SpaceX sticks the landing perfectly!

[jyoung8607]

Ouch, and it just blew up, maybe 10 minutes after landing.

-Uwe-

DOESN'T MATTER, LANDED ROCKET

 

[jyoung8607]

YES the "Adama Maneuver" is now the semi official SpaceX name for the landing sequence, love it!

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1367350152080461827

 

[Uwe]

the "Adama Maneuver" is now the semi official SpaceX name for the landing sequence

Are they working on FTL jumps too? And has Elon secured a supply of Tylium?

-Uwe-

 

[jyoung8607]

Are they working on FTL jumps too? And has Elon secured a supply of Tylium?

-Uwe-

FTL will take a while, but they may have to start working on mag catapults. The governments of Earth will not be happy when Elon declares independence of his Dogecoin-backed Mars colony, and he's going to need mass drivers along with a few squadrons of Vipers for combat air patrol.

 

[dieseldub]

Holy crap, now there's a show I haven't thought about in a minute. That 'new' version of BSG was pretty entertaining to watch.

As for the SpaceX deal... that was absolutely surreal to watch. The maneuvers it did looked almost like CGI it was so wild. Hugely impressive the out of the box moonshots Musk directs his people to try and achieve. Truly.

 

[Uwe]

I missed this a couple of days ago, but it's very cool. There was no signal from the booster's on-board cameras during ascent, but (for the first time?) they had signal during the entire landing burn, right down to touch-down. The whole video is well over an hour long, but I think I've got it queued up at the right place here if you just click Play.

-Uwe-

 

[vreihen]

NASA and SpaceX just cleared Crew-2 for launch on (NET) 4/22. They are re-using the Dragon capsule "Endeavour" from Demo-2, and the flight-proven booster from Crew-1.

Speaking of Crew-1, they will tentatively splash down in their "Resilience" capsule on 4/28 somewhere off the coast of Florida, after a week of overlap with Crew-2. I wonder if they are going to handle the pleasure boat armada any better this time?????

 

[vreihen]

More news from NASA today. SpaceX was awarded the $2.9 Billion Artemis lunar lander contract! Musk bid a Starship-based lander, so let's keep an eye on Boca Chica.....

 

[Uwe]

SpaceX was awarded the $2.9 Billion Artemis lunar lander contract! Musk bid a Starship-based lander,

I guess NASA has faith that SpaceX will learn to land Starships in one piece!

-Uwe-

 

[Uwe]

People look at videos of the SpaceX Starship flying and attempting to land without realizing just how big it is. So someone made this picture to scale to put it in perspective:

The Starship is no model rocket, boys and girls!

-Uwe-

 

[vreihen]

FYI, Crew-2 is now scheduled for 5:49 AM EDT tomorrow morning. Should be an interesting pre-sunrise spectacle from the Space Coast.....

 

[vreihen]

While not SpaceX, it seems like an appropriate place to say RIP to Michael Collins...the only human who was NOT watching the video of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon...because Apollo 11 capsule he was orbiting the moon in didn't have a TV screen.....

 

[Uwe]

Today, Starship SN 15 "Stuck the Landing!"

There was a low cloud layer, and the video downlink froze often, but they did it.

There was a small fire at the base of the rocket for a while, but as of this writing, they look to have gotten it fully de-tanked without RUD.

My untrained eyes say they did the flip at slightly higher altitude than on previous attempts, and kept two engines lit during the whole landing.

-Uwe-

 

[Uwe]

Yesterday's Falcon 9 Starlink launch has some really spectactular views from the on-board cameras starting about 1 minute into the flight:

They stuck that landing too, but that's more-or-less expected from a Falcon 9 booster these days.

-Uwe-

 

[vreihen]

There was a small fire at the base of the rocket for a while, but as of this writing, they look to have gotten it fully de-tanked without RUD.

My $0.02 is that they need to lose the "Buck Rogers" skirting around the engines, and consider longer legs with a wider stance. The skirting and short legs provide a place for unburned fuel vapor to collect, and trap the heat/flames bouncing up from the landing pad right before touchdown. It also looked like the engine gimbals got a serious workout right before touchdown.

Since there was no RUD or "crater in the right place" this time, I'd call SN15 a success.....

 

[DV52]

My $0.02 is that they need to lose the "Buck Rogers" skirting around the engines, and consider longer legs with a wider stance. The skirting and short legs provide a place for unburned fuel vapor to collect, and trap the heat/flames bouncing up from the landing pad right before touchdown. It also looked like the engine gimbals got a serious workout right before touchdown.

Since there was no RUD or "crater in the right place" this time, I'd call SN15 a success.....

@vreihen : I agree with that losing the "Buck Rogers" skirting might help - but notwithstanding the latest Starship success, I still think that the landing experience of SpaceX passengers is likely to be the same as "Major Kong" !!

I suggest that you don't book a ticket on the first commercial flight, just yet!!

Don

 

[Uwe]

I've commented on the scale of Starship a few posts back. I just came across this pic of it being stacked on top of the SuperHeavy booster. The workers really put it in perspective:

Holy grid fins, Batman!

-Uwe-

 

[Uwe]

This short clip randomly appeared in my YT feed. I believe the footage is from June 30th of this year:

-Uwe-

 

[vreihen]

Firefly Alpha's first ever launch attempt had an anomaly that triggered the FTS on Thursday evening.

Listening to the live stream, it sounds like someone was calling for an abort on the controller voice net at T-4 by saying the word "abort" one time. Right before they transferred to internal rocket control at T-30, the net controller spelled out that the post-transition abort request was "abort, abort, abort." Lends credibility to Scott Manley's theory that they were letting it fly to a safe place for a manual FTS, and it went out of control near Max-Q and triggered the automatic FTS.....

.

 

[vreihen]

https://www.businessinsider.com/spa...an-malfunctioned-elon-musk-crew-dragon-2021-9