How did the fairing recovery go? Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip....photoshopped by me
I wonder if I observed one of the satellites from Northern Norway(!).At 18:10 local time (173 minutes after the launch of the Falcon 9), I observed an object that appeared to be venting propellants or thrusting, moving from southwest to northwest. My brother also observed it from about 70 kilometers away. It was clearly in vacuum or near vacuum due to the pure arcing shape of the plumes. As it moved further north it seemed to change from plumes going straight up and down from the object to one big plume to the right of the object as it moved. So it looked almost like a plane change maneuvre.Now, the reason why I ask if it might be Paz or one of the other payloads is the math. Wikipedia says 514 km altitude for Pez, which gives an orbital period of almost 95 minutes. So when I observed the object, it would be about 1,8 orbits into the flight.I live at 69° northern latitude. Vandenberg is at 34°, and the launch headed south (at 97° inclination and not 90°, so forgive my naive calculation). So it headed south 34° to equator, 90° to the south pole, 90° north to equator again and 69° north to where I live. That's (34+90+90+69)=283° to travel around the world from Vandenberg to here. That equals (283/360)=0,79 orbits. So yes, the timing would match about 1,8 orbits into the mission, not accounting for the few minutes it takes for the rocket to reach orbital speed, although my observation at 18:10 was when it appeared south of me, not quite at my latitude yet.My observation was after sunset with a not-quite dark sky, so the satellite I observed roughly followed the terminator with the sun on its left relative to its direction. Paz launched in the very early morning in California, following roughly the terminator with the Sun to its left.Does anyone know if any of the satellites did a burn or venting of propellants about 173 minutes after launch time?Edit: also, Vandenberg is 120° west. That means that in a naive calculation it would go up from antarctica at 60° east. But the Earth rotates, and 173 minutes is about 0,12 days. This means the Earth had time to rotate (360°*0,12)=43°, which means the satellite would be over (60-43)=17 degrees eastern longitude. And hey presto, I live at 18° eastern longitude and observed it fly by from southwest to northwest!Edit 2: the exact directions were difficult to assess as I stopped my car in the middle of nowhere and so I am not positive that it was west of me. But the calculations are so rough that one should not interpret them as precise in any way, just a back-of-the-napkin ballpark calculation.
Hey All!Just registered here today to figure out what this was.I also saw the event last night from flight deck of an airliner. We were over the Baltic sea and saw the object on a roughly northwest path. Very interesting sight indeed as it was quite bright.Maybe there's a trajectory map over that area anywhere? And the location of where S2 was de orbiting?
Quote from: eeergo on 02/22/2018 02:43 pmQuote from: ejb749 on 02/22/2018 02:41 pmhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BfgRX-lgIt6/ If it landed so softly, major amounts of sea water shouldn't have touched the inside of the fairing. The outside should be pretty waterproofed, so maybe they can still try to lift it out of the water as an almost-valid recovered fairing?Otherwise it has the right shape for a fishing boat Seriously. I wonder what is keeping them from designing it to be seaworthy enough to be towed back to port (or at least float long enough to be winched up onto a barge)? Seems like an easier engineering problem than a pinpoint parasail landing through random weather into a giant floating net!
Quote from: ejb749 on 02/22/2018 02:41 pmhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BfgRX-lgIt6/ If it landed so softly, major amounts of sea water shouldn't have touched the inside of the fairing. The outside should be pretty waterproofed, so maybe they can still try to lift it out of the water as an almost-valid recovered fairing?Otherwise it has the right shape for a fishing boat
https://www.instagram.com/p/BfgRX-lgIt6/
I read that this time the fairing missed by several hundred metres. What happens if it misses by 10 metres and hits the cabin?
Quote from: alexterrell on 02/23/2018 10:57 amI read that this time the fairing missed by several hundred metres. What happens if it misses by 10 metres and hits the cabin?My guess: you spend few ten k $ in repairs to boat and write fairing off. Humans inside should be sufficiently protected.
Paz launch patch
From the article written for this mission, what is the rocket core in the background of the picture mentioning the VAFB landing pad construction?It appears to have two engines? Maybe something previously discussed?-Splinter
Are they manually controlling the ship?I assumed they’d eventually end up with computer control and info from a radar to position the ship. Building up the SpaceX Robot Navy.
One of the possibilities is sailing an exact track, useful for cablelay, pipelay, survey and other tasks.
The fairing recovery vessel should be under manual control unless you really trust the parachutes and wind to land within a couple meters of a set position (which doesn't seem very likely).
Quote from: Lewis007 on 02/23/2018 11:45 amPaz launch patchTranslation: "Everything seems impossible until it is accomplished"Also, I don't remember seeing a SpaceX patch without a clover leaf before, or am I missing it?edit: better translation
Quote from: gongora on 02/23/2018 02:24 pmThe fairing recovery vessel should be under manual control unless you really trust the parachutes and wind to land within a couple meters of a set position (which doesn't seem very likely).Seem very likely. Control of the parachute would be much more agile the a ship. Ever seen the Golden Knights land on a target?
It is the left to die F9 In flight abort stage 1 that Spacex decided not to use in favor of doing the in flight abort at CCAFS.Quote from: swervin on 02/23/2018 12:59 pmFrom the article written for this mission, what is the rocket core in the background of the picture mentioning the VAFB landing pad construction?It appears to have two engines? Maybe something previously discussed?-Splinter
Quote from: fthomassy on 02/23/2018 02:48 pmQuote from: gongora on 02/23/2018 02:24 pmThe fairing recovery vessel should be under manual control unless you really trust the parachutes and wind to land within a couple meters of a set position (which doesn't seem very likely).Seem very likely. Control of the parachute would be much more agile the a ship. Ever seen the Golden Knights land on a target?And yet it missed.The boat also has a dynamic positioning system which should be able to hold position within a few meters. And huge thrusters (for its class of ship).Given that we've seen meter-scale boat positioning accuracy demonstrated on the ASDS, I'm going to go with "the parachute missed" rather than "the boat missed".Full specs on the boat's dynamic positioning system: http://www.seatranmarine.com/vessels-1/mr-steven(Elon's tweet suggests to some that the boat is manuveuring to get under the parachute; it could also be read as "the amount of cross-range compensation possible on the chute was not enough given the descent time", ie discussing rates of x/y versus rate of z, with the implication being it was easier to decrease dz than increase dx and dy.)
