SpaceX Falcon 9 FT - ORBCOMM-2 - Dec. 21, 2015 (Return To Flight) DISCUSSION

[Llian Rhydderch]

I wasn't aware of the new landing zone. Is there info on its size relative to the barge?
Meaning, will the landing location be more relaxed, doesn't have to try to hit the exact center.
Can focus more on staying vertical and just stick the landing?
I'm a lot more excited for this than another barge attempt.

Most of the publicly-released details, with links to sources, are published here: SpaceX Landing Zone 1  Seems to have been updated recently.

I would expect that much more public attention may be paid to LZ-1 over the forthcoming week.

[b ramsey]

Has anyone heard if there will be live cameras at LZ-1 or is it just a recorded event. I sure hope its live.

[ugordan]

Marc Eisenberg ‏@Marc944Marc
She looks ready

Note that at least one of the access ports in the engine section was open at that time.

[Aerospace Dilettante]

Does anyone have a good estimate of the total flight time of the S1, i.e. the T+time of the landing? 

[sublimemarsupial]

Orlando Sentinel reports that the FAA issued the final launch license covering launch and land landing on friday.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/go-for-launch/os-spacex-engine-testing-sunday-launch-20151218-post.html

[Rocket Science]

Does anyone have a good estimate of the total flight time of the S1, i.e. the T+time of the landing?

9-10 min.

[the_other_Doug]

Has anyone heard if there will be live cameras at LZ-1 or is it just a recorded event. I sure hope its live.

This has been asked several times (including by me), with no authoritative answers forthcoming.

For the barge landing attempts, SpaceX declined to provide a live feed from the landing site, even though the people at Hawthorne were obviously watching live feeds from and around the barge.  If SpaceX was to follow this precedent, then it's unlikely we will get a live feed from them.

But -- and there's always a "but" -- during the barge landing attempts, SpaceX had the only cameras within 100 km of the action.  There will be thousands of cell phones within 20 km of LZ-1 tonight, all recording (likely at best) jittery, long-range video of the event.

If, in the past, SpaceX has declined to provide a live feed of a potentially explosive landing failure, well, they could do so because they were the only source of any such videos.  But tonight, no matter what happens, there will be many, many other videos, that will all be posted to Facebook or elsewhere within minutes of the event.

Because of this change in the media environment, so to speak, the game board changes, and it now behooves SpaceX to provide a live feed.  They have little to gain from withholding it, even if there is a failure, when there will be many other video sources of the event out there that they will not be able to control.

As an example -- imagine if Orbital's Antares launch failure was not covered live, for some public relations spin reason that Orbital somehow got NASA to go along with.  Then consider the number of rather high-quality personal cell-phone videos of that launch failure that came out within the first hour of the event.  This poses Question: how effective would such a PR-spin-video-blackout have been in denying the public an embarrassing view of a failure?  Answer: not very.

I am hoping that SpaceX is savvy enough to have learned that lesson by proxy, and will provide a live feed of the landing attempt.  But I guess we won't know for sure until about 8:40 local time tonight.

[obi-wan]

One of the Cape photographers posted on the SpaceX Facebook group that they weren't allowed to put cameras at LC-13 because the USAF was restricting all access to that area - he said SpaceX had tried to get permission for cameras at LC-13 but were turned down.

[MarekCyzio]

As seen from 401 in Port Canaveral.

[Rocket Science]

Perhaps from on board rocket cam?

[kirghizstan]

are there really going to be no cameras at lz-1, that makes no sense.  why how could a remote camera be cause for concern and couldn't it provide some useful information if things go "sideways"

[the_other_Doug]

One of the Cape photographers posted on the SpaceX Facebook group that they weren't allowed to put cameras at LC-13 because the USAF was restricting all access to that area - he said SpaceX had tried to get permission for cameras at LC-13 but were turned down.

There are all sorts of camera positions available to SpaceX around CCAFS that would provide good video coverage of the landing attempt.  You don't have to have a camera right at the pad to get several good angles of the landing.  All you need is a decent zoom lens and a steady camera operator, and you can position cameras 5 miles or more away from the pad.

A camera position atop the VAB would likely give you a good view, and could even be operated remotely if the VAB were to be placed inside an exclusion zone for a given landing attempt.  And would not require Air Force permission, since it is on the property of the Kennedy Space Center.  Heck, NASA has (or at least used to have) permanent camera positions atop the VAB to serve as part of their photo coverage of launches from Complex 39.  So, it's not difficult to do, I wouldn't think.

Also, couldn't SpaceX deploy a small fleet of camera drones with telephoto lenses just outside of the exclusion zone for the landing?

In other words, just having no access to the actual landing pad doesn't really restrict your ability to get video of the landing.  It's really only a question, at this point, of how much of that video SpaceX will provide live to the public.

And, hey -- don't you think some of the local (and maybe even national) media might bring their own cameras out to the area and set up as close as they're allowed?  Even if SpaceX doesn't show us the landing live, there are going to be a whole lot of other sources of video of the landing attempt tonight.  Just no way to know how many (if any) will be streamed live.

[Kabloona]

are there really going to be no cameras at lz-1, that makes no sense.

SpaceX will certainly have their own cameras. What may have been implied was that SpaceX tried to get permission to allow other photographers to place their own remote cameras near the pad but were denied that permission because security doesn't want photographers accessing LZ-1 to place/retrieve their cameras.

The key phrase in your post is "restricting access." ie no outside photographers going into LZ-1, period.

[HIP2BSQRE]

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Are there any "fact sheets" out there from SpaceX like they used to do for every launch?

[Norm38]

The key phrase in your post is "restricting access." ie no outside photographers going into LZ-1, period.

Why?  Isn't it just concrete?  What's in there the USAF doesn't want anyone seeing?
I don't mind rules so long as they make sense.

[edkyle99]

The key phrase in your post is "restricting access." ie no outside photographers going into LZ-1, period.

Why?  Isn't it just concrete?  What's in there the USAF doesn't want anyone seeing?
I don't mind rules so long as they make sense.

Safety would be my guess.     

 - Ed Kyle

[Comga]

Even it is not larger, location of the land landing zone is fixed and known with certainty. In case of barge landing, the positioning error of the barge is additive to the navigation error of the incoming rocket.

This may be one more of an endless series of repeated answers but the ASDS was supposedly able to hold its position to 3 meters. 
This is less than the diameter of the rocket and not significant on the scale of the ~53 meter wide ASDS.
Another ten feet of deck wouldn't have enabled either of the previous landing attempt to succeed.

[Confusador]

The key phrase in your post is "restricting access." ie no outside photographers going into LZ-1, period.

Why?  Isn't it just concrete?  What's in there the USAF doesn't want anyone seeing?
I don't mind rules so long as they make sense.

Safety would be my guess.     

 - Ed Kyle

That's my assumption.  They're obviously not certain the landing will be successful, even though they've been convinced it will not pose a risk to the public.  I suspect they don't want to deal with people wanting to get to their equipment in the middle of (not unlikely) accident response operations.

[edkyle99]

Looking at the photos of F9-21 posted today and comparing them with earlier Falcon 9 v1.1 rockets, I'm coming up with 30 inch-ish stretches for both the interstage and the second stage for a total of around 60 inches.  Give or take a few inches.  The interstage stretch may slightly exceed the second stage stretch.

 - Ed Kyle