
SpaceX first stage landing failed for Starlink-4 launch - gokhan
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/f4d8sg/rspacex_starlink4_official_launch_discussion/
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Shivetya
well it would become noteworthy that their failures make news simply because
they had taken the concept of recovering the first stage to the point of
people just assuming it was how rocket launches are meant to be.

I remember the first video of one successfully landing after launching and
being wowed but when two landed together then it truly felt like science
fiction had become reality

~~~
zanderwohl
I watched this live with a friend. We had previously watched a couple of
failures, and were almost expecting that one to fail as well. We went out of
our minds when the smoke cleared and the booster was upright.

It does feel annoying when rocket launches, which are enormously complex, go
right and get no press, but surface in the news when they explode or fail in
some way. By most standards, this launch was perfectly successful, but every
time the first stages crash the press treats this like some kind of major
failure.

~~~
scrumbledober
important to note that by any other launch provider's standards this was a
perfect launch. Payload was inserted into the correct orbit, no one else even
attempts to recover the booster.

~~~
speedgoose
However it's important to note that recovering the first stage makes sense
only if it's successful enough times. Because it reduces the payload and it's
more expensive as a single use.

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gibolt
>1 is enough times for an individual booster. Some failures are ok, as long as
the average is >~1.2

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jacquesm
Please all keep in mind that the primary mission is a success and that landing
the booster is an _optimization_ , not a failure if it does not work. A
failure is when the primary mission fails, everything else is a success.

~~~
ogre_codes
Also worth keeping in mind: Every other launch system out there "Fails" to
recover their first stage on every single launch. SpaceX "Failing" here is
reverting to norm.

~~~
jacquesm
Not quite, they re-flew this particular booster 3 times after the initial
launch. Reverting to the norm would be a crash after the first flight. Makes
you wonder what the maximum life expectancy is for these boosters.

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xt00
I believe they do a little horizontal kick just before landing when they
validate things are look good. Potentially something wasn’t right and it just
crashed into the ocean like 100 yards from the drone ship.. the good thing is
that spaceX seems to learn from all of these issues and compensates, so will
be interesting to here what happened.

~~~
clutchingstraws
This is accurate. More good examples of this passive-safety landing procedure
in action were in the Heavy demo flight and the CRS-16 mission. The Heavy demo
center core failed to relight two of the three engines needed for landing, and
plunged right into the water off the side of the landing barge
([https://youtu.be/A0FZIwabctw?t=72](https://youtu.be/A0FZIwabctw?t=72)).
CRS-16's booster had a hydraulic failure of the grid fins but still had engine
and RCS control, so it was able to make a soft water splashdown at the last
second (dramatic video from the booster's perspective is here:
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1070399755526656000](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1070399755526656000)).

~~~
Denvercoder9
If I remember correctly this procedure was implemented after SES-9, which came
in too hot and broke straight through the deck of the droneship.

~~~
clutchingstraws
I didn't know that. Thanks for the detail. Better to lose a booster than both
lose a booster and cripple a droneship.

On that topic, I've always been impressed at how tough those droneships are.
They've taken a lot of punishment but they've never lost one at sea yet. I'd
love to have been a fly on the wall of the first meeting between reps from
SpaceX and McDonough Marine.

"So, you folks make big rockets. I'm guessing you're going to need these
barges to transport them around to avoid roads. And there's likely some
insurance implications here."

"In that order: yes, technically yes, and _definitely_ yes."

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jessriedel
Here's a list that includes all their landing attempts:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches)

After their first successful drone-ship landing in April 2016, they had two
failures of Falcon 9 in June 2016 and Dec 2018, two failures (of core only) on
Falcon Heavy in Feb 2018 and June 2019, and 47 successful landing.

~~~
dtparr
I believe it's 48 successful landings after the 1st as they kept mentioning
today would be the 50th successful core to land. (Which counts each booster
separately, including the FH side cores, but you must have been doing that too
to get to 48 since the first)

~~~
jessriedel
I'm giving the number of successful landing after the first successful _drone-
ship_ landing, which doesn't include the first successful _pad_ landing. (This
seemed a more fair way to count because drone-ship landing are harder; if you
start counting after the first successful pad landing you include two failed
drone ship landing which should be considered still total experiments.)

~~~
dtparr
Dammit. I read that 3 times before commenting and still missed that point of
emphasis. Touché

~~~
jessriedel
No worries :D

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bolasanibk
SpaceX has made landing so routine that now failed landings are news.

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tomp
I wonder if they're deliberate? Like if you're 100% you can land in "normal"
circumstances, maybe try perturbing the parameters or input data a bit... to
stress-test your algos, as if simulating wind, earthquake, different planet's
gravity, different atmosphere, different rocket, engine failure...

~~~
bo0tzz
Absolutely. Musk has openly shared that at spacex, failure is just a chance to
learn. Successful landings don't teach you much, so the launch of an old core
like this one (4 previous landings) is a good chance to experiment a bit.

~~~
aguyfromnb
> _Absolutely._

There is no chance they are deliberately crashing rockets because landing them
is too easy. That's lunacy.

~~~
SquareWheel
Agreed. They do stress test old cores, but they make it clear that it's an
intentional test before they do so. They don't shake up the parameters on a
whim just because they've had a good stretch.

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chrisjc
I recall that the last landing had an unusually hard touchdown.

[https://youtu.be/1KmBDCiL7MU?t=1188](https://youtu.be/1KmBDCiL7MU?t=1188)

~~~
foota
Maybe they're trying to cut the fuel they take closer to the limit?

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vermontdevil
Starlink launches are heavy and I wonder pushing the envelope reduces the
margin of error. The last successful barge landing with Starlink crushed the
leg core as it came in hot and heavy.

I’m sure these tough landings will help SpaceX.

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shadowgovt
I'm hoping we get an info-dump into the public channel on the nature of the
recovery failure.

Footage from the drone ship before they cut away due to no landing to show
indicated the sea had larger swells than I remember seeing on previous
attempts and some water striking the camera lens from somewhere. I wonder if
they aborted the landing because they couldn't guarantee the drone would have
the right attitude to receive the rocket at time of touchdown?

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nathandaly
This was the fourth mission for this first stage booster, which is the most
any core has launched yet, is that right?

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vermontdevil
Yes. No core has done 5 launches yet.

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jacquesm
That's just a matter of time though. The rate they are going up it will
probably happen this year.

~~~
vermontdevil
I read they plan one of the next few starlink launches to be a fifth reflight
booster.

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krm01
I remember seeing the first landing. I thought it was some fake footage. Glad
to see they progressed so rapidly that a relatively minor failure becomes
news.

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Simulacra
the fact that a failed landing makes more headlines nowadays is pretty damn
impressive

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bryanlarsen
Perhaps apocryphal, but:

"You learn more from one failure than from ten successes"

\- Von Braun

"I'd rather have ten successes"

\- Elon Musk

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anorphirith
this shouldn't be news. this isn't news

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fauxrockpet
When are people gonna start talking about the elephant in the room? There is
no publicly available data that points to reusable rockets being safe for
human return.

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martindevans
There hasn't been a single failure of a reused falcon 9 booster on launch,
which is the bit relevant to human spaceflight. Humans aren't going to ride a
falcon 9 down to landing.

If you're talking about starship then I'm not sure how worthwhile
extrapolating from F9 is. I would guess they're pushing F9 to its limits here
- after all a small gain in launch efficiency multiplied by the size of the
StarLink constellation is a big overall improvement!

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fauxrockpet
I'm talking about extrapolating from any rocket launch. Sorry if I'm not
clear, but I am talking about starship.

