Author Topic: SpaceX Falcon 9 : PAZ & Microsat 2a/2b : SLC-4E : Feb 22, 2018 : DISCUSSION  (Read 202440 times)

Offline Raul

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https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-121.7/centery:30.2/zoom:9
This positon is more accurate - Mr Steven is High Speed Craft marked by orange.

Just in hazard area by green.

Offline cscott

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The Recovery Ship Formerly Known As Mr Steven (TRSFKAMS)

I nominate "GO Something" as the placeholder name. ;)

Offline atsf90east

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The Recovery Ship Formerly Known As Mr Steven (TRSFKAMS)

I nominate "GO Something" as the placeholder name. ;)
Since it's function is like a big floating catcher's mitt, I'm throwing out two possible names - either the GO Bob Uecker, or the Go Yogi Berra ;)
« Last Edit: 02/21/2018 05:35 pm by atsf90east »
Attended Launches: Space Shuttle: STS-85, STS-95, STS-96, STS-103. Falcon 9: Thaicom-8

Offline input~2

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NORTH PACIFIC.
1. HAZARDOUS OPERATIONS, ROCKET LAUNCHING
211350Z TO 211501Z FEB, ALTERNATE 1350Z TO 1501Z
DAILY 22 AND 23 FEB IN AREA BOUND BY
31-50N 121-31W, 31-50N 120-57W,
30-06N 120-50W, 30-06N 122-08W.
2. HAZARDOUS OPERATIONS, SPACE DEBRIS
211718Z TO 211751Z FEB, ALTERNATE 1718Z TO 1751Z
DAILY 22 AND 23 FEB IN AREA BOUND BY
50-17N 168-05W, 50-17N 161-46W,
41-47N 165-43W, 33-14N 168-50W,
33-14N 173-39W, 42-50N 170-58W.
3. CANCEL NAVAREA XII 75/18.
4. CANCEL THIS MSG 231851Z FEB 18.//

Authority: WESTERN RANGE 172016Z FEB 18.

Date: 172028Z FEB 18
Cancel: 23185100 Feb 18

Offline Lar

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I wonder if Mr. Steven will come in or stay out. I am betting stay out.

BTW, SpaceX is using a different name for this vessel.  Maybe they'll mention it in the post recovery environment.
Hm.  And it's owned by Guice Offshore now, so it would be "GO Mr. Steven" judging from GO's past naming convention.  Did SpaceX purchase the vessel from GO? Or did GO choose a different suffix than "Mr. Steven"?
How is it known that GO bought her? (off topic... I will try to find a better thread for these posts and move them)
"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk
"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Offline JonathanD

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How is it known that GO bought her? (off topic... I will try to find a better thread for these posts and move them)

I think someone tracked down some registry info, but more obviously, the craft-formerly-known-as-Mr. Steven has a giant GO logo on the side of it now.

Offline Helodriver

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So with B1038.2's serial number missing, I set out to see if it was really the same booster for FORMOSAT and PAZ.

After looking through my archives of the ASDS recovery from August and the vehicle stack yesterday, it clearly is the same. Soot doesn't lie.  8)

Offline AncientU

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Soot prints...
"If we shared everything [we are working on] people would think we are insane!"
-- SpaceX friend of mlindner

Offline Lars-J

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... And the ghosts of legs past.

SpaceX are really going full tilt to embrace the sootiness. Sooty McSooty for lifoff!  8)

So with B1038.2's serial number missing, I set out to see if it was really the same booster for FORMOSAT and PAZ.

After looking through my archives of the ASDS recovery from August and the vehicle stack yesterday, it clearly is the same. Soot doesn't lie.  8)

Once a west coaster, always a west coaster.  ;D
« Last Edit: 02/21/2018 07:33 pm by Lars-J »

Offline zeke01

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I wonder why this is reported as a balloon, surely they use a radar profiler.  A balloon won't do much more than 1100ft per min.  Radar is now.

Radar is also quite useless if all that it can see is clear air. Moving or not, wind or not, if there is nothing *in* the air to reflect the radar, you ain't getting no info on the air movement.

As a meteorologist with knowledge of radars and wind profilers and how they work, this statement is false. Wind profilers can easily measure atmospheric motions in clear air since their beams don't move. This allows for lengthy dwell times in each gate along the beams. The returns are faint in clear air, yes, but they have all the time in the world to improve S/N ratio and get the measurements.

Mostly clear skies over KSC this afternoon, here's the vertical wind profile from 2 to 19 km.

https://www.weather.gov/smg/ksc50p

For weather radars, at least in the United States, when there is no precipitation detected within range of the radar, they are commanded to operate in 'clear air' mode. The slower rotation speed of the radar beam increases S/N and allows horizontal winds to be measured even without the presence of precipitation. The radar processor then generates VWP products (VAD wind profile product in tabular and text formats) after the completion of a volume scan.

Melbourne FL NWS weather radar

http://weather.cod.edu/satrad/nexrad/index.php?type=MLB-NVW-0-6

« Last Edit: 02/21/2018 09:46 pm by zeke01 »

Offline speedevil

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For weather radars, at least in the United States, when there is no precipitation detected within range of the radar, they are commanded to operate in 'clear air' mode. The slower rotation speed of the radar beam increases S/N and allows horizontal winds to be measured even without the presence of precipitation. The radar processor then generates VWP products (VAD wind profile product in tabular and text formats) after the completion of a volume scan.

This would sort-of-imply that weather balloons are useless, when they are in fact apparently used.
Are these a historical artifact, or is there some subtler reason that RADARs are in fact not good enough.

Offline Helodriver

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For weather radars, at least in the United States, when there is no precipitation detected within range of the radar, they are commanded to operate in 'clear air' mode. The slower rotation speed of the radar beam increases S/N and allows horizontal winds to be measured even without the presence of precipitation. The radar processor then generates VWP products (VAD wind profile product in tabular and text formats) after the completion of a volume scan.

This would sort-of-imply that weather balloons are useless, when they are in fact apparently used.
Are these a historical artifact, or is there some subtler reason that RADARs are in fact not good enough.

Vandenberg's WSR-88D enhanced NEXRAD has been showing this for its VAD all day, I checked it this morning before launch too.

When very dry air from the NW comes in as we have been having the last few days, this is a common occurrence, the upper level oceanic air has no dust, humidity or other particulates to provide meaningful velocity data, even in clear air mode. The 30th Space Wing Range also uses acoustic profilers, but backs them up with balloon data for the above 40,000 measurements. I think when the data is showing a near limits situation like today, SpaceX wants that corroboration of information before launching.

Offline c3infinity

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For weather radars, at least in the United States, when there is no precipitation detected within range of the radar, they are commanded to operate in 'clear air' mode. The slower rotation speed of the radar beam increases S/N and allows horizontal winds to be measured even without the presence of precipitation. The radar processor then generates VWP products (VAD wind profile product in tabular and text formats) after the completion of a volume scan.

This would sort-of-imply that weather balloons are useless, when they are in fact apparently used.
Are these a historical artifact, or is there some subtler reason that RADARs are in fact not good enough.

My understanding is that balloons offer better vertical (altitude) resolution for wind data. They also allow direct measurement of temperature, pressure, etc. One or more of those attributes may be required to accurately compute vehicle loads.

Offline HarryM

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I think I might actually be able to see this from my back-yard. I always assumed that VAFB was too far to see them but at 120KM, I think it should get up around 20 degrees or so from the horizon. Fingers crossed! :)

Offline Michael Baylor

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Posting this here since Fairing 2.0 is a milestone for this mission.

Someone with alleged insider info posted this on /r/SpaceX. Reddit can be risky, so take this with caution, but it does seem to align with what's been observed and what's expected of Fairing 2.0.

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/7z9am2/information_about_fairing_20/

Offline zeke01

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For weather radars, at least in the United States, when there is no precipitation detected within range of the radar, they are commanded to operate in 'clear air' mode. The slower rotation speed of the radar beam increases S/N and allows horizontal winds to be measured even without the presence of precipitation. The radar processor then generates VWP products (VAD wind profile product in tabular and text formats) after the completion of a volume scan.

This would sort-of-imply that weather balloons are useless, when they are in fact apparently used.
Are these a historical artifact, or is there some subtler reason that RADARs are in fact not good enough.
Balloons can carry meteorological instruments as they ascend providing information on the atmosphere besides winds.  For rocket launches, I don't know if they do that, however.

Balloons can provide finer granularity of the vertical profile (more data points) so can more readily identify strong wind shears.  Radars sample larger volumes (dependent on the length of the pulses and width of the beam), and so have coarser resolution.

Offline zeke01

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For weather radars, at least in the United States, when there is no precipitation detected within range of the radar, they are commanded to operate in 'clear air' mode. The slower rotation speed of the radar beam increases S/N and allows horizontal winds to be measured even without the presence of precipitation. The radar processor then generates VWP products (VAD wind profile product in tabular and text formats) after the completion of a volume scan.

This would sort-of-imply that weather balloons are useless, when they are in fact apparently used.
Are these a historical artifact, or is there some subtler reason that RADARs are in fact not good enough.

Vandenberg's WSR-88D enhanced NEXRAD has been showing this for its VAD all day, I checked it this morning before launch too.

When very dry air from the NW comes in as we have been having the last few days, this is a common occurrence, the upper level oceanic air has no dust, humidity or other particulates to provide meaningful velocity data, even in clear air mode. The 30th Space Wing Range also uses acoustic profilers, but backs them up with balloon data for the above 40,000 measurements. I think when the data is showing a near limits situation like today, SpaceX wants that corroboration of information before launching.
Yes. The maritime air masses can be quite clean and laminar, attributes which reduce the amount of backscattered energy to the radar receiver. OTOH, continental air is often turbulent and full of crud and insects.

Offline ChrisC

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Posting this here since Fairing 2.0 is a milestone for this mission.  Someone with alleged insider info posted this on /r/SpaceX. Reddit can be risky, so take this with caution, but it does seem to align with what's been observed and what's expected of Fairing 2.0.

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/7z9am2/information_about_fairing_20/

Here's what was posted.  (If there's an NSF policy against quoting Reddit, my apologies and mods please delete.)


Information about Fairing 2.0
submitted 7 hours ago * by sodiepopsboyyyyyyyyy

I was fortunate enough to go Vandenberg for the Paz mission along with some SpaceX employees and members of Spanish government. We got some information about the new fairing and why they are using it, here are the highlights.
- Slightly bigger: 4 inches taller and 4 inches wider.
- Easier to build: Takes less pieces to put together.
- Lighter: Strength is more optimized for the places that need it, resulting in a lighter fairing.
- Easier for recovery: Has designated points for a steerable parachute/parafoil, allowing it to be caught by boat.
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Posting this here since Fairing 2.0 is a milestone for this mission.

Someone with alleged insider info posted this on /r/SpaceX. Reddit can be risky, so take this with caution, but it does seem to align with what's been observed and what's expected of Fairing 2.0.

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/7z9am2/information_about_fairing_20/

I've seen similar things mentioned on multiple public forums, such as teslerati. Although not as detailed as the reddit post, they agree in terms of easier manufacture etc.

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-fairing-recovery-boat-using-giant-net/
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. -- Richard Feynman

Offline sevenperforce

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Here's what was posted.  (If there's an NSF policy against quoting Reddit, my apologies and mods please delete.)


Information about Fairing 2.0
submitted 7 hours ago * by sodiepopsboyyyyyyyyy

I was fortunate enough to go Vandenberg for the Paz mission along with some SpaceX employees and members of Spanish government. We got some information about the new fairing and why they are using it, here are the highlights.
- Slightly bigger: 4 inches taller and 4 inches wider.
- Easier to build: Takes less pieces to put together.
- Lighter: Strength is more optimized for the places that need it, resulting in a lighter fairing.
- Easier for recovery: Has designated points for a steerable parachute/parafoil, allowing it to be caught by boat.
As I understand it, the airstream disturbance from the large and fluffy fairing kept fouling the steerable chutes, so Fairing 2.0 was designed to have chute attachment points that would prevent this.

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