I can't put into words how excited I am for this launch today.
I remember back in 2012 where spacex was still a laughingstock. The idea of landing a rocket from a private company was a joke.
But SpaceX always did one thing right, they made many care about space again. They broadcast their launches, made a bit of a show of it, and they weren't ashamed of their failures.
Then they started breaking milestones. They increased their launch cadence in what felt like overnight. They were actually trying (and failing) to land rockets, but they were still broadcasting them! Then they landed the first one on land, then the first one on a barge, then they re-launched rockets (and re-landed them!). Now it's weird when a rocket is launched in "expendable mode"!
I wanted to start this comment saying this is the most excited I've been of any launch in a long time, but when I really thought about it, it's not. There have been half a dozen launches in the past few years from SpaceX that were just as exciting, and that's amazing.
I hope today's launch goes well, and I hope this is the start of the "new normal"!
I remember clearly thinking the whole idea of landing the booster as being completely unrealistic, verging on not possible. I'm really pleased to have been utterly wrong. And 2/3rds of the boosters in today's test have already been into space. Mind blowing. Congratulations to all the hard working engineers at SpaceX!
hah i felt the same way. I remember when the Sky Crane was used to put Curiosity down on Mars, I thought there's just no freaking way that's going to work but they pulled it off. When SpaceX started talking about landing boosters I shook my head again but then they did it. The older I get the more blown away (and humbled) I am at what people are capable of achieving.
On a lighter note there's a Simpons line when Homer has to land a plane and is talking to someone on the ground
Colby: Okay Homer, I don't know anything about planes, but I know about you. You have what made America great: no understanding of the limits of your power and a complete lack of concern for what anyone thinks of you. So you'll land that plane. And do you know why? Because I heard some guy say you couldn't.
Homer: What! I'll show him. I'll show that guy!
The best way to get something great done is to tell someone it's impossible for them to achieve.
This whole thread should review Clarke's Three Laws[0]
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, they are almost certainly right. When they state that something is impossible, they are very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The (counter) corollary to rule #1: They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
AFAIK Columbus should be grouped together with Bozo the Clown - his plan was rightfully laughed at; he only survived because he lucked into discovering a new continent halfway through the trip...
> I remember clearly thinking the whole idea of landing the booster as being completely unrealistic, verging on not possible.
SpaceX also had that same opinion originally. I believe their first concept was to use parachutes for the first stage (and maybe splash down in the ocean for recovery).
They interviewed an engineer from Masten Space Systems (who have really cool test platforms). He was talking to them about VTVL (vertical takeoff, vertical landing) systems, and SpaceX basically just laughed at him.
I'm not sure I've ever thought it was impossible -- I've learned to be more circumspect about that kind of thing as I'm nearing 40 -- but I tried imagining the fine detail engineering that would be required to do it and was totally overwhelmed.
I mean, take a yardstick or short rod or something, and try to balance it upright on the tip of your finger. That's basically what they're doing, but with a -rocket-. It's amazing.
The rocket has its center of mass very low during landing, as it's mostly an empty shell by this point, with heavy engines at the bottom. So take a meter tape, pull it out a bit, lock and try to balance that. Much easier, right?
The magic is in a) ensuring the whole construct survives reentry, and b) timing the landing burn - even a single Merlin engine is too powerful for the almost empty rocket to hover, so they need to zero out their velocity at precisely the moment they're hitting the ground. There's no second attempt.
> even a single Merlin engine is too powerful for the almost empty rocket to hover
Indeed. For their last launch, they decided to try landing the booster with three engines rather than one, which brings the whole 'hoverslam' concept to the next level.
This was considered so risky that they didn't try landing it on the barge, for fear of damaging it. Instead, they soft landed on the ocean.
But much to everyone's surprise, it actually worked! There's a picture of the Falcon 9 booster floating awkwardly. Musk said they'll try to tow it to shore.
And all that is really the core of why I love SpaceX: continuous improvement. It's a grand thing!
I decided I had no way to guess on the mass distribution of fuel, engine, and airframe, plus wind shear, so I went with the hard scenario. If anybody knows the numbers for this, I'd love to hear it!
Not parent, but I was surprised when I first heard of it. I thought it must be infeasible - in retrospect, for no reason other than vertical-standing rockets are associated with kitschy cover arts of old sci-fi stories. It didn't fit the more modern sci-fi aesthetics I grew in.
Since realizing that I became more wary of unconscious biases picked up from environment, and how they affect what I think is technologically possible.
Perhaps I grew up in a different era, but it's precisely that same aesthetic which makes me see these landings as futuristic because they align so well with those images.
The ascent into space looks like a massive show of raw power, and in contrast these vertical landings look so graceful and controlled.
> The ascent into space looks like a massive show of raw power, and in contrast these vertical landings look so graceful and controlled.
Personally, I think both are a "massive show of raw power" - both literally and figuratively.
Literally goes without explanation. But what I mean of the word "figuratively" is that it shows our capability as a species to fully harness our intellect, knowledge, and emotions to do this kind of engineering, despite knowing it can all go horribly wrong (especially in the case of manned space flight).
Certainly there are many other drivers to why we do this (profit in the case of SpaceX certainly is a great one), but part of it is also to show ourselves we can push beyond what seemed or seems impossible at times, and make it routine, and eventually both practical and relatively "safe" (always knowing it might never be perfect).
The Space Shuttle was perfectly capable of carrying its main fuel tank into orbit... I always wondered why they didn’t do that as standard, then later connect up all the now empty tanks, pressurise them and hey presto, instant space station, far bigger than the ISS. Such a waste to just drop them.
I know that many aerospace engineers were skeptical it would be possible to achieve ignition when facing "backwards" during hypersonic flight. No way to get the right mixture in exhaust chamber.
Even engines that "startup" more than once were pretty "out there". Over the years watching along, I've gotten the feeling that getting the engines to restart at all, and then restart in the right order and with enough consistency was one of the major breakthroughs.
I found the NASA blog entry on engine ignition pretty interesting (https://blogs.nasa.gov/J2X/tag/ignition/). Doing that when you have mach 6 winds blowing always seems amazing to me.
to me it was having to carry the fuel for the landing burn. Also, an empty booster is very fragile, they're basically metal balloons. I figured the landing legs, extra support needed, and the required fuel would make it infeasible in the end.
> an empty booster is very fragile, they're basically metal balloons.
If you think about it that's not really the case. Post launch the boosters are empty and must sustain their own weight and that of the payload sitting upright on the launch pad prior to fueling.
During the launch the full force of the engine is exerted on everything and it must withstand that force even as the tanks empty. If the boosters were not able to withstand these forces then as the rocket climbed into the sky you'd see it start to compress like a tin can the higher into the atmosphere it climbed.
I thought it was kind of unrealistic as well. The reasons were that now you have to store fuel for the return trip of just an "empty can", as well as (possibly) even more launch trajectory restrictions to ensure it can reach the landing site.
> Now it's weird when a rocket is launched in "expandable mode"!
So much this. You just made me realize I don't know when this flipped for me. I remember having fingers crossed for successful landings. But few months back I was checking the launch schedule and found myself completely surprised by no landing plans. Like, "what do you mean you're not landing, because you need to get rid of obsolete reflown boosters?!".
The pace of progress they're making is incredible. It feels just like the early days of space race that I only read about.
i watch the video of the first landing and the cheers that erupted as soon as the engines went out whenever i need some inspiration. It's just incredible what they've done. That video could play on repeat in my office all day and I'd be perfectly ok with it.
very well said. I also want to add that SpaceX has forced many engineers to rethink their life because they are believing their current job does not matter (for valid reasons), does not make a difference in the world for the sake of GOOD and does not bring actual progress. Many would argue that working for FB, Twitter, IG or other big tech companies merely provide anything good to human existence.
Engineers are builders at heart. They want to put their effort to good use.
Personally I was more excited about the RocketLab launch. This to me feels like a variation on a theme. RocketLab was in may ways a breakthrough. First orbital launch from New Zealand and first orbital launch using electric turbopumps.
Yes, their cost per kg for launching is higher than SpaceX.
But it's their first launch from a new company. It's expected to cost some more to start with. I presume the price is going to come down quite significantly over the next few years.
RocketLab will never be as cheap, but the business plan isn't to compete on price. The business model is that with smaller rockets you can have much higher launch cadence, much higher throughput (i.e. you can book a launch and have it launched a week later), and more customisable orbits (since it's cheaper to book out an entire launch).
He really is an alien. Human PR usually involves making a slick show, and having skilled communicators express vague messages full of bullshit. Musk is an exact opposite of that.
It is possible for a "technical document" to appear rigorous enough to untrained eye, but sadly, you can fool people, you cannot fool nature. Which is why "Hyperloop", which was not even an original idea, still remain in paper...
AFAIR the paper was technologically sound to the first approximation; the objections were mostly economical (I'm ignoring people who missed that Hyperloop was not a vacuum tube design and went on ranting how infeasible it is).
Also, for a paper-only design, there seem to be plenty of activity involving people building actual hardware to test components.
Also2, from the first day it was known that Elon is not going to pursue Hyperloop himself any time soon; he threw an idea for others to pick up, and didn't promise anything. Judging him by not having built the Hyperloop by now is... insane.
Well, hyperloop was kind of bullshit that now appears only made up for cheap publicity aka PR stunt.
Then there is the promise of taking humanity to "mars", which quite honestly, sounds a bullshit claim at this point. It wold have held more water, if they said it after making real tech breakthroughs (Ie not stunts like landing a rockets, which only guillable people finds magical because they were not tech savvy to know that it was possible with tech that is half a century old).
> It wold have held more water, if they said it after making real tech breakthroughs
Going to Mars is literally the only reason they're in the rocket business. Like everything behind their breakthroughs, which they had a few - including landing and turnaround times - is meant to enable the Mars mission. They've been explicit about this since day one.
> stunts like landing a rockets
This is not a stunt. It's the real, practical, working, cost-effective rocket reusability. For the first time ever. Not sure what do you expect; em-drive? Because SpaceX booster landing is exactly how a technological breakthrough looks like (as opposed to fundamental science breakthrough).
> Like everything behind their breakthroughs, which they had a few - including landing and turnaround times - is meant to enable the Mars mission. They've been explicit about this since day one.
It's not so much a rocket company with a Mars objective, it's a Mars cult with a rocketry front operation.
Somehow, people get the idea that they're "not really serious" about the one driving goal that they've never deviated from.
That's not a criticism. The Mars cult is a very good thing. For forty years, most space programs have been motivated by the burning urge to...uh...send some more people to Low Earth Orbit, I guess, and eke out marginal improvements on technology that never really changes.
The force of the idea of Mars keeps people focused on what really matters.
Sorry. Was tired and in anticipation of Falcon Heavy launch (and wondering how I'll excuse myself from a telco to watch it). I misinterpreted your comment as another line of criticism this whole subthread was made of. I apologize.
It's getting tiring, really - people seem to still believe they're bullshitting with Mars, even though it was the single constant thing about SpaceX since the very inception of the company.
No worries! I guess I get people's reactions a little - they've heard so many vague plans about "maybe a Mars mission" that never pan out, so when the real thing arrives they're not ready to believe it's serious.
What you refer to as a 'stunt' is not magical but a very important step in reducing costs to get a certain mass to orbit.
Whether Musk gets to take humans to Mars or not remains to be seen, but in the meantime he's making a lot of progress that is going to be super useful to humanity.
Whether it was possible or not is irrelevant, what matters is that someone actually went and did it.
After all, the internal combustion engine could have probably been built in 1750 or so, but nobody did...
People skeptical regarding that video won't view Tesla as a laughing stock, they'll view them as not living up to the previous standard of quality they set with their higher-priced cars. That is bad enough, really.
I have this thought a lot. Elon Musk is in charge of a rocket ship company. "Rocket Ship Company". And now he has competition! Soon we'll be able to go to the moon or mars and it'll all seem completely normal.
Falcon Heavy is just a toe in the door of super heavy launch. BFR will have 31 engines at liftoff compared to Falcon Heavy's 27. BFR will be about twice the thrust of Falcon Heavy, and most importantly BFR is not just a launch vehicle (which gives SpaceX a big edge in deploying megaconstellations of low-latency internet satellites), but the upper stage part will be a spacecraft capable of reentering the Earth's atmosphere with a payload and crew like Shuttle but also capable of being refueled and landing on (and taking off from) distant worlds. Falcon Heavy really helps provide this necessary interim step, and will help build a manifest of large payloads that BFR will be able to take over.
SpaceX is increasingly serious about BFR, their next-gen rocket which is like an enormous, fully reusable hybrid of Shuttle and Falcon 9 using soot-free and higher performing methane (which can also be made on Mars in a fairly straightforward process) instead of kerosene.
They're cancelling lunar Dragon+FH to focus on BFR which is making more progress than they expected. They plan to start flight testing the upper stage/spaceship portion of it by next year according to Elon in the prelaunch press conference.
Falcon Heavy was originally supposed to fly about as often as Falcon 9, but they upgraded Falcon 9 so much that now they barely need Falcon Heavy, as amazing as Falcon Heavy is.
yeah i think BFR and the upgraded Falcon 9 pretty much obsoletes Falcon Heavy almost immediately. The Heavy just took so long to put together, it was suppose to fly 4 or 5 years ago right? I've heard it reported that the Falcon Heavy engineering was much harder than anticipated. Does anyone know what some of the major obstacles were? The concept seems straightforward but where did they start getting into trouble?
I remember reading a quote from Elon where he says that at some point, they realised it's less "strapping three cores together" than "flying three cores in very close formation"
The stresses involved are truly enormous, and the whole thing must be very well balanced to avoid putting even more stresses on the frame.
Something as stupid as fueling the rocket needs to be done with care, as they're dealing with super-chilled liquid oxygen: The cold temperatures make the rocket contract a little bit, you have to make sure all three boosters contract exactly the same otherwise you can break the attachment points.
After countless hours of experimenting with additional struts in KSP to keep my rockets from going through RUD I have a weird feeling as if I understand this on some level. Rationally, I don't think that I have any real understanding of rocket science from KSP - but that weird feeling just won't go away.
The structure in the core is beefed up a lot, but I wouldn't call it nearly a complete redesign as the other functions remain basically the same. Nearly complete structural redesign, I agree.
One of the things that slowed it down a lot was the continual development of the Falcon 9.
With the Block 3/4/5 series of the Falcon 9 (5 is the final design and mostly focused on reusability upgrades, 4 is interim) they have a relatively stable base rocket to develop the Heavy variant against.
Yeah, the regular Falcon 9 is so much stronger nowadays, it can basically do what was planned for Heavy back in ~2015. Just at the thrust difference between Merlin engine iterations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine_family) ), and add the fact that the stage is longer than before, and you have a pretty capable base rocket.
By making the booster bigger, you have much more margin for making everything reusable. And once everything is reusable, marginal costs approach the cost of fuel rather than the cost of the rocket.
And of course, you can put more than one payload on a booster.
After all, we don't have a single 747 for each passenger, or for each package we fly.
I'm not american or connected in any form or shape to the aerospace industry and yet I feel so excited for watching this. It has been absolutely mind-blowing watching all those rockets landing perfectly.
Same here. I'm not American, or working in the Aerospace industry... but watching Musk has had a spurring effect for me. He's a constant reminder that the impossible is possible and that you should keep trying even if it turns out it's impossible.
I'm stressed out because I need to get my thesis done soon, but he's worried because he needs to perfectly launch a Tesla Roadster into Solar orbit, and vertically land three first-stages so he can do it again.
was planning on buying tickets but they sold out before I could get arrangements made with work and family. I grew up in Port Orange FL and could see the shuttle launch from New Smyrna Beach, there's nothing like seeing a launch in person. My colleagues are a little annoyed how excited I am but I can't help it hah.
Weather looks good so here's hoping for no delays!
Remember that Elon is saying there's even odds the rocket explodes. 2 failures in the first 10 launches is par for the course for new rockets. You can do better by being paranoid like ULA but that slows down innovation which is not the tradeoff SpaceX is going to take.
It might still end up in LEO. SpaceX wants to demonstrate to interested parties that they can coast for 6 hours then do a second burn of the upper stage. That's important for some payloads to GEO. So they're going to put the Tesla in LEO then 6 hours later do an insertion burn into solar orbit. If something about the coast fails then you will end up with a Tesla in LEO.
For the curious, it's Musk's midnight-cherry red Tesla roadster, with a dummy in a spacesuit in the drivers seat, David Bowie playing on the stereo, and a towel in the glove box along with a copy of hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and a sign that says Don't Panic.
4 hours to go... I'm on the wrong continent :( I would have definitely gone there to view the launch, it's a real milestone and I so hope that it will work.
I think the day we send people to Mars, never mind the fact I'm living in Europe, I'll take a holiday and flight to see that rocket take off...
I already missed the Saturn V going to the moon (wasn't born), there aren't that many positive, predictable historical moments like that in a life time
> I already missed the Saturn V going to the moon (wasn't born), there aren't that many positive, predictable historical moments like that in a life time
I was 4 years old when that happened and it is as far as I can tell my earliest memory. We had this incredibly small black-and-white TV and watching that really impressed me, the moon never looked the same afterwards.
Incidentally, that live broadcast was quite a thing to pull off:
She was more interested in the animation than the launch. Overall a bit underwhelmed, slightly intruiged by the launch but not much more. She's not quite sure why daddy is so excited that there's a car floating around in space. I clearly need to work on her inner space geek.
A thought I've had about SpaceX, Crazy Horse Memorial, and 9/11...
They were all once the kind of things that only nation-states could accomplish... Putting up massive payloads into space, building huge monuments, and killing thousands of people.
We've made all kinds of things easier to do - some good, some bad.
I hope we continue to grow into our capabilities a bit more smoothly than we seem to be, right now...
As horrific as 9/11 was, it’s not fair to characterize it as 4 idiots bringing down a plane.
It was 19 people who led a coordinated attack that took hundreds of people, millions of dollars, and years to plan and execute. In the process, they brought down 4 airplanes, damaged the pentagon, and toppled TWO skyscrapers, killing thousands of people in the process.
Looking back at the 17 years since, they indirectly started multiple wars, toppled governments, inspired a generation of terrorists, and changed the geopolitical situation in the Middle East for decades, at least.
Again, it was horrible and we should condemn it, but it was also a lot more strategically impressive and impactful than you’re making it out to be.
The webcast now says it is going live at "February 6, 14:50 EST". Any official word on a delay? I know the window was from 13:30 EST to I believe 16:00 EST.
Edit:
Looks like delayed due to upper level winds.
stream it on your phone over your own data connection.
Or, just wait until you get home tonight. I don't know if you've watched the webcasts in the past but the video footage frequently cuts out during the most exciting times(probably due to the fact that a big rocket is blasting them around). So, frequently, the replay footage is much better than the live event.
i was just thinking if a possible downturn would have any effects on his plans of settling the solar system. (for me as a lowly grunt a downturn always means switching to work with a different industry, but who cares except for me.)
If this launch of Falcon Heavy becomes its last one then it would be so similar to the Buran shuttle.
I remember back in 2012 where spacex was still a laughingstock. The idea of landing a rocket from a private company was a joke.
But SpaceX always did one thing right, they made many care about space again. They broadcast their launches, made a bit of a show of it, and they weren't ashamed of their failures.
Then they started breaking milestones. They increased their launch cadence in what felt like overnight. They were actually trying (and failing) to land rockets, but they were still broadcasting them! Then they landed the first one on land, then the first one on a barge, then they re-launched rockets (and re-landed them!). Now it's weird when a rocket is launched in "expendable mode"!
I wanted to start this comment saying this is the most excited I've been of any launch in a long time, but when I really thought about it, it's not. There have been half a dozen launches in the past few years from SpaceX that were just as exciting, and that's amazing.
I hope today's launch goes well, and I hope this is the start of the "new normal"!