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

[MATTBLAK]

Yes, a Delta IV-H should be able to do it. But even though the Tesla Roadster masses less than 1.4 tons; I have no idea what the pedestal it was mounted to weighed, or other payloads aboard the rocket.

[M.E.T.]

Is there any indication yet whether the failure to restart two of the centre core engines is linked to something inherent to the Falcon Heavy mission architecture? Such as higher entry velocity increasing the stresses experienced by the engines or something else unique to Falcon Heavy missions?

It seems strange that such a failure would be experienced now, but not on any of the last 20-odd F9 missions where landings were attempted.

[Ben the Space Brit]

I'm sure that there will be a full investigation onto the central core's TEA/TEB shortage and a root cause will be found. However, I doubt that it will be something inherent in the Block 5 core's design or this mission's flight plan.

[kevinof]

I suspect it's to do with the hot entry as it only impacted the centre core (I'm assuming a lot here). Do we know if it was TEA/TEB or a fuel shortage? doe's the fuel flow equally to all engines or would be the centre engine tend to get priority given it's location?

[Tonioroffo]

I was wondering how much time Spaceman will need to complete an orbit?

[justineet]

The Tesla is permanently connected to the second stage, yes? No separation of it?

Nothing suggests it would separate, which serves no purpose. No chance to see the car slowly floats away, and after all it is not a spacecraft.

I thought they were going to separate it for demonstration of a deep space mission for US military national security program.

[kevinof]

Not the separation. It was the long coast and 3rd relight was what they were looking for.

The Tesla is permanently connected to the second stage, yes? No separation of it?

Nothing suggests it would separate, which serves no purpose. No chance to see the car slowly floats away, and after all it is not a spacecraft.

I thought they were going to separate it for demonstration of a deep space mission for US military national security program.

[macpacheco]

I was wondering how much time Spaceman will need to complete an orbit?

Lookup a few pages back, I think it was more than 18 months, less than 24.

[tea monster]

Elon Musk is a human Crazy Eddie.

Not to put down recent acheivements, but Bono and others had ideas for making rockets reuseable back in the 60s. Even the first concepts for Collier's magazine in the 50s had a booster that would be recovered for later use.

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*.

[catdlr]

Falcon Heavy Launch Dash Cam, Vibrates entire car!

[Harry Young]

Does anyone have the solar orbital parameters? I'd like to feed this to a simulator and see where it might go in the future

[Ben the Space Brit]

According to someone on the update thread, the orbit is fairly stable but, in the long term, will increasingly be perturbed by Jupiter.

[Dao Angkan]

The aphelion of "Starman" takes it past the perihelion of Ceres.

[justineet]

Not the separation. It was the long coast and 3rd relight was what they were looking for.

The Tesla is permanently connected to the second stage, yes? No separation of it?

Nothing suggests it would separate, which serves no purpose. No chance to see the car slowly floats away, and after all it is not a spacecraft.

I thought they were going to separate it for demonstration of a deep space mission for US military national security program.

They were not very clear about the end of mission. Even Elon in his post launch press conference was talking about ejection into the final orbit. I guess he was referring to the whole thing including the stage 2. I assumed they would try to eject/separate the car to prove all their hardware survived the long coast.

[Archibald]

More seriously, does anybody remember Interstellar, and Murph teacher that felt that Apollo had been a 100 billion dollar d--k showing contest with the Soviets to ruin them - and a typical 20th century waste of money and resource ?
Today I'm thinking about that scene, and the morale of it. If Murph teacher ever exists, she is probably barely born, but will probably heard about today's launch. Then you can imagine her feelings about it, if she already thought Apollo was a colossal waste of money, then THIS happened...

(flash forward to the Interstellar (bleak)  timeline, let's say, 2060)

"rockets are a waste of money ! And you know it, M. Cooper, remember when a billionaire I can't remember the name got into an insane vanity project and spent 150 million dollars in rockets to send his own car to Mars just to impress people" poor girl.

More generally: when I was a teen, I got my great fireworks madness that lasted two years. With my elder sister, we blew everything standing: notably my mother's flowers, and also an unfortunate cockroach we placed in a matchbox with fireworks, and blew the hell of it.
At some point I come with an ever grandiose project: I was going to strap a load of fireworks on the back of a playmobil or a barbie, get the unfortunate doll a parachute, and send the thing 100 ft high. That was a boy dream of grandeur.
Well, please forgive me, but what Musk did today is nothing but an upscale variant of that boyish dream. "I strapped my car to a rocket, and send it to Mars. Just because I'm Musk, and just because, boy, it is so funny."

We are really living through strange times, I told yah.

P.S: I respectfully promise to move my last two posts to a party thread if one exists somewhere.

cheers !

[mattrog]

Sorry if its been posted already - closest video that i have seen of the landing - with astonishing sound !!

[kevinof]

great video.

Sorry if its been posted already - closest video that i have seen of the landing - with astonishing sound !!

[LouScheffer]

Followup here from Update thread, since it's more of a discussion:

From Musk:

0.98 x 2.61 AU solar orbit with C3 (Earth) = 12.0 km^2/s^2

It seems that the solar orbit parameters and the C3 value reported above don't match:

So @elonmusk says aphelion is 2.61AU and C3 = 12, I can't make those numbers agree. C3=12 only gets me to 1.7 AU, I need C3=34 to get the orbit he reports... any of you other orbital mechanics out there have better luck?

https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/961103125569564672

This seems odd to me, too.  C3 is Vinf^2.   From the Wikipedia page on Hohmann transfers, to get to Mars apogee you need to add 2.9 km/sec to earth's orbital speed, or C3 = 8.4 km^2/sec^2.  But to get to Jupiter, you need to add 8.8 km/sec, for a C3 of 77.  Given to orbit goes way past Mars,  12 seems suspiciously small.

[missinglink]

Sorry if its been posted already - closest video that i have seen of the landing - with astonishing sound !!

Awesome, thanks for posting. Amazing that air turbulence from the booster coming down first did not interfere with the smooth landing of its companion.

Also, let me re-ask a question that was removed from the Updates thread. When Elon Musk said that they "tried to cancel three times" the Falcon Heavy, who or what persuaded them to carry on nonetheless?

[sanman]

Sorry if its been posted already - closest video that i have seen of the landing - with astonishing sound !!

I think this other one I found is even closer still - feel free to compare the two:



This one is the closest I've seen yet.
(They'd better put up good security at the Cape, or someone's going to try to get a little too close eventually)