SpaceX News

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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ladajo
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by ladajo »

This is a commercial overhead image taken shortly after landing. It does appear that the booster remnants are on deck for the most part. Lots of smoke...

Image
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

ladajo
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by ladajo »

Musk posted on Twitter with a comment and video. Looks like it got on deck, but ran out of O2 in the final alignment before touchdown. This caused the booster to drop hard on the deck and crunch itself up. Musk used the phrase "accordion the engines".
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Tom Ligon
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Tom Ligon »

Running out of fuel on a flight profile where that's expected is a lot better explanation than an engine failure.

As Maxwell Smart used to say, "Missed it by THAT much."

D Tibbets
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by D Tibbets »

Speculation, but an engine failure could be simply due to running out of fuel/ oxidizer. Resultant vapor lock or other cause of decreased fuel mixture flow leads to lower thrust. How syncronized is fuel starvation to the three landing engines (or is it on?)? Would plumbing, tilt, etc. allow one engine to burp faster than the others- like 10ths of a second variation? In this, case the mention of low thrust in one engine, and oxygen starvation could be two ways of describing the same event.

Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.

paperburn1
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by paperburn1 »

Looks like spacex is suffering from Apollo syndrome , so successful media is not starting to pay attention. :shock:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/ ... e-landing/

And then I think of Apollo thirteen and wonder what Spacex thirteen would be like.
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

zapkitty
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by zapkitty »

paperburn1 wrote:And then I think of Apollo thirteen and wonder what Spacex thirteen would be like.
For now... bad. Spacex is currently a launch services provider and launch/landing is the worst place to have something go wrong.

ladajo
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by ladajo »

Nice clean landing on the concrete at Canaveral.
The rest of the year is looking to be busy.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Skipjack
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Skipjack »

The attention will come back whenever SpaceX shows the next steps on their way.
Future things to get them attention are:
- Mars architecture including heavy lift launcher and mars transport vehicle (MCT), which will be presented in September. That is probably going to get people talking.
- Commercial Crew
- Falcon Heavy
- Powered landing of Dragon
- Mars mission in 2018
- BFR/MCT
- Manned Mars mission...

ltgbrown
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by ltgbrown »

Looks the day we see a re-used core is not the far off!

"SpaceX has selected core F9-023 for the first reflight. This was first launched for the Dragon CRS-8 mission in April, which was a drone ship landing (by choice, not because of staging velocity). This mission had the most gentle recovery profile of all landed cores, because of the modest staging velocity and the low delta-V on the boost-back burn (just to null the downrange velocity). So it makes sense to start reflight operations with this core."
Famous last words, "Hey, watch this!"

Maui
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Maui »

I wonder in the end what percentage of landed boosters they will deem fit for re-flight. Unless it's >80-90%, I think that will really start to challenge the cost effectiveness of re-use.

Skipjack
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Skipjack »

Maui wrote:I wonder in the end what percentage of landed boosters they will deem fit for re-flight. Unless it's >80-90%, I think that will really start to challenge the cost effectiveness of re-use.
1. Why? It is still better than throwing them away every time.
2. They want the reuse rate to be 100% and they want rapid reuse (within days). Right now this is still a technology development program.

Maui
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Maui »

I'm sure you've seen one of the many such speculative calculations into how many times a booster must be re-flown for the savings to make sense. ULA says 15, which is probably high. but if it's not more than half a dozen or so, then the savings are probably minimal at best.

Clearly there are a lot of extra costs to offset:
- A lot of extra engineering on the rockets.
- A fair amount of extra unit costs (legs, rcs, survivability)
- System overall a little larger than it would otherwise need to be for the same payload capacity to account for fuel needed for landing.
- A lot of extra operations costs (employees, facilities, barges)
- Refurbishment costs?

Few of these costs go away when a landing fails or they decide they cannot re-fly a booster.

Skipjack
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Skipjack »

Maui wrote:I'm sure you've seen one of the many such speculative calculations into how many times a booster must be re-flown for the savings to make sense. ULA says 15, which is probably high. but if it's not more than half a dozen or so, then the savings are probably minimal at best.

Clearly there are a lot of extra costs to offset:
- A lot of extra engineering on the rockets.
- A fair amount of extra unit costs (legs, rcs, survivability)
- System overall a little larger than it would otherwise need to be for the same payload capacity to account for fuel needed for landing.
- A lot of extra operations costs (employees, facilities, barges)
- Refurbishment costs?

Few of these costs go away when a landing fails or they decide they cannot re-fly a booster.
I think those calculations are nonsense.
1. SpaceX is already able to offer lower launch prices than anyone else without reusability.
2. The extra engineering is sunk cost and it obviously did not cost enough to make their rockets uncompetitive.
3. The extra payload margins are irrelevant. They can always fly it (or some stage that has reached its end of life) in expendable mode if the extra margins are needed. Later they will fly them on Falcon Heavy.
4. The extra cost for refurbishment and facilities is marginal and/or sunk cost respectively. SpaceX plans to have refurbishment be less than a day. That is obviously less time (and much less cost) than building a new stage. Since the refurbishment happens at the cape, you also safe the money for the transport from Hawthorne to McGregor (for testing) and from McGregor to the Cape.

ULA is simply in denial. They know that they are f@#@ed and don't want to admit it.

ladajo
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by ladajo »

Given the traditional histories of large defense contractors, this statement is probably the most likely:
skipjack wrote:ULA is simply in denial. They know that they are f@#@ed and don't want to admit it.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

KitemanSA
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Location: OlyPen WA

Re: SpaceX News

Post by KitemanSA »

Maui wrote:I'm sure you've seen one of the many such speculative calculations into how many times a booster must be re-flown for the savings to make sense. ULA says 15, which is probably high. but if it's not more than half a dozen or so, then the savings are probably minimal at best.

Few of these costs go away when a landing fails or they decide they cannot re-fly a booster.
Yeah, the airlines have figured out with such assessments that it is more cost effective to throw a plane away after every flight and start with a brand new one. No, wait...

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