SpaceX FH : Falcon Heavy Demo : Feb 6, 2018 : Discussion Thread 2

[Johnnyhinbos]

I had wondered if it was the ejected ROSA, which I believe de-orbited on the 6th. However I think the Roadster is too high to have that show up. I had been wondering about this object since launch too...[/size]

That's the front camera mount.  Take a look at some of the pre-launch pics of the roadster on the payload adaptor and you'll see it.

Not that ... look to the right.

Yes, it's the camera mount. You can see it here too.

No, there's a dark streak down in the atmosphere.  If you go back and look at the video footage you can't miss it.   It looks a lot like a volcanic streak. 

attachment edit :

[TripD]

No, there's a dark streak down in the atmosphere.  If you go back and look at the video footage you can't miss it.   It looks a lot like a volcanic streak. 

The first thing I noticed is that this object is not occluded by the clouds.  This makes me think that this might be a small object that fell off of the payload and is slightly out of focus.

[Wolfram66]

Miles O'Brien report 

Miles O'Brien has come along way from just running the transporter on the USS Enterprise 1701-D

[LouScheffer]

The MECO they picked for this mission (I suspect) was another of their test objectives - to show that FH, fully recoverable, can fly any mission the F9 can fly expendable (such as Inmarsat and Intelsat), even with a partial boostback and the ASDS relatively close to shore. 

How much better can SpaceX do?  By eliminating the center core boostback and positioning the ASDS farther out, they can do better yet.   Boostback on this mission appeared to last 48 seconds, with 3 engines.  If you skipped it, that would give 16 more seconds of booster power.   Assuming you can use 12 seconds of this to go faster at MECO (and the other 4 seconds worth to slow down the booster, which is about 1/4 the mass after the second stage separates), and the stage is accelerating about 5G at cutoff, that's 600 m/s more at MECO, while still recovering all boosters.  So I suspect they can stage in the 3300 m/s range, with the droneship far out at sea, and recover all boosters with no hotter entry than today.

The ASDS position is a knob that SpaceX can adjust to change FH performance.   If the ASDS is right off the coast, they can recover stuff that a Falcon 9 could lift, but not with recovery, perhaps 5400 kg.   By about 300 km, where they were this time, they can put 6700 kg into GTO.  By moving the ASDS all the way out, the could get about 600 m/s more, which would let them put about a 10,700 kg satellite into GTO.  So the heavier the satellite, the further out the ASDS, and the longer it takes to get on station and bring the booster back.

[martin_nv]

I took, as I guess we all did, a few screen grabs of Starman last night, but this one has a rather unusual object visible through the windshield. Any suggestions?

I was wondering this too. It looks to me like it's on the surface, not something floating in space. The long mark is visible at approx. 19:29 of this version of the Starman video:

 

[3Davideo]

I took, as I guess we all did, a few screen grabs of Starman last night, but this one has a rather unusual object visible through the windshield. Any suggestions?

Looks like an island mass in the ocean, but can't identify it without knowing where the vehicle was at that point.

iirc it was north and a bit east of Australia.  Mount Mayon on Luzon erupted recently, but that was almost a month ago.  I don't know if it's still that active.

I saw that discussed (somewhere, don't remember exactly where) that it was probably the island of New Caledonia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Caledonia

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Apparently the aphelion of the final orbit of this car as reported by Musk yesterday was incorrect (the C3 value is correct though):

It looks like the car isn't going all the way to the asteroid belt after all....

In an email to astronomers asking for orbital data, the final heliocentric orbit of the Roadster was reported to be:

Jonathan McDowell
@planet4589

Corrected orbital data for the Roadster: 0.99 x 1.71 AU x 1.1 deg
C3 = 12.0, passes orbit of Mars Jul 2018, aphelion November

The parameters can be found in the JPL Horizons system later.

[lcs]

Last pic of Starman in Roadster on its journey to Mars orbit and then the Asteroid Belt

This must be the morning terminator of the Earth, since the TMI burn took place on the evening terminator.  So the photo is actually 'upside down' (south pole at top). 

[clongton]

Space X has acheived great successes and have revolutionised spaceflight. It's sad that nobody has acted on the possibilities  within the last *FIFTY YEARS*.

A few of us tried. 

The new people don't know us. Gotta give them time to read our histories.

[EngrDavid]

The MECO they picked for this mission (I suspect) was another of their test objectives - to show that FH, fully recoverable, can fly any mission the F9 can fly expendable (such as Inmarsat and Intelsat), even with a partial boostback and the ASDS relatively close to shore. 

How much better can SpaceX do?  By eliminating the center core boostback and positioning the ASDS farther out, they can do better yet.   Boostback on this mission appeared to last 48 seconds, with 3 engines.  If you skipped it, that would give 16 more seconds of booster power.   Assuming you can use 12 seconds of this to go faster at MECO (and the other 4 seconds worth to slow down the booster, which is about 1/4 the mass after the second stage separates), and the stage is accelerating about 5G at cutoff, that's 600 m/s more at MECO, while still recovering all boosters.  So I suspect they can stage in the 3300 m/s range, with the droneship far out at sea, and recover all boosters with no hotter entry than today.

The ASDS position is a knob that SpaceX can adjust to change FH performance.   If the ASDS is right off the coast, they can recover stuff that a Falcon 9 could lift, but not with recovery, perhaps 5400 kg.   By about 300 km, where they were this time, they can put 6700 kg into GTO.  By moving the ASDS all the way out, the could get about 600 m/s more, which would let them put about a 10,700 kg satellite into GTO.  So the heavier the satellite, the further out the ASDS, and the longer it takes to get on station and bring the booster back.

Based on this analysis, does this mean that F9H can approach the performance of Arianne in launching 2 sats to GTO and still be reusable?

[ciscosdad]

How well do they know the trajectory?
Is there some indication of how close it comes to Mars and How close is the next Earth encounter?


I reckon this object will generate interest for some time to come.

[LouScheffer]

The ASDS position is a knob that SpaceX can adjust to change FH performance.   If the ASDS is right off the coast, they can recover stuff that a Falcon 9 could lift, but not with recovery, perhaps 5400 kg.   By about 300 km, where they were this time, they can put 6700 kg into GTO.  By moving the ASDS all the way out, the could get about 600 m/s more, which would let them put about a 10,700 kg satellite into GTO.  So the heavier the satellite, the further out the ASDS, and the longer it takes to get on station and bring the booster back.

Based on this analysis, does this mean that F9H can approach the performance of Arianne in launching 2 sats to GTO and still be reusable?

Looks like if SpaceX uses block 5, and pushes the ASDS all the way out, they could get close to Ariane 5 in terms of in mass to GTO while remaining re-usable.   At these higher masses, though, Ariane will give a better orbit, since at max mass FH can only do minimal inclination reduction (leaving GEO-1800), where Ariane starts at only 7^o, and can do GEO-1500. For lower masses, perhaps 8 tonnes, FH can do inclination reduction on injection, or super-synchronous, or both, and get an orbit almost equivalent in delta-V to what Ariane can offer.

[rockets4life97]

Based on this analysis, does this mean that F9H can approach the performance of Arianne in launching 2 sats to GTO and still be reusable?

Looks like if SpaceX uses block 5, and pushes the ASDS all the way out, they could get close to Ariane 5 in terms of in mass to GTO while remaining re-usable.   At these higher masses, though, Ariane will give a better orbit, since at max mass FH can only do minimal inclination reduction (leaving GEO-1800), where Ariane starts at only 7^o, and can do GEO-1500. For lower masses, perhaps 8 tonnes, FH can do inclination reduction on injection, or super-synchronous, or both, and get an orbit almost equivalent in delta-V to what Ariane can offer.

How much does an Ariane 5 cost?

[scdavis]

The new people don't know us. Gotta give them time to read our histories.

Hah, I'll bite! I've been lurking for a long time and posting just a bit recently. Chuck, I'm able to google a bit about your history, that you worked on propulsion for Atlas and Titan (cool!) since you're kind enough to say a bit about yourself in your tag line. And thanks for posting often so we can learn from you! But it feels rude to just ask bluntly "who is Jim" and "who is SpaceGhost" and I can't imagine everyone wants a 1000 private messages from newbies. We could search the forums by user but some of you have 10k messages or more.

So... uh... how do we newbies get to know you guys? Really asking!

-- Scott Davis (embedded software engineer, servo controls, robotics, etc. ... and recently renewed love for aerospace)

[MATTBLAK]

Jim's recent post about 'Challenger' gives some good background on him. If he has no objections; I'll paste that thread here -

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=44793.msg1778987#msg1778987

[macpacheco]

The MECO they picked for this mission (I suspect) was another of their test objectives - to show that FH, fully recoverable, can fly any mission the F9 can fly expendable (such as Inmarsat and Intelsat), even with a partial boostback and the ASDS relatively close to shore. 

How much better can SpaceX do?  By eliminating the center core boostback and positioning the ASDS farther out, they can do better yet.   Boostback on this mission appeared to last 48 seconds, with 3 engines.  If you skipped it, that would give 16 more seconds of booster power.   Assuming you can use 12 seconds of this to go faster at MECO (and the other 4 seconds worth to slow down the booster, which is about 1/4 the mass after the second stage separates), and the stage is accelerating about 5G at cutoff, that's 600 m/s more at MECO, while still recovering all boosters.  So I suspect they can stage in the 3300 m/s range, with the droneship far out at sea, and recover all boosters with no hotter entry than today.

The ASDS position is a knob that SpaceX can adjust to change FH performance.   If the ASDS is right off the coast, they can recover stuff that a Falcon 9 could lift, but not with recovery, perhaps 5400 kg.   By about 300 km, where they were this time, they can put 6700 kg into GTO.  By moving the ASDS all the way out, the could get about 600 m/s more, which would let them put about a 10,700 kg satellite into GTO.  So the heavier the satellite, the further out the ASDS, and the longer it takes to get on station and bring the booster back.

Based on this analysis, does this mean that F9H can approach the performance of Arianne in launching 2 sats to GTO and still be reusable?

Why would you do that ? If you got reuse, you launch each satellite individually, either on Block V F9 with ASDS landing or FH if you actually need more performance.
This launch was kneecapped in so many ways. Not Block V, thrust limits, half boost back for the center core.
The ultimate show would be having 3 ASDS platforms to catch all 3 boosters on parabolic trajectories with full Block V performance.
Likely enough to launch a roadster to Saturn or 2x payload roadster to TMI.

There are still many unknowns. This mission demonstrated that the whole Falcon Heavy concept is viable, but not how far it can be pushed.
Look for gradual increase in performance envelope, starting with Arabsat, then STP-2, and so forth.

Of course since SpaceX itself doesn't want to handle payload aggregation, its very possible we'll see somebody stepping in and aggregating, but mostly on lighter payloads (like 8 or 9 tons combined).
US$ 90 million apparently is only for launches where all 3 cores can RTLS. side RTLS+core way out ASDS costs more. 3 core ASDS much more. It might be cheaper to only do 3xRTLS unless you really need the performance that even Ariane couldn't handle.

[CameronD]

Yes, it's the camera mount. You can see it here too.

Love the "Don't Panic!" on the center console display.  Links back to the front cover of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"..  Very cool of them to think of that! 

[Johnnyhinbos]

And photoshop’d. In the very least the driver side camera bracket was airbrushed out. Wished they just left it real. Now I look at it and wonder just how touched up it is...

[WindyCity]

Just curious if anybody knows what data from the center core would have been gathered had the booster not crashed. I assume that on-board sensors sent back loads of information via telemetry. What differences are there between what was likely obtained by signal transmission and the physical data that was lost? If answering this question doesn't tire you out, would you have an opinion about how important that loss is. Thanks.

[Phil Stooke]

Not just in shadow?  Do you know it was deliberately removed?  Seems pointless, so I would question it.