Author Topic: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities  (Read 314011 times)

Offline Eagandale4114

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #140 on: 03/13/2015 07:30 pm »
From SpaceX's Facebook page

Offline edkyle99

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #141 on: 03/13/2015 09:12 pm »
Just don't call it "LC 1", please. 

http://www.robsv.com/cape/c1.html

I'd rather they have retained the "Complex 13" nomenclature, then "Landing Complex 13" would work perfectly.  LC 13 hosted the Lunar Orbiter launches.  Lunar Orbiter 1 was the first US spacecraft to orbit the Moon and the first to return an "Earth Rise" image.

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 03/13/2015 09:26 pm by edkyle99 »

Offline PahTo

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #142 on: 03/13/2015 09:22 pm »

All of this naming stuff!  "LanCom1"?  As a network guy who helped bring DARPA (net) to the masses, I have trouble with that.  LC1?  "Landing Complex 1" with SLF so close by?  I know, how about "Stage Landing Site"  or SLS for short...?
:)

Offline rcoppola

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #143 on: 03/13/2015 09:43 pm »
Sorry but LC-1 seems perfectly reasonable.  How about just adding a coastal designation like "West" so any landing complexes at VAFB would be LC-1 West, LC-2 West etc. and then do the same for CCAFB. LC-1 East, LC-2 East etc..

Or not, I have no strong feelings either way. But there's little to no question it will be abbreviated to LC-1. or lick-1. I mean, people turned Space Launch Complex into SLC which turned into slick then number...
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Offline xpete

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #144 on: 03/13/2015 10:03 pm »
Just call it Vertical Landing Complex 1.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #145 on: 03/13/2015 10:13 pm »
Just call it Vertical Landing Complex 1.
VLC? Knowing the wags around there, it would be a moniker for "Very Large Crater" ;)

Offline Llian Rhydderch

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #146 on: 03/14/2015 01:22 am »
From SpaceX's Facebook page


Ya know, it's great to see increased market forces and ordinary commercial practices begin to affect the space industry.  It is quite common for long-term leaseholders in ordinary commercial business deals, to have a certain amount of freedom in naming their facility. 

I think it is a great thing to see this happening, at some limited margins, in the traditionally national-government-centric space industry.  I very much look forward to a time when these sorts of commercial ventures are changing things up in the other space-going nations as well!
Re arguments from authority on NSF:  "no one is exempt from error, and errors of authority are usually the worst kind.  Taking your word for things without question is no different than a bracket design not being tested because the designer was an old hand."
"You would actually save yourself time and effort if you were to use evidence and logic to make your points instead of wrapping yourself in the royal mantle of authority.  The approach only works on sheep, not inquisitive, intelligent people."

Offline Kabloona

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #147 on: 03/21/2015 01:53 am »
Just call it Vertical Landing Complex 1.
VLC? Knowing the wags around there, it would be a moniker for "Very Large Crater" ;)

Speaking of craters, some comments from Gwynne on range safety for incoming stages:

Quote
“It’s more a range safety activity. We basically have to get clearance from the range. I think the Eastern Range is going to let us, but they’d like to see us land on the drone ship first. But they have their finger on the button.

“If you think about the decision-making before you blow up a launch vehicle for safety reasons, on ascent it’s a harder decision. You’ve got a payload onboard. Someone’s bird is not getting to orbit if you press the Command Destruct button.

“If you hit Destruct an incoming stage, it’s an experiment at this point anyhow, it doesn’t have a ton of fuel on it, it’s probably going to hit a barge. You can imagine if a rocket with a bunch of fuel hit a building, there would be a huge explosion. You can be a little twitchier with your finger on the button for incoming.”

http://spacenews.com/spacex-aims-to-debut-new-version-of-falcon-9-this-summer/

Not sure I understand the "probably going to hit a barge" comment. Maybe she meant that's the worst that could happen in case of a destruct command. But how many barges are going to be in the vicinity of an RTLS attempt?

Or does she mean that they will be doing a near-shore barge landing demo for the range with live FTS in case the stage overshoots towards land?
« Last Edit: 03/21/2015 02:04 am by Kabloona »

Offline Jim

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #148 on: 03/21/2015 02:03 am »
Sorry but LC-1 seems perfectly reasonable. 

That already was taken for Redstone.  And it still is the site of LC-13.
« Last Edit: 03/21/2015 02:07 am by Jim »

Offline Jim

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #149 on: 03/21/2015 02:04 am »

Ya know, it's great to see increased market forces and ordinary commercial practices begin to affect the space industry.  It is quite common for long-term leaseholders in ordinary commercial business deals, to have a certain amount of freedom in naming their facility. 

I think it is a great thing to see this happening, at some limited margins, in the traditionally national-government-centric space industry.  I very much look forward to a time when these sorts of commercial ventures are changing things up in the other space-going nations as well!

It is nothing new.  The commercial companies (Boeing and LM) renamed facilities they reutilized. Same broken record about market forces and ordinary commercial practices.

Missile Inert Storage became Atlas Spaceflight Operations Center
Centaur Processing Facility became Delta Operations Center
Orbiter Processing Facility-3 became Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility
« Last Edit: 03/21/2015 02:17 am by Jim »

Offline Llian Rhydderch

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #150 on: 03/23/2015 01:10 am »

Ya know, it's great to see increased market forces and ordinary commercial practices begin to affect the space industry.  It is quite common for long-term leaseholders in ordinary commercial business deals, to have a certain amount of freedom in naming their facility. 

I think it is a great thing to see this happening, at some limited margins, in the traditionally national-government-centric space industry.  I very much look forward to a time when these sorts of commercial ventures are changing things up in the other space-going nations as well!

It is nothing new.  The commercial companies (Boeing and LM) renamed facilities they reutilized. Same broken record about market forces and ordinary commercial practices.

Missile Inert Storage became Atlas Spaceflight Operations Center
Centaur Processing Facility became Delta Operations Center
Orbiter Processing Facility-3 became Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility

So, just wondering, since you have a great deal of knowledge on the historical way things have been done with the US government launch programs at the cape over the past several decades, which other "Launch Complexes", or "Launch Pads", have been renamed when they were leased by a commercial company, even one of the traditional cost-plus space contractors?
Re arguments from authority on NSF:  "no one is exempt from error, and errors of authority are usually the worst kind.  Taking your word for things without question is no different than a bracket design not being tested because the designer was an old hand."
"You would actually save yourself time and effort if you were to use evidence and logic to make your points instead of wrapping yourself in the royal mantle of authority.  The approach only works on sheep, not inquisitive, intelligent people."

Offline Galactic Penguin SST

Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #151 on: 03/23/2015 01:25 am »

Ya know, it's great to see increased market forces and ordinary commercial practices begin to affect the space industry.  It is quite common for long-term leaseholders in ordinary commercial business deals, to have a certain amount of freedom in naming their facility. 

I think it is a great thing to see this happening, at some limited margins, in the traditionally national-government-centric space industry.  I very much look forward to a time when these sorts of commercial ventures are changing things up in the other space-going nations as well!

It is nothing new.  The commercial companies (Boeing and LM) renamed facilities they reutilized. Same broken record about market forces and ordinary commercial practices.

Missile Inert Storage became Atlas Spaceflight Operations Center
Centaur Processing Facility became Delta Operations Center
Orbiter Processing Facility-3 became Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility

So, just wondering, since you have a great deal of knowledge on the historical way things have been done with the US government launch programs at the cape over the past several decades, which other "Launch Complexes", or "Launch Pads", have been renamed when they were leased by a commercial company, even one of the traditional cost-plus space contractors?

And your point is....?

(IIRC VAFB SLC-8 for Minotaur is one of them)
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Offline Jim

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #152 on: 03/23/2015 02:10 am »

So, just wondering, since you have a great deal of knowledge on the historical way things have been done with the US government launch programs at the cape over the past several decades, which other "Launch Complexes", or "Launch Pads", have been renamed when they were leased by a commercial company, even one of the traditional cost-plus space contractors?

None of the launch sites have been renamed.  Falcon 9 launches from SLC-40, which always was the numeric designator.

Landing Site-1 is on the site of LC-13.    So, no real change. 

Offline Jim

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #153 on: 03/23/2015 02:11 am »


So, just wondering, since you have a great deal of knowledge on the historical way things have been done with the US government launch programs

Not just gov't but commercial ones too.  Was doing commercial space back in the 90's
« Last Edit: 03/23/2015 02:13 am by Jim »

Offline cscott

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #154 on: 03/23/2015 05:18 pm »
Speaking of craters, some comments from Gwynne on range safety for incoming stages:

Quote
“It’s more a range safety activity. We basically have to get clearance from the range. I think the Eastern Range is going to let us, but they’d like to see us land on the drone ship first. But they have their finger on the button.

“If you think about the decision-making before you blow up a launch vehicle for safety reasons, on ascent it’s a harder decision. You’ve got a payload onboard. Someone’s bird is not getting to orbit if you press the Command Destruct button.

“If you hit Destruct an incoming stage, it’s an experiment at this point anyhow, it doesn’t have a ton of fuel on it, it’s probably going to hit a barge. You can imagine if a rocket with a bunch of fuel hit a building, there would be a huge explosion. You can be a little twitchier with your finger on the button for incoming.”

http://spacenews.com/spacex-aims-to-debut-new-version-of-falcon-9-this-summer/

Not sure I understand the "probably going to hit a barge" comment. Maybe she meant that's the worst that could happen in case of a destruct command. But how many barges are going to be in the vicinity of an RTLS attempt?

Or does she mean that they will be doing a near-shore barge landing demo for the range with live FTS in case the stage overshoots towards land?

Since this seems to be a transcription of a spoken interview, my money at this point would be simply that the quote has gotten a little bit garbled in transcription, and shouldn't be parsed word-for-word.  There were probably several different incomplete thoughts there, and the pauses and topic-switches weren't transcribed, and some connector words got lost as well.

My (conventional wisdom) interpretation of her remarks is that they've already hit a barge with an incoming stage, they expect there's a fair chance they'll do so again (perhaps by falling over once landed), so the range has a pretty good idea of the incoming destructive potential (not much).  It's not like if "a rocket with a lot of fuel hit a building", but they'll probably treat it the same way -- ie, be "twitchy" on the trigger finger since "it's an experiment at this point anyhow".

Rephrased: we've already blown up our own returning core once by slamming it into a barge; we certainly don't mind if the range blows up one or two more out of twitchy trigger fingers and an abundance of caution.  It's an experiment at this point anyhow.

Offline Llian Rhydderch

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #155 on: 03/23/2015 10:16 pm »

So, just wondering, since you have a great deal of knowledge on the historical way things have been done with the US government launch programs at the cape over the past several decades, which other "Launch Complexes", or "Launch Pads", have been renamed when they were leased by a commercial company, even one of the traditional cost-plus space contractors?

None of the launch sites have been renamed.  Falcon 9 launches from SLC-40, which always was the numeric designator.

Landing Site-1 is on the site of LC-13.    So, no real change.

We'll see.

What that complex will be called, by the USAF, by SpaceX, and by the mainline space media, will determine the name of that facility over time.  No particular reason to believe (yet) that either Landing Complex 1 or Launch Complex 13 will carry the day.  The common name it is referred to in the future will emerge.  So, yes, we shall see.
Re arguments from authority on NSF:  "no one is exempt from error, and errors of authority are usually the worst kind.  Taking your word for things without question is no different than a bracket design not being tested because the designer was an old hand."
"You would actually save yourself time and effort if you were to use evidence and logic to make your points instead of wrapping yourself in the royal mantle of authority.  The approach only works on sheep, not inquisitive, intelligent people."

Offline Jim

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #156 on: 03/23/2015 10:24 pm »

 by SpaceX, and by the mainline space media,

Those have never been the determinator. 

Spacex took over Building AO and tried calling it Hangar X.  It is still still referred to as  Building AO by everybody.  Same goes for the SPIF.

And Landing Site-1 will always be on the site of former LC-13 so there is no changing that no matter what spin is used.
« Last Edit: 03/23/2015 10:27 pm by Jim »

Online matthewkantar

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #157 on: 03/25/2015 07:54 pm »
The sticky nature of place names on Cape Kennedy.
« Last Edit: 03/25/2015 07:55 pm by matthewkantar »

Offline llanitedave

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #158 on: 03/25/2015 10:24 pm »
It's a truism that paradigms, no matter how anachronistic, don't change until the dominant people holding them retire or die.  That rate is a fairly good predictor of the rate of cultural change.
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Offline Jim

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #159 on: 03/25/2015 10:31 pm »
The facilities at the Cape have existed over multiple generations. 

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