The Recovery Ship Formerly Known As Mr Steven (TRSFKAMS)
Quote from: JWag on 02/21/2018 02:53 pmThe Recovery Ship Formerly Known As Mr Steven (TRSFKAMS) I nominate "GO Something" as the placeholder name.
Quote from: hootowls on 02/21/2018 02:05 pmQuote from: Lar on 02/21/2018 01:42 pmI 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"?
Quote from: Lar on 02/21/2018 01:42 pmI 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.
I wonder if Mr. Steven will come in or stay out. I am betting stay out.
How is it known that GO bought her? (off topic... I will try to find a better thread for these posts and move them)
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.
Quote from: JoerTex on 02/21/2018 01:06 pmI 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.
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.
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.
Quote from: zeke01 on 02/21/2018 09:39 pmFor 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.
Quote from: speedevil on 02/21/2018 09:42 pmQuote from: zeke01 on 02/21/2018 09:39 pmFor 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.
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/
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 2.0submitted 7 hours ago * by sodiepopsboyyyyyyyyyI 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.