
SpaceX successfully launches and recovers second Falcon 9 in 48 hours - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/25/spacex-successfully-launches-and-recovers-second-falcon-9-in-48-hours
======
schiffern
Incredible time-lapse of the landing, from Elon Musk's instagram:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/BVxysOlA04j/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BVxysOlA04j/)

The yawing motion at the beginning of the video is because they moved the
drone ship to avoid stormy seas, so the stage had to thrust sideways to
retarget. In calm weather SpaceX positions the ship right along the ballistic
path, so the stage only needs to pitch up and "flip."

You can also see the grid fins "pulling up" through the atmosphere to bleed
off as much speed as possible. I described the optimization a while back.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14288431](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14288431)

Fantastic job to everyone at SpaceX!

~~~
vvanders
That comment is worth a read, I had no clue they were actually generating lift
on the body to reduce fuel/etc. Incredible stuff.

~~~
schiffern
Thanks. I made a mistake in that comment, saying the lift/drag of the Shuttle
was 1. The _hypersonic_ L/D was 1, but during subsonic approach it was 4.5. In
hindsight it kinda makes sense that wings do something. :)

The maneuver is more noticeable with the new titanium grid fins (needed
because the old aluminum ones _caught fire_ from aerodynamic heating). Not
only are they larger, but they use a "sawtooth" leading edge that increases
control authority. New:
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/879065552060260352](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/879065552060260352)
Old: [http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/12...](http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/12/4571-spacex_falcon_9_orbcomm_og2-michael_howard.jpg)

They also happen to be the largest titanium forgings in the world.
[https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42544.340#...](https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42544.340#msg1661163)

~~~
skykooler
Well, the plan is to use forging to make them, but the ones on this rocket
were cast as a blank and machined. One presumes that they are still working on
the forging system.
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/878821062326198272](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/878821062326198272)

------
TheAlchemist
This is becoming really astonishing. It's more and more fitting the quote
“They did not know it was impossible so they did it”

I mean, the company was founded only 15 years ago, they started (with success)
launching stuff into space only 10 years ago and now it feels like they are
able to launch rockets into space every week. Reusable rockets should we add.

Musk very often sets impossible deadlines, but in this case, even if you take
a step back, it's scary to make 10 years predictions based on this company
track record !

~~~
lettergram
I mean, NASA helped them a ton based on their previous research to this point.

Going forward I'd expect some slowdown.

But yes, very impressive IMO that he won all the necessary investments and
contracts. My bet is his buddy Theil (idk not really buddy, but collegue)
helped out with that.

~~~
ryanmarsh
_Going forward I 'd expect some slowdown_

Slowdown in funding or launch pace?

SpaceX is cutting launch costs significantly. I suspect that many satellite
projects that weren't viable before will become viable now, thus increasing
launch pace.

~~~
andrewwharton
Slowdown in development pace I believe.

Not to take anything away at all, but a large part of the rocket development
until now was based on an existing knowledge base from NASA.

Going forward, there's going to be more and more uncharted territory, so
things will likely progressively slow down, relative to the astonishingly fast
development pace up until this point.

~~~
adventured
That premise doesn't inherently follow at all. Quite the opposite.

The uncharted territory combined with Musk & Bezos being willing to do
audacious things with billions of dollars, is why breakthroughs are about to
accelerate again. With scale and greater R&D capabilities, SpaceX will
(perhaps along with Blue Origin and others) be responsible for the next great
leap forward in space technology - finally.

Whereas the US Government launch platforms, through NASA and ULA, had been
extremely stagnant in several areas that SpaceX & Co are operating in, due to
eg wild (but typical) Congressional incompetence (constantly shifting goals,
setting up the context where ULA was granted a monopoly (again due to
Congressional incompetence or worse)). The Space Shuttle was an absurd
production in all regards, it set US launch progress back decades due to the
_hyper_ bloat / cost that was entirely unnecessary. The Shuttle was the space
equivalent of the F35, a boondoggle that isn't really great at anything and
costs several times what it should have. Now that the incompetent Congress is
much further removed when it comes to deciding which way to go (how to get
there, why, etc etc etc), space tech will accelerate again.

~~~
nickik
Consider the capability they had with Saturn V and Apollo. Also, compare how
easy it was to make Skylab happen, compared to the ISS. With the Saturn V, a
smaller people launcher and Apollo they could have done so much more.

Imagen the next Space station after Skylab, they could have launched 4 Saturn
V and launch a Skylab size station each time, creating a vastly bigger station
then ISS at a minimal cost.

Now they are recreating the capability with SLS and Orion at a cost that is so
absurdly high that its hard to even wrap you head around the numbers,
specially when compared what the pay for COTS and CommercialCrew.

~~~
ceejayoz
Anyone who's in DC should check out the Skylab module in the Air & Space
Museum. It's remarkable how _big_ it is.

~~~
nickik
I have not seen it, but I think the internal volume is very impressive.
Compared to the ISS that looks more connected mining shafts.

------
ChuckMcM
Per Elon's tweet those grid fins were _much_ better behaved than previous
versions. Nothing got hot enough to start showing up in the visible spectrum
(good). And what was interesting for me was the lack of gunk landing on the
camera. (presumably from the fact that the covering of the fins wasn't burning
off like it had in previous flights). What is particularly impressive for me
is the slow and steady progress on the 'landed' F9's. The first one
successfully landed looked really beat up, and the next couple marginally less
so, Friday's went through a part of flight regime that SpaceX had deemed "un-
recoverable" and an this one came through looking quite good. Still feels like
science fiction to me ...

~~~
JshWright
> Nothing got hot enough to start showing up in the visible spectrum (good).

The new grid fins undergo the same amount of heating, they're just better able
to cope with the heat. The reduced heat in this case was due to the much lower
energy entry profile (the partial boostback burn killed a large chunk of the
stage's velocity prior to reentry, combined with the fact that it was a lower
energy orbit in the first place).

~~~
ChuckMcM
Thanks Josh. I went back and reviewed the Iridium 1 footage and saw that even
the Aluminum fins had no trouble with this particular launch and recovery
option. I am looking forward to seeing the first GTO launch with a booster
that has them.

------
zer00eyz
Those fins are awesome:

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/878821062326198272](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/878821062326198272)

Cast and cut titanium. They are about 4x5 feet and some of the largest (if not
the largest) titanium castings in the world.

Titanium is an amazing material that is super hard to work with (special
furnaces), and has its own sets of risks (titanium fire any one). I would love
to see what goes into making those things because it simply has to be
impressive.

~~~
snovv_crash
I'm curious why they didn't go the laser-sintered 3D printed route. For low
volume items like these I'd imagine that the cost of the moulds and machining
would be prohibitively expensive, and printing would let them try some
different designs as they lead up to a Block-5 design freeze.

~~~
2dollars27cents
There are a few reasons I could think of:

1 - Most industrial DMLS/EBM systems have a build envelope far too small for
this. A system like the Norsk Merke IV might have the required size, but parts
built that that process still require post-machining. 2 - Tolerances. Casting
-> Machining still offers greater control over the final geometry than
additive processes, especially at that scale. 3 - Casting is a bit more
design-agnostic than additive processes. 4 - QC processes for casting +
machining are far more defined than for additive processes.

None of these are insurmountable challenges, so I'm sure in the future a
laser-sintered/EBM/plasma-deposition process will be used or at least heavily-
considered.

~~~
JshWright
What would be the advantage? "3D printing" is great for geometries and
structures that don't lend themselves well to traditional CNC milling, but a
grid fin is a really straightforward part.

------
Animats
Nice. SpaceX is finally getting their launch rate up.

As a business, that's been SpaceX's biggest problem. Customers like the
pricing but not the long delays. Finally, SpaceX seems to be getting past
that.

Getting pad time at Canaveral is a bottleneck. SpaceX is still building their
own launch site at Brownsville,, TX, but that's going slowly.[1] All SpaceX
has there right now is some fill that's settling (the location is on sand
maybe 2m above sea level) and a dish antenna. Next to be built, the fire
station. First launch is now supposed to be no earlier than 2018.

[1] [http://www.krgv.com/story/35550679/3m-road-project-
underway-...](http://www.krgv.com/story/35550679/3m-road-project-underway-to-
facilitate-spacex)

~~~
mabbo
Today's launch wasn't from Canaveral. It was a polar orbit launch, so it went
from Vandenberg near LA.

It's still around a two-week turnaround to get a launch pad ready in
Canaveral.

~~~
mschuster91
Why? Because the exhaust fire burns everything in its path down to the core?

~~~
azernik
Not down to the core, but part of the process _is_ a couple of days of
inspection to figure out which parts need replacing.

------
Tade0
I like how SpaceX has a "pricing" section on its webpage as if space flight
was something mundane and pedestrian like an oil change in your car or
something.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Someone a while ago wrote a blog post comparing the pricing sections on
various startup websites and how some startups don't have actual prices on the
site, and made a comment about how if SpaceX can put a pricing section on
their site, your startup can surely manage it too.

~~~
bluGill
Your startup can, but should you? Your competition wants to know what you
charge so they can undercut you - or if they choose not to undercut you know
how much they have to spin that they are better to account for the higher
costs. Either way the competition will use your pricing information against
you.

Now there are other considerations. SpaceX has a number of good PR reasons to
want to be upfront about their costs (their competition is regularly accused
of cheating the government every election cycle). If you sell retail your
customers will ignore you if you don't have pricing information.

~~~
nostrademons
It's not just competition. In most markets, your customer's willingness to pay
follows a power law: you'll have one customer who's willing & able to pay an
exorbitant amount, your next biggest might pay 50% less, and so on down, until
you get to the mass market who all want your product for $99.99. Companies
that operate at the head of the distribution (i.e. most B2B companies) want to
be able to practice price discrimination, and charge that one whale what
they're actually willing to pay. Otherwise, they could be leaving a
significant amount of money on the table.

The competition aspect is pretty commonly worked around - basically every B2B
company I know has no compunctions against calling up a competitor, posing as
a potential customer, and getting a price quote for competitive research. Or
if they have slightly more compunctions, they'll call up a market research
firm, hand over some money, and the market research firm will call up all the
competitors in the industry, pose as a potential customer, and sell that
information back to all the competitors in the market.

I suspect that SpaceX's published price tag is really there to motivate the
_employees_. It's a reminder that Elon's goal is to make spaceflight a mass-
market product that an ordinary middle-class citizen can afford, and so he
wants that number to go _down_ over time. In many B2B markets without price
transparency, there's a tendency towards lazyness on the engineering side;
when your revenue comes from how effective your salespeople are at jacking up
the price, there's little incentive to focus on small efficiencies that keep
the overall price down. Elon wants to keep the focus on small efficiencies so
that the price gets low enough that it becomes an everyday thing.

------
app4soft
Take TLE of all Irridium-NEXT satelites...
[http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/iridium-
NEXT.txt](http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/iridium-NEXT.txt)

... and import it to Stellarium
[http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Satellites_plugin](http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Satellites_plugin)

P.S.: Stellarium 0.16.0 released few days ago!
[https://sourceforge.net/p/stellarium/news/2017/06/stellarium...](https://sourceforge.net/p/stellarium/news/2017/06/stellarium-0160/)

~~~
antgiant
Any idea how I could get a copy of Stellarium 0.16.0 compiled for Raspberry
Pi?

------
snovv_crash
Did anyone else notice that the engines shut off while the rocket was still a
small ways up, after which it fell quite heavily onto the landing legs?

~~~
olex
Yes. Probably due to pitching drone ship deck due to heavy seas, the stage
reached zero vertical velocity above the deck and had to shut down. Even at
the lowest throttle setting the first stage still has a TWR > 1 and cannot
hover without accelerating upwards again, so calculating the "suicide burn"
timing is really crucial.

 _edit_ Corrected "TWR > 0" to "TWR > 1".

~~~
winslow
Is that TWR (Thrust to Weight Ratio) for when all 9 Merlin engines are lit?
Landing burn today had 3 lit if I recall correctly.

~~~
olex
No, that's for a single engine. At landing, the first stage is nearly empty,
and thus very light. Even the single center engine alone, throttled as low as
it will go (40% or something like that, I don't think we have the exact number
for the Merlin-D), produces too much thrust to be able to hover. The
Grasshopper and F9R testing vehicles carried extra ballast to be able to hover
and descend under thrust without cutting their engines.

~~~
winslow
That's pretty cool. Makes sense, especially with stage 1 being so light on re-
entry that a single engine would have a TWR > 1.

------
vermontdevil
And the second launch with the updated grid fins made out of titanium alloy.
Elon Musk said it went well and they want to reuse them indefinitely.

~~~
olex
This was the first launch of the titanium fins. The BulgariaSat booster from
two days ago was an older block 3 first stage with the "original" aluminum
fins. They did glow quite a bit during the very hot re-entry, visible on the
last few video frames before the feed cut out: [https://youtu.be/Y8mLi-
rRTh8?t=1405](https://youtu.be/Y8mLi-rRTh8?t=1405)

~~~
nialv7
That was probably not just glow. That was the shielding material actually
burning.

~~~
olex
Yes, you're correct. Elon stated in a tweet earlier today that the aluminum
fins had burned up their ablative coating on every flight.

------
lostdog
To deploy 10 satellites, does the rocket do a series of burns, or do the
satellites have enough propulsion to deploy themselves to separate orbits?

~~~
olex
The satellites do it themselves. The deployments from second stage are
staggered with pauses of 100 seconds between each to allow them to safely
drift apart from the initial separation jolt. After that, the sats do their
own thing.

------
deegles
Looking forward to articles complaining about SpaceX launching too often. :)

------
chaosbutters314
I had always hoped that they would use giant versions of these pin toys to
land rockets.

[https://www.amazon.com/Toysmith-Classic-Pin-Art-
Black/dp/B00...](https://www.amazon.com/Toysmith-Classic-Pin-Art-
Black/dp/B000FZVNM4)

------
sidcool
Some mornings when I am unable to get out of bed, such news act as an
Adrenaline shot for me. I kick myself out of the black hole and go ahead to
launch my rockets (metaphorical).

If Elon can, I need to, as his protege (again metaphorical)

------
agumonkey
The frequency is quite staggering. Will Musks replace Hertz?

~~~
ygra
This was only possible since the two launches were on different pads.
Otherwise they're on a good path of having one launch every two weeks this
year.

~~~
Klathmon
And they have quite aggressive goals of 24 hour turnaround on the same pad
with the same first stage eventually.

~~~
krallja
It seems like most missions don't have the fuel budget to return to LZ, so
they're going to have to buy a lot more drone ships!

~~~
ygra
Once Falcon Heavy is flying you could upgrade those flights to FH with a
flight profile where you can land all cores on land. The only difference would
be more fuel used (which is cheap) and threefold increased risk of stuff going
wrong in the first two minutes. May depend on how important it is to get those
cores back immediately. Upgrading otherwise expendable flights to FH is
already planned as well.

The upgrades of Block 5 later this year will improve reusability and
performance, though, so more missions can be RTLS.

~~~
krallja
If the payload is small enough (compared to FH), will it be possible to SSTO?
Then you could park in LEO, and return to LZ when it's clear!

Edit: no. Falcon Heavy has more than one stage.

------
ttandon
Does anyone know why a side-view of the actual touchdown (like they usually
release after) hasn't been posted by SpaceX yet?

------
peki
I'm wondering what would be the flight time for a transcontinental flight on a
SpaceX falcon9?

How about London to NY?

------
esseti
wondering if all this tech is only for rockets or he has a plan to build the
next generation of "airplanes" for traveling.

~~~
ygra
I guess from Elon's POV travelling long distances is already fairly efficient
with airplanes for people and ships for cargo. As evident from projects like
Hyperloop and The Boring Company he tends to tackle the shorter distances
where things like trucks, cars, or planes are rather wasteful (and trains seem
to be not good enough, but maybe that's also due to the US' bad train
infrastructure with virtually no high-speed rail at all).

So, no, I don't see anything like that coming. Based purely on speculation and
observation, of course.

~~~
bluGill
> US' bad train infrastructure with virtually no high-speed rail at all

The US has the best train infrastructure in the world. What is lacking is
passenger rail, which gives the false impressions that the infrastructure is
bad. Trains are not a very good fit for moving people for the most part. Other
countries have stretched those limits to the max which means that they can
give the impressions of good train infrastructure.

------
gsmethells
I'm reading his autobiography right now. Fascinating life of both the man and
his companies if you are interested: [https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-
Fantastic-Future/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-
Future/dp/0062301233)

~~~
naedish
That's a biography, not autobiography. And Musk ended up refuting some aspects
of the book.

~~~
dewski
As someone who read the book, do you know which parts he refuted?

~~~
icelancer
Primarily the child care / miss the birth of a son quote, and the fact he
called himself a Samurai.

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-takes-to-
twitter-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-takes-to-twitter-to-
refute-bio-book-passages-2015-05-12)

So basically very little.

------
babyrainbow
There seems to be a reason that more companies are not attempting to reuse
rockets [1]

So considering that, SpaceX has not proved anything, yet. Because the
impossible or hard part is not launching and landing rockets. Hard part is to
do it..

1\. With same or more reliability than using completely new rockets.

2\. Launch with enough frequency to justify the reusing procedure..

So yea. A couple of launches and reuses does not prove anything. It is a
start, sure. But they have not yet proved others who didn't attempt this yet..

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14626183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14626183)

