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Man, I was really impressed with the single rocket returning back to the earth, but this is really incredible. . .




You know, as divided as this country can get, and despite the problems it has, and the criticism of it from outside this country, I look at this and just think, "Man, who else is doing sh!t like this?" No one. Those Space X employees have every right to be as excited as they are. Really cutting edge stuff. Amazing. And the balls to send a car into space. Awesome.

We still got it. Best years still yet to come.

Just heard about it - its certainly more interesting news than what passes for it most of the time.

Congrats to the team hwo made this happen and kudos for having a sense of humour as well.

Something that puts the difficulty of this feat into perspective, from an engineering point of view: according to my amateur rocket engineer friend the engines on those boosters can not be throttled down low enough to hover, thrust is always going to be greater than weight. So to make that landing without crashing and exploding or lifting back into the air (followed shortly by crashing and exploding) they had to perfectly execute the braking burn so that the rocket hit zero velocity exactly as the landing legs touched down. The precision of it is just mind-boggling.

I'm guessing these rockets have elements of the Tesla car autopilots in them. Cross-development can't hurt.
Having both rockets land within seconds of each other though, within seconds of the scheduled landing time... impressive.

You know, as divided as this country can get, and despite the problems it has, and the criticism of it from outside this country, I look at this and just think, "Man, who else is doing sh!t like this?" No one. Those Space X employees have every right to be as excited as they are. Really cutting edge stuff. Amazing. And the balls to send a car into space. Awesome.
We still got it. Best years still yet to come.

I don't know how international SpaceX is, but Elon is a "South African-born Canadian American". This stuff as gone beyond national teams, and commercial projects like Space X see the money involved.
Virgin Galactic are trying stuff like this, as is Boeing, I think. The X prize was set up to get things moving, and Space X started there, I think.

 Skinnereal wrote:
I'm guessing these rockets have elements of the Tesla car autopilots in them.

I doubt it, at least on more than a very superficial level. The tasks involved are massively different*, and with this kind of precision engineering at huge expense you're going to be making custom control software and hardware for the specific application. There would be very little savings in trying to swap components between the two, and high potential for errors and/or sub-optimal design choices.

*TL;DR version: landing a rocket involves very precisely executing a physics equation with a well-understood solution, a self-driving car involves making correct judgement calls with low-precision hardware.

Having both rockets land within seconds of each other though, within seconds of the scheduled landing time... impressive.

Not really, at least not beyond how impressive the feat of landing the rocket at all is. The landing time is constrained by physics, if they hadn't hit the planned arrival time within a second (and quite possibly a smaller window) they'd be a very expensive fireworks show when they crashed. Losing enough precision to meaningfully deviate from the schedule would be a catastrophic failure. And because both boosters were on identical trajectories their arrival times ended up identical as well.

The X prize was set up to get things moving, and Space X started there, I think.

Somewhat, maybe in general "yay space" hype at most. SpaceX and the winning X Prize effort have absolutely nothing in common.

The X prize was set up to get things moving, and Space X started there, I think.

Somewhat, maybe in general "yay space" hype at most. SpaceX and the winning X Prize effort have absolutely nothing in common.

Yeah. I just read up some more and that's true. Nothing to do with each other.

 Skinnereal wrote:
I don't know how international SpaceX is, but Elon is a "South African-born Canadian American". This stuff as gone beyond national teams, and commercial projects like Space X see the money involved.

All true, but I don't see these things happening in Canada, South Africa, or anywhere else for that matter. Its happening here for a reason, that's my point.

I'm wondering though, the body slammed into the ocean at 300 km/h after running out of fuel. If they can make miscalculations like this, what will the risk be when they start sending more valuable payloads? What happens when they send astronauts in their spacesuits into space? The error margin must be considerably lower for me to feel safe watching one of these takeoff. However, this is only a small part and it is pretty amazing to have both boosters touch down within milliseconds of each other precisely on target. It's very cool, at the very least!

Well, its the first time they did something like this. Usually those launches only use one Falcon rocket. This one used three of them. I think this is a lot more complicating than the casual observer gives them credit for. I am sure Space X will learn from this.


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LOL


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Looks like the opening scene from Heavy Metal.

Pretty awesome.

KTG17 wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
I don't know how international SpaceX is, but Elon is a "South African-born Canadian American". This stuff as gone beyond national teams, and commercial projects like Space X see the money involved.

All true, but I don't see these things happening in Canada, South Africa, or anywhere else for that matter. Its happening here for a reason, that's my point.

China, India and Europe (the ESA) all have active space programmes. They don't get as much media coverage as Space X gets though.
[Edit: Also Japan, Russia and USA have the 6 national agencies]

Nice one, they only gave it even odds of getting off the launchpad so I'm glad it went so well.

We need to get on with space travel in England, can't let the Americans and the Russians have all the fun exploring Alien temples and wooing spacebabes without us!

lliu wrote:
If they can make miscalculations like this, what will the risk be when they start sending more valuable payloads?

Pretty low. Remember, this is a completely new design on its initial test flight. Good engineering work and simulations are valuable, but at some point you have to actually fly the thing and see if reality matches your calculations down to the very tiny error margins required for a successful mission. There's a reason why they launched a car into orbit and not an actual payload. With a first test like this you (as Elon Musk said) consider it a win if the explosion doesn't wreck your launch pad, getting the dummy payload into orbit and recovering 2/3 of the boosters is a massive win. You'll notice that the previous generation of rockets is at the point of being very consistent in its successes.

And in general the SpaceX rockets are carrying obscenely huge fuel margins by the standards of space flight. Unlike expendable rockets, where you have just enough fuel to get to your destination, a reusable rocket carries a ton of fuel for the recovery portion of the flight. If fuel is being burned faster than expected you have the option (and SpaceX has included it in their design) to burn the recovery fuel to get the payload to its destination. It sucks that you don't get to recover the boosters after all, but the payload doesn't care if SpaceX's quarterly profit numbers take a hit.

 Kroem wrote:
We need to get on with space travel in England,

After having seen Hyperdrive, I'm not sure that's such a good idea.

 Skinnereal wrote:
China, India and Europe (the ESA) all have active space programmes. They don't get as much media coverage as Space X gets though.
[Edit: Also Japan, Russia and USA have the 6 national agencies]

Oh really? I hadn't been caught up on current events. Let me know when a rocket they launch returns to the launch area on its own.

Let me know when they put a guy on the moon too.

Completely missing my point bro.




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 Peregrine wrote:
And in general the SpaceX rockets are carrying obscenely huge fuel margins by the standards of space flight. Unlike expendable rockets, where you have just enough fuel to get to your destination, a reusable rocket carries a ton of fuel for the recovery portion of the flight. If fuel is being burned faster than expected you have the option (and SpaceX has included it in their design) to burn the recovery fuel to get the payload to its destination. It sucks that you don't get to recover the boosters after all, but the payload doesn't care if SpaceX's quarterly profit numbers take a hit.

I think the benefit too I don't hear about is by recycling, you also limit the amount of trash accumulating in space. Download the SkyView app for your phone and look around. There are hundreds of various leftover boosters sitting in orbit. Some since the 60s.The app will even tell you what the launch was from and when.

 Kroem wrote:
Nice one, they only gave it even odds of getting off the launchpad so I'm glad it went so well.

We need to get on with space travel in England, can't let the Americans and the Russians have all the fun exploring Alien temples and wooing spacebabes without us!

The European Space Agency is headquartered in England.

Here are all the missions launched or planned:

http://www.esa.int/ESA/Our_Missions/

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Kroem wrote:
Nice one, they only gave it even odds of getting off the launchpad so I'm glad it went so well.

We need to get on with space travel in England, can't let the Americans and the Russians have all the fun exploring Alien temples and wooing spacebabes without us!

The European Space Agency is headquartered in England.

Here are all the missions launched or planned:

http://www.esa.int/ESA/Our_Missions/

The link just says 'page not found' for me, unless that is a tongue in cheek reference to how little the ESA actually get done.

I think what makes this launch cool, and something I have been frustrated with NASA for, is that it does create attention and capture imagination in ways that most NASA launches do not. Sometimes I can't believe some of the crap they send up there. Its not that I am not in favor of hardcore scientific projects, but at times you also need to justify your budget to the average person, and sending something up like Kepler is rather pointless to me if we have no means to reach any of the planets it finds. I would rather see them do things like Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity, only send them to every moon in the Solar System. Send satellites to map all of the planets and moons. That would be far more interesting to the average person. If we ever manage to develop light speed, then yeah, that would be a good time to fiddle around with something like Kepler.

KTG17 wrote:
I think what makes this launch cool, and something I have been frustrated with NASA for, is that it does create attention and capture imagination in ways that most NASA launches do not.

Because they spent a lot of money on marketing. States have been putting stuff in space since Sputnik so this nerd spending billions on a vanity project does not impress me.

KTG17 wrote:
Let me know when a rocket they launch returns to the launch area on its own.

It's impressive from a "whoa, that is cool" point of view, but it's hardly an essential component of a successful space program. The primary value is to private industry, where making a profit on every launch and every satellite is essential. If you're talking about a government-funded space program it's much less essential. Expendable rockets give you much better payload to mass ratios, and if money is not an issue you don't care about throwing away the engines after every launch.

Let me know when they put a guy on the moon too.

Also an increasingly irrelevant standard. At this point manned exploration is mostly about ego and nationalism, the scientific value is extremely limited compared to spending that payload mass on robots.

I think the benefit too I don't hear about is by recycling, you also limit the amount of trash accumulating in space. Download the SkyView app for your phone and look around. There are hundreds of various leftover boosters sitting in orbit. Some since the 60s.The app will even tell you what the launch was from and when.

It's a benefit, but mostly a side effect of the real goal. If all you want to do is limit space junk it's easy to do a brief reentry burn and let the wreckage crash in the ocean. And the SpaceX boosters were never reaching an orbital trajectory, they were coming down one way or another no matter what. Even the fully-expendable maximum payload configuration of the Falcon Heavy has sub-orbital boosters.


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Rosebuddy wrote:
Because they spent a lot of money on marketing. States have been putting stuff in space since Sputnik so this nerd spending billions on a vanity project does not impress me.

It isn't a vanity project, it's a successful business. Don't think that putting a car into space was the goal here. The only reason the car was there was because the alternative was launching a box of lead weights into orbit. The rocket was never going to fly with a real payload on its initial test flight, so you might as well have some fun with it. This rocket design, once it gets through the test program and into normal operation, is going to make SpaceX a lot of money.

 Peregrine wrote:
This rocket design, once it gets through the test program and into normal operation, is going to make SpaceX a lot of money.

The purpose of the mission is not to explore space, but to privatise it. I said it was a vanity project because they tossed a car out rather than a simple weight, but the rocket being an actual vanity project would be far preferable to this. At least it would just be money wasted rather than put to something awful.

KTG17 wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
I don't know how international SpaceX is, but Elon is a "South African-born Canadian American". This stuff as gone beyond national teams, and commercial projects like Space X see the money involved.

All true, but I don't see these things happening in Canada, South Africa, or anywhere else for that matter. Its happening here for a reason, that's my point.

I think that's more to do with suitable sites close to the equator than anything else? The talent at this level will likely move around as required, or be done remotely.

Rosebuddy wrote:
The purpose of the mission is not to explore space, but to privatise it.

Ok? So? You know that we have a lot of very useful private satellites in space already, right? For example, communications satellites are private industry, and I don't know of any argument that those are bad. And SpaceX is launching government-funded scientific payloads as well as their purely commercial contracts. If you want to explore space you should be celebrating the development of low-cost reusable launch vehicles, as it has the potential to significantly cut the cost of scientific missions in the future.

Also, it's not like SpaceX is the first to commercialize space, the stuff they're putting into space would just have flown on a Boeing/Lockheed Martin rocket if SpaceX didn't win the contract.


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Herzlos wrote:
I think that's more to do with suitable sites close to the equator than anything else? The talent at this level will likely move around as required, or be done remotely.

Pretty much. There's a very limited set of good launch sites, you need a point near the equator and on the coast (so you don't have rocket debris falling on people) with enough infrastructure to build your rocket and deliver it to the launch site. SpaceX was never going to operate out of Europe for simple physics reasons.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
This rocket design, once it gets through the test program and into normal operation, is going to make SpaceX a lot of money.

The purpose of the mission is not to explore space, but to privatise it. I said it was a vanity project because they tossed a car out rather than a simple weight, but the rocket being an actual vanity project would be far preferable to this. At least it would just be money wasted rather than put to something awful.

I think making space travel economically productive is crucial if we are ever going to spread our species out amongst the stars.

Space travel being nothing more than a scientific curio doesn't lend enough urgency or resources to the affair, we need the competition created by business or nations to make progress.

 Kroem wrote:
I think making space travel economically productive is crucial if we are ever going to spread our species out amongst the stars.

No, space travel is not required for this. Good writing talent is, because the only place it's going to happen is in science fiction.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
This rocket design, once it gets through the test program and into normal operation, is going to make SpaceX a lot of money.

The purpose of the mission is not to explore space, but to privatise it. I said it was a vanity project because they tossed a car out rather than a simple weight, but the rocket being an actual vanity project would be far preferable to this. At least it would just be money wasted rather than put to something awful.

I am OK with that because its Elon Musk and I am OK if this is a project that will inflate his ego.

We get so much more out of this. He is on the move to making launches much more affordable. This means justifying missions to space will be less of a hassle for places like NASA.
As far as I see it this isn't money wasted because people stand to benefit from this like we have from previous missions to space.

I am OK with this and if Elon wants to launch a school bus into space next I say go for it.

And yes, in the grand scheme of things this kind of stuff does great things for the US Space Industry. NASA can't do everything, and they def can't do it as economically. If private businesses can find a way to do it cheaper it works out for everyone.

Amazing. Only 12 years from Bowie playing Tesla to Tesla playing Bowie

Missed a launch last year while in Florida by about 3 days, was gutted. Always wanted to visit kennedy and loved it.
Seems a good move by nasa to allow other groups to launch from there.
Have my eye on the next moon landing and mars mission although the one that grabbed me is the plan to snag asteroids and bring the back to mine. Sounds too sci-fi and expensive but hell the payouts alone must be worth it. Beats digging up the navi home world lol.

This is nothing yet. Putting a car into space and such is all very fun, but really we don't want to just launch random junk into space, we want to go to space ourselves. Let me know when Americans finally build something that can match the Soyuz, when they can actually put people into space again without high risk of blowing them up. The Soyuz is pretty much ancient at this point, but still the safest and most cost-effective spacecraft ever designed. Even NASA has recognised its obvious superiority. American astronauts can only get into space on Russian spacecraft.
Nobody builds better rockets than good old Mother Russia.

So, with the blatant nationalist feelings out of the way, I can say that I think that this was a pretty nifty work of science and engineering. Especially for a private company. Let us hope that many useful developments follow this launch that will benefit all of humanity.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
This is nothing yet. Putting a car into space and such is all very fun, but really we don't want to just launch random junk into space, we want to go to space ourselves. Let me know when Americans finally build something that can match the Soyuz, when they can actually put people into space again without high risk of blowing them up. The Soyuz is pretty much ancient at this point, but still the safest and most cost-effective spacecraft ever designed. Even NASA has recognised its obvious superiority. American astronauts can only get into space on Russian spacecraft.
Nobody builds better rockets than good old Mother Russia.

Did you ever think that the US goes along with the Soyuz not just because they are reliable and economical, but so they can spend money and time doing other things? While the Russians are taxi-ing our peeps up into space, we're sending rovers, telescopes, and now convertible cars into space.

The legacy of the Soyuz is impressive, but if the US felt the need to actually have to build their own to use instead, it would be done. And I am sure the Russians keep the costs down to keep the revenue stream going.


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 xKillGorex wrote:
Missed a launch last year while in Florida by about 3 days, was gutted.

I live in Florida and have yet to see a launch. My Grandfather watched one of the space shuttles back in the day and said it was unbelievably awesome. I would make an effort, but honestly its some distance and there are delays and I would be super irritated to go all that way only to find it wasn't happening.