SpaceX COTS Demo 1 Updates

[Swatch]

And does not count the money NASA spent on the technology base and research that Space tapped.

Wow... this may be the biggest reach I've ever seen on here.  Guess we should just add the costs of Apollo to their spending while we're at it.  After all, they would have never figured out pintle engines if not for the Lunar Module.  Or perhaps we should add the cost of developing the microchip...

[Chris Bergin]

Keep it on topic guys or we may as well close this one and use the COTS-2 thread.

[Comga]

I am also anxious to learn more about the technical details of COTS Demo 1 flight, the nominal subject of this thread.  However, this is descending in to endless whining.  "He didn't quit after 3 failures." "It's nothing ESA didn't do with ARD." "The real cost is $1B."  "No, it's $400M." "The QD failure was a hair's breath from doom." "The fire was trivial." "Musk admits he's a failure because the price is three tenth of current cost."  "It's going towards 9/10's."  "The Dragon's first landing error was a third of the minimum ever achieved by the Russians."  "Must stood on the shoulders of giants."  "What's with the cheese and the cow with muddy boots?"  (OK.  I really do want to know that one.)

It would help if SpaceX released a few more images, details, or videos....

edit: Written before Chris' warning.  Thanks.

[Antares]

Please stop quoting the prices on the SpaceX web page.  Only real contract prices for a real integration are valid.  This is the difference between space professionals and everyone else.  We don't come to your place of work and give you list prices from your suppliers when no one is actually paying that.  Please refrain from the analogue here.

Also, I demand photographic proof of "WWED" - and I hope the amazing people are given junk assignments.  WWED is another extreme, where various positions in the middle are far more valid than either WWED or the Apollo/Shuttle paradigm.

[docmordrid]

No taste for freedom of expression, 'eh?

[kkattula]

You know WWED could also be taken as gently mocking the wide-spread view that only SpaceX is doing anything innovative in space, while at the same time encouraging a bit of lateral thinking.

I think it's good sign, if true.

[Lars_J]

Also, I demand photographic proof of "WWED" - and I hope the amazing people are given junk assignments.

Demand proof from the Orlando Sentinel. That's where the "WWED" stuff comes from. Or is independent verification needed before any news story can be discussed here? Hardly.

[SpacexULA]

If there is any forum that could produce physical evidence it would be this one.

Some COTS1 related things I haven't seen much talk about:

-I wonder how many pieces that dragon is in right now

-Some people on here personally know SpaceX employees, have they got their patches yet?

-The "black Box" they used, what would a black box for a 1st stage look like anyway?

-Notice the Rubber dingy/barge recovery of the Dragon, could that be used for a manned launch?  Or would they really need the seahawk chopper they show in the video?

[Robotbeat]

I'm also waiting for more information about the first stage's "black box." Has it been recovered?

[Nomadd]

 I haven't heard anything about the infamous 1st stage flaking cork coating in a while. Did they abandon that idea for now?
 I never could figure out what was so hard about feeding data to an epoxy foam encased memory stick that would survive a thousand Gs and float.

[Jim]

1.   I haven't heard anything about the infamous 1st stage flaking cork coating in a while. Did they abandon that idea for now?
 2.  I never could figure out what was so hard about feeding data to an epoxy foam encased memory stick that would survive a thousand Gs and float.

1.  no, there is still cork

2.  Because most of the telemetry is analog and voluminous.  Especially for nine engines

[Robotbeat]

...
 2.  I never could figure out what was so hard about feeding data to an epoxy foam encased memory stick that would survive a thousand Gs and float.

...
2.  Because most of the telemetry is analog and voluminous.  Especially for nine engines

You think SpaceX is using an analog black box? I highly doubt it. EDIT:And actually, I'd bet the sensor data is digitized practically right on the sensor, since the avionics are digital. Analog to digital converters are fast, cheap, and ubiquitous.

As far as voluminous... You could fit about 1 terabyte (that is, 1 trillion bytes) in a solid-state blackbox the size of a deck of cards. No moving parts, so could be made to survive thousands of gees (and very high write speeds... 500MB/s, though faster is possible). A 32GB (that is, 32 1Megasamples/sec bandwidth signals with 16bit resolution for about 8 minutes) solid-state drive is smaller than a fingernail (I have a similar, but 1GB capacity microSD disk in my cellphone), though to get the necessary 64MB/s, you'd need a slightly larger device (the size of a book of matches).

You really think SpaceX is using something like this?

(That's kind of a joke, BTW. )

Modern "black box" essentially is an industrial version of a memory stick, though larger so you can actually find the thing (and fit a locator beacon, etc).

[butters]

They recovered the "black box" from the first stage. I think they call it "Talon".

[Robotbeat]

They recovered the "black box" from the first stage. I think they call it "Talon".

Can you point to a reference? I heard they just found the signal, I don't remember them actually recovering the "Talon."

[butters]

They recovered the "black box" from the first stage. I think they call it "Talon".

Can you point to a reference? I heard they just found the signal, I don't remember them actually recovering the "Talon."

They at least had the signal after it had landed in the Atlantic and sent the recovery boat to get it. It's possible that they didn't recover it. I haven't heard anything either way. Why would they be unable to recover it if they had the signal? Maybe it sunk?

[Nomadd]

 2 bytes of data gives you 64k analog resolution, so 1,000 samples per second would only be around 120KB raw data per minute if you had some nice clean software that only stored results.
 Been in this discussion with airliner folks who were convinced that you couldn't send real time system monitoring without using "Huge" amounts of bandwidth. You can pack a pretty impressive number of high resolution/rate analog readings into a small data stream if you're old enough to remember when efficiency counted and you didn't get to use 4 thousand lines of code to read a switch.

[Jim]

Airplanes are different from rockets

[iamlucky13]

1.) You think SpaceX is using an analog black box?

2.) As far as voluminous... You could fit about 1 terabyte (that is, 1 trillion bytes) in a solid-state blackbox the size of a deck of cards.

1.) In data acquisition, you typically refer to digital for signals that only have binary states (on/off) and analog for signals that have more states, even if the values are digitized. A pressure transducer being read out as a 16 bit digital value is an analog channel.

2.) Some things aren't as trivial as they first seem. Even if it did eject and survive and broadcast a homing signal ok, actually pinpointing such a tiny object in the open ocean before its battery dies isn't trivial.

And either it needs a preprocessor onboard the rocket to feed the cartridge collated data, or it needs a connection for every input it records. The former is most likely.

That Engineer Guy video was pretty well done. I'll have to look up more of his stuff.

[Robotbeat]

1.) You think SpaceX is using an analog black box?

2.) As far as voluminous... You could fit about 1 terabyte (that is, 1 trillion bytes) in a solid-state blackbox the size of a deck of cards.

1.) In data acquisition, you typically refer to digital for signals that only have binary states (on/off) and analog for signals that have more states, even if the values are digitized. A pressure transducer being read out as a 16 bit digital value is an analog channel.

2.) Some things aren't as trivial as they first seem. Even if it did eject and survive and broadcast a homing signal ok, actually pinpointing such a tiny object in the open ocean before its battery dies isn't trivial.

3) And either it needs a preprocessor onboard the rocket to feed the cartridge collated data, or it needs a connection for every input it records. The former is most likely.

4) That Engineer Guy video was pretty well done. I'll have to look up more of his stuff.

1) Ah, that makes sense.
2) After reading Jim's response again, I realize he was responding most to the claim that it was trivial. I agree it isn't trivial. However, I'll keep my post as-is because I don't think either the data quantity or data rate are what makes it non-trivial, because of the enormous advances in the last few decades in storage technology (my current day-job).

3) I bet it'd uses the Falcon 9 avionics bus, which I believe is ethernet-based (and thus higher bandwidth than older legacy digital buses which might not be able to handle the necessarily throughput), so is the "former." An embedded processor of that capability is pretty common-place, though... Since the data is presumably already digitized, you just need to get the requisite streaming throughput, which I highly doubt would be over 100MB/s. I don't know if the rad-hardening requirements would that great for a first stage "black box" like this. You could probably get by with just good ECC.

4) Yeah, he's really cool.

[Nomadd]

 The video makes me wonder if they are using a device with built in accelerometer, vibration sensing, mini gyro outputting sensors, in addition to external data recording.
 My Iphone can do all that. Sound ridiculous, but I often strap that sucker onto various moving objects to get roll/pitch/vibration/acceleration data to see if various gear can take the abuse. What you get from a world where video game technology drives the market I guess.