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SpaceX Attempting 1st Stage Landing After Rocket Launch (AKA Crazy Space Stuff)

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To me it looks like the second stage went. It was right around MECO, so maybe something failed. You can kinda see the dragon capsule (or at least the fairings) come tumbling away.
 

s_mirage

Member
It almost looked like the second stage may have fired prematurely. That's where the anomalous smoke seemed to be coming from.

Edit: Beaten to it.
 

rbanke

Member
It seemed to be going so well, too. Dammit.

Just seemingly out of nowhere. Toothpicks.

CImAhWwWoAA9A5n.jpg

I live on the space coast and just watched it from my front yard. It's pretty crazy how quick it happens. A split second before it exploded it looked 'different'. Last time I saw something like this it was the Challenger (there was quite a bit more pieces visible with that though). It's pretty erie, at least no one was on board.
 
We really need a way to get into space without riding on tons of highly explosive chemicals.

Google's AI needs to become self-aware and figure out anti-grav or something...
 

legacyzero

Banned
I live on the space coast and just watched it from my front yard. It's pretty crazy how quick it happens. A split second before it exploded it looked 'different'. Last time I saw something like this it was the Challenger (there was quite a bit more pieces visible with that though). It's pretty erie, at least no one was on board.

Yeah, was it just me, or did it look like it was burning REALLY hard right before it failed:

CImAjOdUwAAmLhN.jpg


Is that normal?
 

rbanke

Member
Yeah, was it just me, or did it look like it was burning REALLY hard right before it failed:

CImAjOdUwAAmLhN.jpg


Is that normal?

I'm not very knowledgeable on the subject but I feel like I heard someone on the stream say it was around the time of a stage transition. Perhaps that was it failing or the second stage taking over? Really not sure on that one as I'm not sure how the stages on it work. But yea it looked like it was going extra strong just before failure.
 

jett

D-Member
Dang man.

Been 50 years of space travel, still haven't cracked this. This industry really needs some sort of miracle breakthrough.
 

Par Score

Member
Yeah, was it just me, or did it look like it was burning REALLY hard right before it failed:

CImAjOdUwAAmLhN.jpg


Is that normal?

It all looked completely normal, right up until T+ 2:20, when it suddenly looked very not normal and exploded.

The Falcon 9 has a very wide exhaust profile, so it always looks like it's giving it the full beans from behind.
 

Jezbollah

Member
Heartbroken :(

/r/SpaceX's coverage says that the flight was terminated by the Airforce.

Elon Musk has stated that there was an issue at the end of the first stage burn. - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/615167185229619202

I think it looked like an issue around the segment between the first and second stages, almost as if the second stage ignited prematurely or something.

This is kind of a huge setback isn't it?

It's a setback, but not huge. the ISS have a Progress launch for resupplies later this week. After the Antares failure earlier this year and the recent Progress fuck up it's another reminder that Space is still very much a challenge. If there is any entity that will fix this, it's SpaceX.
 

owasog

Member
This is also a huge setback for the commercial crew program. The thing had the docking adapter for future vehicles on board.
 

Blizzard

Banned
yep - It will set back SpaceX commercial crew and cost them a ton of commercial contracts, and henceforth money.
Who else is going to take the commercial contracts? I thought SpaceX was pretty much the only U.S. group successfully launching rockets besides NASA.
 

Blizzard

Banned
It sucks that the last two ISS resupply missions have failed.
rCJXQh5.png


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unmanned_spaceflights_to_the_International_Space_Station

Looking at the entire list, the success rate is super impressive. The next mission is planned for July 3 with a Soyuz-U.
An earlier poster said there's a Progress launch for resupplies later this week:

It's a setback, but not huge. the ISS have a Progress launch for resupplies later this week. After the Antares failure earlier this year and the recent Progress fuck up it's another reminder that Space is still very much a challenge. If there is any entity that will fix this, it's SpaceX.

*edit* My bad, already mentioned.
 

Arnie7

Banned
Days like these are when I question if we did really land on the moon :-(
bad joke/s

Why is space travel so hard!!!
 
Dealing with space has a ton of setbacks and failures. As long as they can get back up and running from this then they can learn and improve.
 

besada

Banned
Ouch. They've failed the landing a couple of times already, but this is the first time I've seen them lose a rocket in the air, before the landing attempt. Space travel is hard.
 

Par Score

Member
Ouch. They've failed the landing a couple of times already, but this is the first time I've seen them lose a rocket in the air, before the landing attempt. Space travel is hard.

This is the first loss of a Falcon 9, and also SpaceX's first total loss of a payload.

All of their previous launch failures were on the Falcon 1, and they were all effectively 'test' launches.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Yea, it's called mining astroids, building space docks and building your space ships in space so you don't have to escape Earth's gravity.
Getting asteroid retrieval equipment, asteroid mining equipment, and space docks into space still requires reliably escaping Earth's gravity, especially if it involves human workers.
 
Getting asteroid retrieval equipment, asteroid mining equipment, and space docks into space still requires reliably escaping Earth's gravity, especially if it involves human workers.

You don't need human workers for that.

Self replicating robots who build copies of themselves from the astroid material means you can build a fleet of workers with minimum cost.
 

Jezbollah

Member
How many Falcon 9's does SpaceX have?

They have quite a manufacturing line for F9s. They have 7 planned launches (including two CRS missions) between now and the end of the year, and also a inflight launch abort test of the Crew Dragon (Dragon v2) sometime this year as well.
 
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