back to article Easy ... easy ... Aw CRAP! SpaceX rocket ALMOST lands on ocean hoverbase

SpaceX very nearly landed the lower stage of its Falcon 9 rocket in one piece at sea on Tuesday – as the capsule payload of the rocket successfully made its way towards the International Space Station. The rocket, carrying a Dragon cargo capsule loaded with supplies for the space station, blasted off on schedule, and separated …

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  1. Richard Ball

    Well done with the good launch and improved target practice - here's hoping for a good landing next time. Though I rarely laugh as loud as when I first saw the jaunty angle of contact last time round.

    I really hope their piss filtering system takes out caffeine. If it doesn't they're all going to be permanently wired until they either retire the iss or purge the water for fresh.

    (Don't know how much of the caffeine in a coffee gets absorbed by the drinker, but it isn't all of it)

    1. Martin Budden Silver badge

      Last time around I thought there was way too much lateral velocity, but I put that down to the x-wings running out of fluid... now I suspect the excessive lateral velocity first time around was no different from this time around.

      1. Captain DaFt

        I think their biggest problem is that although they can control the stage's rate of descent, they have no control over how much or how fast the barge rides up and down on the waves.

        So the barge either drops out from under the rocket at the wrong time, or rises up into it, skewing the relative rate of descent.

        1. Kharkov
          Go

          Landing on (seemingly) bouncy ground...

          I think you've put your finger on a valid point there. If the barge is going up and down (I've heard there are engines to reduce the lateral movement to zero or near-zero) then that could be a problem for the incoming 1st stage.

          That said, SpaceX is just trying to prove the concept. One successful landing and they'll have done that. And the NEXT barge may well have a landing platform on hydraulic jacks.

          Da Roof! Da Roof! We gonna raise da... er... landing platform...

          Nah, the next hit on MTV it isn't.

          And for the failure proclaimers out there? SpaceX is doing more than any other company to make reusability work. They got the Dragon capsule away, they controlled the descent of the 1st stage and... didn't quite get the landing to work. I'd rate that as 99%.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Landing on (seemingly) bouncy ground...

            If they nail the landing on a barge, landing on terra firma will be a piece of de-caffeine piss

        2. Richard Ball

          ..

          The motion of the platform will be modelled in the flight controller and used to inform the flight plan for a big chunk of its final descent. There will be aerospace-grade inertial sensors on it and systems akin to those used for autolanding a military aircraft on a carrier. So the problem isn't so much the motion of the platform per se, rather it is the irregularity of the motion and consequent uncertainty in projections of its position over time. (Periodic motion OK, jerky not so good)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Joke

            @Richard Ball

            So owners of this red rocket should be comforted by the knowledge that "it's not the size of the wave, its the motion of the ocean"?

          2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

            Re: ..

            Size matters.

            Like it or not a Nimitz class monster does not wobble too much. It is just too BIG for that.

            Compared to that landing on a small barge is a different exercise in its entirety.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: ..

              If only we'd waited a bit we could have sold them the Ark Royal for landing on!

            2. ridley

              Re: ..

              Try landing on one, the back end most certainly does go up and down and by very many feet too. If memory serves me right by about 40ft in rough weather.

              Pilots find carrier landing at night in rough weather more stressful than combat for a reason.

              1. Tom 13

                @ridley

                All very true. And yet, a carrier is nearly immobile compared to that little barge.

            3. iranu

              Re: ..

              They are towing USS Ranger (CV-61) round the bottom of the Americas to a scrap yard in Texas. I wonder if that could be used instead. Would be a fitting purpose instead of turning it into razor blades.

        3. Gordon 10
          Flame

          @captain daft

          Not sure you're right there, for this mission at least, lateral motion suggests so far that the rocket has been coming in sideways relative to the barge then skidding and tipping.

          Presumably the barge has station keeping thrusters, either they need to let the barge drift a little in the same sideways direction, or use the cold gas thrusters on the rocket to kill the sideways motion.

          I would think swell is a less issue, and potentially somewhat out of their control due to weather and the like than the lateral motion. Having said that they also presumably have much more thrust on hand to counteract heaving and pitching.

          1. Dave 126 Silver badge

            Just a thought:

            Just how impractical would it be to control height and angle of the landing platform with hydraulics? A rough back-of-a-beermat estimate...

            1. James Hughes 1

              Re: Just a thought:

              The sea state was 3ft waves, I seriously doubt a barge this big was moving up and down at all. It weighs over 4500 tons IIRC.

              1. the spectacularly refined chap

                Re: Just a thought:

                The sea state was 3ft waves, I seriously doubt a barge this big was moving up and down at all. It weighs over 4500 tons IIRC.

                Aircraft carrier "ball" lights that guide the planes down have explicit compensation for heave - up and down motion. They can weigh 100,000 tonnes+. Yes, they're big and heavy but the water they are sat in is even bigger and heavier...

                1. ukgnome

                  Re: Just a thought:

                  Pretty much what the spectacularly refined chap said.

                  You would need a massive vessel to counteract the waves.

                  1. JeffyPoooh
                    Pint

                    Re: Just a thought:

                    "You would need a massive vessel to counteract the waves."

                    Nope. Just medium sized (700T), but one that can flip up on end.

                    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP

                    Stable, even in the vertical axis, in waves is the raison d'être of the Flip Ship.

                    I'm surprised that Mr. Musk didn't think about borrowing a Flip Ship for this purpose. LOL.

                    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

                      Re: Just a thought:

                      RP_FLIP

                      That is an interesting idea. However, it does not have the mass to convert to a landing pad. You are looking at a "monster FLIP" with displacement ~ 10x the displacement of the original RP_FLIP to do that. At least.

                      I would not be surpirsed if Elon builds something like this when the idea reaches production stage as it can double as a launch pad as well.

                      1. It makes his march towards "The Ultimate Supervillain" status nearly complete. Add a large fake tanker and no Lotus driving Brit teamed up with a cute "Russian" (quotes intended) agent will be able to defeat him.

                      2. From a cost-saving perspective he no longer has to lease the fairly expensive pads at NASA facilities.

                2. ridley

                  Re: Just a thought:

                  That is what I was talking about. I used to work on them and the end of the carriers most certainly do move up and down a frightening amount and the ball light has to account for it.

                  Is this where "you are on the ball" comes from?

                  1. SkippyBing

                    Re: Just a thought:

                    I suspect the barge is a SWATH (Small Water Area Twin Hull) style design. Imagine it as a platform sat on two submarines. The buoyancy is provided by the submerged bodies, the pillars connecting them to the platform are narrow in cross section, think of an aerofoil, this means as the waves pass along the vessel there's very little change in the submerged volume, hence little change in buoyancy or vertical movement of the platform. Without anchoring it to the seabed that's about as stable as you'll get.

                    It will still move with the swell but that's actually fairly predictable and normally quite a long time period unless you're in the sort of sea states where frankly you'd be better of crashing the rocket into the sea.

                    1. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Re: Just a thought:

                      >I suspect the barge is a SWATH (Small Water Area Twin Hull) style design.

                      It's not, it's a barge. Google "MARMAC 300" for pics.

                      1. SkippyBing

                        Re: Just a thought:

                        Thanks for that! Interesting choice as I would have thought a barge would be the worst thing for the open ocean!! I'll have to do some reading to see what modifications they've done to it.

        4. JeffyPoooh
          Pint

          Why a wobbly wave-tossed barge?

          Why not put a platform on some chunk of stable land somewhere?

          According to the promotional video (where everything works perfectly), the rockets are supposed to land near the spot from whence they left.

          Obviously the landing spot will eventually be moved further afield after the first major failure when the authorities decide that aiming rockets back towards expensive launch installations is not a brilliant idea.

          So Musk will need a barge to bring the rockets home, from the landing spot 100 miles away in some empty valley.

          1. Tom 13

            Re: Why a wobbly wave-tossed barge?

            Safety reasons of some sort or other. Barge landing was all they could get approved.

            Nope, doesn't make sense to me either. Solid land seems much better for this sort of test.

        5. ravenviz Silver badge
          Boffin

          Re:

          Why not just have an oil-rig type affair if it's at-sea landings they want?

      2. DryBones
        Mushroom

        @Martin

        To me, it looks like a control issue. That's undamped/underdamped oscillation you're seeing, might have a 30m arc to it, too. Without seeing if it was stable earlier in the approach it's hard to say if this just developed on final approach, or if it's wiggled its way down. Either way, that being present just before landing is the kiss of death.

        If you watch carefully, you can see it snap just above the dust cloud.

      3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Mushroom

        "now I suspect the excessive lateral velocity first time around was no different from this time around."

        Maybe next time they can do it via remote control and I can have a go at landing it? I used to be a dab hand at Lunar Lander in the arcades!

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Richard Ball

        Re: Caffeine

        OK then.

    3. Ralph B

      Practice Makes Perfect

      SpaceX shouldn't feel bad. I usually take 3 attempts to make perfect landing too.

    4. Fink-Nottle
      Pint

      Re: Caffeine

      > I really hope their piss filtering system takes out caffeine.

      Caffeine is a fairly large molecule so it should be filtered quite effectively. However, worries about trace caffeine in the drinking water pale into insignificance when you realise that the urine from 'laboratory rodents' on the ISS is recycled too.

  2. Mark 85

    A very well done

    A successful launch and an almost successful landing. Appears to be some minor bugs in the landing.... lateral speed in this case, but rocketry isn't easy. The important thing is the resupply mission is going well.

    I'm tad bit disgusted by some the trolls on Musk's Twitter feed and even the news media reporting the landing as a "failiure". No failure at all in my opinion. Crashing is part of testing. The mere fact they can even hit the barge is success. I'm hoping they can get a couple of landings on the barge in an upright position. It won't matter if the wind and waves knock it over after that but maybe NASA and the FAA will let them go for land instead of the barge then.

    I won't even go into the whining idiots who were pissed (American "pissed" not British "pissed") that there was no HD live video of the landing. Sheeesh...

    1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Re: A very well done

      I think this is all kinds of awesome tinged with some doubts.

      So the basic launch is kind of old-hat, we've been there, done that. So now rather than landing large, expensive and potentially reusable bits of the launch rocket in the Pacific +/- a few square kilometers.. It's landing in a much more controlled fashion in a way one could almost walk away from. Or <stuff> fab'd in space could end up useable vs dropping it in a reasonably sized ocean and having enough recovery vessels handy before it sinks.

      But I'm bothered about the vendor lock-in. If we're to colonise space, we shouldn't be reliant on coffee machines which need Earth-created capsules. This is inefficient and we need to spend more money working out how to grow coffee beans in space if we're ever going to get off this rock. Then again, if people will spend a lot of money on beans that have been shat by civets, think how much they may spend on orbital/lunar/martian beans.

    2. DropBear

      Re: A very well done

      Considering I'm pretty sure more or less every single viewer of the launch was there to see the landing, not the launch, I find people getting annoyed at the total lack of any coverage of it hardly surprising. As exciting and formidable a thing rocketry is, you have to remember that by Apollo 13, people only got interested after the tanks blew up - this is no different.

      1. James Hughes 1

        Re: A very well done

        The barge is 300 miles away in the Atlantic - it's not that easy to get footage....especially live HD footage.

        People nowadays just have no patience.

        1. JeffyPoooh
          Pint

          Re: A very well done

          "...300 miles away in the Atlantic - it's not that easy to get footage...."

          Yeah, like BLOS HD Video has never been done before.

          {Rolls-eyes}

          1. James Hughes 1

            Re: A very well done

            Did I say it was impossible? No, didn't, I said it was difficult. Not perhaps technically difficult, but overall, difficult.

            Now go and install everything required for a HD capable satellite link on an unmanned barge. For the cost of simply bringing the SD cards back as the barge is towed in. Also, make the system literally bomb proof, because there is a big flamy thing going to be landing on or near it.

            Rolls eyes.

            1. JeffyPoooh
              Pint

              Re: A very well done

              You know that they sent near-Live video (certainly not HD) back from the fricken! Moon in fricken! 1969? Kids these days. Can't do this, can't do that. "It's difficult..." Bunch of pansies. ;-)

              HD is optional. Any off-the-shelf drone with a video link. A nearby ship within LOS to the drone (20 miles is easily do-able), with an H.264 video encoder to crunch the stream down to 432 kbps, and an Inmarsat internet link (common on ships). $30/minute for air time. Done.

              If you really want HD, then H.265 and drop the frame rate. Not worth the trade-off.

              Other satellite links are more bother. Not worth it.

              1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

                Re: A very well done

                "You know that they sent near-Live video (certainly not HD) back from the fricken! Moon in fricken! 1969?"

                Always some sap has to come in and tell other people how to spend more of their money, rather than be thankful that that sap actually was permitted to see a proprietary device in operation and later failure.

                Here's an idea, if you want to see that live, *you* work with the team and *you* pay for all of the involved costs.

                1. JeffyPoooh
                  Pint

                  Re: A very well done

                  Wzed1: "...*you*..."

                  I DID! I took my Gyrocopter out there and they chased me away! I ended landing in DC and got in trouble for that.

            2. Wzrd1 Silver badge

              Re: A very well done

              "Also, make the system literally bomb proof, because there is a big flamy thing going to be landing on or near it."

              Also, make the system literally bomb proof, because there is a big bomb, exploding in one direction (hopefully) going to be landing on or near it.

              A rocket is essentially, a huge bomb, which if properly constructed, only explodes continuously in one direction.

              When improperly constructed, or when things break, the rocket fully describes all characteristics of a bomb - a very, very large bomb.

              See Russian mishaps and NASA mishaps, the latest of which took a chunk off of an island launch facility.

  3. Camilla Smythe

    Meh

    Close but no banana... and probably never.

    Obviously I know fuck but why is it apparently being left exclusively to the rocket to pop its clogs on a bit of tarmac smeared on a barge in the middle of the sea and then fall over.

    It got launched from a 'gantry' why not stick one on the tarmac along with 'I'm Fucking Here, Where the Fuck are You?' communications and associated responses, to recover it....

    It's not 'rocket science'.

    Yo! Elon. Twat.

    I Thank You.

    1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

      Re: Meh

      "Obviously I know fuck"

      Obviously.

    2. Mr Miser

      Re: Meh

      Are you a robot?

    3. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Meh

      Camilla Smyth,

      Rocket go KABOOM! People of Florida sad. People of Florida even sadder, if rocket go oopsie missy landing pad, and go crash-bang-boom on their house.

      Then survivors hire lawyers. Or just get into pickups with rifle racks. And they hunt SpaceX and NASA and FAA, who allowed it. And so FAA say SpaceX have to go play whoosh-KABOOM far far out to sea...

      1. FrankAlphaXII
        Trollface

        Re: Meh

        I person of Florida.

        If SpaceX rocket go crash-bang-boom on house, lawn, car or pool, Person of Florida get angry, take week off work and drive to California in F-250 diesel of Michigan with AR-10 derivative of Florida to find South African paypal moneyman and NASA bureaucrat of Washington responsible. Open checkbook or PayPal account for new house, week's wages, plus ride on Dragon, person of Florida go home. Get Federal Firearms License, install FIM-92 around house regardless.

        1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

          Re: Meh

          "Get Federal Firearms License, install FIM-92 around house regardless."

          And get a wider burning debris field hitting your new home.

          I'd simply get a Mind and have it effector away the wayward rocket, then CAM dust SpaceX.

      2. JeffyPoooh
        Pint

        Re: Meh

        The SpaceX promotional video over-optimistically shows the rockets touching down right next to the brazzillion dollar launch installation.

        Another Musk exaggeration?

        1. JeffyPoooh
          Pint

          Re: Meh

          The Musk fanbois are so cute. Down voting any criticism of their man-love super hero. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

          Facts: The SpaceX promotional video DOES over-optimistically show the rockets touching down right next to the brazzillion dollar launch installation. And it IS another Musk exaggeration.

          Down vote away.

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