Did anyone see the first stage landing? The feed cut out. Were there other cameras present? I see that it did land though. Finally. Now we don't have to rely on the Russians anymore.
Cue the conspiracy theories about the satellite feed to the drone ship cutting out and coming back exactly when the first stage landed.
I think it's possible the video feed of the first stage touchdown was cut out on purpose in case it went poorly. Hopefully we'll get a replay of it at some point. Personally, I find it pretty much the coolest part of the whole process. It's also a classic case of necessity being the mother of innovation. Unlike the government, a private company like SpaceX can't afford to dump rockets into the ocean over and over again and stay in business, I'm guessing.
It was disappointing to not see the stage 1 landing, but it looked to be raining there. Rain fade fucks with sat signals all the time, especially if you're trying to punch through thick clouds.
Actually, the reason the Apollo rockets weren't re-usable was that they had to meet the deadline that had been set for the first landing. They were working on things to be able to re-use the stages, the engines were even designed to be reusable, but there simply wasn't time enough to do all that and still have a man on the moon by 69. And if you launch enough rockets in a year, the costs drop dramatically, even if they are disposable. Musk, BTW, has read that paper and is aiming for even lower costs thanks to reusing his rockets.
On Twitter, someone said that the feed cutting out is a common occurrence and is due to the fact that the ship is being subjected to the thrust of the stages engines as it comes down (which they pegged at 2 million pounds, though this seems a bit high), so it shakes and causes them to lose signal lock. Certainly sounds plausible to me.
Yeah. But it's a barge right? So why not have a camera on the ship that will tow the barge film the landing?
I was watching it live on NASA TV and the feed cut out several times (both on board the Dragon and exterior shots). Shitty that it cut out right when the stage one landed, but only conspiracy nuts are going to think it was "planned".
This video explains why the SpaceX droneship live feed constantly cuts out: Warning: the narrator's voice may put you to sleep.
Wow. No kidding about the narrator. Dan Levitan-like. And it's clearly a powered barge, so no towing vessel.
No, it's towed. The tug then backs well away from the drone ship so the crew isn't anywhere around if something goes wrong.
I think you're mistaking spacex with some other company. Elon celebrates the ruds along with the soft landings. On the business model, of course they can afford to dump rockets just like every other company in the biz. The companies just won't be able to compete until they have their own reusable boosters.
I seem to remember Musk saying that the economics of reusing rockets are so huuuuge that they don't have to get anywhere near 100% recovery to make their whole operation much more cost efficient.. I don't remember what the figure was that they need to hit (or even if he gave it), but they seem to be getting better at it. Does anyone remember that or know the realistic percentage of recoveries they need to hit?
The goal for the current models of Falcon 9 first stages (referred to as Block 5) is for each to fly up to 10 launches. Currently their record for re-use is five launches. Certain types of launch like their crewed launches currently require a new booster to be used. They also do offer an expendable mode launch for heavier payloads, which is intended to use boosters nearing the end of their lifetime. There's a good list of all the boosters and what they've done on this Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters
