SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 - Dragon - CRS-5/SpX-5 -Jan. 10, 2015 - DISCUSSION

[gospacex]

Russian news site:

http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2265465

Title: "Dragon launch: fiasco of American engineers".

Typical case of ill-informed reporting and the resulting opinionating. Best to ignore it.

It is most definitely not a case of somebody being ill-informed. They lie knowingly.

[woods170]

Russian news site:

http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2265465

Title: "Dragon launch: fiasco of American engineers".

Typical case of ill-informed reporting and the resulting opinionating. Best to ignore it.

It is most definitely not a case of somebody being ill-informed. They lie knowingly.

My final words on this: that wouldn't be the first time, nor the last. It won't change, so get used to it. Like I said, that kind of "reporting" is best ignored.

[fast]

Russian news site:

http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2265465

Title: "Dragon launch: fiasco of American engineers".

Typical case of ill-informed reporting and the resulting opinionating. Best to ignore it.

It is most definitely not a case of somebody being ill-informed. They lie knowingly.

Word "American" isn't accidential. Read between the lines: american engineers are "no very good"

[Ben the Space Brit]

The Russians have been furious for years at a policy level at the very existence of the Falcon-9/Dragon system and its implications for "The Age of Soyuz". I'm not surprised that they'd jump on any problems or setbacks as proof positive that those inherently dangerous spacecraft should not be let anywhere near the ISS.

Given the number of hideous failures Russia had during its early spaceflight history (including some on-the-ground disasters that racked up three-figure or higher body counts), it is my view that a serious journalist wouldn't be so sanctimonious.

Purely IMHO, I would have thought that they'd be flattered that US launch service providers had acknowledged the fundamental utility and sensibleness of Korolev's Soyuz/R7 system.

[rpapo]

This isn't at all new.  If you recall, during late 2011 and early 2012, in the run up to the first docking of Dragon to the ISS, the Russians were trying in various ways to get the Dragon prohibited from docking at all... in spite of the fact that for all intents and purposes, the rendezvous and docking was going to happen exactly the way it had already been happening with Kounotori/HTV, the Japanese cargo spacecraft.  The main difference was that Dragon would be able to return afterwards.  Mind you, at that point in time, the Russian complaint had a much firmer foundation, in that Dragon had only gone into space once so far (December 2010), and in a rather incomplete form (no trunk).

Since then, of course, there have been five more Dragon and six commercial satellite launches, and a major launcher upgrade, so they look for "failures" where they can.  Especially when you have mass media articles of the "quality" we have seen lately...

[kevin-rf]

There is no common mechanism that would take a yellow flame and make it bright blue.  Something else is going on in that video.  I don't think it portrays a grid fin silhouetted in front of the retroburn.

Here's a picture of my stove. Option 1, I heated it two white hot. Option 2, that's what infrared looks like on a CCD that's not properly IR filtered. Which do you think is more likely?

Option 3, you photoshopped it No one should have a stove that garish green. Just say No!

Good point, if you removed the IR filter it should bleed through all three color in the Bayer filters.

*Yes I realize that the garish green is most likely some sort of FL lighting color coupled with auto white balancing and the near IR bleeding through at different intensities on the different color filters causing the skew on what is most likely a picture of a white stove.

[ArbitraryConstant]

Just say No!

One doesn't quibble over such things when finding an apartment in the sf bay area.

Good point, if you removed the IR filter it should bleed through all three color in the Bayer filters.

I didn't remove the IR filter, I used a camera that didn't have one. Not all do.

Anyway for SpaceX I think it's doubtful worrying about external interpretation of an apparently blue/white flame was their main concern when selecting the camera configuration, and if they thought about it at all they might have decided being able to see near infrared like that would actually be an asset. The color has been noted on previous night launches on ascent, and we saw it this time too during the first stage ascent phase. The same thing during the day looks dark and sooty.

[TomH]

it is my view that a serious journalist wouldn't be so sanctimonious.

I don't want to get too OT and into politics, but IMHO, journalism has been supplanted by its predecessor, propagandism, in that country. I agree, best to ignore it.

[TomH]

This video is cool:

Second stage firing when Dragon separates worries me a little (lot).  Seem to recall they had a problem with this (kinda, residual thrust) with Falcon 1.

I noticed that too; Dragon is accelerating ahead of US while Dragon is showing no thrust, but US still burning! Also, Dragon soars in for unbelievably fast docking rather than being grappled and berthed at slow relative V.

[Comga]

Re the grid fin image: Look people.
I am fully aware of the transmission curves for the standard Bayer filters and resonse curves and properties of solid state array detectors. Bleed through is one of a number of effects that cause false representation of colors.
However, shifting what was seen as solid yellow to consistently blue isn't likely U nder these conditions  as evidenced on previous flights. 
Previous "boost back" burns i.e. right after staging, were yellow.
On the other hand, watching the first stage burn one sees a period, some high altitude, where the plume is indeed blue.
That could be consistent with the "reentry" burn.
My understanding is that the grid fins deploy between these two burns.
That puts my original uncertainty to rest. I agree that the image is what was said, grid fins silhouetted against the reentry burn.

[TomH]

Sorry if this was reported elsewhere and I missed it. How hard was the landing and how much hardware remained intact and on the deck of the ship? The main reason in asking is to know whether there was enough of the engine power packs, recovered and  intact, to examine the degree of wear, coking, etc.

[robertross]

Sorry if this was reported elsewhere and I missed it. How hard was the landing and how much hardware remained intact and on the deck of the ship? The main reason in asking is to know whether there was enough of the engine power packs, recovered and  intact, to examine the degree of wear, coking, etc.

Nobody really knows, except what looks to be some fragments & sections of the tanks. The explosion likely threw things a fair distance, some of it to the sea floor.

[SoulWager]

Sorry if this was reported elsewhere and I missed it. How hard was the landing and how much hardware remained intact and on the deck of the ship? The main reason in asking is to know whether there was enough of the engine power packs, recovered and  intact, to examine the degree of wear, coking, etc.

My understanding is that the stage was nearly vertical and moving horizontally toward the center of the barge when it hit the hull or support equipment from the side(very close to zero vertical velocity), with the lox tank and interstage tipping onto the landing platform, and the RP-1 tank onto the support equipment. I'm pretty sure the octoweb and engines went into the ocean.

[cro-magnon gramps]

Sorry if this was reported elsewhere and I missed it. How hard was the landing and how much hardware remained intact and on the deck of the ship? The main reason in asking is to know whether there was enough of the engine power packs, recovered and  intact, to examine the degree of wear, coking, etc.

My understanding is that the stage was nearly vertical and moving horizontally toward the center of the barge when it hit the hull or support equipment from the side(very close to zero vertical velocity), with the lox tank and interstage tipping onto the landing platform, and the RP-1 tank onto the support equipment. I'm pretty sure the octoweb and engines went into the ocean.

hmmmm sounds like they had the XY axis covered, but the pesky Z axis was the culprit in this attempt.
So rather than missing by 10 m, it was possibly by a matter of a couple of or fractions of a meter. (That hole in the side, could that have been done by a leg/foot?)

Coming in from the corner rather than head on. Now this has really whetted my appetite for a video of this attempt. It's going to be awesome...

[IRobot]

Good point, if you removed the IR filter it should bleed through all three color in the Bayer filters.

No, on normal RGB cameras it bleeds mostly on the red filter. On CMYG cameras it can bleed on all filters, especially Magenta and Yellow.

[Elmar Moelzer]

Two thoughts on the blue exhaust:
1. very bright exhaust against very dark backdrop means something rather white.
2. We are seeing a compressed video which is a small detail in another compressed video running on an LCD TV that the camera is looking at an angle. Filming off a display without color aberration is hard (which is why most displays in movies and on TV are added in post). They also tend to distort colors when looked at at an angle.
Then we have compression in the original video stream which could already cause a slight color shift and that then is again compressed by another compression algorithm which could account for the rest.

[darkenfast]

Sorry if this was reported elsewhere and I missed it. How hard was the landing and how much hardware remained intact and on the deck of the ship? The main reason in asking is to know whether there was enough of the engine power packs, recovered and  intact, to examine the degree of wear, coking, etc.

My understanding is that the stage was nearly vertical and moving horizontally toward the center of the barge when it hit the hull or support equipment from the side(very close to zero vertical velocity), with the lox tank and interstage tipping onto the landing platform, and the RP-1 tank onto the support equipment. I'm pretty sure the octoweb and engines went into the ocean.

Sorry, but HOW do we know that?  There's been lots of fun speculation, but unless SpaceX has released something I missed, then we simply don't know what "hard" landing meant.

[Chris Bergin]

Use the relevant threads for the relevant ASDS posts.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?board=66.0

[widgetMan]

Did anyone else notice what may have been a landing leg partially angled out during powered first stage flight?

See the following launch video at about 1 minute 40 seconds.



FYI - this is my first post on NSF!

[Dudely]

If you look up from beneath the rocket when the legs are flat against the side you see a chevron shape. This is what you're seeing there, I think.