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Commercialization

SpaceX Tribute to "2001"

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 5, 2015
Filed under
SpaceX Tribute to "2001"

SpaceX Video: Falling Back to Earth
“A GoPro inside a fairing from a recent Falcon 9 flight captured some spectacular views as it fell back to Earth. Footage is played in real time. Music: Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

75 responses to “SpaceX Tribute to "2001"”

  1. Terry Stetler says:
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    Now that the cat’s out of the nag about their fairing recovery reuse research and use of GoPro’s for that purpose it’s no surprise they released it. What’ll be interesting is footage showing lower portions of the fairings trip, and how long it takes them to grow a RCS and some kind of parasail or other decelerator.

  2. speragine says:
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    Awesome GoPro of this fairing returning! Kinda reminds me of those terrific views from cameras aboard the Space Shuttle SRB’s. Which captured the views of the Shuttle rocketing on-ward as the two SRB’s cartwheeled their way to chute deploy. With sound all the way to the Atlantic.

  3. Yale S says:
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    And the real thing… The “mating” scene from Kubric’s 1968 film:

    https://www.youtube.com/wat

    • brobof says:
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      Many thanks bookmarked 🙂

      • Yale S says:
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        https://www.youtube.com/wat

        If you ever get to see it on a full size screen you will have your socks knocked off.
        I saw it first in 1968 in it original format, Super Panavision 70mm Cinerama on a massive curved screen. . Un-freaking-believable.
        When you consider that it was made without CGI, it it incredible.

        • DTARS says:
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          That movie made what really happened very disapointing.

          • PsiSquared says:
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            That only happens if you struggle with the difference between reality and fiction.

          • DTARS says:
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            Spin is always better than reality isn’t it.

            Let me know what you find when you dig deep enough and find why and how SLS keeps going. I am truely interested?

            We just threw another 1/2 billion at it. Let me know what good that money does?
            How that helps “nasa”

            Tell me this.

            I BELIEVE SLS should be canceled.

            Can you tell me why I’m wrong and Why it should not?

            1/2 billion that could have gone to other space things just went to SLS.

            HOW IS THAT GOOD?

          • PsiSquared says:
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            Who said it was good?

          • SpaceMunkie says:
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            because no one else has the engineering experience or finances to undertake project of this magnitude

          • DTARS says:
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            Seems they would have designed a reusable rocket then, and not relied on old fashion systems.

          • Yale S says:
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            SpaceX is.

          • SpaceMunkie says:
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            Sure, that is why they keep coming to NASA for technical help, (I’m on one of the teams) and keep getting money from NASA

          • Yale S says:
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            The film was very much reflected the possibilities of the time. The world was adventure. The near future held infinite exciting possibilities. Old Farts like you and me know these feelings in our guts.
            The present is so small and timid. I think that is why we are amongst the biggest boosters of SpaceX. It is re-capturing the Dream. They are doing it.

            I am with you 100%, babes.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            That is SO true, Yale. It’s the case that we had problems- the war, civil rights come to mind- but we also had a sense that these things could be fixed.

            Nowadays our so-called leaders are just whiney-babies.

            I will get a lot of flack but will point out in any case that the turning point came in a speech from Mr. Reagan, asserting that ‘government IS the problem’. That simple statement has translated into the sensibility that we can’t solve problems together, that the only way forward is the Church of the Free Market.

            As a result I present you with a crumbling country run by ninnies afraid to impose the taxes needed to fix roads and build the infrastructure our great nation requires. A country where kids are saddled with decades’ of debt after college. A country where the income spread is unconscionable.

            And a laughable space program. Hyperbole? little. But not much.

          • Yale S says:
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            It’s the case that we had problems- the war, civil rights come to mind- but we also had a sense that these things could be fixed.

            Yes! The times were terribly stressful and society was being tugged apart. But it was with a sense that something was being created, with the different sides struggling over what that something was to be.
            The music of the time was full of social and political comment but it was angry and/or hopeful, not cynical. There was a sense that there was an unacceptable situation and it was going to be changed, one way or another – up to and including revolution.
            Americans have always been characterized as having the “Can Do” spirit, and back then we were gonna have that big wheel in the sky and people on Ganymede, damn it.
            All that seems to have dissolved into utter dead triviality,

        • Daniel Woodard says:
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          The computer graphics on the spaceship instrument panel in 2001 were actually hand drawn animation. Computers of the day were not up to the task. Conversely even though nasa is the only organization that operates robots so far away that teleoperation is impossible and autonomous operation would be invaluable, there has been very little progress in artificial intelligence for robotic exploration, let alone something like HAL.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            There’s actually been a lot of progress in “artificial intelligence,” but that depends a lot on what your definition of “artificial intelligence” is. For example, we have lots of programs that do a lot of the things that people think an “artificial intelligence” would do, like win against humans in Jeopardy, beat grand masters at chess, understand speech and accept spoken commands, move autonomously and decide the best way to execute a task on its own (did you see any of the DARPA robotics challenge last weekend?), etc.

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            I agree with all you said. My point was that NASA is not using the available AI tech in space probes and rovers when it could be at the cutting edge.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            Well, probably the biggest problem with that is that radiation-hardened electronics are a few generations behind the cutting edge electronics of today, so their processing power is limited. Also, the rovers on Mars can operate semi-autonomously. When Opportunity was doing long, straight drives a few years ago, they let it drive itself, navigate around any hazards, and decide the optimal path quite a lot of the time. And they can make other decisions, such as when to stop moving if preset parameters are violated. For example, if the wheels register a given amount of rotation but the hazcam images determine the rover hasn’t moved as much as those rotations indicate it should have, it can stop moving and transmit back to Earth that it has stopped. This recently happened to curiosity. Oh, and a couple of months ago Curiosity stopped a drilling operation when the rock it was working on shifted. Things like that are well within their capabilities.

        • brobof says:
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          I was fortunate to attend the Glasgow premiere. Still have the press kit. In that and in response to comments below: Clarke and Kubrick justified the advances that they predicted in the film. Unfortunately subsequent politicians -of all nationalities- in the decades following 1968 decided to spend the global treasure on bombs rather than butterflies. [Woodstock refers.]

          As to 2001? I rate it as my second favorite SF Film of all time. The First: Shape of Things to Come.
          “Which shall it be?”
          [spoiler] https://www.youtube.com/wat

          • Yale S says:
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            Wells’ creation of the Wandering Disease (I think it was called that) was a fascinating prediction of radiation disease/biological warfare.

            The opening sequence was a spot-on preview of the London Blitz which occurred a few years later.

          • brobof says:
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            According to some reports: when the film was released, the audience laughed at the absurdity of bombs falling on London, again… Things to Come was a film with true grandeur like 2001. I would like to think that SpaceX ultimate goals are similarly grand.
            “The man who sold (the) Mars” perhaps. With apologies to Heinlein 😉 and cunningly returning to the topic.

          • Yale S says:
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            Going back even earlier to the silent era is 1929’s Women in the Moon by Fritz Lang. Amazingly accurate, it had a three stage rocket (launched from water to suppress heat and shock).

            The giant ship was built in a vehicle assemby building and then rolled out to the pad. An actual countdown occurred. The crew flew in horizonal seats and had difficulty breathing under high g forces.

            https://www.youtube.com/wat

          • brobof says:
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            Came across this the other day! Cutaway of Frau Im Der Mund Rocket Cabin
            http://www.projectrho.com/p

    • DTARS says:
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      Watching that 2001 commercial space plane, that looks so much like a giant X-37 to me, really pisses me off!

      When will some one ever finally build space liner?

      Chicken or egg
      http://www.starbase79.com/i

      • Neil.Verea says:
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        Probably when it makes economic sense.

      • Yale S says:
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        You might like the UK Skylon spaceplane. It uses engines that use amazing physics to work as jets and as rockets.
        http://resources3.news.com….

        http://www.space.com/26838-

        The animation reminds me of Thunderbirds…

        http://www.space.com/11405-

        • SpaceMunkie says:
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          there is nothing amazing about the Skylon physics

          • Yale S says:
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            why do you say that? where is there any engine anywhere that uses the technology in those engines (the sabre/lace/scimitar/hotol types)?

          • DTARS says:
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            Why get so high tech
            Wouldn’t an X-37 D which includes “second stage reusability with engine out capability, draco escape with heat shield between fuel and tourist cabin do the trick?

            Couldn’t you make this spaceship the diameter of a falcon heavy fairing?

            Couldn’t such a craft carry at least 30 tourists

            DoD basic my flies this now right

            If we want commercial space we need to be able to get more than 7 people up there at a time.

          • PsiSquared says:
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            Obviously Reaction Engines Ltd is looking for/working an SSTO solution.

          • DTARS says:
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            SSTO is to far out in the future. I think we need 30 plus tourist capability sooner, to kick off space economy.

            Chicken or egg

          • PsiSquared says:
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            The Skylon is as far in the future as SpaceX’s MCT or SpaceX’s base on Mars. That aside, I rather doubt anyone outside Reaction Engines Ltd. knows what they expect prices for passengers to be.

          • SpaceMunkie says:
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            high efficiency gas power turbines use interstage cooling, heat regeneration, and heat recovery – nothing new in physics – the Skylon ENGINEERING is intriguing and innovative

            you are confusing engineering with physics

          • Yale S says:
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            No confusion. My background is science, not engineering. It is a perceptual difference. I see the thermodynamics involved as fascinating -and the engineering process that utilizes the process as ingenious.

          • SpaceMunkie says:
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            yes, physics – no change, its still basic thermodynamics; engineering – phenomenal

          • PsiSquared says:
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            The heat exchangers for cooling the incoming air alone are an amazing bit of engineering. If that’s all that is ever accomplished, it’s a job well done.

          • Yale S says:
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            Exactly! Cooling incoming air at 1,000 degree C down to minus150 degree C in a tiny fraction of a second. An amazing bit of physics.

          • SpaceMunkie says:
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            physics has not changed – heat still flows from high temperature to low temperature – nothing new there – the ENGINEERING is however intriguing

          • Yale S says:
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            No… you are misinterpreting my words. Of course the laws of nature don’t change. The company is using clever engineering to apply some amazing physics.

          • PsiSquared says:
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            No one said that the laws of physics had changed. You, however, don’t seem to have a grasp of the power being dissipated through the rapid cooling of that incoming air.

          • SpaceMunkie says:
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            yes I do, that is why I said its an amazing piece of engineering, but that does not change the laws of thermodynamics

  4. Daniel Woodard says:
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    How was the signal downlinked? With the fairing tumbling the transmitting antenna must have been low gain.

    • fcrary says:
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      It was probably an omni-directional antenna on the fairing, and probably a fairly low gain on the ground. I can’t see them tracking the fairing well enough to point a higher gain antenna at it. I’m not sure what data rate they’d need for that, but 10 W at 100 km ought to give a few to ten Mbytes/second.

      On a related note, attached is another, related “real thing.”

    • Neowolf says:
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      I believe the GoPro recorded the video? Interesting that a GoPro is cheap enough that they could afford to add one on the off chance someone would recover the hardware.

      • DTARS says:
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        I Believe Go Pros have been the source of some of the cool barge landing attempts too.

      • PsiSquared says:
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        The GoPro MSRP range is $129.99-$499.99 US. I think SpaceX could afford to festoon a Falcon 9 with GoPros.

      • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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        The video was transmitted to a ground station, that a guy found a bit of SpaceX fairing is a coincidence.

    • Todd Austin says:
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      It wasn’t downlinked, it was downloaded. Some people found a chunk of the fairing on a beach in the Bahamas. It had two intact GoPro cameras mounted on it. They mailed the SD cards to SpaceX. SpaceX has since sent out folks to retrieve the fairing itself.

      https://mobile.twitter.com/

      • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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        Doesn’t make sense to put hardware on a rocket that serves no purpose unless by random chance someone finds it months later. The video was transmitted to ground stations, we don’t know if any data was recovered from the fairing found in the Bahamas.

        • DTARS says:
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          Source! Trying to learn which is correct here?

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            Common sense.

            You don’t stuff a few pounds of metal housing and a camera on a rocket if you aren’t getting the video streamed back to a ground receiver. It’s reasonable to assume that either aerodynamic forces or impact with the surface would break it, and most likely, that it would end up on the bottom of the ocean.

            Also, you don’t just hope for recovery by random chance beachcomber. Stuff floating on the ocean surface can drift for years, sometimes decades, before washing up on a beach somewhere.

            That said, it’s -possible- this video, with its excellent clarity, is in fact recovered from the gopro hardware, but that’s not how I would expect SpaceX to be receiving the video normally.

          • fcrary says:
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            Actually, I could see putting a GoPro on without a plan to downlink the data. They are cheap and light. What if you’re going to have an opportunity to downlink on only one launch in ten? (Say, having an antenna in exactly place relative to the ground track.) It might be easier to put a GoPro on every launch, just because it costs so little and avoids making custom changes.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            So you’re cutting into the profit margin (both by spending the time and money to put useless, but well protected and fully functional cameras on the rocket, and by cutting into the mass budget of the rocket, meaning you can’t launch as much because there’s a few pounds of housing and camera on the fairing) without any intent to recover the data from those cameras?

            Absurd. Even suggesting such a waste of company assets would get you fired, by Elon Musk or anyone else.

            Might as well think they would super glue a brick to the fairing, at least that will accomplish the ding in the mass budget while minimizing other wasted resources.

            As for putting it up there and turning it on even if they never plan receive the video, did you ever notice that they don’t put legs on rockets they don’t plan to land? So why would SpaceX be wasting any resources on other launches? If something won’t be used for a launch, they remove it. Save every ounce you can. That’s how the launch business works. Especially if you’re providing very low cost launches, as SpaceX is. You don’t do that by frittering away resources at every opportunity.

            There are telemetry stations all down the East coast for tracking launches and receiving data. The fairing separation and 2nd stage operation is tracked by ground stations in Newfoundland and Labrador.

            https://ca.news.yahoo.com/k

          • fcrary says:
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            Actually, the sort of optimization you suggest can make things more expensive. I don’t know what SpaceX actually doss, but this is too good a hypothetical example to pass up. Consider the numbers.

            For a GoPro, radio and batteries to power a few minutes of video,I’d estimate a mass of under 0.5 kg. Since it doesn’t go all the way to orbit, the hit to paying payload is less. Following normal, industry practices, I’d expect a case-by-case decision to fly one to take at least 10 engineer-hours per launch. An aerospace engineer’s time costs something like $250 per hour ($200k per year salary and a 2.5 cost multiplier for benefits, corporate overhead and profit, etc.) So, the case-by-case approach, although more optimized, adds up to over $5000 per kilo to orbit of saved payload mass. That might not be worth it. You can certainly debate those numbers, but not the fact that, beyond some level, more optimizing isn’t cost effective.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            It’s really simple. If it won’t be returning data during the launch, it doesn’t need to be on the fairing.

            Unless you really think that SpaceX is the sort of company that likes to spend many thousands of dollars engineering and installing equipment.

            Like I said. If it has no use, you might as well glue a brick on, it’ll do the exact same thing for much less cost.

          • fcrary says:
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            Simply figuring out whether or not you can get data from such a camera takes some analysis. If you want to use mass savings to get a little bit more payload to orbit (which you specifically mentioned) would take quite a bit more time and effort. Flying ballast instead would not. But then you only save the cost of the camera (which, as class D COTS hardware isn’t much) and you still need to manage two different versions of your assembly and testing procedures and related documentation. Doing things the same way, every time is cheaper and more reliable than doing it in one of several ways and deciding which way to do it each time. Probably not much cheaper, but cheaper. If you are doing so to a very small, additional expense, that might not be a good idea. I once ran across a physics professor who had spent a few hours of his time going through catalogues to find the cheapest source for an electronic component. He probably saved $50, which is a lot less than a few hours of his time was worth. That’s the same sort of no-net-savings issue I’m talking about.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            My point is you don’t spend ANY time and money to put equipment in a rocket unless it has a purpose. Doing lots of expensive work to no real gain in the end is the epitome of the little anecdote you provided.

          • fcrary says:
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            Actually, flying unnecessary hardware is pretty common. People use COTS hardware with more capabilities than their application needs, because TRL 9, COTS parts are an overall better option than designing custom parts which do exactly what they need and no more. I’ve seen plenty of flight, scientific instruments with unneeded and never used modes and capabilities, simply because it was more efficient to build a copy of something the people involved had designed and flown before.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            You’re missing the point entirely. Why would SpaceX waste time and money installing a useless camera on a fairing in the first place?

          • PsiSquared says:
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            That analogy with the physics professor doesn’t work. He gets paid by the university/college no matter whether he continues to use the same part or spends 2 hours looking for a new cheaper part. The savings on the price of that part, however, is a net savings for that research project which will operate on a fixed budget.

          • fcrary says:
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            Yes, the professor probably wasn’t billing his time to project, so there would have been a net savings to the project. Probably, because tenured professors are typically paid nine months per.year by the university and have to bill three months to contracts or grants. I have no idea if he did this during the summer.

            I could also say the total cost of a project is relevant, regardless of who gets which bills. But that’s likely to degenerate into discussions of full cost and earned value accounting, and I don’t think I have the heart for that.

          • DTARS says:
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            Doug

            While I agree with your logic, I have a question.

            How heavy are fairings?? Do they normally sink or float. Shouldn’t this fairing be deep deep in Davey Jones locker?

            How many fairings have washed up before?

            Could it be that SpaceX designed this fairing to float knowing that it might be found?

            Has any fairing ever been found before?

            Hope SpaceX lets us know.

            Curious George

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            The fairings are made of a relatively thin composite shell with a few cm of insulation / sound proofing on the inside. My guess is they would float pretty well.

            As you can see in the pictures, though, there’s only a -fragment- that was found on the beach.

            https://pbs.twimg.com/media

            Most likely, aerodynamic forces during reentry caused a spin or flutter that ripped it apart. If the gopro and its housing were ripped off, or were on only a small bit of the faring, it would sink.

            Fragments of fairing / rockets washing ashore isn’t unusual (a google search will provide plenty of hits), but it isn’t commonplace, either. It’s probably becoming more frequent with the increase in use of composite structures.

            “Could it be that SpaceX designed this fairing to float knowing that it might be found?”

            No. That it floats is a coincidence of its design, it wasn’t made with those materials for that purpose. Fairings usually don’t survive reentry, that should be clear, given that it’s a fragment and not the whole thing.

            I don’t know if an intact fairing has ever been found, but it seems unlikely.

        • Todd Austin says:
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          It’s a reasonable point. I don’t know what else was inside the housing you see holding the GoPros in those pictures. It would have been quite a challenge to capture a usable signal from the fairings after separation.

          Informed chatter over on spacex.reddit.com is that the video did indeed come from the SD cards.

  5. DTARS says:
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    Guess this is the goal
    https://youtu.be/I8TsdYxugn0

  6. DTARS says:
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    Seems these fairings will drop to earth far from the launch site yet have to be picked up by helicopters. I was wondering if landing barges will do double duty as helicopter aircraft carriers? Seems SpaceX is developing a fair size little fleet.

  7. mfwright says:
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    Neat video, goes to show how durable those GoPros are. However, for me it is kind of depressing as I’m old enough to have watched “2001” in 1968 at Century theater in San Jose (next to Winchester Mystery House) with the big wraparound Panarama screen. It all seemed obvious. Of course when I will be an older guy I can buy a seat on the Pan Am space liner. Hey, my grandfather was in his 20s when Lindbergh crossed the ocean and flew the same route in a cushy 707. We stopped going to the Moon, Mars has always been 20 years away, Pan Am is gone, Century theaters are gone (the WMH is still there), meanwhile we argue about next step into space (and fighting over scraps of budget), and the vehicles are all capsules.

    Regarding Johann Strauss’ song, I read someplace it was first performed in US in 1868. I also remembered as a boy I saw this as perfect soundtrack for orbiting spacecraft and the spaceliner approaching the space station. For older people it didn’t make sense. How does this notable waltz song relate to space travel?

  8. Bernardo de la Paz says:
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    2001… Now that was a rational human space flight policy.
    -A truly permanent human presence in LEO (not just until 2024).
    -An optimized, reusable, single-purpose Earth to LEO shuttle system.
    -A LEO transit hub.
    -An optmized, reusable, single purpose LEO to Moon shuttle system.
    -A permanent human presence on the lunar surface.
    -Nuclear engines for deep space missions.
    -Deep space exploration vehicles that operate only in space.
    -Centrifugally simulated gravity for long duration flights.
    -and most importantly, no obessision with Mars as the goal of human space flight. In fact, not mentioned or even hinted about at all.

    Remember, it wasn’t just Hollywood, they had NASA as consultants. Back when NASA actually got stuff done. And the guy who wrote the story was the inventor of the geostationary Comsat industry…

    • Yale S says:
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      The Discovery ship to Jupiter was originally spec-ed out as an Orion atomic bomb ship, that propelled itself with nuclear explosions. It was later changed to a “conventional” nuclear fusion rocket. The ship in the film “Deep Impact” was powered by an Orion atom bomb engine.
      As to Mars, there were already outposts there.

      Some isolated paragraphs from the Clarke novel:

      “No matter how many times you left Earth, Dr. Heywood Floyd told himself, the excitement never really palled. He had been to Mars once, to the Moon three times, and to the various space stations more often than he could remember. “

      “It showed a man in a bright red and yellow spacesuit standing at the bottom of an excavation and supporting a surveyor’s rod marked off in tenths of a meter. It was obviously a night shot, and might have been taken anywhere on the Moon or Mars.”

      “The ship was still only thirty days from Earth, yet David Bowman sometimes found it hard to believe that be had ever known any other existence than the closed little world of Discovery. All his years of training, all his earlier missions to the Moon and Mars, seemed to belong to another
      man, in another life.”

      Clarke did not want to call it 2001 because he knew the events in the film would take much, much longer, but Kubrick overruled him.