SpaceX F9 : Starlink 5 (v1.0 L4) : Feb. 17, 2020 : Master Thread

[bjornl]

I'm starting to feel 2017 was a fluke for landing successes. 2016 had 4 failures, 2018 had 2, 2019 had 1 and 2020 has had 1 so far. I guess landings just really are hard, and 2018/19 were not flukes, they were the norm.

2016 had only 3 _landing_ failures, and that was when they were still getting the hang of landing on drone ships. One of the failures of 2018 was the first time a FH center core tried to land, so should that really count? In the same way, the only failue of 2019 was the very hot landing of the STP-2 center core, which really was not expected to survive. CRS-16 and this one are really the only ones you could comfortably expect to succeed that did not.

[lonestriker]

It's issues like this missed landing that really drives home the point that what SpaceX has been doing these past few years has been phenomenally hard.  Even though they make it look easy, small changes to the system whether it's the flight profile, or too hot a reentry, single-points-of-failure on grid fin actuators, or missing something obvious afterward (not enough hydraulic fluid) can lead to missing the boat by 25 yards.  It's also why I think Blue's attempts at NG booster landing will take time to iron out and "perfect".  Quotes around that word since we've all kind of assumed that SpaceX had gotten there already with what would have been their 50th successful landing.

From the water vapor and small splash seen on camera, the booster definitely seemed to have a gentle landing and fall like the previous CRS water landing.  It'll be really interesting to see what the cause of this landing miss is.  My bet is on software/navigation and not necessarily hardware failure.

[quagmire]

It would be interesting to find out why it missed the drone ship. We have to remember though the booster/core always aims for the water before dog legging to the drone ship or LZ-1/LZ-2. Hardware could have been fine, but maybe booster velocity was too hot where damage to OCISLY could occur from impact and it decided to abort or any other criteria that needed to be met for that dog leg to occur wasn't met. Remember the last FH launch, the center core was seen aborting away from the drone ship.

I think it is silly to speculate that there was a hardware failure every time we see ice fall off the booster, sparks coming from the engine, etc.

[freddo411]

From the overall Starlink campaign perspective, how much money does this failed landing cost Spacex? $30m booster, 4th flight.

Assuming a $10m refurbishment cost, is the loss equivalent to the $20m difference between refurbishment and new booster construction? Or, if that new booster eventually flies 5 times, then do you spread that $20m over 5 flights, meaning only $4m loss to SpaceX from this missed landing?

Or do you look at depreciated value and say this was a $30m booster, intended to depreciate by 10% per flight over 10 flights, so it was 40% depreciated, meaning still worth $18m?

Gets confusing after a while, to me at least.

I'm pretty sure it's just a round number guess, but why assume 10 Million for a refurb?    That's something like 50 workers for a whole year.   I'm pretty sure that's above the actual number of workers used, and furthermore it gets done in 60 days.   

I would guess that a rough cost estimate for a single booster recovery and refurb would be in the very low millions when flying 20 flights a year.

[bjornl]

This side-by side comparison shows the difference in profile between the last two Starlink launches - most obvious from +- 10 km up - and also highlights how much they read from script in the webcast :-D

http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/5e4ad79dab043-starlink-side-by-side.php

[joek]

I'm starting to feel 2017 was a fluke for landing successes. 2016 had 4 failures, 2018 had 2, 2019 had 1 and 2020 has had 1 so far. I guess landings just really are hard, and 2018/19 were not flukes, they were the norm. Which sucks cause 2017 was an awesome year of no loss of payload or booster, reused boosters 5 times for the first time and FH was on the pad.

This has me worried about SS. Any human rated SS has to be a lot more reliable.

I expect they are are squeezing every bit of margin for some of these flights.  They are also into significant additional relights for refurbished boosters.  Also expect they are still pushing the envelope and continue to learn--so expect to see failures as they continue to push.

Starship is a very different animal; based on everything we have seen has more margin and designed from day 1 to meet requirements that have been a work-in-progress for F9.

[capoman]

It was obvious that SpaceX was experimenting with a higher energy profile and test the limits. This could have been a similar failure as the FH center core, where the thrust structure got too hot, but at this point it’s all speculation.

That being said, this is not a big loss for SpaceX. They have some new cores in the pipeline that will be available for reuse in the near future, as manned NASA flights and some military launches require new hardware, and might be the reason SpaceX was willing to experiment with a different Starlink launch profile to get satellites into orbit.

[jebbo]

I wonder if the new deployment directly to an elliptical orbit is to minimise the visibility of the "train" before the satellites are in their final orbits?

--- Tony

[Lars-J]

That being said, this is not a big loss for SpaceX. They have some new cores in the pipeline that will be available for reuse in the near future, as manned NASA flights and some military launches require new hardware, and might be the reason SpaceX was willing to experiment with a different Starlink launch profile to get satellites into orbit.

Keep in mind this was the 4th reuse... It might never have flown again anyway. If it was lost on its first flight, that would be more of a loss.

[anof]

It was obvious that SpaceX was experimenting with a higher energy profile and test the limits. This could have been a similar failure as the FH center core, where the thrust structure got too hot, but at this point it’s all speculation.

That being said, this is not a big loss for SpaceX. They have some new cores in the pipeline that will be available for reuse in the near future, as manned NASA flights and some military launches require new hardware, and might be the reason SpaceX was willing to experiment with a different Starlink launch profile to get satellites into orbit.

Hopefully the Air Force/Space Force will allow the next GPS booster to be recovered.

[flexbuffchest]

I'm starting to feel 2017 was a fluke for landing successes. 2016 had 4 failures, 2018 had 2, 2019 had 1 and 2020 has had 1 so far. I guess landings just really are hard, and 2018/19 were not flukes, they were the norm. Which sucks cause 2017 was an awesome year of no loss of payload or booster, reused boosters 5 times for the first time and FH was on the pad.

This has me worried about SS. Any human rated SS has to be a lot more reliable.

Elon has said that F9 landings are not a primary mission and do not have a lot of system redundancy. For SS, landing will be mission critical so there will be more redundancy built in.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1070388894875545600

Pump is single string. Some landing systems are not redundant, as landing is considered ground safety critical, but not mission critical. Given this event, we will likely add a backup pump & lines.

Sweet, thanks for that. Good to know they are taking reliability way more seriously for the SS vs. F9.  Even with just a few landing failures a year with Falcon9/Heavy (even if the majority of them are from "risky" missions)  it just gives me pause since the SS is supposed to fly many, many times and obviously with humans.

I've learned to trust SpaceX to get something done if they say they can even though the majority of the time it takes longer then they initially think.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

More launch photos from SpaceX

[mlindner]

A friend of mine was on ops for this launch, so that was cool hearing him. Not going to mention which position, so as to avoid identifying someone specifically.

[DatUser14]

what exactly was the insertion orbit? lowest number I saw after MECO was 219km or thereabouts.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Beautiful

https://twitter.com/johnkrausphotos/status/1229486731180871680

Here’s a closeup look at the launch of the fifth Starlink mission, launched from Cape Canaveral atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 10:05am this morning.

[HVM]

also
https://twitter.com/johnkrausphotos/status/1229474446454525954

Fairing halves were not caught during today’s Starlink mission.

[wannamoonbase]

also
https://twitter.com/johnkrausphotos/status/1229474446454525954

Fairing halves were not caught during today’s Starlink mission.

Starting to seem like catching these things will not be a reliable step but that they will be fishing them out of the water a lot.

[mandrewa]

From the overall Starlink campaign perspective, how much money does this failed landing cost Spacex? $30m booster, 4th flight.

Assuming a $10m refurbishment cost, is the loss equivalent to the $20m difference between refurbishment and new booster construction? Or, if that new booster eventually flies 5 times, then do you spread that $20m over 5 flights, meaning only $4m loss to SpaceX from this missed landing?

Or do you look at depreciated value and say this was a $30m booster, intended to depreciate by 10% per flight over 10 flights, so it was 40% depreciated, meaning still worth $18m?

Gets confusing after a while, to me at least.

Based on what Elon Musk was saying two years ago, and I'll skip my reasoning and evidence, I inferred at that time that the first stage of the Falcon 9 costs $36 million to build.  Now I would imagine that it costs less than that to build today, so this is a likely an overestimate of the current cost.

We have little idea what it costs to inspect and refurbish a first stage but Elon Musk has said it costs very little.  In fact he has more or less said they are flying some of these stages without any refurbishment and thus only inspection.  I will guess that this translates to about $2 million to inspect and repair per flight.

So if a first stage is going to be good for 10 flights then that's $36 million for the original build plus $18 million for 9 inspections, which would mean that per flight the first stage costs $5.4 million.  If that is case then losing it on the fourth flight means a loss $21.6 million of expected future value.

Alternatively we can see the 10 flights as a goal is yet to be demonstrated.  This loss then can be taken either as an incentive to modify the stage to improve stage recovery or as part of demonstrating that the first stage is good only for four or five flights.  If that were the case that would mean the first stage will end up costing $8.8 million per flight.

[marsbase]

Starting to seem like catching these things will not be a reliable step but that they will be fishing them out of the water a lot.

Elon is not going to give up easily.  Not only are the fairings valuable but he wants to use the same technique to eventually catch Dragon capsules so they can also be re-used.

[northenarc]

 They should develop an AI algorithm to drive the fairing catch boats, I think its too many variables to instinctively predict. Maybe a crazy idea.