Vesselfinder says 5.1 knots for Elsbeth III speed, is that fast? (Note: this info is not from their sat AIS subscription service, I don't have it).
If they want to land all three stages at sea, maybe they could buy an old gutted aircraft carrier. If it is a carrier with a side launch. They could land one fore and aft and one on the side launcher. Lots of equipment for beginning refurbishment could be stored below deck.
QuoteVesselfinder says 5.1 knots for Elsbeth III speed, is that fast? (Note: this info is not from their sat AIS subscription service, I don't have it).No, that's normal speed for a 4-day trip, so I don't see now they can be predicting a 2-day trip.
Too many details to remember these days for what SpaceX is doing, and too many pages of threads to go thru, so I'll ask:Do we know if SpaceX is building more barges for the East Coast? Or are we thinking that they will stick with one for now?I'm assuming the plan for Falcon Heavy is that they want to recover the boosters on land (RTLS), so a second one would only be needed as a backup, or to handle an increase in launch tempo.Any updates would be appreciated.
Or, if you lost your one-and-only ASDS in a storm, you could be forced to choose between splashing tens of millions of dollars worth of rockets vs delaying launches for a couple of months while you got a new one into service.
Quote from: bstrong on 05/09/2016 12:53 amOr, if you lost your one-and-only ASDS in a storm, you could be forced to choose between splashing tens of millions of dollars worth of rockets vs delaying launches for a couple of months while you got a new one into service.Practically speaking, you wouldn't. You'd make one phone call to Dockwise and ask them to pick up the East Coast ASDS ASAP and bring it around in time for the next launch. Sure, it wouldn't be cheap, but it wouldn't cost millions nor take months neither.
Quote from: CameronD on 05/09/2016 12:57 amQuote from: bstrong on 05/09/2016 12:53 amOr, if you lost your one-and-only ASDS in a storm, you could be forced to choose between splashing tens of millions of dollars worth of rockets vs delaying launches for a couple of months while you got a new one into service.Practically speaking, you wouldn't. You'd make one phone call to Dockwise and ask them to pick up the East Coast ASDS ASAP and bring it around in time for the next launch. Sure, it wouldn't be cheap, but it wouldn't cost millions nor take months neither.So, what's a reasonable estimate of the elapsed time between when you pick up the phone to call Dockwise and when JRTI is sitting in Port Canaveral with wings reattached and ready to put to sea? I have a hard time believing it could happen in three weeks.
Quote from: bstrong on 05/09/2016 01:05 amQuote from: CameronD on 05/09/2016 12:57 amQuote from: bstrong on 05/09/2016 12:53 amOr, if you lost your one-and-only ASDS in a storm, you could be forced to choose between splashing tens of millions of dollars worth of rockets vs delaying launches for a couple of months while you got a new one into service.Practically speaking, you wouldn't. You'd make one phone call to Dockwise and ask them to pick up the East Coast ASDS ASAP and bring it around in time for the next launch. Sure, it wouldn't be cheap, but it wouldn't cost millions nor take months neither.So, what's a reasonable estimate of the elapsed time between when you pick up the phone to call Dockwise and when JRTI is sitting in Port Canaveral with wings reattached and ready to put to sea? I have a hard time believing it could happen in three weeks.Depends on whether or not Dockwise happen to have a suitable ship nearby, I suppose.I couldn't say for certain since I don't live there, but knowing how much traffic there is over your side of the planet, I would have thought it was possible to make a 3-week deadline.. just. ..and there's no need to take the wings off. That's simply unnecessary for a trip via Cape Horn.
However, the Dockwise option would IMHO be a near-term-only; the inauguration of the Panama Canal expansion is expected next month (around June 26th), and the new lock chambers are 180 ft. wide. The ASDSs have a beam of, I think, 170 feet with wings. JRTI could (once the canal expansion is in operation) be towed to Florida in... I get 4188 nautical miles for the voyage (approximately) and at 5 knots average that's 837 hours, about 34 days. If they were in more of a hurry, hire a bigger tug to get a few extra knots. Upping the average speed to 8 knots would cut the transit time down to 22 days.
I have a feeling that SpaceX isn't quite ready to have quite as many cores returned as they are currently getting. There is additional work to be done on the F9 design until these cores are really fully reusable, and those changes will take some time to work their way through the production line. If they were to lose their East Coast ASDS tomorrow I don't see them spending huge amounts to replace it, not yet.
Quote from: CJ on 05/09/2016 09:09 amHowever, the Dockwise option would IMHO be a near-term-only; the inauguration of the Panama Canal expansion is expected next month (around June 26th), and the new lock chambers are 180 ft. wide. The ASDSs have a beam of, I think, 170 feet with wings. JRTI could (once the canal expansion is in operation) be towed to Florida in... I get 4188 nautical miles for the voyage (approximately) and at 5 knots average that's 837 hours, about 34 days. If they were in more of a hurry, hire a bigger tug to get a few extra knots. Upping the average speed to 8 knots would cut the transit time down to 22 days. Of course if it fits through Panama then the Dockwise option becomes a factor of three (approx?) faster too, which could be more than 8 knots by a lot I assume.But I would expect Dockwise is not particularly inexpensive? How much would it actually cost to transport something from LA to Port Canaveral?
The Dockwise ship could do 13 to 14 knots lightly laden (the ASDS is way below their max load limits) but, there's a rather large (sorry for the pun) problem; the dockwise ships won't fit through even the expanded Panama canal (the narrowest of the three ships is about 206 feet in beam), so you'd need one to deliver the ASDS to one end, a tug to take the ASDS through, and another Dockwise on the far end to pick it up. Seeing as how there are only three, that's prohibitively unlikely IMHO.
The proposal was to take advantage of the Dockwise ship's speed to take the ASDS all the way around South America. I have no insight as to whether that's a reasonable idea or not.
I have no idea how much Dockwise charges. Their ships cost a quarter billion or more, so I suspect they charge a lot.
I bet the Panama transit, including reassembly, was less than 6 figures.