Poll: What will the eventual fate of the CRS-3 first stage be?

[ugordan]

If the F9 booster successfully did the ocean soft landing, and became horizontal in the next 8 seconds or so, and they have (even crappy) video images of that from the aircraft, would that not be "found floating..."?

That's likely footage from the onboard (likely heavily fogged up by that point) downward looking camera, not airplane footage. IOW, telemetry received in real time without having a visual on the stage as it's conceivable the landing zone was clouded over.

Could be IR or low light amplified footage from the SpaceX private jet. Which are usually difficult to make out objects but less of an issue with cloud cover with the IR.

I rewatched Musk's press conference on the 25th, with respect to video he said the link was very weak and they're trying to clean it up so that corroborates my theory. In addition to being fogged-up, it's probably full of data dropouts. Airplane recorded video would not be impacted by any link issues as it would have been recorded locally and returned.

[Antares]

What was the weather like?  Was the lighting good or was it stormy/cloudy?  What was driving the sea state?

[srepetsk]

What was the weather like?  Was the lighting good or was it stormy/cloudy?  What was driving the sea state?

There were heavy waves, reports of 10-15' peaks. They weren't able to get a boat out to the landing site until ~2 days afterwards, per Elon at the Friday press conference.

[QuantumG]

- Sank before any recovery assets arrived on the scene, located, but nothing recovered (31.5%)

That's exactly what happened.

I think the problem here is that you think "recovered" includes "we collected some bits that float", it doesn't. If that was the criteria SpaceX could say they recovered the vehicle on the last flight too. Even the bits they found floating, mostly carbon fiber, were ripped apart.

It sank. The boats took two days to get there. Nothing was recovered.

 

[Lar]

It sank. The boats took two days to get there. Nothing was recovered.

I'm ok with that, honest. But a leg is not "nothing". that's all. Peace out. poll over.

Hm... "celebrate our awesomeness" ... I think I know how qG voted..

[QuantumG]

It sank. The boats took two days to get there. Nothing was recovered.

I'm ok with that, honest. But a leg is not "nothing". that's all. Peace out. poll over.

We actually have been able to find pieces of the interstage. The interstage is the carbon fiber structure that joins the first and second stage. That's certainly something that you would expect to get destroyed by wave action as it's got that big open hole at the top and waves will come in and blow it apart. We've recovered most of the interstage. We recovered a portion of one leg, and there are a bunch of other little bits and pieces. We've not recovered anything of the main aluminum-lithium airframe. - transcript

There's a technical word for this stuff.. it's called "floatsom". Most of us would call it junk. It's not what anyone would call "recovering a rocket stage". The majority vote was 100% right. Celebrate our awesomeness.

[meadows.st]

It sank. The boats took two days to get there. Nothing was recovered.

I'm ok with that, honest. But a leg is not "nothing". that's all. Peace out. poll over.

We actually have been able to find pieces of the interstage. The interstage is the carbon fiber structure that joins the first and second stage. That's certainly something that you would expect to get destroyed by wave action as it's got that big open hole at the top and waves will come in and blow it apart. We've recovered most of the interstage. We recovered a portion of one leg, and there are a bunch of other little bits and pieces. We've not recovered anything of the main aluminum-lithium airframe. - transcript

There's a technical word for this stuff.. it's called "floatsom". Most of us would call it junk. It's not what anyone would call "recovering a rocket stage". The majority vote was 100% right. Celebrate our awesomeness.

An observation based on the following quote:
"we kinda got unlucky that we essentially landed the stage in the middle of a big storm" - Elon Musk (From QG's transcript

The vast majority of the votes:

Sank before any recovery assets arrived on the scene, located, but nothing recovered 92 (31.5%)
Found floating but damaged. All or part lost trying to recover, or on return journey 42 (14.4%)
Found floating but damaged, essentially all of stage returned to shore, successful recovery 64 (21.9%)
Found floating, essentially undamaged, but all or part lost trying to recover, or on return journey 8 (2.7%)
Found floating, essentially undamaged, returned successfully 29 (9.9%)

for a total of 80.4% are reason to "Celebrate our awesomeness" for the following reasons:
a) "Sank before any recovery assets..." is a statement that is true because "[SpaceX] kinda got unlucky"
b) "Found floating but damaged. All or part lost..." is still a possible outcome of a nominal landing (of future first stages) in "seas <6ft" which was one of the (test) conditions that was exceeded at launch
c) "Found floating but damaged, essentially all of stage..." (my vote because I thought they had already got a ship close to the stage and I thought that the stage would be damaged by wave action but not at the point of landing) is still a possible (future) outcome as in note b)
d) "Found floating, essentially undamaged, but all or part lost..." is still a possible (future) outcome as in note b)
e) "Found floating, essentially undamaged, returned successfully" is still a possible (future) outcome as in note b)

And for those of you who got the answer "right". Congratulations!

Personally, I am still lamenting the loss of the stage because now I will be on tenterhooks (again) for the next recovery attempt and I don't know if my heart can continue to take this level of stress.

[Lar]

Thank you meadows.st for that thorough[1] dissection/analysis.

Also, major props to you on calling the 8 seconds for time to tipover

1 - dare I say epic?

[Antares]

What was the weather like?  Was the lighting good or was it stormy/cloudy?  What was driving the sea state?

There were heavy waves, reports of 10-15' peaks. They weren't able to get a boat out to the landing site until ~2 days afterwards, per Elon at the Friday press conference.

That's not what I asked.  I already knew that.  I asked what the weather was, leading to whether there is video and what its quality might be.