
SpaceX: Eutelsat/ABS Mission Hosted Webcast - pol0nium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLNmtUEvI5A
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manaskarekar
As for the first stage:

"Following stage separation, the first stage of Falcon 9 will attempt an
experimental landing on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship. As with
other GTO missions, the first-stage will be subject to extreme velocities and
re-entry heating, making a successful landing difficult."

Mission Press Kit :
[http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/spacex_eutelsat_abs...](http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/spacex_eutelsat_abs_press_kit.pdf)

EDIT: Sounds like they lost the first stage, still not very clear on the
details.

EDIT2: Confirmed loss of first stage by Elon Musk.

"Ascent phase & satellites look good, but booster rocket had a RUD on
droneship"

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/743096769001578498](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/743096769001578498)

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AliCollins
Did the "experimental landing" work this time?

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atonse
Feed died.

I hope the next-gen of communications satellites improves the broadband-over-
satellite situation.

If only there was a company in this day and age that is launching satellites
often and at lower cost. :)

~~~
bisby
Apparently the broadband out there is great. The issue isn't lack of
satellites or speed.

The issue is that when you have a Merlin 1D (or 3) firing directly at a mobile
platform, it's going to shake violently. And when you have sensitive equipment
on that platform shaking, you're going to have a satellite misalignment and
signal cut outs while the lock is reacquired.

Considering this is a pretty unique scenario (I would imagine 99% of satellite
internet connections don't have rockets landing on them), I doubt it's a high
priority to resolve somehow.

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ChuckMcM
Another successful satellite launch and more experimental data (aka they have
a new failure mode for landing things). It is really awesome that they can be
collecting the expertise to land the first stage "for free"[1] like this and
every failure has improved the lander in some key way.

I can't wait to see the reconstructed footage of this event. From what we got
initially it seemed a bit off to the left of screen and generating a lot of
smoke.

[1] I realize it costs them time and money to operate the barge and recover
the stages, but the cost of building those stages and launching them is
covered by the launch contract so this work has extremely low marginal cost
for rocket research.

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pol0nium
As usual, the reddit /r/spacex launch thread is a useful resource:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/4o5u6r/rspacex_eute...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/4o5u6r/rspacex_eutelsat_117w_b_abs2a_official_launch/)

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ritonlajoie
If you are wondering, the video feed from the barge got cut off during the
landing, but it didn't appear that it was very good. Lot of smoke. But I'm no
pro. For now, we (the viewers) don't know if the landing was OK or KO.

~~~
AliCollins
No telemetry from the landing stage? Or views from the nearby boats (how close
is the nearest boat anyway?)

~~~
ritonlajoie
Well, they (the people at spacex) probably have everything, but I don't have
access to this information :) Just watching the webcast, nothing indicated if
the landing was ok or not. The people presenting the cast didn't know either.

~~~
tomahunt
They have just said that they got lots of good data. Even though the landing
failed.

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tdy721
Here's the bit where they "landed":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLNmtUEvI5A&t=36m18s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLNmtUEvI5A&t=36m18s)

Looks to me like they may have stuck the "landing" but it was hard, broke
something and the vehicle was on fire. Listen to the crowd and I think you can
hear when the RUD went down.

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wiredfool
It was announced on the webcast that they lost the Falcon 9. Second stage is
still looking good, on a good GTO orbit after the second burn.

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xiphias
Am I the only one who thought the landings are already starting to be boring?
Smoke, rocket is there, cheers from the engineers...I remember Musk expected a
few months ago to be able to save 10-20% of the Stage 1 this year (while the
ratio increasing over time). But I guess they already can achieve 70-80%
success rate, which is a cost saving that is already enough to kill
competition.

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lutorm
When 70-80% are _reflown_ , that might be true. So far there has not been any
cost savings whatsoever...

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gozur88
Yeah, this is the critical part. We still don't know what kind of reliability
to expect from the used stages, and we don't know how much it's going to cost.

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xiphias
Right now it is, but as they built the rocket, they are able to repair it and
save money for sure. From what Elon said, landing was the tougher part. He was
much more sure about being able to relaunch some of the stage 1s (except 1)
than about being able to land (which took a lot of effort)

