
SpaceX: “Close, but no cigar. This time” - ggonweb
https://vine.co/v/OjqeYWWpVWK
======
sixQuarks
Sorry for sounding like such a fanboy, but during my 40 years on this earth, I
have never been more impressed with a human being.

The guy is pushing the envelope on perhaps the most difficult
engineering/technological endeavor ever attempted by a private company - and
he's making it look cool and futuristic.

As if that wasn't enough, he's doing this in two different industries
simultaneously.

I'm not saying he can do no wrong, but I'm just flabbergasted that there are
still so many armchair critics and naysayers when it comes to Elon Musk.

~~~
Someone1234
> I'm not saying he can do no wrong, but I'm just flabbergasted that there are
> still so many armchair critics and naysayers when it comes to Elon Musk.

That's why you're a fanboy. Nobody is perfect, and Elon Musk likes to make fun
of the competition quite publicly when they have an issue, while ignoring his
project's own failures.

It is hard to even discuss the man on HN as anything that could even be taken
as critical gets downmoded or flagged. Just look at yesterday's hyperloop
discussions, nobody could say anything critical without being very actively
attacked. By the way make sure "show dead" is turned on to see the full
discussion.

Honestly his track record is very impressive indeed. His aspirations are also
impressive. However his fans are insufferable as is HN's general attitude
about the man. When someone is treated as if they're beyond reproach and their
ideas are also, you're just asking to get led down the garden path.

The hyperhoop concept in particular is pretty bad, and the white paper leaves
more questions than it does answers. The cost is too high and the value too
low Vs. normal high speed trains (e.g. Japan). Plus there are massive safety
issues surrounding it (as you can see from the thread yesterday, that were
largely just ignored and downmodded).

Overall I'll be happy when people start acting rationally around the guy
again. Currently I feel like I at a One Direction concert surrounding by a
bunch of screaming teenage girls (on HN in particular).

PS - I wouldn't dream of criticising this rocket failure. Rockets are hard,
the last 80 years have proven that again and again.

~~~
ForHackernews
Amen. It's also kind of insulting how much HN has bought into this "Great Man"
theory of engineering and development. Sure, Elon Musk is a smart guy and
seems to be a good leader who sets bold goals, but the real geniuses that make
SpaceX possible are the brilliant engineers working there--who you've never
heard of.

Watching the way HN reacts to SpaceX, in contrast to say, NASA, or the ESA
makes me think those organizations should hire a charismatic frontman, too.

Edit: For example, see my sibling comment: "The thing that intrigues me is in
the new innovations _he_ had in _his_ rocket, and _why NASA didn 't have it_
before SpaceX." (emphasis mine)

~~~
paulwal
You described every organization or company ever. Jobs didn't personally write
the code for iOS but he created the vision and made it happen.

~~~
ForHackernews
Yeah, and I also think there's way too much Jobs-worship in the technology
industry.

------
grecy
Interesting. It had quite the lean, And close to zero vertical velocity. Then
it looks like it accelerated at the last second in an attempt to move sideways
back the center of the barge.

I wonder if the top of the rocket was at or very near the center?

Also you can clearly see the landing legs deployed, jeez they look tiny.

Must just tweeted _" Next rocket landing on drone ship in 2 to 3 weeks w way
more hydraulic fluid. At least it shd explode for a diff reason."_

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/556105370054053889](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/556105370054053889)

~~~
mitchty
Was probably the engine gimbaling and thrusting up to attempt to correct but
was just unable to due to the fins not being around the whole descent.

~~~
0x5f3759df-i
Not only were the fins unable to move, the position they were stuck in was a
very unhelpful position.

~~~
Sammi
Yes, and could speculate that the main engine fired 'wrongly' because the
control code didn't take into account that the fins were locked.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Hm, if I was the guy designing the control loop on that thing (not gonna
happen in real world, but bear with me), I would definitely take into account
the fins position - the real position, not the one I want them to be in.

Not that it would have helped anyway in this case.

~~~
Symmetry
I suspect that the code takes the fin's starting position into account in each
planning cycle but also assumes that the fin will move as directed in the
future.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
No rotary encoders on those things?

------
jacquesm
Looks like it did not come down vertically but at a slant, but they got the
positioning better than I thought they would on this try. One thing to note is
that it is from now on officially a very bad idea to piss off Elon Musk if he
knows where you live, being able to hit stuff with this kind of accuracy using
rockets from space is normally enough to get you placed on the 'axis of evil'
list. Incredible precision.

~~~
guelo
You joke but a future were corporations control ICBMs to their advantage is a
realistic worry.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I'm trying, but not succeeding, to imagine a non-fiction situation where a
corporation has any business advantage in owning and/or controlling an ICBM.
Can you expand on your comment? What would a corporation do with this, other
than to perhaps implement same day delivery of packages around the globe?

~~~
guelo
The best historical example is the British East India Company whose private
army conquered India and ruled it for about 100 years. Another example is the
United Fruit Company in South America that bought local armies to crush
rebellions.

Since the US government has become so corrupt American companies have found it
easy to use the power of the US government to coerce other countries, for
example for intellectual property treaties. But it’s feasible that in the
future companies might want their own military power to get their way.

~~~
dredmorbius
Any good references on BEIC and its army?

~~~
chobo
How did the power and economic reach of pre-modern organizations like the
British East India Company compare to modern megacorporations? --
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17mvv1/how_di...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/17mvv1/how_did_the_power_and_economic_reach_of_premodern/)

~~~
dredmorbius
Nice. I tried asking a similar question on corporate violence a ways back and
got moderated out.

------
ChuckMcM
That is awesome! I appears the stage has maybe 10 m/s horizontal velocity and
less than that vertical, but at that angle I can see how difficult it would be
for just engine gimballing to get get it vertical again. I wonder if the barge
is equipped to record a downlink of telemetry from stage. Once it gets close
enough you should be able to shoot over at least some data which the barge
could presumably keep 'safe' in a blast protected storage system.

------
downandout
Could an aeronautics person kindly explain why it's so hard to get this thing
to land as it's supposed to? I'm not being judgmental at all here; I am saying
that as a software engineer with no aeronautics experience, I simply don't
understand the problem. Assuming all of the sensors indicating tilt, altitude,
etc. are accurate, the software portion coordinating where and how much thrust
needs to deployed to keep it level and descending at an appropriate speed
should be relatively straightforward to write. And yet, with at least dozens
of undoubtedly brilliant people working on this very problem, the result is
the world's most expensive fireworks show.

~~~
vladimirralev
Not aeronautics, but control systems engineer and I've seen the explanation.
The rocket engine they use is too powerful to hover and move towards the
destination in a slow adjustment loop. And there is no throttle control on the
engine, 70% minimum which is still too powerful. In order to land you turn the
engine off and wait to pick up some vertical speed, then in the last N seconds
you turn the engine on to kill the speed you picked up from the freefall just
before you hit the ground. Best described as a hover-slam. If your position
during the freefall is off, you can't just keep the engine running to hover
around and fix it (like they do in their dev rocket), it would fly up quickly
if they do. In this video they still have lots of fuel in the rocket so they
were trying to hover a little, however in the real landing presumably the
rocket will be empty thus the hover-slam will be harder.

~~~
grecy
Thanks, that's very helpful.

> _The rocket engine they use is too powerful to hover and move towards the
> destination in a slow adjustment loop. And there is no throttle control on
> the engine, 70% minimum which is still too powerful_

I've seen this a lot, and I've also read about how many times each engine can
be re-lit. Can you talk a bit about why the engines have a limited number of
times they can be lit?

If there were no limit on that, I'd want to just turn the engine on and off a
bunch to get the right amount of thrust to hover.

~~~
shasheene
While there's a limit in the amount of (highly toxic) TEA/TEB hypergolic fuel
that's carried in the ignition system I'm not sure it's the bottleneck.

The limited number of times the Merlin 1D can be relit is probably referring
to the re-usability aspect (from memory they tested "cycling" the engine
something like 40 times in qualification testing, but it's a little unclear
exactly what a cycle entails). It's the associated "coking" of the engine with
hot and sticky carbon/soot from the incomplete combustion of the kerosene
that's been speculated to be a major hinderance to the long-term engines
survivability.

Other than consumables, it's probably the high (and variable) latency in the
switching time that restarting the engine in quick succession that would make
it problematic, in addition to the engine damaging aspects you mentioned.

Hover-slamming a first-stage with a Merlin 1D has been heavily tested by
F9R-Dev1/2 - it's a completely workable solution that minimizes engine
restarts over the flight profile to 3 (boostback, re-entry burn, hoverslam).

While the switching the engine may be made to be workable solution which can
effectively throttle the engines between 0% and 70%, a hoverslam with a
vehicle with thrust/weight ratio > 1 gives less stress on the entire (~$40
million F9R first stage) vehicle to be reused.

------
ufmace
Cool video! Just what we've been waiting to see.

I wonder what actually exploded there? Part of the argument for why the
landing was supposed to be relatively safe was that the stage would be mostly
empty of fuel by the time that it landed, so there wouldn't be much to explode
if something went wrong. So is that an explosion of the remaining fuel in the
rocket, or something on deck?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Not easy to do with Vine's crappy interface but if you step through it and
stop you will see that the rocket is decelerating and when it gets close to
the platform it adds thrust which then increases its pitch over (which would
be expected without anything on the top to control pitch) and then it
increases thrust still more (presumably to right itself) but the back end of
the stage is already below deck level at that point. It comes across the back
of the barge and clips the engine section which separates the engines from the
fuel supply. The fuel and oxidizer continues coming out and burns rapidly.
That ends up tossing the remains of the rocket off the screen to the left.

We can't tell of course from the video if the barge was moving (by virtue of
the camera being fixed to the barge it makes it appear to be unmoving in the
video).

If you are reading this SpaceX, here is my suggestion for capturing more data
in future flights. Install quad copters on the barge which launch once the
barge detects the landing stage is inbound, have them position themselves
using the GPS from the barge 100 yards out in four directions. Then have four
reference lights on the corners of the barge (can be LEDs) to give you the
ability to back compute angles from the video. Stream video from the quad
copters back to a secure video storage facility in the barge which is designed
to withstand rapid disassembly of the barge and float. Could make for some
awesome videos too.

~~~
narag
I've been watching an old scifi series this days, called Starhunter. They had
that obvious (but unusual) concept of drones that gripped on prey and
delivered it to the mothership.

------
notjustanymike
I'm amazed it's taken this long for innovation to happen in rocketry. Here's
an entire industry that -expects- your production model to explode and crash
after one use. Literally anything that doesn't explode and crash is a step
forward. And it's been this way for 50 years!

------
jefurii
Wow, they struck a glancing blow to that barge! From space!

------
eyeareque
I think its awesome that they are open and show off their failures like this.
This is one company that I am rooting for.

------
ChrisBland
Wow, what an amazing feat to come this close. To think just ~100 years ago
humans took flight for the first time. Now we are able to launch a rocket in
orbit, then fly the first stage to land on a small platform floating in the
middle of the ocean.

~~~
hnnewguy
> _Now we are able to launch a rocket in orbit, then fly the first stage to
> land on a small platform floating in the middle of the ocean._

You know we landed on the moon, right? I mean, this is cool, but from a sheer
"fascinating achievement" standpoint, this is at least a few notches behind
that.

~~~
KeytarHero
Can't we just appreciate how both are fascinating for entirely different
reasons? I think it's pretty amazing we were able to get a rocket to land
(edit: well, _almost_ land) to this precise a spot - and all by itself,
without human pilots. Sure, it's no moon landing, but it has certain other
challenges the moon landing didn't have. I think both are really cool.

------
butwhy
I still don't understand how hydraulic fuel is used in this case and how lack
of it caused this failed landing.

~~~
jacquesm
The hydraulic oil is not used as a 'fuel' to burn but to control the actuators
for the grid fins. So if you lose control because you run out of hydraulic oil
the last bit of the descent will be uncontrolled. So they _almost_ made it
with enough hydraulic oil, which means that next time the grid fins will work
all the way down, which leaves a ton of other possibilities for mishap (too
high a descent rate, rogue waves, barge being slightly at an angle and so on).
Makes you wonder why the hydraulic circuit isn't closed, probably they figured
an open loop system is more reliable than a closed one (half the gear and no
need for a sump, which comes in handy when you have to deal with gravity
coming from all directions).

~~~
mitchty
Open loop is lighter than closed. No need for a closed loop if you have a set
time of operation. I thought I heard they were also pumping the fuel through
the system as well so I imagine this amounts to just a bit more propellant and
another go.

~~~
seanflyon
> I thought I heard they were also pumping the fuel through the system as well

I think they use fuel as the hydraulic fluid for the gimbaling of the motors,
but not for the grid fins.

~~~
mitchty
That might be true, can't seem to quickly find a source for that so I'll just
eat crow and look like a muppet on that one.

~~~
jacquesm
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553963793056030721](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553963793056030721)

------
goshx
Could someone please explain the "no cigar"?

~~~
Uhhrrr
It's from a time when it was common to offer cigars as rewards for playing
carnival games. If you missed the target or milk can or whatever, "close, but
no cigar!".

~~~
returnofdjedi
I have watched A Few Good Men to guess what it means . I forgot what it meant
though.

------
simias
I'm annoyed by this trend of having posts with 0 context or analysis on the
top of the frontpage. Yesterday we had a link to some bitcoin chart showing a
sudden drop in price (why? I still don't know). A few days ago it was a gif of
a flowchart for some brainfuck interpreter (I had to dig into the comments to
find the link to the source code). And now... Vine?!

The problem with that kind of submissions (images, short videos...) is that
they're quick to overtake more in depth articles because people upload it in
seconds without 2nd thought. I don't want the front page of HN be overtaken by
imgur posts, if you see what I mean.

~~~
sp332
This story is a few days old, so I guess the upvoters figured most people were
already aware of the context.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8895397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8895397)

Also, HN's obsession with linking to "original sources" means you often get a
raw feed instead of commentary.

------
nickhalfasleep
I wonder what the cost savings to space there are for buying a trip for a
satellite on a "used" booster. Also if SpaceX is recycling the 1st stage, I
wonder if they have plans to "Recycle" the 2nd stage in orbit.

~~~
krasin
Somebody on /r/spacex made the following spreadsheet to demonstrate the effect
of savings due to the reusability of the first and potentially second stages:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhFJHvEz4SHQdDB...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhFJHvEz4SHQdDBvanoxSzhUbEhnd05OZENiTDBBR0E&usp=sharing#gid=0)

~~~
Gravityloss
That's interesting, though it doesn't take into account all the non-rocket
costs in the launch. Also the factory has to exist, probably the yearly cost
does not scale linearly with the number of engines produced. That said, once
you go there, if launch prices drop to one tenth, all kinds of other things
can start to happen.

------
Pro_bity
This is why the landing pad is run autonomously.

------
32faction
I feel if the 1st stage booster had an attitude control system toward the top
like the BRAHMOS missile [1], the lean could've been corrected to at least
have the rocket be upright when it impacted the platform. Although the choice
to add an attitude control system would probably take up more space and add
mass which is critical for a stage rocket.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/5RWkvem.gif](http://i.imgur.com/5RWkvem.gif)

~~~
shasheene
The Falcon 9 does have attitude control system towards the top: the nitrogen
cold gas thrusters in the Reaction Control System is located in the interstage
portion of the vehicle - right at the top of the first stage

The gimballing engines give attitude control at the bottom, as far as I
understand

~~~
32faction
Nitrogen cold gas thrusters don't give enough "oomph". Maybe if the rocket was
inclined at angles x<10 degrees with respect to the vertical axis it would've
been able to correct but this rocket was leaned over at what seems to be
20<x<=45 deg. In other words they wouldn't of have been powerful enough to
correct that much of a drastic lean the Falcon had coming down.

But I'm sure with the hydraulic fluid corrections a stronger control system
won't be needed to fix large angles of attack but it would be nice to have as
an emergency system.

"Have it and not need it/Need it don't Have it" really doesn't work with
rockets because of the mass requirements

------
grondilu
On this video the trajectory seems a bit weird. It looks like the rocket does
its approach slightly to the right and afar, and then when it gets closer it
changes direction and goes towards the camera, more or less in the direction
of its tilt. As if the rocket began to tilt only around the end to a point the
engine could not compensate anymore except by adding a large horizontal
acceleration.

~~~
krschultz
The rocket ran out of power for its control fins at some point during the
descent, so this is indeed partially out of control. The engine is doing a lot
more than was intended during this video.

------
wickedlogic
What is the weight on the rocket? It seems like towers with something like
cable lasso's would help with the final descent stabilizing by securing the
top of the rocket, or weighted arms/blocks that box in the rocket during
final. So it never has to 'land', just hover.

------
jonalmeida
Can someone explain what the rocket was trying to do? Was it trying to correct
itself to land vertically thrusters-first? I also don't understand how it got
in that particular trajectory either from this vine.

~~~
duskwuff
Here's a video of the desired behavior, more or less:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxiK7K28PU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxiK7K28PU)

The video's a few years old, so the hardware's changed a bit since then, but I
think you'll get the idea. :)

~~~
jonalmeida
Thanks, I remember watching this along time ago. I was under the impression
they had landing the rocket all figured out after this :)

------
krmboya
Maybe OP, but if Elon Musk makes actual technical contributions to his
companies, I'd be super impressed.

~~~
throwawaymsft
Like being the Chief Designer (CTO) of SpaceX?

~~~
ceejayoz
He owns the company, he could take the title Head Janitor if he really felt
like it. It might not necessarily reflect his actual duties.

------
fluffheadsr
love that they're trying something new and exciting.. you're gonna fail when
you're going for it.. but at least someones going for it. looking forward to
hyper loop.

~~~
returnofdjedi
Elon Musk is the Tesla and Steve Jobs of our generation.

~~~
legohead
Wouldn't compare him to Steve Jobs. Musk is actually a philanthropist.

~~~
ceejayoz
That may be unfair.

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/laurene-powell-
jobs...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/laurene-powell-jobs-and-
anonymous-giving-in-silicon-valley/)

------
kylerpalmer
Just like KSP

------
mjs
Is that in realtime?

~~~
moskie
Oh, you're asking if the video is slowed down/sped up. Ok.

At first, I thought you were asking if we were watching it in realtime.... and
seeing rocket after rocket blow up on this barge.

~~~
returnofdjedi
Cool.If would be great to know how musk distributes his time between Tesla And
Spacex.

~~~
mikeyouse
From here: [http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-day-in-the-life-
of-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-day-in-the-life-of-the-tesla-
and-spacex-ceo-2012-7)

> Musk splits his time between his two companies. He's at SpaceX's LA-based
> headquarters on Monday and Thursday, then he heads to Tesla (in the Bay
> Area) on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Friday he splits time between both. Tesla
> Design has offices in the same office park as SpaceX.

He lives in LA, so the schedule makes sense in that he flies LA -> SF Tuesday
AM and then SF -> LA Thursday night.

------
whoisthemachine
Explosions are cool

------
XJOKOLAT
Great video. Exploding rockets and failed attempts give plenty to talk about
and get excited about.

But Spacex have already launched a rocket and landed it in a similar way as
they are doing here.

Ok, so they are flying it somewhere else, GPS'ing, and landing it somewhere
else.

I enjoyed the video but ... just seems like a small progression in the grand
scheme of things.

Cool, but no cigar. This time.

~~~
sp332
It looks like a small progression, but it failed. Rocket science is hard!
Remember, no one has ever done this before.

------
rvennar
So the rocket just explodes and the trash goes in the ocean? Thanks for
polluting our oceans. Can I take all my household trash and just dump it in
your living room?

------
thescorer
This was "close?"

~~~
thaumaturgy
Put a .5" x .5" cardboard square on a wooden post.

Grab a pushpin.

Start counting paces away from the post.

Stop when you're about four city blocks away.

Start running full speed towards the post.

Hurl the pin at the post as hard as you can when you're three city blocks
away.

Pin glances off of one corner of the cardboard square.

Crowd yells, "epic fail!"

~~~
ctdonath
In contrast, from the HN-featured article about finding the Beagle2 probe on
Mars:

 _MRO 's data confirms that Beagle landed just 5km from the centre of its
targeted touchdown zone._

5km, and it was considered a bulls-eye accurate landing.

~~~
taeric
At the relative ranges we are talking about here, those numbers are probably
more comparable than many would realize. Consider, Mars at its closest, is
over 6700km away. The space station at its furthest is 418km. (Assuming I
looked up the correct numbers, of course.)

~~~
joezydeco
Mars is 225,000,000 km away, on average.

~~~
taeric
So, obviously, I looked up the wrong numbers. I knew they didn't sound right.

------
ForHackernews
HN when SpaceX screws up: "Wow, what an amazing job they've done learning from
this mistake and moving forward!"

HN when NASA screws up: "Wow, this shows how government can't do anything
right. They should privatize everything and outsource it to SpaceX."

~~~
ceejayoz
This wasn't really a screw up, though. The mission was accomplished -
successful resupply flight to the ISS. The landing was a R&D test - the first
of this nature - with the leftover pieces.

------
sandworm
SpaceX is certainly doing great things, but where was this vid a couple days
ago?

When I first heard of the hard landing I jumped online to see the vid. But no
vid appeared. Then I realized what was happening. A vid of a crashing rocket
is never a good thing for a spacelaunch company. It's just bad PR. Thinking
back, we don't see many vids from SpaceX that aren't unqualified successes.

They surely had this vid withing minutes, of not seconds of the landing
attempt. But they delayed its release until the media and the public were
educated sufficiently to understand that, despite the flames, this landing was
not a failure.

~~~
32faction
> Where was this video a couple of days ago?

Usually when there's an error or a failure on a mission, there will be an
immediate lockdown of all PR, videos etc to analyze the problems first and
understand what happened before the official release of material. This might
seem trivial but I'll type it anyway.

First off, if SpaceX released videos and didn't know what happened, the press
would obviously speculate and SpaceX's brand would lose value somewhat. If the
videos were released and the problem is a little harder to solve, well now you
have a video of your error circulating and you don't even know what to tell
the press what happened.

If you watch the Mission Control footage during Columbia's fatal reentry, when
Houston realized the worst had happened, Flight Director Cain said over the
intercom "G.C., FLIGHT, Lock the doors". This was meant figuratively and
literally; He told Ground Control to lock the doors of Mission Control so no
one could leave, and that all information regarding the incident would not
leave that room. Not even the President could enter that room after Ground
Control locked the doors.

