Posted on 04/19/2015 2:52:20 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Billionaire biz baron Elon Musk has revealed a few more details about why SpaceX's latest attempt to land a rocket in one piece at sea had failed.
The Register reported on the drama as it unfolded on Tuesday. Once again, Falcon 9 successfully launched the capsule payload to 'nauts on the International Space Station, only for the rocket to hit the "just read the instructions" deck hard on its shaky return to Earth.
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
SpaceX is the NASCAR of Space launch companies.
The whole deal is an embedded systems problem.
Believe me. This is a complicated problem...when they work it out it will shave mucho $$$ from the cost of a space launch.
It is ROCKET SCIENCE after all....
If I may translate:
It descended too fast because a sticky throttle valve limited the thrust required to slow the descent sufficient for the horizontal thrusters to maintain a vertical attitude and a soft landing.
If he’s so rich, why ain’t he smart?
;-)
Goddard knew that. Con Braun knew that.
They spent all this dough and just now realize.. Oops.
I’m sure Musk will have no problem sucking, er, up to Obama for more handouts in order to fix it.
A real capitalist would risk his own money with investor backing instead of shoving the risk onto the taxpayers...
Anyway, it was amazing to watch the difficulties of solving so many of these problems. One rationale for building the X-30 was that, like Obamacare, to know how to test it we had to build it. There were no wind tunnels for Mach 15-20, so really except for computer models, the only way they could get real data was to build stuff and test it.
Calling that a FAIL is ridiculous, makes the author look ignorant.
Another company was trying rotor blades, seems like its worth a try
I won’t try to explain the physics of it but it actually makes more sense to me to hang the rocket from its main propulsion source.
I look at it as hanging a baseball bat from the top as opposed to trying to balance it at the bottom. The rotors idea would follow that principle.
I think he came incredibly close to pulling it off, and I would bet that he will do it in the next couple of tries.
The transient response of the rocket guidance system looked very good to me. Remarkably good.
The software that controls that rocket has to bring the solutions of five or six differential equations all to zero at exactly the same instant in time. Being off by even a tiny fraction on any one of them results in failure. Even the slightest hang-up in any mechanical part will probably be unrecoverable.
Didn’t Edison say something like “I didn’t fail 10000 times, I found 10000 ways that didn’t work”?
Do you honestly think that NASA or some other government agency could do it cheaper, better, or faster than SpaceX can? Even with the federal funding?
It is similar to making a good, no-hover landing in a helicopter. You have to zero forward velocity, vertical rate of descent and altitude to coincide with a fixed point on the ground. When you manage to do it smoothly, it is quite satisfying.
Especially in a very large helo with stabilization turned off...
:-)
Now where did I say they could?
Care to quote me?
Provide links please.
Sorry if pointing out that Musk is a tax parasite bothers you.
But shoving the risk onto us is not a good thing.
Nor is it capitalist to do so.
Top it off, Musk is an Obama fanboy.
It certainly does.
SpaceX has successfully launched rockets and landed them multiple times. The difference now is that they are trying to land at a specific spot. They’re pretty close to sticking it.
More thrust at the top, less thrust at the bottom and maybe land it in a funnel so it settles into its lock down position if they miss by a few feet.
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