
"Autonomous spaceport drone ship” - ph0rque
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/536262624653365248/photo/1
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ChuckMcM
This is going to be epic. It really gives me a sense of living in the movies I
used to watch as science fiction as a kid.

Even more interesting for me was he tweeted the X-wings [1] which make total
sense. On re-entry you don't need to burn fuel to provide attitude
stabilization and drag if you can do that aerodynamically. I realize the first
test failed due to an out of control spin, but if you remember the old rotary
rocket days you may note that one could use reentry to spin up the F-9 then
flip the pitch on the x-wings to provide an auto-rotation type of re-entry
into the denser atmosphere. That would save fuel needed for the landing.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/22/space-x-x-wing-rocket-
drone...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/22/space-x-x-wing-rocket-drone-
landing-pads/)

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msandford
Hot shit! I speculated on this a while ago. Seems like I wasn't far off the
mark.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7627515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7627515)

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pjscott
It gets even better:

"Base is 300 ft by 100 ft, with wings that extend width to 170 ft. Will allow
refuel & rocket flyback in future."

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/536263260056850432](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/536263260056850432)

Instead of spending valuable propellant on a boostback burn to get to the
launch site, they'll just partially refuel the spent lower stage on the barge
and have it fly itself back to the launch site. This'll improve their maximum
payload, and possibly save money.

~~~
trhway
>they'll just partially refuel the spent lower stage on the barge and have it
fly itself back to the launch site.

given the capabilities of the stage, wouldn't it basically be a suborbital
hyper-transport - they can fly it from any point A to point B, like from SF to
Honk-Kong must faster than Concorde.

~~~
Gravityloss
That's very hard. The hop it does is just a few hundred kilometers. ISS orbits
at around 300 km height. Just crossing the atlantic would require 6000 km
horizontal travel. So 20x horzontal vs vertical. If you want to avoid the
radiation belts, you need a relatively shallow trajectory. The velocity needed
is near orbital. High ICBM trajectories have issues...

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32faction
71% of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans so it would only make sense to
make launch and land platforms on the oceans. Not only for the space but for
the safety; if a launch needs to be aborted, or has a catastrophic failure
(see; explosion) the harmful debris won't come raining down on the population.

That's why the U.S. launch sites are located on the coasts: Wallops Island,
Cape Canaveral, and Vandenberg AFB. They all launch vehicles away from CONUS.

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nashashmi
Can a sea ship be called a drone? I thought drones where air based. I thought
that 'drone' came from the sound a robotic air vehicle makes.

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aboodman
heh, no: [http://i.imgur.com/ohETHFD.png](http://i.imgur.com/ohETHFD.png)

~~~
001sky
According to this, the GP is essentially right.

Bees are both airborne (not seaborne) and make a notable (droning) sound in
flight.

Old English-->Male Bee

from the German --> Droning sound

~~~
sandstrom
Yes, 'drönare' is a male bee in Swedish too.

Although bees aren't remote control via a computer chip, they are generally
seen as being commanded by the queen :)

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rlt
His real tweets are even better than @BoredElonMusk's tweets
([https://mobile.twitter.com/boredelonmusk](https://mobile.twitter.com/boredelonmusk))

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grantbachman
What is the cost/technical feasibility of SpaceX being able to broadcast this
landing live? The barge will be miles out to sea where there are no cell
towers, so how difficult would it be and how much would it cost to stream a
video from the middle of the Atlantic?

~~~
troymc
I'm pretty sure they could send the live video signal up to a communications
satellite in geostationary orbit. That satellite would relay the signal to a
base station which would then broadcast it however they normally do.

There are lots of comsats in GEO; no doubt some of them are open to doing a
deal, but I don't know the cost. Maybe an international TV news network would
be willing to do it "for free" so long as they get exclusive access?

~~~
JshWright
Or they could just use an airplane to relay to signal. The technology isn't
really the issue. The issue is they don't want to release a video of a rocket
crashing into a barge (or the ocean next to a barge). They know such a video
would be replayed in mainstream media without the "this was just a test that
only had a 50/50 shot of working in the first place" context. Especially after
F9R-Dev, an Antares, and SS2 all RUD'd in the past couple months.

That being said, they have announced that there will be cameras on the barge.
The fact that they have announced that ahead of time makes it very likely we
will see at least some footage in the days or weeks after the attempt (they'll
just want to do it in a PR controlled way).

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kenrikm
Based on this I think we can see a recovery attempted on one of the upcoming
missions that will actually support it. Very cool stuff.

~~~
JshWright
The next flight (CRS-5, coming up in a few weeks) is going to attempt to land
the first stage on this barge.

~~~
jessriedel
Wow, thanks, I hadn't heard about this.

[http://www.spacenews.com/article/launch-report/42305next-
fal...](http://www.spacenews.com/article/launch-report/42305next-
falcon-9-launch-could-see-first-stage-platform-landing)

Looks like the Bayes is strong with Musk:

> If the stage successfully lands on the platform, Musk said, it could
> potentially fly again. He put the odds of success at no greater than 50
> percent for this particular attempt, but was more optimistic about the
> company’s chances of landing on the platform on a future mission.

> “There’s at least a dozen launches that will occur over the next 12 months,”
> Musk said. “I think it’s quite likely — probably 80 to 90 percent likely —
> that one of those flights will be able to land and refly.”

The scheduled date is Dec 16:

[http://spacexstats.com/mission.php?launch=19](http://spacexstats.com/mission.php?launch=19)

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robgibbons
(Space)X marks the spot!

