SpaceX Dragon Headed to the ISS

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Recommends Galerita · 2024-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Could Superheavy land downrange and return if Starship were launched from Boca Chica?”

TL;DR Yes, with increased payloads the SuperHeavy will be forced to land downrange, likely on a larger drone ship than is currently used for the Falcon 9 first stage. No, it does not make sense to refill the booster and fly it back to Boca Chica. Like the Falcon 9 first stage, the drone ship will return to a purpose built dock near Boca Chica where SuperHeavy will be unloaded and refurbished for relaunch. Falcon 9 has 3 launch modes, dependent on the amount of fuel left at separation. Stage 1 will either: return to launch site (RTLS) land on an autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) be expended somewhere in the Atlantic Musk partly explains it here [this video] . Launches to GEO or Earth escape r

Cites Hobbes · 2016-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Falcon 9 fairings cost and reusability”

Apparently this was considered by SpaceX in Q1 2015, to work around a production bottleneck. Due to delays in 2015 after the June 2015 loss of CRS-7 that bottleneck may not have occurred. As of CRS-8 [this video] (1 year later) we haven't seen a recovery attempt but it's still something SpaceX wants to do. This slide is from an internal SpaceX presentation [LINK] : [LINK] SpaceX note that by the the end of 2015, fairing production will not be able to keep up with desired fairing launch frequency. Incremental improvements in production are occurring to resolve this, but a redesign is needed to drastically improve fairing production. This will be accomplished by decreasing the number of piece parts

Cites hshib · 2016-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Falcon 9 fairings cost and reusability”

The fairings cost several million dollars. During the post launch briefing of CRS-8 [this video] , Elon Musk mentioned that: A few more things we want to do... we want to try to bring back the fairing - the big nose come back. That will certainly help because each of those cost several millions. Midair helicopter capture would be tricky. Is there such a system currently in use for any use case? Only thing I could find with a quick search is this system [LINK] developed in the 70s. Correcting myself. There is a system developed by NASA [LINK] for space probe recovery. Also came across a youtube video [LINK] which is obviously unofficial and must be based on the reddit post mentioned in the reply b

Cites user12102 · 2016-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “How stable would a Falcon 9 first stage be after it has landed on a drone ship?”

Using spherical cow [LINK] physics, ignoring momentum and sloshing (because the time scales are so different) I just looked at where the cm is for an empty F9 1st stage of uniform density, and one with 5% remaining propellants. I get static tip-over angles of 15° and 18°, respectively. Additional remaining propellants bring the center of mass even lower. Counting localized masses like bulkheads and engines would further lower the center of mass. See this answer [LINK] above! That's not inconsistent with Musk's comments [this video] that 8-9° would be possible, which probably includes various non-spherical-horse factors like dynamics, leg strength (especially if there turned out to be more fuel th

Cites hshib · 2016-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “How does the Falcon 9 know where the landing barge/pad is?”

According to Musk at the post CRS-8 briefing [this video] : Both (ship and rocket) is going to an absolute position. So the ship is holding to the absolute GPS position, with relative GPS and today it was holding to the accuracy of below a meter. It has four engines all of which can rotate 360 degrees and operating continuously to hold the position, to hold both attitude and position in the ocean. I assume that means that there is no communication between the drone and the rocket and they simply meet at a set GPS location. I caught following during the THAICOM 8 launch [LINK] : Recovery vessel has AOS. AOS means Acquisition Of Signal. That means that the recovery.. the drone ship has reached comm

Cites hshib · 2016-04 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “How will SpaceX tie down a landed stage on the ASDS barge after landing?”

Musk confirmed in the CRS-8 briefing [this video] that they are putting steel shoes over the landing feet and welding them down.

Cites user12102 · 2016-05 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Technologies use by SpaceX to enable landing on a drone ship”

I'm pretty sure I've either read or heard Elon must use the term "relative GPS" explicitly *somewhere* - looking for it now. I think it was on a televised interview after either the first ground or first ship landing. By the way, Elon sez [this video] we should call it a *ship*, not a *barge* :) ...also, could someone take a moment and explain what relative GPS actually means?

Cites user12102 · 2016-06 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “What work needs to be done before reusing Falcon 9?”

Interesting question - that darn Elon, always saying he's going to do stuff (and then does it). The quote can be heard at around 08:00 in the CRX-8 post landing press conference [this video] . paraphrasing: *hopefully10X test firings while still at Cape Canaveral followed by orbital launch in May or June*.

Cites user12102 · 2016-07 · Space Exploration Stack Exchange · on “Why cannot supersonic retropropulsion, for use in the Red Dragon lander be tested on Earth?”

I'm looking at the video of LL's SETI talk. Slide 5 at about 17:00 - there seems to be a *return-to-earth rocket, fully fueled*, sitting inside the Dragon capsule which has propulsively landed. Is there some place I can read more about that - especially the math? Oh, the answer to Phil Harwood's question at 14:50 [this video] - Indeed a ship.