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

[spacetraveler]

First off, there's a Discussion thread - this one - that can be used instead of an Update thread.  There is also a Party thread for the more frivolous posts.

Due to the level of excitement, it's natural that folks that don't post as frequently here, or people caught up in the moment, forget themselves and post material in the Update thread that would be better posted in the Discussion or Party threads.  I will admit to some twinges of annoyance myself.  However, for 99% of NFS live flight threads, they are quite orderly.  The tradition of the congratulatory post extends well back before I was a member and is rarely an issue.

How about we all take a deep breath, celebrate this amazing launch, and dial back on the nine-alarm-fire overreactions that the structure NFS follows for its live threads has to change because of this one (or even a small handful of) launches?

And if you're going to make a suggestion, may I politely suggest you do it in the discussion thread (this one) instead of the Update thread?

Agreed, major events like this always bring an influx of newbies who obviously are not as familiar with the rules here.

[webdan]

Drove over from Clearwater early in the morning and settled on 528 next to the BEARS 1 Launch area. Talked with some very nice folks (even a retired B52 pilot with his wife).

First to spot and shout out "IGNITION!!!" thanks to my friend's large binoculars.

An incredible twin landing, my first (and second!). A man behind to us muttered "Bummer, there's no sonic boom?". Sorta half turned around and said "Wait for it". And right on cue "BAMM, BA-BAMM...BAMM, BA-BAMM". Big grin from me and cheers all around.

Trying to fall asleep last night and suddenly realized I hadn't won the bingo

Thanks to SpaceX for quite the event and thanks to NSF for awesome coverage.

Now to find that bloody chip reader so I can get at my real photos...

Edit: Close up of my license plate holder

[HMXHMX]

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*.

A few of us tried. 

[Rocket Science]

Drove over from Clearwater early in the morning and settled on 528 next to the BEARS 1 Launch area. Talked with some very nice folks (even a retired B52 pilot with his wife).

First to spot and shout out "IGNITION!!!" thanks to my friend's large binoculars.

An incredible twin landing, my first (and second!). A man behind to us muttered "Bummer, there's no sonic boom?". Sorta half turned around and said "Wait for it". And right on cue "BAMM, BA-BAMM...BAMM, BA-BAMM". Big grin from me and cheers all around.

Trying to fall asleep last night and suddenly realized I hadn't won the bingo

Thanks to SpaceX for quite the event and thanks to NSF for awesome coverage.

Now to find that bloody chip reader so I can get at my real photos...

Edit: Close up of my license plate holder

If you find my wife's gold wedding ring which she lost in the water viewing STS-29 in 1989 let me know...

[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*.

A few of us tried. 

Those attempts were much appreciated at the time. Thank you.

[speedevil]

Those attempts were much appreciated at the time. Thank you.

Still are.

Could Musk have gotten to where he is without those niggling voices over the years that said it diddn't have to be this way, and what successes they achieved with the limited resources they had?

Standing on the shoulders of would-have-been-giants-but-for-the-funding.

[ppb]

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*.

A few of us tried. 

Did you work on DC-X? A real shame that couldn't have been followed through. I suppose the demise of MacDac had something to do with it.

[Hauerg]

Check:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T/Space

[envy887]

Does anyone have a list/table of first stage MECO altitude/velocity data and comparison with recovery outcome for all v1.2/Heavy missions? I have seen such a table updated yesterday (in French IIRC) that indicates that the central core for this launch was the stage with the highest velocity at MECO that have been attempted to be recovered so far - at around 2.65 km/s, comparable with those expended stages for heavy GTO F9 missions. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it back, so if you know where I can find this please post here!

Musk said the hottest recovered booster was BulgariaSat, which staged at ~8500 kph. FH staged over 1000 kph faster.

[envy887]

I think the question was other way around, could anyone else have launched this payload to this orbit. FH did it in fully reusable mode, could a Delta IV Heavy have done it?

Looks to me like they did a very inefficient launch partly to minimize stresses and partly to demo the long coast phase. Because of that I wouldn't be surprised if Delta IV medium could do it, or Falcon 9 with reusability.

Any Atlas V bigger than 411 could do it. Would still cost more though.

[Paul_G]

Listening to the Launch webcase as it is now (the edited version fixing the booster video streams) on the SpaceX Youtube channel, at 26:16 in the webcast, when 'Life on Mars?' is blaring, and the booster shutdown has been announced, can anyone else hear 'Centre Core defect on shutdown'?

Paul

[ugordan]

Listening to the Launch webcase as it is now (the edited version fixing the booster video streams) on the SpaceX Youtube channel, at 26:16 in the webcast, when 'Life on Mars?' is blaring, and the booster shutdown has been announced, can anyone else hear 'Centre Core defect on shutdown'?

'Center Core boostback burn shutdown'

You're much better off listening to the countdown net audio loop of the original (unedited) webcast than trying to hear anything through all the cheering.

[the_other_Doug]

Does anyone have a list/table of first stage MECO altitude/velocity data and comparison with recovery outcome for all v1.2/Heavy missions? I have seen such a table updated yesterday (in French IIRC) that indicates that the central core for this launch was the stage with the highest velocity at MECO that have been attempted to be recovered so far - at around 2.65 km/s, comparable with those expended stages for heavy GTO F9 missions. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it back, so if you know where I can find this please post here!

Musk said the hottest recovered booster was BulgariaSat, which staged at ~8500 kph. FH staged over 1000 kph faster.

Unfortunately, there is an apples/oranges factor at work, here.  F9 GTO launches with hot entries have no boostback/entry shaping burns, and short entry burns.  The FH center core had a fair amount more remaining prop, so it did a boostback and, I believe, a longer entry burn.

So, the FH core stage ought to have had a cooler entry, I would think, than the standard F9 GTO stage one entries, even though it was going a click a second faster at staging than those GTO entries.  That's a gestalt-level feel of it, though.

[pb2000]

From comments made after launch, and from where the trajectory ended up, I'm thinking that reality aligned to the second option...

Yes, and to tie this up there was a comment many pages ago saying that "Elon mentioned during the press conference that S2 was "...gonna do a restart, deplete it's propellant, and go to trans Mars injection.""

"Trans-Mars" is a vague descriptor.  Probes have be launched "Trans-Mars" that flew by the planet and then beyond its orbit, for example.  In this case it is extra-vague because Mars won't be anywhere nearby when this simulated mass zips past its orbital distance.

 - Ed Kyle

I'm pretty sure in the pre launch press tele-conference, Elon said they expected sufficient fuel to exceed Mars orbit.

[Paul_G]

Listening to the Launch webcase as it is now (the edited version fixing the booster video streams) on the SpaceX Youtube channel, at 26:16 in the webcast, when 'Life on Mars?' is blaring, and the booster shutdown has been announced, can anyone else hear 'Centre Core defect on shutdown'?

'Center Core boostback burn shutdown'

You're much better off listening to the countdown net audio loop of the original (unedited) webcast than trying to hear anything through all the cheering.

Thanks for clearing that up - will aim for the countdown net next time.

[ugordan]

Thanks for clearing that up - will aim for the countdown net next time.

If there *is* such a thing next time, this was a first. Personally, I prefered technical webcasts instead of just watching Hawthorne MCC the whole time.

[OxCartMark]

You're much better off listening to the countdown net audio loop of the original (unedited) webcast than trying to hear anything through all the cheering.

How do you go about listening to that?

[ugordan]

You're much better off listening to the countdown net audio loop of the original (unedited) webcast than trying to hear anything through all the cheering.

How do you go about listening to that?

Go to

and click on that briefcase-looking thing in the lower right with arrows on it and it'll allow you to switch feeds.

[rsdavis9]

My guess on center stage failure:

If musk is right that the outer 2 engines failed ignition and the center was good then how about the heating caused the tea/teb to boil in the lines. Maybe because it is a new design they didn't route the lines the same way as the sides.

[rsdavis9]

You're much better off listening to the countdown net audio loop of the original (unedited) webcast than trying to hear anything through all the cheering.

How do you go about listening to that?

Go to

and click on that briefcase-looking thing in the lower right with arrows on it and it'll allow you to switch feeds.

Was the briefcase thing new for this webcast?