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Commercialization

SpaceX F9 ORBCOMM 1st Stage "Soft" Landing Video

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
July 22, 2014
Filed under ,

SpaceX Releases ORBCOMM First Stage Return Video, SpaceRef Business
“Following last week’s successful launch of six ORBCOMM satellites, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage reentered Earth’s atmosphere and soft landed in the Atlantic Ocean. This test confirms that the Falcon 9 booster is able consistently to reenter from space at hypersonic velocity, restart main engines twice, deploy landing legs and touch down at near zero velocity.”

SpaceRef co-founder, entrepreneur, writer, podcaster, nature lover and deep thinker.

38 responses to “SpaceX F9 ORBCOMM 1st Stage "Soft" Landing Video”

  1. Allen Thomson says:
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    > At this point, we are highly confident of being able to land
    successfully on a floating launch pad or back at the launch site and
    refly the rocket with no required refurbishment.

    “Floating launch pad”? That’s new, isn’t it?

    There’s been a lot of speculation that Falcon 9 might recover on a down-range floating platform, but this is the first time I’ve seen SpaceX hint of such a possibility.

    • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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      it is new! my thought is that they are hedging their bets on whether they will be able to get a location / clearance to touch down on land by then.

      • Chris says:
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        Will be tricky as Bezos owns the patent on landing on a Barge.

        • DTARS says:
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          Has he made a working model for his silly patent?

          • richard_schumacher says:
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            Are you thinking of the USPTO? They have not required working models since 1880.

          • Jafafa Hots says:
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            Too bad, too. They didn’t have to be full-scale. As a former antiques dealer, these mini patent models were rare fun to get your hands on.

            I remember this one potato-digging machine model… so cool.

        • MarcNBarrett says:
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          Can you patent a technique? If so, I would like to patent the human belly-flop into a pool.

        • Jackalope3000 says:
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          Burt Rutan sketched this same idea 10 years before Bezos got his ridiculous patent.

        • Steve Pemberton says:
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          These are both tech guys so they are used to a business environment where everybody patents everything no matter how ridiculous. The primary reason is so that in case you get sued by a competitor holding a frivolous patent you can countersue them for one of your frivolous patents which probably they are violating. Then it gets settled out of court and everybody is happy especially the lawyers.

      • DTARS says:
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        Agree Caption Obvious 🙂

      • Steve Pemberton says:
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        It might also be used for launches of heavy payloads where they need the fuel that would otherwise be used for flying the stage back to the coast. For those launches they would just land it downrange on a platform.

      • Jeff Havens says:
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        It does sound logical… land on a platform first (or several times) as a proof of concept. Not sure so much about the “hedging the bet”, but thinking that they are already encountering difficulties obtaining permission to come back to the Cape.

        Bonus points to SpaceX for the writeup about the video.. not only descriptive, but informative about the future – the statement of fixing the camera icing, as well as letting everyone know that the next two flights will NOT include testing (and why). Good job.

      • nasa817 says:
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        The Cape needs to get with the times on working with SpaceX. No wonder they are looking at Texas for a new launch site. Once they get that up and running they won’t need the Cape and it’s rules. Texas will let them do nearly anything they want within reason.

        • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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          Based on what I’ve heard around various interweb forums, the Range Safety people at Canaveral are all gung-ho about letting SpaceX try to touch down on land, and they’re the ones who have to push the Destruct button if it strays anywhere dangerous. Likely the people who need more convincing are those who are in management.

          Regardless of physical location, you still need landing procedures worked out, safety protocols in place, a landing area of some sort, a way to track the stage as it’s incoming, some sort of go / no go system for landing, etc. etc.

          • dogstar29 says:
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            A recent column in Florida Today made it clear that if KSC and DOD cannot be responsive to the needs of commercial industry, particularly for quick response and low cost, industry will go elsewhere. It’s time for DOD to lead, follow, or get out of the way (i.e. turn range safety over to the FAA as it is for almost all other US launch sites).

        • DTARS says:
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          Deleted

    • duheagle says:
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      Yeah, that’s new. Agree with Hug Doug that it’s probably a hedge against KSC/Canaveral foot-dragging on authorizing a place to try feet-dry landings. I’m guessing whatever SpaceX has in mind by way of a seagoing catcher’s mitt is probably well along in design and perhaps even in fabrication.

    • Terry Stetler says:
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      “@Rand_Simberg: (of Space News)
      @FLspacereport Talked to Gwynne yesterday and she confirmed that they’re working permission on flyback, but next landing will be on a barge.”

      Right from the horses mouth. Perhaps a jack-up barge or semi-submersible platform?

  2. Paul451 says:
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    Neat.

    But needs the self-cleaning roll-off-film of racing cameras.

    • TerryG says:
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      Yes indeed, audio feed from a radar altimeter would be welcome, as would footage from a chase boat. 🙂

    • hikingmike says:
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      That might not work since the camera lens underneath could still ice… but they could probably work out a design that works, with films or something else. I was thinking of sticking a small resistor near the lens to keep it warm, or maybe put some tiny wires through it like rear windshields on cars.

  3. DTARS says:
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    They cut the time in between the burns skipped from 24 minutes 17 secs to 25 40 seconds. I have not checked what time stage separation is?

    Next attempt will be on “solid surface”
    I have suggested that Spacex buy 4 barges 100X25 and build a steel truss platform with a concrete deck. cheap. I was thinking after landing they could shackle it down. and tow to a port and pluck it off with a crane.

    I saw the same crane we used on our last job setup Falcon 9 R for tests.

    I wonder what Musks target platform solution will be?

    Cost of drowning first stage about 30 million??

    Cost of cheap target barge million or two.

    I think target barge is good idea VS another booster Slam

    Cooper Steel could build the platform on some barges.
    [email protected]

    • Paul451 says:
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      Why use multiple skinny river barges and clumsily bolt them together when there are already larger, wider off-shore rock/gravel barges would would be ideal for simply pouring a slab on to?

      • John_AnotherContractor says:
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        Given how precise the landing system is, I’d use an old Jack up offshore rig. Just put an ablative coating on it, over some bricks or other heat barrier. Done. No problems with bobbing up and down throwing off the landing program, either. Think they go about 500 feet of water. For that matter they could just rent one for the few tests they would need.

        • duheagle says:
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          Probably not a good idea to use bricks, they’d soak up too much moisture from the sea air. Then, under the influence of hot exhast gases, the water would flash boil and explode the bricks. The jack-up rig idea is good, but I’d just fabricate a big circular landing pad out of PICA-X. We already know the stuff is waterproof and that it can stand even more heat than a Merlin 1-D exhaust plume can generate.

  4. Anonymous says:
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    This is an amazing accomplishment in the history of rocketry. Making something from science fiction a reality.

  5. Odyssey2020 says:
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    When SpaceX lands their first stage on land that’s going to one heck of a viral video!

  6. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    I’m impressed that you can actually see details like the legs deploying and the splashdown despite the ice and what look like carbon particles on the lens!

  7. Saturn1300 says:
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    I guess they think that after a breech it would be obvious it would sink. Did it? Both tanks? I guess it sank before they could get to it to take pictures. The engines should run long enough underwater to lower it down so it doesn’t tip over. Or they need to touch down with some speed, so that it sinks down far enough not to tip over. They have proven they can touch down at zero. Just enough not to hurt the engines. Next launch early AM Aug. 4. Too early for me. Then a quick Aug. 25. Next landing CRS in Sept. ATV and Cygnus has just delivered. I wonder if NASA will delay that mission. Hopefully the legs would have enough travel to take care of the movement. Musk said he needs a big ship. One of the oil ships with a gyro stabilized heli pad might work. Use grating to to let the flame through. 140′ tall, the top would be moving fast when it hit. The control jets must not be strong enough to to lower it down. Nice to see SpaceX get on board with all fans that suggested a barge. Cameras going up the ice soon disappears. Going down the moisture increases. Heat might keep it clean. They need to recover one pretty quick so they can use it on the inflight Dragon abort. Only way they can afford to do it for 30 m. $. I wish NASA would just hire them, sole source, to reuse a cargo Dragon and say to install a solid rocket pack in the Trunk for abort. Use a used cargo Dragon for the abort tests. They are already paying for the aborts. So a little extra for seats and laptops. NASA pays 140 m.$ a flight for cargo, so it should not be much more. But NASA says ’17 for Crew and they sure would not want to be early. And they could use berthing. The ground does that anyway.

    • hikingmike says:
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      They probably are just using the same program as landing on land so that it gets to near 0 right when it’s at the surface (not sure how the surface is determined). I wonder if there is a big splash back when the engine cuts off since it probably makes a big bowl in the water surface. Plus there are big waves out there.

  8. GregB says:
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    A group crowdsourced a repair job on the badly garbled video of the first landing attempt in April. They were very successful in reconstructing the video. It looks very similar to the newly released ORBCOMM first stage video. The final version of it can be found at:
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    https://www.youtube.com/wat

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    Does anyone have any information as to how these tests relate to the tests that are supposed to take place in New Mexico?

  9. ReSpaceAge says:
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    Did Spacex recover the booster or did it sink? I think they fished the crumpled beer can out and got a look at the engines?.

    Anyone here know for sure?

    • Anonymous says:
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      Mr. Musk said it was lost.

      • ReSpaceAge says:
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        I missed where he says that it was lost? Do you have a link?

        Have you ever thrown a coke can in the water and tried to sink the dam thing? Nearly impossible. A booster has two chambers that trap air. Wouldn’t both boosters need to rupture for this thing to sink? Seems to me that the engines would hold the open end down. In the video we see it tip over then nothing. Did it explode like a bomb rupturing both tanks? Wouldn’t all that water around the engines put any fire out? Where there any recovery crew witnesses? I heard some say on the net that it landed right on target. Is that true? Is it in Spacex’s interest to recover it without letting the public know? Delays any serious competition maybe?

  10. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    This latest soft landing will change the game for sure!

    SpaceX knows they can recover the booster stage up til the landing part. They also know they do the landing part accurately from their Grasshopper and F9R test. The now know that recovering the booster stage from an ocean landing is just not going to happen.

    So, don’t expect them to put legs on the CRS-4 mission when they try a soft ocean landing again. Two soft landings so far has probably given them enough data to mitigate the roll problem they had on their first attempt from Vandenberg last year.

    Will they try to use a barge as a landing pad or go straight for an on-shore landing?

    I think the on-shore landings would be less of an effort… considering there’s a perfect, ready-made landing pad already in existence less than a mile from SpaceX’s Florida launch pad!

    tinker

  11. AA “Proper Gander” Morris says:
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    Space X is something else! WOW!!
    http://www.aamorris.net/pro