Eric Berger has the story. As he says, reusability isn’t a fad, we’ve finally gotten to the point at which it’s clearly the future.
There is a little tension because Elon announced shortly before the launch that this would be the most challenging entry yet (probably to downplay expectations). It landed, but not quite on the bullseye. But close enough. This was the first rocket to land on both the east- and west-coast ASDSs. We’re planning to go up to Vandenberg Sunday for the Iridium launch. It should be better weather than the last time, in January. If successful, it will be two launches for the company almost within forty-eight hours. They’re finally getting to the launch tempo they need to work down their backlog.
Bulgariasat-1 makes 8 successes for SpaceX this year which ties last year’s record. And it got to that mark almost two months faster than in 2016. Sunday’s launch from Vandy should make it nine and a new record. If SpaceX sticks reasonably closely to its current schedule, it should get 13 missions up in roughly the same time it took to do 8 last year.
The next scheduled mission after Sunday’s Iridium 2 is an expendable one to put up the ca. 6 tonne Intelsat 35E. That mission has been scheduled for July 1 for quite some time. But given the six-day slippage in Bulgariasat’s launch date, one wonders if SpaceX intends to surprise us with a record-shattering 8-day pad turnaround, push the date out to keep the cadence at ca. 2 weeks, or split the difference and still make a turnaround record. Given that normal procedure would be to do the Intelsat 35E hot-fire test this coming Tuesday for a launch a week from tomorrow, we should find out what the revised plans are – if any – pretty soon; perhaps even before Iridium 2 goes up on Sunday.
Wikipedia’s list of upcoming SpaceX missions for the remainder of 2017 has 20 entries on it, including Sunday’s Iridium 2. If SpaceX can actually accomplish that, it would finish 2017 with 28 missions – 19 from Kennedy/Canaveral and 9 from Vandy. That would be two more than I predicted after the Iridium 1 mission in January. It would even be one more than Elon, himself, is said to have stated recently, though I have yet to locate any confirmatory source for this.
It would also represent an average launch cadence, over the remaining 191 days in 2017, of roughly a launch every 9.5 days. That means a hot-fire or a launch at least once a week – and sometimes twice.
If SpaceX pulls this off, that French description of SpaceX as a potential “steamroller” that Berger included in his story is going to look like rank understatement by 1/1/2018.
Good one. This looked hard, with that picture of the stage off-center, smoking, and leaning. I’m looking forward to the video if it comes out; the first stage must have come in fast.
In 2002, SpaceX (if anyone was aware of its existence) was considered a joke by most of the in-the-know people. I know the heat I took for about a decade telling everybody I believed in what they would achieve (and it was a close thing by Elon’s telling.)
You can’t really predict the future, but you can still be right about it when most people are wrong (while they later claim they were always on board which tickles me no end!)
I am so thankful for SpaceX’s example and hope they have lots of healthy competition.
That would have been on USENET News I presume? Yeah, a lot of SpaceX discussions back then were qualified. As in, well IF x happens then possibly y will. Some were even bolder, likely x won’t happen so I’m not even going to consider y.
As so it went until 2007… A big year for SpaceX if memory serves…
Dave
Once they got their first rocket into orbit I know my attitude shifted.
Ken, I freely admit to being one of the SpaceX skeptics in those early days. I’m utterly delighted to have been wrong. 🙂
I had seen a lot of startups with grandiose claims, and figured SpaceX was one of them. I was surprised when they actually launched a F1 (even though it had a RUD shortly after liftoff, the fact it existed proved they weren’t just about vaporware), and I was still dubious until I saw photos of the first F9.
I’m still dubious about some of SpaceX’s claims, especially anything involving a timetable. Falcon Heavy, to name one item, has kept slipping and slipping, so much so that it’s become a common joke that they way you have always been able to find the launch date for FH is look at the calendar and add 8 months. On the other hand, schedule slips are by no means unique to SpaceX.
I think some of the FH slips are because F9 performance has improved so much that FH doesn’t have that many immediate potential customers.
If that’s the case, then holy moly does a propellant depot test article ever make a lot of sense as the test payload.
MikeR, “came in fast” is an understatement. IIRC after NROL the first stage was doing around 4600 kph when it hit the atmosphere. This one was doing 6600.
I believe I saw (in the video) one of the grid fins glowing red-orange during entry. Good thing they’re replacing the aluminum in those with titanium.
Watched it again. The right grid fin in the video frame was definitely glowing, right after the video started to be obscured by soot and just before LoS (I presume as the stage dropped below the horizon from Florida.)
I noticed while the first stage was coasting above 100 km that when the cold gas thrusters fired, there was a couple of second later some white chunks that would float away. I assume these are nitrogen ice from the thrusters.
Finally: if you compare images of the drone ship before/after landing, there’s a scorch mark on the far side from where the stage ended up. The landing may have involved a bounce across the landing platform. The recorded video, if they release it, it likely to pretty spectacular.
Also just before LOS from he drone ship the last frame showed a large seemingly thrust induced disturbance in the water on the opposite side of the drone ship from where the first stage actually landed.
I didn’t follow SpaceX at first. I think I was dimly aware of Falcon 1 from the occasional MSM report.
The first Falcon 9 launch, when they had an ignition abort, then recycled the count and successfully launched the same day, is when I sat up and took notice. I had never heard of anything like that ever happening before. Maybe it has, but if so I’m unaware of it. I remembered Gemini 6 and a few Shuttle ignition aborts, but none of them went on to launch the same day. I was absolutely flabbergasted about that when it happened.
Lately the first stage landings have almost seemed to be becoming routine. They they go and push the envelope like this one today. This really does feel like the 1960s, when every launch built on the previous one.
I think they still need to change the design quite a lot until they can achieve the necessary rapid turnaround to have actual reusability. Still Falcon 9 comes closer to it than any other vehicle that I can remember so far.
I can certainly imagine doing better than SpaceX. Actually I hope for it. Trump and Elon have some of the same blind spots and are alike in many ways. […waiting to see minds exploding]
Funny names, above-average number of children, relationships with younger women, Wharton alumni…
We shall see what the block 5 brings to the table.
Rapid is relative though. Same day re-flights might not happen for some time but days or weeks would still be awesome.
Being a skeptic is a good general strategy but it means you will miss some things. SpaceX isn’t the first call I got right. Some of my relatives still talk about the IPO for a little company run by a nerd called Gates. Observational bias would suggest I’ve just forgotten my bad calls… but I sincerely can’t think of any. My good calls are actually quite rare, but when they happen they never miss.
If my life had ever been stable I would have ridden some mighty fine waves. Stupid me, when it finally did seem to be getting stable in my 40s I got married! That fixed that!
Now I don’t have the health for another (of un-countable) reboots. I just have to make the best of it. The one thing my life has given me is a perspective few can share. I’ve done a lot of impressive things (humbly acknowledging just the facts) in diverse industries in many locales (and revisited decades later which adds another layer of perspective.)
I wouldn’t recommend my life to anybody, but I appreciate its value. Perhaps I will become a martian?
How’s that first chapter coming along?
Chapter 1 close to final. Added a small intro chapter zero because I realized I’d jumped in too fast. Had three chapters on SpaceX which I’ve merged into one. I’ve got two pending chapters in mind. Then will step back and reassess the whole. making progress but not yet ready to share (I could still end up doing the whole thing over, but it’s looking more likely I’ll keep most of what I’ve written.) I have thrown away a few chapters already.
I’ve got some spots with stubs I need to research… hopefully I can find again what I remember reading.
50 pages and I’m running out of steam. Got to get a printer because it’s easier to markup than on screen.
And baby makes two.
I wonder if the move of the landing barge was related to Tropical Storm Dora.
Quite the marine layer at the launch site.
It wasn’t as bad as it looked, but it was enough to obscure the view of liftoff. We didn’t see it until a few hundred feet off the pad. It was clear at the coast all the way up, but the climate is different north ot Point Conception, where the Alaska current still hugs the coast.
No offense to Bulgarians, but is “BulgariaSat” the worst ever name for a satellite?
Shotwell stated they are geared up build new 40 cores per year. If they salvage 30 plus per year it is only going to take a few years to have hundreds of used cores waiting to push something into space. I really hope bigelow can launch two habs per year because adding 12 people per year capacity will really start taking a lot of cargo runs