Business, Space, Technology and Society

Today’s Launch Attempt

48 Comments

SpaceX and Orbcomm have put out a press kit. A successful landing (along with Blue Origin’s recent successful flight) would be a nice early Christmas present to space enthusiasts.

[Tuesday-morning update]

Congrats to SpaceX obviously. Here are some nice photos of the landing. Here is Tim Fernholtz’s story.

[Update mid morning]

Here’s a detailed technical explanation from Spaceflight101, and Lee Billings has the story as well.

48 thoughts on “Today’s Launch Attempt”

  1. Question for the peanut gallery: what are the staging altitude and velocity of a reusable F9.

    One of the engineers doing tonight’s webcast said staging altitude is approximately 100 km and when I search for staging velocity, the most popular hit is Rand’s older Pop Sci article with an Elon quote saying a resuable F9 1st stage stages at Mach 6.

    1. I can’t say precisely, but I glanced at the speed and altitude readouts onscreen at second-stage ignition, and they showed a bit over 5000 km/h at a bit over 100 km altitude. I think it’s a pretty safe bet the first stage was at similar altitude and speed as it began its flyback burn, at right around the same time.

  2. Question for the peanut gallery: what are the staging altitude and velocity of a reusable F9?

    One of the engineers doing tonight’s webcast said staging altitude is approximately 100 km and when I search for staging velocity, the most popular hit is Rand’s older Pop Sci article with an Elon quote saying a resuable F9 1st stage stages at Mach 6.

  4. Ah, I stand corrected. Dr. Foust said 1st stage apogee is 200 km. But that still seems high. If the telemetry on the webcast is accurate, I saw somewhere between 80 km and 90 km for stage sep. But I’m frequently wrong.

    1. You could be right. At stage sep the first stage would have significant speed both horizontally (which translates into centripetal acceleration) and vertically. It could very well have coasted the extra 120 km.

  10. Success! So far as I know, 2 of the 3 main mission goals met, and met perfectly; Sat deployment and landing. The one I don’t know about yet is the second stage relight after sat deployment. It’s irrelevant for this mission, but critical to prove for GTO missions which require it. They do need to revalidate the relight because this is the first mission to use subcooled prop.

    I wonder what altitude the 1st stage reached? The boostback burn puts it on a lob trajectory, so its max height would be attained well after stage sep. It’d be nice from a PR POV if it crossed the Karman line (62 miles, the usual definition for space). F9 V 1.1 staging altitude usually varies a bit with each mission, but unless I’m misremembering, it’s around 50 miles. I really don’t see how they could fly a boostback trajectory from that and not cross the Karman line.

    1. I calculated 106.6 km with a substantial margin of error. 🙂

      Assuming the webcast telemetry is good, I put stage sep altitude at 78.7 km (34:51 in the YouTube copy of the webcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5bTbVbe4e4). Assuming that pencil/Empire State Building graphic is to scale (41:35 in the same video), 1st stage apogee is like 35% higher than stage sep altitude.

      Though at 11:46 in the same video, their engineer says 1st stage apogee is 200 km, but that seems suspiciously high to me.

      1. The problem is that the Empire State graphic they showed is NOT a boostback trajectory. What’s shown would be accurate for an ASDS landing at sea that did not have a boostback.

        So, what actually happened is a burn that puts the 1st stage on a ballistic trajectory back to the cape. It’d increase the first stage’s max altitude well above what a non-boost-back trajectory (what’s shown) would be.

        However… no matter what, that first stage has been to space and back. That’s significant IMHO because some of the chatter about the Blue Origon launch and landing was that their stage, unlike the F9 first stage, did reach space.

        Actually, I love the rivalry between Musk and Bezos, because competition benefits us all. 🙂

        1. both Internet Baron’s rocket programs represent significant advancements.

          Flying back boosters from 100km at mach 6 or 7 to an accurate, safe landing is VERY impressive.

          Doing it with the appropriate margins to throw a second stage and paying satellite customer to orbit is VERY, VERY impressive.

          I’m sure the skeptics will squawk that we don’t know if the booster can fly again, and we don’t know the refurb costs yet … but those weak arguments will be settled by actual factual, real world tests in a matter of months.

          Ad Astra!

          1. The skeptics don’t appreciate the value of having an intact booster and engines that have never touched seawater. The engineers can get in there and rip it apart and do ND and NDT. Now components can start being optimized for fly-back. Telemetry is nice but it’s nothing like being able to retrieve every nut and bolt.

          2. “I’m sure the skeptics will squawk that we don’t know if the booster can fly again, and we don’t know the refurb costs yet … but those weak arguments will be settled by actual factual, real world tests in a matter of months.”

            Well I’m not a skeptic. But those squwaks are valid. Totally.

            The Shuttle took off and landed on it’s first flight. It didn’t make it’s flight rates or cost savings.

            Yes I know this isn’t the Shuttle.

            I think it’s a tremendous achievement and the harbinger of things to come. But we DO need to see what sort of refurb is required to make it re-usable, how quickly it can be done, and at what cost.

            I have every confidence that if this first stage is not in good enough shape to re-use economically that design changes can be made so that it will be economical.

            But until you know those numbers, that first stage is an interesting museum piece.

        2. Ah, that’s a good point about boostback v. downrange ASDS landing. And I agree, the Internet space Billionaire competition is a Good Thing.

          1. “And I agree, the Internet space Billionaire competition is a Good Thing.”

            I agree as well. It’s how America is supposed to work.

  12. Well, some big-time congratulations are due to this company and crew, I hope they are all half-smashed on champagne by now.

    Now for the profitable part … a busy launch schedule!

  13. Well, some big-time congratulations are due to this company and crew, I hope they are all half-smashed on champagne by now.

    Now for the profitable part … a busy launch schedule!

    1. I don’t care what shape the booster is in and whether they can re-launch it — they achieved a landing. This and the Bezos accomplishment make this a very historic year.

      1. “I don’t care what shape the booster is in and whether they can re-launch it — they achieved a landing.” Could you explain this? I thought the whole purpose of the landing was reusability.

      2. I see from one of the posted articles that they don’t expect to be able to re-use this one. But they hope to learn from it which components took the worst beating, and maybe re-engineer for those parts… Neat.

        1. I never thought they would relaunch the first recovered stage. I figure they will disassemble it and test every nut and bolt.

          I think reusability will prove to be more difficult than they thought. Some parts will be fine; while others will need to be refurbished or replaced.

          The only way to tell is to recover stages and examine them. That will also tell them which parts need to be beefed up or redesigned to achieve true reusability.

  16. This webcast is also far better in production quality, kudos also to the information peeps.

    Do we know “% launch weight devoted to landing”? Or devoted -solely- to landing depending on how ‘spare margin for primary mission’ fuel is accounted for?

    1. One complaint about the webcast. They went too far in the other direction from a typical NASA production.

      “So we have to make the satellite go really really fast!”
      “Not just high?”
      “No, because it sort of falls around the curve of the Earth!”
      “It doesn’t fall over the side?”
      “No, because what most people don’t realize is that the Earth is round like a ball!”
      “It is?”
      “Yes! I looked it up on Wikipedia before I came out here.”

      1. “One complaint about the webcast. They went too far in the other direction from a typical NASA production.”

        Agreed. Couldn’t stand the visitor. But that’s ok.

      2. At first I agreed with you. But then, we’re all space geeks around here. That isn’t their audience. You can show the video of this to a seven year old or a retired farmer’s wife and they will get it. I’m definitely going to show it to my nephews and my mom when I see them this Christmas.

    2. Flying back and landing represents a significant amount of fuel and weight added to the rocket.

      From an economic point of view, it is a no brainer.

      Would you rather have a 4 ton pickup truck that runs exactly once — or a two ton pickup that runs back and forth to your job for 5 years?

      Can you imagine how to get 4 tons to your job site if you only have a truck that can carry 2 tons? Yeah, I can too.
      Can you imagine how to build a “reusable” pickup that carries 4 tons? Yeah, I can too.

      1. Four tons? Heck! I got a book on my shelf from the 60’s where they proposed flying back Saturn stages up to the IVB. Damn shame it’s taken us forty years to get to this point. But I’m sure glade that SpaceX has!

  17. As I said in my congratulatory post at NSF.com: “Congratulations, SpaceX. You had me about to turn blue. I’m breathing again. Thanks a lot.”

  20. Even if they can just reuse parts from these first stages, I suspect the economics comes out positive. Of course they want to do more than that. And I think they will: there is a clear road of incremental improvement and experimentation until they have a first stage that can be fully reused. I expect some of these stages will be relaunched by themselves until failure, just to find gotchas/fatigue limits.

    There will also be market segmentation. Customers willing to buy used first stages will get a discount, at prices below which SpaceX will charge NASA/DOE for launches on new boosters. Federal regulations that require the government get the same best price as other customers will not apply, as they are different products.

  21. Has it ever been revealed what guidance technology SpaceX is using for landing? This one appears to have landed precisely in the center of the X target, implying a sub-meter accuracy. I’m guessing some form of augmented GPS plus a radio link to the rocket to provide it with target coordinates for barge landings.

  22. I think it was @NASAWatch that tweeted out some info from Musk about the cost of a F9 (at least I think it was the entire F9 and not just the first stage), $60m and fuel about $200k. This is interesting because of the base price they were advertising was pretty much at cost. Now, just need to know how much of that $60m is the first stage.

    Certainly there are savings here and the opportunity for incremental improvements but still some uncertainties here about just how much can be knocked off the cost of a launch much less the price.

    1. I couldn’t find any reference to a $60 million cost figure for F9 at the NASAWatch web site. Could you provide a link? Over at SpaceflightInsider.com there was a story about about yesterday’s events that quoted Elon as having said the cost of an F9 was $16 million. I tried to provide a link in this comment, but the web site is acting screwy just now. A $16 million cost would be pretty much in line with some speculations I posted over a year ago, but I don’t want to take that figure to the bank as there were two or three definite factual errors in the story and the “$16 million” figure might be another. The story said it was something Musk had said on a conference call with journalists after yesterday’s launch. “60 and “16” sound similar enough that a listener might easily mistake one for the other, but which is the actual statement and which is not? Not being a participant on the call, I have no idea. Also, there tends to be a lot of loose usage between the terms “cost” and “price.” If Elon said the “price” of an F9 is $60 million, that is true; that’s, round numbers, roughly the posted price on the SpaceX web site. Perhaps someone heard “price” and wrote down “cost?” It would nice to disambiguate this whole thing.

      1. You are exactly right. I should have been more skeptical and it gets muddy fast because one man’s price is another man’s cost.

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