Comments on: SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites; 1st stage landing fails

By: sippin_bourbon

sippin_bourbon — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 03:48:13 +0000

Okay. I get. A failsafe into the water, and if everything is green redirects to the barge.

Result is the same, tho, this morning. All was not green, so it did not steer to the barge, and stuck with the default safe course. At least, that is what is being speculated.

By: Diane Wilson

Diane Wilson — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 21:06:46 +0000

@sippin-bourbon, it’s the other way around; the normal descent path is into the water; if the entry burn and guidance are good, it will dog-leg to the landing spot. True for both land and barge landings. So if anything goes wrong, the default is “into the water.”

What’s curious (haven’t checked for a couple of hours) is that apparently the first stage did a soft landing over water.

By: sippin_bourbon

sippin_bourbon — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 19:41:31 +0000

Still no word on fairing capture.

I caught a comment (tweeter, I think) that stated that if there is an anomaly detected, the booster will steer to avoid the landing barge, to avoid the possibility of damage to the vessel.

Not sure if this is the case here, or wild speculation.

I liked the launch angle too, at the start. Appeared to be a camera at the top of the retracted tower? Or maybe one of the grounding towers.

What would be super would be a 3d feed on the next one, so I can have can watch with one of these fancy VR head sets.

By: Willi

Willi — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 18:31:49 +0000

The view of the first few seconds of liftoff was one of the best I’ve ever seen…

By: Calvin Dodge

Calvin Dodge — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 18:18:21 +0000

The speed at MECO (7700 km/hr) seemed a little high to me. I wonder if the reentry cooked some guidance hardware.

By: sippin_bourbon

sippin_bourbon — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 17:46:24 +0000

Cannot find any info on the fairings yet. I was a little disappointed.
This booster was going to have the fastest turn around at 8 weeks.

Was pulling for them, as that just sounds phenomenal. However they have shown that they are very good at learning from the failures.

By the old school standard, “did the payload make it to the correct orbit” this was still a success.

By: MDN

MDN — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 16:57:28 +0000

Any word on the fairing recovery? I watched the summary clip at their site but it made no mention.

By: Robert Zimmerman

Robert Zimmerman — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 16:20:13 +0000

In reply to geoffc. geoffc: You are correct. I have edited the post.

By: geoffc

geoffc — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 16:11:13 +0000

You forgot CRS-16, where the grid fins hydraulic systems failed. It spun up, and they continued to aim at the water, since they could not control it to divert it to land properly.

They recovered in the last second for a soft landing on the water a mile or two offshore of the landing pad.

Core 1050, Dec 2018.