The middle booster of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket failed to land on its drone ship [crash landing]

[240B]

The Verge
By Loren Grush @lorengrush 
Feb 6, 2018, 6:39pm EST

Though the Falcon Heavy’s outer cores successfully landed after launch this afternoon, the middle core of SpaceX’s huge rocket missed the drone ship where it was supposed to land, a source tells The Verge. SpaceX later confirmed The Verge’s reporting in a press conference.

The center core was only able to relight one of the three engines necessary to land, and so it hit the water at 300 miles per hour. Two engines on the drone ship were taken out when it crashed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a press call after the rocket launch.

It’s a small hiccup in an otherwise successful first flight. The Falcon Heavy rocket took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 3:45PM ET on Wednesday and made a beautiful arc to space. About two and a half minutes after liftoff, the two outer boosters of the rocket broke away and returned to Earth. The pair then touched down just seconds apart on SpaceX’s two ground landing pads at the Cape called Landing Zone 1 and Landing Zone 2.

(more)
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16980954/spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-middle-core-failed-landing

[edpc]

[anubias]

Scratch one $250,000 Tesla.

[240B]

Scratch one $250,000 Tesla.

The car, if that is what you mean, is on its way to Mars as we speak. It will orbit Mars for infinity. There are no plans to land it on the surface or to attempt to recover it.

[edpc]

The car, if that is what you mean, is on its way to Mars as we speak. It will orbit Mars for infinity. There are no plans to land it on the surface or to attempt to recover it.

Elon Musk
✔
@elonmusk
Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.


A 1B year orbit.  Basically, the car got drafted into Scientology Starfleet.

[WingNot]

The car, if that is what you mean, is on its way to Mars as we speak. It will orbit Mars for infinity. There are no plans to land it on the surface or to attempt to recover it.

Perfect.  Saint Elon is sending his junk to other worlds.

[Frank Cannon]

[anubias]

The car, if that is what you mean, is on its way to Mars as we speak. It will orbit Mars for infinity. There are no plans to land it on the surface or to attempt to recover it.

Aaah.  I did not know that.  I thought he just strapped something ridiculous for a ride instead of a monkey.

That’s hilarious!  Tesla space junk rotating around Mars.  I thought this guy was a Liberal?  Aren’t the libs pissed that he’s now junking up another planet?

[240B]

Elon Musk
✔
@elonmusk
Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.


A 1B year orbit.  Basically, the car got drafted into Scientology Starfleet.

Of course that was said tongue in cheek. Orbits degrade over time and are corrected with microbursts from thrusters. Once the thrusters run out of steam, the thing will crash. Which is kind of cool in a way.


It is fun to think about a Tesla Roadster sitting on the Martian surface. LOL


We're going 'redneck' decorate Mars. The next trip they are going so send a trailer home to sit behind it. Nothing better than a crashed car in front of the trailer. I'm savin' it for parts! Dangit!

[Gefn]

How do they get the car to play Bowie? Continuous loop?

Ground control to Elon Musk 🎶 🎶🎶

[Frank Cannon]

It is fun to think about a Tesla Roadster sitting on the Martian surface. LOL

I'm not amused. My hard earned tax dollars payed for that car and this professional morons ego masturbation exercise.

The countries budget deficit could be cut in half if Elon would do us all a favor, have a heart attack and drop dead.

[edpc]

Matt Damon said he needed more food, not a car.

[WingNot]

[240B]

I'm not amused. My hard earned tax dollars payed for that car and this professional morons ego masturbation exercise.

The countries budget deficit could be cut in half if Elon would do us all a favor, have a heart attack and drop dead.

@Frank Cannon

SpaceX is a private company. I do not know of any ties to the government.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., doing business as SpaceX, is a private American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars.[8] SpaceX has since developed the Falcon launch vehicle family and the Dragon spacecraft family, which both currently deliver payloads into Earth orbit.

SpaceX's achievements include the first privately funded liquid-propellant rocket to reach orbit (Falcon 1 in 2008);[9] the first privately funded company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft (Dragon in 2010); the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station (Dragon in 2012);[10] the first propulsive landing for an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2015); and the first reuse of an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2017). As of March 2017, SpaceX has flown ten missions to the International Space Station (ISS) under a cargo resupply contract.[11] NASA also awarded SpaceX a further development contract in 2011 to develop and demonstrate a human-rated Dragon, which would be used to transport astronauts to the ISS and return them safely to Earth.

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

[edpc]

[240B]

This is what STARMAN (the driver of the Roadster) looks like in space.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO3h4FBLWqY

[Frank Cannon]

SpaceX is a private company. I do not know of any ties to the government.

Where do you think Elon gets all this money to do shit? It ain't all Paypal cash. He has set up on of the biggest worldwide grifts on the planet. He started with Tesla and getting governments to subsidize the hell out of that. Then he went into buying defunct solar companies so that he could hide debts and obligations from other companies and so on and so forth along with more govt' handouts. SpaceX is another game he is playing. All the money rolling into that turn are govt' contracts. Were you aware of that? Probably not.

His are the only prospectuses that use non-GAAP numbers to hide the disaster they are, which is wholly illegal, yet because he owns all the pols he gets away with it. 

[Elderberry]

Of course that was said tongue in cheek. Orbits degrade over time and are corrected with microbursts from thrusters. Once the thrusters run out of steam, the thing will crash. Which is kind of cool in a way.


It is fun to think about a Tesla Roadster sitting on the Martian surface. LOL


We're going 'redneck' decorate Mars. The next trip they are going so send a trailer home to sit behind it. Nothing better than a crashed car in front of the trailer. I'm savin' it for parts! Dangit!

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a16571489/elon-musk-space-tesla-mars/

Musk's vehicle won’t be going to Mars, or even orbit around Mars. In fact, it could be several million miles away from the Red Planet. Rather, this launch would put the car into the kind of orbital loop that brings it close to Mars and Earth over and over again.

The Falcon Heavy launch would place the Roadster into a heliocentric orbit, meaning that like the planets and comets and so on, it will be orbiting the sun. More specifically, the Muskmobile will go into a type of heliocentric orbit called Trans-Mars injection, which it is the easiest and least energy-intensive way to move objects back and forth between Earth and Mars.

At specific moments every two years, the conditions are right to fire up the spacecraft’s engines and slide from one orbit to the other. A future transportation network that supplies a Martian colony would benefit from this kind of scheduling. Think of Musk's car like a city bus on a scheduled run through the solar system, slung this way and that to take advantage of the gravitational pull of the sun to make it easier to get into Earth or Martian orbits.

Since the Tesla doesn’t have thrusters, it won’t make that jump into Martian orbit. It'll be a Flying Dutchman, careening through the solar system for billions of years. Even so, the opportunity for a private company to launch anything on a jaunt through the solar system is itself a game changer. The fact that the launch may help lay the groundwork for industrialization and colonization makes this far more than a publicity stunt.

[240B]

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a16571489/elon-musk-space-tesla-mars/

Musk's vehicle won’t be going to Mars, or even orbit around Mars. In fact, it could be several million miles away from the Red Planet. Rather, this launch would put the car into the kind of orbital loop that brings it close to Mars and Earth over and over again.

The Falcon Heavy launch would place the Roadster into a heliocentric orbit, meaning that like the planets and comets and so on, it will be orbiting the sun. More specifically, the Muskmobile will go into a type of heliocentric orbit called Trans-Mars injection, which it is the easiest and least energy-intensive way to move objects back and forth between Earth and Mars.

At specific moments every two years, the conditions are right to fire up the spacecraft’s engines and slide from one orbit to the other. A future transportation network that supplies a Martian colony would benefit from this kind of scheduling. Think of Musk's car like a city bus on a scheduled run through the solar system, slung this way and that to take advantage of the gravitational pull of the sun to make it easier to get into Earth or Martian orbits.

Since the Tesla doesn’t have thrusters, it won’t make that jump into Martian orbit. It'll be a Flying Dutchman, careening through the solar system for billions of years. Even so, the opportunity for a private company to launch anything on a jaunt through the solar system is itself a game changer. The fact that the launch may help lay the groundwork for industrialization and colonization makes this far more than a publicity stunt.

@Elderberry

Wow. What a bold experiment. I read the article and cannot say that I understand it completely, but it seems the gist is the car is in orbit around the sun like a new planet or comet.  And it is on a path which causes it to intersect from time to time with the orbits of Mars and Earth. That is wild. I did not know that. Thanks for the clarification.

I think the reports I have read and heard must be saying that it will orbit Mars for the sake of simplicity. It is true, in a way. But it is not the whole story.

[Suppressed]

Elon Musk’s Tesla overshot Mars’ orbit and is headed to the asteroid belt
By Loren Grush. @lorengrush  Feb 6, 2018, 11:45pm EST
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falcon-heavy-roadster-orbit-asteroid-belt-elon-musk-mars

Elon Musk’s Tesla roadster, which launched on top of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy earlier today, is going farther out into the Solar System than originally planned. The car was supposed to be put on a path around the Sun that would take the vehicle out to the distance of Mars’ orbit. But the rocket carrying the car seems to have overshot that trajectory and has put the Tesla in an orbit that extends out into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

[...]

[DB]

That's a pretty big oops...

[thackney]

Third burn successful. Exceeded Mars orbit and kept going to the Asteroid Belt.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/961083704230674438

[thackney]

[240B]

I was surprised to find out that there are no thrusters on this payload. Can't figure out why SpaceX ever thought that they would never have to do any course corrections?

[WingNot]

This what happens when K-mart tries runs a space program.

[Joe Wooten]

Elon Musk’s Tesla overshot Mars’ orbit and is headed to the asteroid belt
By Loren Grush. @lorengrush  Feb 6, 2018, 11:45pm EST
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16983744/spacex-tesla-falcon-heavy-roadster-orbit-asteroid-belt-elon-musk-mars

Elon Musk’s Tesla roadster, which launched on top of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy earlier today, is going farther out into the Solar System than originally planned. The car was supposed to be put on a path around the Sun that would take the vehicle out to the distance of Mars’ orbit. But the rocket carrying the car seems to have overshot that trajectory and has put the Tesla in an orbit that extends out into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

[...]

Looks like a rocky road ahead.........

[bolobaby]

I was surprised to find out that there are no thrusters on this payload. Can't figure out why SpaceX ever thought that they would never have to do any course corrections?

Because it is a dumb payload that no one really gives a shit about?

[240B]

Because it is a dumb payload that no one really gives a shit about?

Not about the 'dumb payload'. It is about success.

[WingNot]

Not about the 'dumb payload'. It is about success.

And Failure.

[txradioguy]

@240B @Frank Cannon

FYI:

Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html

[jpsb]

That's a pretty big oops...

First time launch and the rocket over performed. No big deal, it was a test launch with a nothing
payload.

[WingNot]

@240B @Frank Cannon

FYI:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html

One thing is a given.  We will put a man on Mars long before any of the patron Saint of grifters companies are in the black.

[bolobaby]

Not about the 'dumb payload'. It is about success.

Oh, I'm all for what Musk and Bezos are doing, but I doubt that - on this particular mission - they were overly interested in adding millions of dollars of backup systems to make a stupid car go where they wanted.

The real test was whether they could land the launch components safely. I was stoked when I saw those Falcons touch down, but it is disappointing that the bigger, more expensive component hit the ocean going 300 mph.

[WingNot]

First time launch and the rocket over performed. No big deal, it was a test launch with a nothing
payload.

That is one way to spin it.

[jpsb]

And Failure.

[txradioguy]

One thing is a given.  We will put a man on Mars long before any of the patron Saint of grifters companies are in the black.

I have no doubt about that.

[240B]

First time launch and the rocket over performed. No big deal, it was a test launch with a nothing
payload.

That's an important point. This is all just a test. It is a part of the learning curve.

Also, since we now know how to reach the asteroid belt, the next payload could be some kind of mining apparatus to mine the asteroid belt.

Scientists have projected that it will look something like this:


 

[Mod1]

Merged two threads on Musk's rocket and moved to Space category

[240B]

That explains why their stock is not publically traded, which is something I was wondering about. If they are a private company, then why wouldn't use shares to raise money?


But now I learn that it is all a lie. They are not a 'private company' as they claim. They are a private company which is funded by the government. Which necessarily means that they are NOT entirely a private company.


SpaceX is simply an extension of the government into a pseudo-private domain. Without government subsidies, SpaceX would not exist. No doubt there are GS-15 level supervisors running the show.


Didn't know any of this. I believed the lie. I thought SpaceX was privately funded. It is not.

[WingNot]

@240Z
Musk makes PT Barnum look like a piker.

[jpsb]

Whatever you think of SpaceX they are doing the country a great service and developing mind
boggling capabilities. With Tesla the jury is still out, let see if they can solve the battery problem.

[edpc]

That's an important point. This is all just a test. It is a part of the learning curve.

Also, since we now know how to reach the asteroid belt, the next payload could be some kind of mining apparatus to mine the asteroid belt.

Wouldn’t that necessitate renaming rare earth elements to common space stuff?

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Hmph. So we now have a random car, with a fake dude in it, out into space towards the asteroid belt.

That is sentence I never thought I'd type in my lifetime.

[Ghost Bear]

The part of me that used to enjoy reading Science Fiction can foresee a time in the future, after asteroid mining has become commonplace, when some Belter will stumble across Elon's Lost Tesla, and become a brief media sensation...

[edpc]

The joke will be on us when that car mysteriously disappears, comes back hundreds of years later as V'ger, and insists on talking to Elon.

[WingNot]

The joke will be on us when that car mysteriously disappears, comes back hundreds of years later as V'ger, and insists on talking to Elon.

A sentient, massive entity which threatens Earth in 2271, en route to find its Creator Saint Elon.... Sounds like a nice movie plot for a sequile.

[truth_seeker]

To a certain extent, Musk's space efforts are a competitor with Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other defense-aerospace contractors.

Those forms, using government accounting rules, have socked it to taxpayers for decades and for billions if not trillions of $$.

Many American families have worked all or most of their careers, riding government contracts for "defense" and "national security," knowing full well the extent of corruption, inefficiency, etc.

[thackney]

A sentient, massive entity which threatens Earth in 2271, en route to find its Creator Saint Elon.... Sounds like a nice movie plot for a sequile.

All while singing "Space Oddity" by David Bowie.

[edpc]

A sentient, massive entity which threatens Earth in 2271, en route to find its Creator Saint Elon.... Sounds like a nice movie plot for a sequile.

It'll have a subplot concerning a #metoo campaign against Captain Decker.

[Oceander]

The car, if that is what you mean, is on its way to Mars as we speak. It will orbit Mars for infinity. There are no plans to land it on the surface or to attempt to recover it.

Some time hundreds of years in the future, some insurance company is going to have to pay on a spaceship hit-and-run with that thing!!