Author Topic: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2  (Read 2965171 times)

Offline Ohsin

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #520 on: 01/05/2015 07:53 am »
Yes it does include inter stage. With cap I meant the cone part onto which crane hooks. Now I wonder how it will get unloaded without it..
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Offline Dave G

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #521 on: 01/05/2015 08:04 am »
SpaceX specs Falcon 9 at 68.4m (224.4 feet). 

What does this mean?
1) The combined height of the first and second stages only?
2) The height of an F9 with Dragon?
3) The height of an F9 with a satellite PLF?

Offline Ohsin

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #522 on: 01/05/2015 08:21 am »
SpaceX specs Falcon 9 at 68.4m (224.4 feet). 

What does this mean?
1) The combined height of the first and second stages only?
2) The height of an F9 with Dragon?
3) The height of an F9 with a satellite PLF?


From measurements I think its 3.
"Well, three cheers to Sharma, but our real baby is INSAT."

Offline Dave G

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #523 on: 01/05/2015 08:42 am »
SpaceX specs Falcon 9 at 68.4m (224.4 feet). 

What does this mean?
1) The combined height of the first and second stages only?
2) The height of an F9 with Dragon?
3) The height of an F9 with a satellite PLF?

From measurements I think its 3.

Then measuring this picture, and scaling for 224.4 feet, it looks like the first stage is 163 feet tall, with the interstage, but without legs.



Offline Ohsin

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #524 on: 01/05/2015 09:08 am »
SpaceX specs Falcon 9 at 68.4m (224.4 feet). 

What does this mean?
1) The combined height of the first and second stages only?
2) The height of an F9 with Dragon?
3) The height of an F9 with a satellite PLF?

From measurements I think its 3.

Then measuring this picture, and scaling for 224.4 feet, it looks like the first stage is 163 feet tall, with the interstage, but without legs.

This is not very good picture for reference. Vandenberg pictures are pretty good as they are taken from a height. Also did you use diameter(12ft) or fairing height(43ft) to deduce?
« Last Edit: 01/05/2015 09:09 am by Ohsin »
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Offline Dave G

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #525 on: 01/05/2015 09:19 am »
This is not very good picture for reference. Vandenberg pictures are pretty good as they are taken from a height. Also did you use diameter(12ft) or fairing height(43ft) to deduce?

I measured the total height and the height of the first stage, and then scaled for a total height of 224.4 feet.

The camera angle creates a linear perspective which should scale both measurements equally, unless there are fish-eye type lens distortions, which this picture doesn't appear to have.

Offline PhilW

Yes it does include inter stage. With cap I meant the cone part onto which crane hooks. Now I wonder how it will get unloaded without it..
Maybe that is the intended use of the white adapter that was sitting in front of the 4 x Grey/Blue F9 supports? Bolts into the interstage to allow the F9 to be crane lifted?

Offline Dave G

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #527 on: 01/05/2015 09:45 am »
Well, this picture produces different results.  Measuring this and scaling for 224.4 feet, it looks like the first stage is 155 feet tall, with the interstage, but without legs.

Offline PhilW

This is not very good picture for reference. Vandenberg pictures are pretty good as they are taken from a height. Also did you use diameter(12ft) or fairing height(43ft) to deduce?

I measured the total height and the height of the first stage, and then scaled for a total height of 224.4 feet.

The camera angle creates a linear perspective which should scale both measurements equally, unless there are fish-eye type lens distortions, which this picture doesn't appear to have.
Would trust SpX has already done this math, way before they leased the dock side land & installed the F9 supports.

Offline Ohsin

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #529 on: 01/05/2015 10:03 am »
This is not very good picture for reference. Vandenberg pictures are pretty good as they are taken from a height. Also did you use diameter(12ft) or fairing height(43ft) to deduce?

I measured the total height and the height of the first stage, and then scaled for a total height of 224.4 feet.

The camera angle creates a linear perspective which should scale both measurements equally, unless there are fish-eye type lens distortions, which this picture doesn't appear to have.

Curved fairing when seen from below would give wrong measurement. What I do is take a decent image which is sharp and taken from far such that the joining lines between stages is as straight as possible after that use diameter or fairing height as reference and scale it up to full length to get proportional relation then multiply it with known number.
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Offline Dave G

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #530 on: 01/05/2015 10:06 am »
Would trust SpX has already done this math, way before they leased the dock side land & installed the F9 supports.

Yeah, but its gonna be pretty close to the bottom of the bridge.  As others have said, it'll be a great photo op.  Be surprised if that picture doesn't make the major news outlets.

Offline rpapo

Yes it does include inter stage. With cap I meant the cone part onto which crane hooks. Now I wonder how it will get unloaded without it..
That cap won't be there.  After the second stage departs, the top of the interstage is an empty tube which used to contain the Merlin 1D Vacuum engine and its nozzle.  That empty space is a cylinder about 15-20 feet deep, and close to 12 feet across.  Look at the recent pictures of the interstage with the grid fins extended to get the idea.

Which of course begs the question of what exactly they are going to connect the crane hook too.  They have to have something, since they did something similar for the stage acceptance tests back in MacGregor (though the interstage might not have been present there).
Following the space program since before Apollo 8.

Offline deruch

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #532 on: 01/05/2015 11:05 am »
Yes it does include inter stage. With cap I meant the cone part onto which crane hooks. Now I wonder how it will get unloaded without it..
That cap won't be there.  After the second stage departs, the top of the interstage is an empty tube which used to contain the Merlin 1D Vacuum engine and its nozzle.  That empty space is a cylinder about 15-20 feet deep, and close to 12 feet across.  Look at the recent pictures of the interstage with the grid fins extended to get the idea.

Which of course begs the question of what exactly they are going to connect the crane hook too.  They have to have something, since they did something similar for the stage acceptance tests back in MacGregor (though the interstage might not have been present there).

I think he realizes that the cap won't be on it.  Otherwise why would he comment on the difficulties of transferring the stage without it?
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Offline OxCartMark

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #533 on: 01/05/2015 11:16 am »
Yes it does include inter stage. With cap I meant the cone part onto which crane hooks. Now I wonder how it will get unloaded without it..
Maybe that is the intended use of the white adapter that was sitting in front of the 4 x Grey/Blue F9 supports? Bolts into the interstage to allow the F9 to be crane lifted?
That is my belief.

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Offline cartman

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #534 on: 01/05/2015 12:15 pm »
They are now about 3.3 nautical miles away from their target, so they should be there in an hour or so.
« Last Edit: 01/05/2015 12:15 pm by cartman »

Offline Kabloona

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #535 on: 01/05/2015 12:29 pm »
Last launch attempt, both ships apparently turned their AIS transponders off shortly after leaving port. Wonder why this time is different.

Offline deruch

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #536 on: 01/05/2015 12:37 pm »
Last launch attempt, both ships apparently turned their AIS transponders off shortly after leaving port. Wonder why this time is different.

Maybe they didn't.  Maybe we just didn't have anyone track them on the vesselfinder.com site?  They dropped off the marinetraffic.com site at about the same point as we lost them on the previous attempt. 
Shouldn't reality posts be in "Advanced concepts"?  --Nomadd

Offline Kabloona

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #537 on: 01/05/2015 01:00 pm »
Last launch attempt, both ships apparently turned their AIS transponders off shortly after leaving port. Wonder why this time is different.

Maybe they didn't.  Maybe we just didn't have anyone track them on the vesselfinder.com site?  They dropped off the marinetraffic.com site at about the same point as we lost them on the previous attempt.

Yes, last time I checked periodically on the Marine Traffic app and they were offline for the entire time at sea. This time they are still online with Marine Traffic, so something is different.

Offline robertross

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Re: SpaceX's Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship Discussion Thread 2
« Reply #538 on: 01/05/2015 01:18 pm »
Last launch attempt, both ships apparently turned their AIS transponders off shortly after leaving port. Wonder why this time is different.

Maybe they didn't.  Maybe we just didn't have anyone track them on the vesselfinder.com site?  They dropped off the marinetraffic.com site at about the same point as we lost them on the previous attempt.

Yes, last time I checked periodically on the Marine Traffic app and they were offline for the entire time at sea. This time they are still online with Marine Traffic, so something is different.

Maybe they realized how persistent the NSF gang is (like finding the ship webcams), and wanted us to refrain from even more clever tactics?  ;)

Offline rpapo

Seeing them act so optimistically, you wonder: just how on-target were those three touch-downs?  Counting Cassiope because as far as we can tell at the moment, all three landings relied on the accuracy of the boost-back and retro burns, and all of those burns came off without a hitch on all three flights.  Only the Cassiope final burn failed.

They were only aiming for 10km, but what did they actually achieve?
Following the space program since before Apollo 8.

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