Author Topic: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities  (Read 314018 times)

Offline Lobo

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #100 on: 01/27/2015 04:59 pm »
What if "hard landing" would render main pad inoperable for the next several launches? Contingency pad  could be used as a min pad until main is back in the operation...

I think the "contingency" which they're concerned about is not a hard landing, but future approval of a future request for permission to land more than one stage at a time there, using the term in the meaning of "dependence on ... the fulfillment of a condition." It's certainly better to get the environmental red tape out of the way now rather than later.
I don't.  These are very closely spaced.  You would not want to send rockets down simultaneously at this distance from each other.  I think an unexpected low-altitude wind change or misguided estimate which pushes the rocket off-course by ~100m+ in the last few thousand meters of descent is what they're protecting against.  RTLS is very useful for Falcon Heavy boosters, and mildly useful for Falcon 9R, while Falcon Heavy centercore will always need a barge/ship/island LZ.  I think Falcon Heavy will routinely land boosters RTLS-style on two separate pads, once it gets clearance - and each pad will have these four contingency pads positioned nearby.

Missed this:  "There are no plans to utilize the contingency pads in order to enable landing multiple stages at LC-13 during a single landing event."

Yes, that's a good point.  In reality they probably won't want 3 cores anywhere even near each other in case one veers off course, or needs to be detonated or something.  The contingency pads I supposed could just quite simply be a way to divert in all directions in case of unexected wind conditions, or inaccuracies in guidence...just as they are saying.  :-)    If it starts drifting off in one direction, rather than try to get it back to the main pad, they'll just steer it over to the alternate pad in that direction and try to put it down there.

Which leads me to believe there'll be talking with USAF about leasing LC-12 and LC-11?  And if this layout works good there, they can do the same with those two and bring each core down at it's own LC.  That should be sufficient spacing between the cores to keep them all well away from each other.  And it's not like LC-11 and 12 are being used for anything now, and all have basically the same foundational layout, so they should be able to do the same layout easily for them that they do for LC-13.

I would assume given the historical nature of LC-14  for Mercury/Altas that it's likely not be available for leasing?

The thing that still confuses me is once FH starts flying, they'll have 3 cores on each that can/could be recoverd and reused because I don't think there's any paylaods that would require and of the cores to be expended or recovered down range.  They all should be able to come back to CCAFS on every launch.  If there's just one pad in the works that can only recover one core, and maybe the barge can recover another, are they just going to be splashing the 3rd core every mission when it doesn't need to be?  Seems like they should be working one accomodations for all 3 cores right now given FH will be launching this year, and I think they already have several payloads manifested for it once it starts flying.   Maybe not enough to worry about recovering all of it's cores in the near term?  Not really understanding their plans.

Online meekGee

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #101 on: 01/27/2015 05:13 pm »
Here's another quandary.

Do EI statements typically go into the negatives such as "we have absolutely no, zero, zilch, nada plans to land multiple stages during the same landing operation"?  They may as well list all the vehicles they do not intend to land there.

Not only did they say they won't try it, they went as far as saying they don't even have any plans of doing it, ever.  Why even do that?

It almost seems like it was a mandatory add-on after someone said "we can approve this, but only for a single stage, and this needs to be clearly stated in the application."

And still, a future application should be able to over-write the first one, and so why even put forward-looking statements in it?


I'm all out.   We'll find out this year.
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Offline abaddon

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #102 on: 01/27/2015 06:03 pm »
Myself, I'd expect Dragons to return to either EAFB or VAFB/SLC-4 (if they want to prevent too much land flyover since DV2 can't actually "fly" like the Shuttle or DC) or the SLF at KSC if they are ok with it flying over populated land.  Don't know if that will be an issue or not.

Gwynn briefly mentioned the idea of someday landing cargo at JSC... so it is something they are thinking/dreaming about, at any rate.

Offline speedevil

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #103 on: 01/27/2015 06:08 pm »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ca6x4QbpoM&feature=youtu.be

And another video - F9H - by spaceX - showing all three cores landing on the pads in question.

Offline abaddon

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #104 on: 01/27/2015 06:11 pm »
SpaceX, thank you for reading our collective minds and releasing this video to blow our minds :)

Offline Helodriver

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #105 on: 01/27/2015 06:21 pm »
The four surrounding pads must be for the four booster Angara 5 configured Very Heavy. ;)

Offline Jarnis

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #106 on: 01/27/2015 06:40 pm »
SpaceX, thank you for reading our collective minds and releasing this video to blow our minds :)

Confirming mind blown.

Offline Lobo

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #107 on: 01/27/2015 08:23 pm »
SpaceX, thank you for reading our collective minds and releasing this video to blow our minds :)

Confirming mind blown.



And would seem to directly contradict SpaceX's EIS and confirm what I was initially pondering.  They're going to likely want to be recovering all 3 FH cores for the payloads they'll be flying on FH for awhile, as I don't think there will be any payloads for awhile that will need more capacity than that can do.    Seems odd they wouldn't be accommodating that sooner rather than later...which is what hte EIS indicates.  Although seems like this cores would be close together, maybe not so much as the central core will stage a bit later and not be landing until the boosters are already down, as shown in the video.  But D4H does that too.    5 pads total means there will always be 3 open pads for the central core so there's still contingency options.
The contingency pads look to be arranged as they are in case of booster over shoot to the eastern most pads?  The 2 western contingency pads would be "down range" in case the boosters are a little long?
« Last Edit: 01/27/2015 10:38 pm by Lobo »

Offline JBF

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #108 on: 01/28/2015 12:49 am »
What they would like to do in the long term and what they plan on doing in the immediate future can be two different things.
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Offline Jim

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #109 on: 01/28/2015 12:55 am »
I think it will be Dragon V2 abort landing site and EOM landing site too.

Online docmordrid

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #110 on: 01/28/2015 01:16 am »
I think it will be Dragon V2 abort landing site and EOM landing site too.
If memory serves Dragon 2 aborts burn to depletion and have to do splashdowns, or has this changed as  well? Will it have reserves for a propulsive landing?
« Last Edit: 01/28/2015 01:17 am by docmordrid »
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Offline Lars-J

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #111 on: 01/28/2015 01:19 am »
I think it will be Dragon V2 abort landing site and EOM landing site too.
If memory serves Dragon 2 aborts burn to depletion and have to do splashdowns, or has this changed as  well? Will it have reserves for a propulsive landing?

No, launch abort will always end up in the ocean. Not enough propellant to do abort and propulsive landing, we have been told.
« Last Edit: 01/28/2015 01:20 am by Lars-J »

Offline hrissan

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #112 on: 01/28/2015 09:37 am »
I think it will be Dragon V2 abort landing site and EOM landing site too.
If memory serves Dragon 2 aborts burn to depletion and have to do splashdowns, or has this changed as  well? Will it have reserves for a propulsive landing?

No, launch abort will always end up in the ocean. Not enough propellant to do abort and propulsive landing, we have been told.
But reserving just 10m/s worth of propellant during abort may allow soft parachute landing on the hard surface (a la Soyuz), so that option may still be open.

Online docmordrid

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #113 on: 01/28/2015 09:39 am »
I think it will be Dragon V2 abort landing site and EOM landing site too.
If memory serves Dragon 2 aborts burn to depletion and have to do splashdowns, or has this changed as  well? Will it have reserves for a propulsive landing?

No, launch abort will always end up in the ocean. Not enough propellant to do abort and propulsive landing, we have been told.
But reserving just 10m/s worth of propellant during abort may allow soft parachute landing on the hard surface (a la Soyuz), so that option may still be open.
How do you precisely steer it to the pad  once the chutes deploy?
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Offline AncientU

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #114 on: 01/28/2015 02:20 pm »
One day in the future, pad abort could simply be lofted and returned to the landing pad.  Chutes optional for fuel depletion past a certain point.
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Offline OxCartMark

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #115 on: 01/28/2015 02:30 pm »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ca6x4QbpoM&feature=youtu.be

And another video - F9H - by spaceX - showing all three cores landing on the pads in question.

My thoughts on this-

a) Who woulda thunket that in a cross feed launch the center core would be returning to the launch site?

b) It shows more hoverness and less slamness than I was envisioning

c)  How does this interact with the EIS that they're trying to get approved?

d) What is up with the building / tower at what I presume to be 39A?  They currently aren't allowed to remove the RSS but in this video everything has been changed changed.  Perhaps this is a sign that the video depicts not the near future of something likely to happen in the next 2 years but rather a longer term vision of what they eventually want to achieve with it.
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Offline JamesH

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #116 on: 01/28/2015 03:39 pm »
It's a video, done by an marketing animator on an unknown date about an unknown date, found on the internet.

Clearly it's 100% prescient.

Offline AncientU

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #117 on: 01/28/2015 03:56 pm »
It's a video, done by an marketing animator on an unknown date about an unknown date, found on the internet.

Clearly it's 100% prescient.

To what video are you referring?
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Offline kch

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #118 on: 01/28/2015 04:05 pm »
I think it will be Dragon V2 abort landing site and EOM landing site too.

If memory serves Dragon 2 aborts burn to depletion and have to do splashdowns, or has this changed as  well? Will it have reserves for a propulsive landing?

No, launch abort will always end up in the ocean. Not enough propellant to do abort and propulsive landing, we have been told.

But reserving just 10m/s worth of propellant during abort may allow soft parachute landing on the hard surface (a la Soyuz), so that option may still be open.

How do you precisely steer it to the pad  once the chutes deploy?

The same way Soyuz does ... ;)

Offline Lobo

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Re: SpaceX Eastern Range Landing Facilities
« Reply #119 on: 01/28/2015 04:34 pm »
It's a video, done by an marketing animator on an unknown date about an unknown date, found on the internet.

Clearly it's 100% prescient.

But someone has to tell the animator what to animate.  Someone told them to depict all 3 FH cores landing at LC-13.  He didn't just pull that out of his/her rearend.  And it looks to be an official SpaceX video, so it has as much weight as statements they'd make I would assume.
I assumed this is at least all the things they'd -like- to do.

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