An update on the Falcon 9 landing attempt
Link here.
Lots of interesting details describing the entire first stage landing attempt. Two interesting facts: 1. The barge was not seriously damaged by the landing crash and will be ready for the next attempt. 2. It appears they will try for a barge touchdown again instead of on land.
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Link here.
Lots of interesting details describing the entire first stage landing attempt. Two interesting facts: 1. The barge was not seriously damaged by the landing crash and will be ready for the next attempt. 2. It appears they will try for a barge touchdown again instead of on land.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Is it me or does that little barge look much too small for that big rocket?
The linked article, along with a number of other articles, don’t seem to be entirely explaining what went wrong with the landing. Yes, there was a valve which was responding slowly. But it landed upright, turned off its engines, and then remained upright for a few seconds before toppling over. It wasn’t that it landed with its center of mass over the fulcrum line between two feet. Rather, it tipped exactly in the direction of the rightward foot (as seen from the deck view) and, just before exploding, we get an ever so brief view of that leg which the rocket was tipping over. That leg is no longer deployed down but has retracted back up by about half of its deployment yet its pneumatic tube is still well in place. In other words, that otherwise intact leg was not functioning right for some reason. All joints seem to be working fine. If the pneumatic tube had continued working I think that the rocket wouldn’t have fallen over or exploded. So, what was the problem with that pneumatic tube. A sticky valve indirectly? Inquiring minds want to know.
My understanding is that the sticking valve caused the computer to wait for it, slowing down the reaction time of the motors. You can see in the last second or two before touch down, the engine gimbals to one side, but remains there way too long and tips the rocket to the opposite side. Just as it’s touching down the engine swings back the other way to try and correct this but it too slow in it’s response. You can see that the rocket doe not land vertically and the reason it remains upright for as long as it did was because the computer knew the rocket was not upright and was using the nose RCS jets to try and correct even after the main engine was shut down. The RCS though did not have enough power to keep the rocket upright and it toppled off of the barge.
Hope that helps.
And sorry to reply to myself, I neglected the point about the landing leg. I think if they di address it specifically at all, it won’t be found to be a defect in the leg, it is more likely the leg was damaged by how roughly the rocket came down as the legs are a fairly simple mechanical system. It’s retracted/semi deployed appearance is most likely due to a mechanical breakage between it and it’s drive cylinder during the landing. The vehicle leaning to that side would naturally fold the leg back up against the body as they are hinged at the bottom.
I would go on to speculate that this was a safety feature/design simplification, as if the legs were hinged at the top they would put stress on a section of the vehicle that isn’t intended to support that kind of stress and would also require an extending mechanism so that after they unfold they would protrude further down then the engines do. The bottom hinging eliminated both of those problems by simply having the legs fold down farther then the engines. I don’t think it alarming that this mechanism failed, the rocket did crash on the deck after all. I think it is just a simple case that the landing exceeded what the leg could withstand and it broke.
I have just watched the loopof the deck camera of the landing.
Those three jets of smoke coming off of the top of the rocket do not look like the RTS system.
They look more like venting valves letting off excess pressure from something.
They look way to weak to do any good as a stabilizing system. Not at all like small rockets.
And from what I understand the RTS system is just for stopping the rotation of the rocket during final decent. And they are on the bottom of the rocket.
The grid fins are on the top to do pretty much the same thing but at far higher speeds. They would have no effect at slower speeds.
Here, try this one: http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/video-of-falcon-9-first-stage-landing-attempt/
You can see the RCS firing and the gimbaling motion of the main motor as the stage comes show and looks like it sweeps across the barge during landing.