SpaceX - so close...
 

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Lift-off, is at 1:48:10 ..

dang..

Exactly.

What I don't understand is why thy don't program in a contingency landing site. --a nice big body of water right there.

An emergency parachute system would have been a good option to carry as well.

a minor miscalculation?

This is what happens if your torque wrench isn't calibrated on the third Tuesday after a harvest moon.


just kidding. Looks like an actuator linkage broke (popped loose? lost pressure?) on one of the nozzles. It flamed out.. then another. Only one remaining, but still impressive effort.

https://youtu.be/ap-BkkrRg-o?t=6592

Apparently header tank lost methane pressure so engines had oxygen rich combustion so they started burning up metal liner...thus yellow flame...

Engine rich combustion.

Landed a little hard with only one engine...
What was the successful mission supposed to be like? Vertical landing with 3 engines?

As Maxwell Smart used to say "Chief, I was THAT close..."

That should buff out.

Musk had said he believed the chance of a complete success was 1 in 3. He was right as it turns out.

The missiles ability to alter its' orientation was impressive.

I watched with no audio, so I may have missed some good information. I noticed a few times during the initial flight what looked like a directional thruster shooting to the right from about the middle of the device where the white stripe is, including around the time that the second thruster went out. Then after the last thruster shut off you could see not only that middle thruster going but also 2 or 3 at the time of the device. It was a cool video, and impressive even though it wasn't quite 100% successful.

The Space-X stuff is extremely impressive. I know that for my parents, men in space, men on the moon and the space shuttle were extremely impressive. For me the Space Shuttle, I know now, was, but I guess because I was a kid it just seemed only natural.

For me, the most impressive stuff has been what Space-X has done like the graceful landings of the boosters and then the video that we just saw.

Space is hard. Asymmetric thrust and not enough thrust to slow the descent, makes for a cool explosion.

The landing reminded me of Robin Williams skit on the Mars Lander.

Oops, I did the calculations in feet, but I programmed it in meters.

they put it on it's side for aero braking to slow down, modulated the fins for a glide path.

Watched live (after the cancellations), blowed up real good.

Yeager could have landed that :)

Dramatic.

There were a lot more attitude corrections from the main engines than what I thought it would have required.

Otherwise it looked like it went pretty smooth right up until they used the header tanks. This is why it is called testing.

This is basically 95% win. The hard part worked! Unproven engines, unproven aerodynamic surface, unproven "flip" maneuver... it all worked!

Yes, they need to check why the header tank started bubbling but hey: it was right there! On the dot! 5 sec of fuel and it would have landed!

Very good point and exactly right, this is why you test. Often times you can learn more from a failure than a success.

I was lucky and watched it live. I was flipping through Google news and saw "Watch Space X launch live". So I click on the Houston TV stream and it was 30 seconds from launch. How lucky was that!

There was no voice over, just 3 different views from on board. When the first engine shut down and then the second and things shook around i wondered If that was planned. With no voice over I had no idea.

And then the landing with the "Incredible work, team. Nice work."

I was left scratching my head.

pfft, big deal, my 930 leaves like that too !
Pretty amazing stuff actually

The plan was to shut them down at intervals.

At 1:49:54 the main engines start going a bit wonky, and one seems to cut out completely. Is that a feature, or a bug?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1607631703.jpg

Something weird with the forums, my post above was a reply to rcooled.

I noticed that. The order of posts was changed

You are just psychic. You answered the question before it was asked. Damn impressive.

Now, if I could only do that with lotto numbers!

How much money does that guy have?

enough

Yeah, Musk has Dr. Evil-level money. Second only to Bezos (and on track to eclipse him soon I believe).

It made it all the way to the scene of the crash .....

Joe sixpack might be laughing but Roscosmos, Boeing, ULA and Arianespace certainly are not ....

I know the engines adjust for flight variances, but there was a view in the engine bay during the flight, and it looked like a couple thrusters/boosters broke loose? it forced the airframe sides ways, and i noticed the belly was getting mighty hot on it, the things boosters kicked back on to compensate for its failures, and Kabooom, no more rocket. Trip to mars anybody?

Nothing broke. Only thing that went bad is fuel tank not being to supply liquid during last 3 sec...
Everything else was right on time.

Engines were shut down on purpose, small "fire" was residual fuel (expected). Basically, everything except the landing went well.

Lots of 'maybes' on this flight.
Maybe they should have some parachutes to upright and slow the decent.
Maybe the engines didn't start up properly or early enough.
Maybe the fuel tanks didn't supply fuel properly to fire up the engines.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But the thing is, lessons are learned and more studies will be performed before the next test flight.

No maybes, they know exactly what happened. The header tanks did not have enough pressure. No need for parachutes, it is meant to land the same as the Falcon first stages.

I was being sarcastic with the maybes. Yes, they know what happened and what went wrong. That is why it is called a test flight. Stay tuned, they will get it right.

Sorry. Could not glean the sarcasm from your post.

I may get flamed here...flame suit on. I don't see what's the big deal about this? Didn't we do the same thing landing on a moon and taking from the moon over 50 years ago with almost non-existence computer power? I know that gravity is 1/6th on the moon as on earth but still they traveled a 'long' way there then back whereas in this test it was a really short trip and it did not end well except for correct orientation of its explosive landing!

It’s the biggest baddest rocket ever made and totally reusable. That’s the big wrinkle and a major technical complexity. This thing is intended for Mars, not the moon.