Since a number of cool things are happening in space exploration these days, we'll widen the scope of this thread a smidge. Conversation about all things space exploration are welcome, whether it be from NASA, SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, or anyone else. Chances are most of the discussion will still be about SpaceX since they love to make things public and fun, but nothing's off limits. I'll eventually get around to modifying the OP to include resources for other companies too, but in the meantime, feel free to post any cool stuff you run across.
Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut) - A "random dude" who got really into space (particularly SpaceX). He's a great resource for simple explanations of this stuff, as well as live hosting launches.
USLaunchReport - Lost of videos of the more mundane stuff (e.g., booster recovery operations). Not a ton of commentary.
NASASpaceFlight - Live hosting of most launches including a ton of video of Starlink operations.
Glossary
Spoiler!
Space discussions tend to get a little bogged down in jargon, so here's a list of terms you might encounter. (Others, please let me know of others that should be added.)
ASDS - Autonomous Spaceport Droneship - The "barges" that they sometimes land rockets on.
Dragon - The cone-shaped capsule that sits at the top of the rocket for ISS-bound launches that holds the cargo (or, in the future, humans).
F9 - Falcon 9, the name of the rocket itself.
FH - Falcon Heavy, the three-booster version.
GTO - Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit, a type of orbit that will eventually result in the satellite orbiting the earth as it turns so that it seems to be in the same spot from the ground (such as DirecTV or Dish satellites). These types of launches are particularly challenging because they require a lot of power to get them into the right orbit, leaving very little fuel left for landing.
HIF - Horizontal Integration Facility - the building near the launch pad where they put all of the pieces of the rocket together before rolling it out to the pad.
ISS - The International Space Station
JRTI - Just Read The Instructions, the name of the "barge" that they land on for west-coast launches.
LEO - Low Earth Orbit, a fairly low orbit shared by many satellites and ISS. These launches usually require less power to achieve the proper orbit, so the first stage can often be landed back on land rather than on a drone ship.
LZ1 - Landing Zone 1, basically a big open slab of concrete at Cape Canaveral where the first stage will attempt to land (for some launches).
NET - No Earlier Than, basically the date they're hoping to launch, but rocket launches have a tendency of getting delayed.
OCISLY - Of Course I Still Love You, the name of the "barge" that they land on for east-coast launches.
RTLS - Return to Landing Site, a mission where the first stage comes back and lands at LZ1.
Starship - SpaceX's next-generation rocket (and spacecraft) that will hopefully one day take us to Mars. Starship is the "second stage" that will carry cargo or people, but also refers to the whole system. (It's confusing, but think of it like the Space Shuttle, which was both the shuttle itself and the entire launch system.)
Super Heavy - The giant booster that will carry Starship to space.
For those of you who have followed the "Roomba," it has officially been used. This is the Bulgariasat booster (east coast from last Friday). She's a leaner!
The booster on the west coast is in too, but not much exciting to report there except that the crush cores got destroyed. It apparently missed the deck height by a bit and dropped pretty hard in the rough seas.
They also knocked a day off of the schedule, so the next launch is currently scheduled for Sunday (though the weather is iffy). After that, looks like there will be a big gap while the Range (different entity) goes down for pretty much the whole month of July. [Reply]
Excellent! Now I just need HD footage of the Roomba in action! That lean is the perfect reason for its use. I'm open they took some video and post it. [Reply]
Originally Posted by eDave:
Man. That looks so precarious.
It definitely LOOKs crazy, but it's important to keep in mind that a ton of the rocket's weight when empty is in the engines. Here's a diagram from reddit:
So if you account for 5-10 degrees of rocking due to waves, that still leaves plenty of room on top of the ~5 degrees it was leaning. The bigger issue to me is that the grid fins were completely destroyed. No surprise that they're moving to titanium moving forward.
So it landed a bit crooked? Can someone explain the significance of this? Was it all built in? Does it damage it to the point it can't be used again? [Reply]
Originally Posted by Cornstock:
So it landed a bit crooked? Can someone explain the significance of this? Was it all built in? Does it damage it to the point it can't be used again?
Possibly but doubtful. The fin just crumpled. Doesn't look like any structural damage. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Cornstock:
So it landed a bit crooked? Can someone explain the significance of this? Was it all built in? Does it damage it to the point it can't be used again?
At the risk of giving you more detail than you really care about...
This booster took more stress than any they've tried to land thus far. (There have been some lately, including the next one, that are flown in "expendable" mode and no attempt is made to land due to the extreme flight profile.) Because it came in so hot, the friction coming through the atmosphere was so severe that it actually ripped part of the grid fins apart.
Either related or unrelated to that, the stage came in very awkwardly. We're still hoping we get video, but as Donger noted above, it looked like it was coming down off the ship, but somehow ended up landing successfully on the other side of the ship.
We don't know how it got there, but it's no surprise that it came down hard on one leg more than the others. They're designed for this and have a "crush core" that is meant to compress in the case of a severe impact and take as much of the remaining force as it can. That happened here, which results in one leg being much shorter than the others. The leg is destroyed, but they're replacing those each time anyway, so no big deal.
The core itself looks generally intact, but I'm going to guess they don't fly this one again. It was its second time already, and the two they've re-flown so far have been on pretty easy missions in terms of load on the rocket. In theory, future iterations of the F9 will include improvements that should make them better able to handle extreme forces like this.
Originally Posted by DaFace:
At the risk of giving you more detail than you really care about...
This booster took more stress than any they've tried to land thus far. (There have been some lately, including the next one, that are flown in "expendable" mode and no attempt is made to land due to the extreme flight profile.) Because it came in so hot, the friction coming through the atmosphere was so severe that it actually ripped part of the grid fins apart.
Either related or unrelated to that, the stage came in very awkwardly. We're still hoping we get video, but as Donger noted above, it looked like it was coming down off the ship, but somehow ended up landing successfully on the other side of the ship.
We don't know how it got there, but it's no surprise that it came down hard on one leg more than the others. They're designed for this and have a "crush core" that is meant to compress in the case of a severe impact and take as much of the remaining force as it can. That happened here, which results in one leg being much shorter than the others. The leg is destroyed, but they're replacing those each time anyway, so no big deal.
The core itself looks generally intact, but I'm going to guess they don't fly this one again. It was its second time already, and the two they've re-flown so far have been on pretty easy missions in terms of load on the rocket. In theory, future iterations of the F9 will include improvements that should make them better able to handle extreme forces like this.
The end.
Perfect. That's about the level of technical info I can understand.
It landed hard and probably shouldn't be used again, but considering the stress of the load this time they might not have been counting on a successful landing anyways. Probably a lot of good data to be gleaned from the semi successful landing anyways. [Reply]
