OT: Falcon heavy rocket launch

[F]

I heard on one of the news channels that they had lost the *TV* feed from the core landing barge prior to its intended touchdown.

[T i m]

Yes, I heard that thought but the commentary (as spoken by mission control itself) stated it lost the central core itself ... "we lost the centre core" (not the feed to the centre core).

And as for the core itself it turns out my guess was right. Apparently (according to Mr Musk himself), not all the (retro) rockets ignited on the central core so it came in too fast (circa 200 mph) and was destroyed (along with a couple of engines on the drone barge possibly).

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

Same here. ;-)

It was indeed. And it's only cost him over half a billion so far. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Davey]

I tried to watch it online, but all I got was incessant buffering. Luckily the BBC showed it live.

[Chris Hogg]

Out of interest and while waiting for the lift-off, I looked up how the Falcon Heavy compared with the Saturn 5. See

[Brian Gaff]

Of course and guess who fell asleep on the sofa and missed it... Brian

[Kevin H]

They said on the radio this morning (so it must be true) that the central core ran out of fuel and crashed close to the barge that was waiting to receive it.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Jeff Layman expressed precisely :

I heard in one report, that it crashed into the sea.

[Tim Streater]

So a capitalist has just halved the cost of space exploration at the first attempt versus the state operated launches. Jeremy Corbyn will be cross.

[charles]

there's a lot more to space exploration than sending a rocket up.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Haha. I am sorry Tim, normally I agree with you 100% but how much money has Elon received from the US government in pursuit of stupid electric cars?

[The Natural Philosopher]

$4.9bn

[Tim Streater]

Yes, well there is that, of course. I should have attributed what I posted, which came from Twitter this morning, but I thought it witty enough that it might annoy Our Dave and other twerps.

Here's another, from Dan Hannan (but not his originally I suspect):

It was so cold this morning - that I saw a Socialist with his hands in his *own* pockets.

[T i m]

Elon suggested that it didn't run out of fuel but boron, that I understand has to do with the ignition of the fuel? Apparently only one of the three rockets that were supposed to kick in to slow the rocket down fired up and as mentioned, crashing into the sea at around

300mph, 100m away from the drone barge, showering it with debris and knocking out two of it's positioning thrusters.

He also mentioned that of all the pods he was happy to lose was the central core (Mk1) as the side cores (Mk3-4, current Mk5) had titanium fins that they really wanted to get back. Same with the fairings that were Mk1's (or summat) and they didn't even bother recovering them (although it suggested they might in the press pack).

Apparently it's not easy because the size and shape of the fairings interrupt the airflow to parachutes and so they were looking at 'catching' them (like with a big catchers mitt)?

Anyone know if the 3rd burn went ok?

Cheers, T i m

[Vortex13]

Ran out of propellant, apparently and crashed close to the recovery barge.

Rewatching the video he first 2 boosters separated at under 7000 kmh

The central one separated at over 9000 kmh.

That's a hell of a lot more energy to scrub off before landing.

The core itself is about 25000kg dry weight with over 400000kg propellant and LOX. I wonder how much is needed in reserve for the braking maneuvers from over 9000 kmh? A fascinating mathematical balancing act.

Clearly this effort is inspiring a generation of engineers, which is great! If I was 35 years younger I would want to be one of them.

[T i m]

This might be of interest then Brian.

And if you want the whole thing, the following Youtube link gives you the launch, recovery and the press meeting with Elon (and loads of chat in between). Handy if you have 5 + hours to spare. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Huge]

Actually (and you may know this already) it's the whole point of the exercise. In order to get to Mars in a reasonable time and land a decent payload, it's necessary to re-ignite a rocket engine facing into a trans-sonic flow and land under thrust. That's what they're learning how to do.

[Martin]

Two out of three is not bad for a first attempt.

[T i m]

Elon himself mentioned something about it running out of Boron and that has something to do with the ignition of the fuel. eg, It was an ignition rather than fuelling issue?

But potentially all calculated and doable or they wouldn't have tried?

And one I'm sure they did. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

I don't think it is the first attempt at landing the cores though as they have even done so on the drone barge.

I'll give you that it's was the first time they had launched the Falcon Heavy and tried to recover all 3 cores simultaneously!

It's funny how some people don't see things [1]. Whilst watching the live feed of the recovery stage it was very obvious to me that on the feed I was watching that what should have been the feed from the two side cores was two duplicate feeds from one (because they 'both' landed on the same pad). ;-)

You can also see the retro burn(s) of both side cores in both video feeds but the orientation of the landing pad is the same in both feeds.

I'm not suggesting that there weren't two side cores, or that they didn't land safely (even though the landing pad video looked like an animation ), just that we didn't get to see the ride from both side cores. ;-(

Cheers, T i m

[1] I spotted that the picture of the kitcar on the home page of the club website was reversed, making it a LHD and apparently it had been like that for years! ;-)