
SpaceX Falcon 9 debris from failed CRS-7 launch found in sea off Scilly - jackgavigan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-34941462
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cecilpl
It's actually CRS-4 (which launched in September 2014), not CRS-7.

See the /r/spacex investigation thread:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3ug55w/scilly_falco...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3ug55w/scilly_falcon_9_updates/)

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Mchl
People at /r/spacex claim it might be actually not CRS-7 debris, but from some
earlier flight

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statingobvious
Here is a link to a thread discussing the origins:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3ug55w/scilly_falco...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3ug55w/scilly_falcon_9_updates/cxelftg)

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jld89
I thought it was Sicily and that Scilly was a keystroke mistake. Funny that...

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gchp
Before reading your comment I still thought it said Sicily. My brain just
assumed that was what it said

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willthames
It doesn't help that Scilly isn't usually used in isolation. Usually the group
is referred to as the Isles of Scilly or the Scilly Isles. None of the islands
is actually called Scilly.

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m-i-l
But the residents apparently prefer the Isles of Scilly to the Scilly Isles.

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zensavona
I've never really heard of it being called the Scilly Isles. Only the Isles of
Scilly.

Not many people even in the UK know it exists though (I only do because my ex
girlfriend grew up there)

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balabaster
I imagine more people in the UK know they exist than you perceive. Anyone who
still watches the weather updates on the TV or listens to them on the radio
instead of getting it from their phone will have heard mention of the...

Though... the more time goes on, the more I expect to hear "oh, they still
broadcast the weather on TV? I thought they just did that during the war"...
and by war, they're referring to the Gulf war... along with "Walkman/Discman?
What's that?"

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cconcepts
I would have assumed that you could calculate the approximate landing area of
at least the larger debris and that there would be some legislation forcing
you to at least try to locate/clean it up.

I suppose it doesn't present that much of a threat to anyone (once it has
landed).

~~~
JshWright
Most expendable launchers are just dropped into the ocean anyway. SpaceX is
the only company that has plans to completely recover the first stage.

I can also assure you that they did do everything they could to locate and
recover the debris from this launch. But for some altruistic environmental
concern though ... They wanted every piece they could find so they could
figure out what happened.

EDIT: Based on analysis from /r/spacex, this is from CRS-4 (not CRS-7), which
successfully boosted its second stage, then performed a retropropulsion to
test rentry (it didn't have landing legs, so a barge landing couldn't be
attempted). I suspect SpaceX still tried to recover as much as they could of
the stage, in order to see how well it handled the rentry.

~~~
peter303
Blue Origin just demonstrated a recoverable rocket. But their ambition is just
suborbital which only needs 1/8th the power or orbital flight.

~~~
JshWright
Yeah, by "launcher" I meant "rockets that can put things into orbit".

New Shepard is cool and all, but it's not really in the same weight class as
"real" launchers.

[https://i.imgur.com/g2VIKVC.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/g2VIKVC.jpg)

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gadders
Tangentially related, but if anyone wants to follow a very funny Facebook
page, they could do a lot worse than add the one for the Isles of Scilly
Police:
[https://www.facebook.com/IslesofScillyPolice/](https://www.facebook.com/IslesofScillyPolice/)

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riffraff
wow, barnacles are crazy efficient, I wouldn't expect the section to be
covered in them so much already.

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Kiro
Are those barnacles? Looks like mussels to me (Mytilidae).

~~~
riffraff
the person in the video says they are "goose barnacles", which from afar kinda
look like mussels[0]. I might have heard wrong though.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goose_barnacle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goose_barnacle)

~~~
Kiro
You're right and I'm wrong. Thanks!

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balabaster
It's interesting that it took less time to find a 10m by 4m piece of debris
from a failed space launch that took place on the opposite side of the planet
than to find an entire missing airliner with a last known GPS coordinates...

~~~
verandaguy
If you're talking about MH370, pieces of the aircraft are washing up and
getting found on various islands in the western part of the Indian Ocean. It
just takes time because (presumably) the currents aren't as favourable to make
parts of the plane wash up as in the North Atlantic.

Incidentally, large parts of the aircraft - including the fuselage itself -
may have sunk already, which was the case with AF447 a few years ago.

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jackgavigan
I'm guessing SpaceX will want to recover this so they can inspect it to see if
they can learn anything useful.

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cconcepts
Its weird really, I can't do much these days without someone tracking me and
using that information to target me with ads and yet whole commercial
airliners and chunks of space rockets can vanish only to wash up on beaches
covered in barnacles...

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manigandham
How are these things related?

I'm sure if all these chunks of rockets were constantly connected to the
internet we could track them too...

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Simorgh
Sometimes the timing of unconnected events is curious on a cosmic scale.

Only a day or two ago New Shepherd reached a milestone. Today parts from a
past SpaceX mission wash up onshore.

The proximity of these events show that space exploration is witnessing a lot
of activity from agents who are operating independently.

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pocketstar
Correlation != causation. Only recently has mass media decided to push tech
billionaire's pet projects as "space news", that's is all this shows. There
are dozens of other arguably more significant space projects flying under the
mass media's radar.

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wertop
Which projects? Would love to know.

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mikeash
Me too. I can't think of anything going on in space flight right now more
significant than SpaceX's reusability efforts

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pocketstar
SpaceX's reusabulity efforts are just another incremental improvement to
existing rocket technology. Reusable launch vehicles are nothing new. If they
can get launch costs down to $60m with their reusable technology that would be
great! However, they still can't launch anything >5000kg so it's a pretty
mixed bag and a lot of good marketing.

~~~
mikeash
Reusable launch vehicles are nothing new? I can think of only one other, and
it ended up being unbelievably expensive, costing far more than an equivalent
expendable launcher.

SpaceX's launch cost is already about $60 million in expendable mode, so your
comment about bringing it "down to $60 with their reusable technology" makes
no sense to me. If they pull it off, the cost might drop to more like $10-30
million.

A rocket that costs like an expendable launcher but can be reused will be a
massive game changer, not "just another incremental improvement." Maybe all
the changes needed to get to that point are incremental, but that doesn't mean
the result won't be huge.

