
SpaceX CRS-5 Launch - AYBABTME
http://new.livestream.com/spacex/events/3665355
======
Laremere
"Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard. Close, but no cigar
this time. Bodes well for the future tho."
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553855109114101760](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553855109114101760)

~~~
Intermernet
I _really_ want to see video of that! How hard? Explosion hard? Broken strut
hard? Hole in the drone-ship hard?

Sorry, my KSP avatar took over there...

EDIT: I just used the term "drone-ship" legitimately in a sentence. We are
living in the future.

~~~
jccooper
We know where the target ship docks. I'm sure there will be photos of its
state soon. I for one can't wait.

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neosilky
"Ship itself is fine. Some of the support equipment on the deck will need to
be replaced..."

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553856479590359040](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553856479590359040)

~~~
FatalLogic
Don't military pilots say a carrier landing is much more difficult than
landing on solid ground? Because the area is small, and not stable.

It seems like SpaceX have had to start out by attempting the most difficult
possible landing scenario (for good safety reasons).

So they did OK, considering the difficulty.

~~~
izacus
Well, carriers have significantly shorter landing strips, require the pilot to
either hit a cable or immediately take off again and usually move themselves
to provide more favorable wind conditions to pilots.

SpaceX drone platform is easier in that respect, since the rocket is landing
vertically and alot of those factors are mitigated. It's still a extremely
hard and complex problem to solve - it IS rocket science after all ;)

~~~
FatalLogic
It's an interesting comparison. At least, with a carrier you can go around,
but I suppose that, for an aircraft landing on a carrier, the moment of
irreversible commitment to landing maybe comes a second or two earlier than it
does for SpaceX.

I don't know if the SpaceX vehicle is programmed to back off and wait if a big
wave rocks the platform, but it _could_ do that, wind permitting ( _edit: no,
it couldn 't, apparently, see reply by Denvercoder9_). Fuel is limited, but it
seems like it should be able to hover for a few seconds and wait for the
platform to stabilize if necessary.

Anyway, they're not developing a sea-landing vehicle, so it's understandable
if they don't spend so much time thinking about that. It's designed to land on
solid ground, I think and the ground doesn't usually move, after all.

~~~
Denvercoder9
The thrust-to-weight ratio of an empty Falcon 9 is far too high to hover. Burn
the engines too long and it'll just ascent again.

~~~
Intermernet
I wonder how feasible / useful it would be to have realtime best-guess
altitude from accelerometers / bouys / laser line-of-site relays etc to give
the rocket up to date info to adjust thrust / vector to the drone-ship.

Or do they already do this?

~~~
jccooper
Almost certainly they have really good GPS and inertial sensors on both. That
should be enough. Any line of sight like laser or visual can't be trusted due
to weather.

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HackinOut
_" Grid fins worked extremely well from hypersonic velocity to subsonic, but
ran out of hydraulic fluid right before landing."_

 _" Upcoming flight already has 50% more hydraulic fluid, so should have
plenty of margin for landing attempt next month."_

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

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553964281025548289](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553964281025548289)

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franzb
For a few minutes we could see bubbles of liquid (water?) floating around in
zero gravity in some kind of container, the whole scene being lit with pink
lighting. Any idea what this is?

~~~
NamTaf
That's a camera from inside the fuel tank. The droplets started floating once
you had engine cut-off, i.e.: it wasn't accelerating and therefore had no
'gravity' pushing the fuel to the bottom any more.

~~~
FatalLogic
The world's most expensive lava lamp.

It was cool.

------
dabeeeenster
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553855109114101760](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553855109114101760)

Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard. Close, but no cigar
this time. Bodes well for the future tho.

------
karpathy
I wasn't able to find much information about the details of the Stage 1
recovery. How long does it take for it to make it back? Will we know the
outcome within a few minutes? (trying to decide if it makes sense to sleep)

EDIT: Reddit seems to have comprehensive coverage
[http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2rrdha/rspacex_crs5_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/2rrdha/rspacex_crs5_official_launch_discussion_updates/)

~~~
gokhan
From Reddit:

 _[10:05 UTC /5:05 EST] Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed
hard. Close, but no cigar this time. Bodes well for the future tho. Aww,
better luck next time._

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dseigle
I wish they provided a bit more narration with this. Would love to know more
about what I'm looking at and know what is going on with Stage 1 recovery.

~~~
iliis
Indeed. Some live telemetry data to put on your second screen would also be
cool.

NASA TV showed essentialy the same footage with a few more comments
([http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html](http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html)).

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throwaway_yy2Di
Anyone just see that piece of debris float away from the Dragon capsule? Is
that normal?

At about t+ 00:12:55

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7x-SumbynI&t=1975](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7x-SumbynI&t=1975)

~~~
kenrikm
Looked like normal ice buildup.

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jacquesm
Too bad the landing didn't work out yet but at least this will - hopefully -
squelch the haters that keep repeating the mantra that SpaceX is merely re-
using what was already known and not innovating. I figure they'll need a
couple of tries at least to get that right, we're witnessing an enormous step
on the path to access to space.

What's amazing is the increase in accuracy with this attempted landing, the
whole grid-fin thing seems to work exactly as planned.

~~~
bane
If they can nail this, and get it right...when the costs to space are driven
down to what they're planning, it'll turn ultra-expensive efforts like the ISS
into merely expensive efforts. Imagine if each country in the G-20 had a
couple ISS-class stations up there plus a half dozen commercial ones as well!

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garretruh
Stage 1 separation. Here we go.

EDIT: "Stage 1 boost back shutdown"

EDIT 2: "Loss of signal from Stage 1" (expected)

~~~
sargun
Where is it? Is there a feed of its location, or the landing pad?

~~~
garretruh
It's completed it's boost back burn, so it's on a trajectory towards the
landing barge (positioned off shore a good distance).

EDIT: All this is just from the radio transmissions broadcast on the SpaceX
YouTube stream.

~~~
sargun
From the Reddit post:

[T + 15:45] Jon - Mission success. We have data but not good enough to put on
the live stream yet (poor connection). Updates here as they come!

Sounds good?

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demallien
Bastards! I foolishly just assumed that it was going to launch at the same
time as the earlier attempt last week (although 1 seconds thought would have
made me realize that this was highly improbable...)

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InclinedPlane
Dragon launch went flawlessly, looks like the first stage landing was close
but not quite good enough:

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553855109114101760](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/553855109114101760)

 _" Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship, but landed hard. Close, but no
cigar this time. Bodes well for the future tho."_

In any event, a great, very smooth launch. And folks at NASA must be breathing
a sigh of relief since this is the first US resupply mission since the Antares
launch failure.

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Zardoz84
Amazing ! A sunrise on space !

~~~
krallja
At the altitude the ISS and CRS-5 fly, a sunrise happens every ~90 minutes :)

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InclinedPlane
If anyone missed it, here's the replay from T-1 minute:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7x-SumbynI#t=1140](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7x-SumbynI#t=1140)

