure it had just gone bang. I think we all did. I REALLY hope they got some footage of both sections landing.
The old saying about "what matters is not how you fall down, but how you pick yourself up"? That.
When they lost signal just as the flap was getting attacked by a massive plasma cutter, I felt sure it had just gone bang. I think we all did. I REALLY hope they got some footage of both sections landing.
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