9 thoughts on “Fifth Time The Charm”

1. So I’m late to the discussion. This may have been shot down before. Why don’t they use some parachutes in the first stage?

   And here’s another question: Why don’t they put the satellite linkup on a separate ship so the feed doesn’t cut out whenever the rocket gets close?

   1. Parachutes are not as reliable as a rocket engine that has just been fired successfully. They also don’t allow recovery on land for rockets this large. Landing by rocket on land will still go on, but landing on the barge from a high fast trajectory requires more propellant than this vehicle apparently had. This should be less of a problem for the Falcon Heavy, which will have to land its center core on a barge.

   2. Assume I recall the physics right… The drag from a parachute will be proportional to it’s area, and to the square of your speed. Unfortunately this means terminal velocity is inversely proportional to square of parachute mass (probably a bit worse).

      A parachute that can slow you down to 4 mph is therefore 25x the size and mass of one that can slow you to 20 mph, and 100x the one for 40mph…

2. You’d think that parachutes would be lighter than the fuel for three burns, but the SpaceX engineers insist you would be wrong. Also, remember that we’re talking a full up main boost stage with 9 Merlin engines on it. Letting that tumble around in the atmosphere at high speed is bad, and letting it land in salt water wherever the wind happens to blow it is worse, to the point that you might as well not bother. If you want to recover the stage and have a hope of reusing it without a bill to refurbish it that approaches the original cost, your choices are a controlled landing on a solid surface, or snatch it out of the air on the way down.

3. Anyone know the fate of the first stage?

   1. Hit the barge, but too hard. I’m guessing they didn’t get lucky with propellant usage and ran out, or perhaps to succeed with the propellant they had they needed to do a high gee landing and couldn’t manage it.

   2. Just saw a article on Drudge saying that it had a ‘hard landing’. Engi speak for, “It blew up, it blew up REAL GOOD!”

      1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQKWn6oPj-c

         If you are channeling SCTV’s Farm Film Celebrity Blow-Up, the correct verb tense is “The first stage blowed up, it blowed up REAL GOOD.”

4. Hey, a question for you all: Is it my imagination, or was there a lot more vibration and expansion irregularity in the second stage vacuum Merlin this time than on previous flights? Compare this launch with the recent Orbcomm launch.

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