@@glennhaggis B1050 is very definitely a Block 5 (see the Wikipedia entry for " List of Falcon 9 first-stage boosters"). I doubt it will be reusable, but next year Space X have to sacrifice a Block 5 for the inflight abort demonstration with Dragon 2, so perhaps they could use this one with left-over used Block 4 engines (if that's possible). The crucial thing is that the avionics have to be all Block 5 for the test, since the test will be of the automatic abort system near max-Q, a bit like the Soyuz MS-10 abort. I understand Space X no longer have infrastructure supporting Block 4 launches.
SpaceX has done plenty of "soft water landings", so they're able to use that as a safe mode for landing when reaching the droneship or landing pad isn't possible. In this case, control to the grid fins was lost, not the engines, so the stage's vertical speed could be cancelled out by the engine burn and soft-landed. It just didn't have the stability to stay upright.
Given the fact that an entire control surface was unusable, they recovered their landing incredibly. Btw who else’s heart sank as soon as it started to spiral??
Christian Santos I'm lucky enough to live jus north of the base here in Vandenberg! I saw the falcon 9 launch last Monday that made history with the first stage booster used for the third time!
I follow SPace X constantly and greatly admire their openness. Today Falcon 9 stage one failed to land on target BUT the stage one engines managed to land up right on the water and then fell on it's side, appearing to float. Great work Space X mission control bringing it in safely. Maybe the water 'landing/ tipover will save the stage for future use.
@@davidedippolito6770 It probably hasn't been in the water for long. I'm pretty much sure they deployed a ship to collect the rocket as soon as it landed.
@@quasar7683 no, you need to safely depressurize the tanks before you can recover the rocket, also you need to send the ship(that is slow) to recover it etc etc. it Will be in salt water for at least 2h+
The rocket has critical software, on board flight computer, navigation motion sensors landing hydraulics, and their proprietary cooling/heating tanks, and then booster itself I’m sure they have a few Merlin’s laying around, as backups
@@f.w.1318 the rocket cost is Made around 50-70% of the engines, so if the engines get damaged the rocket wont be reused in any way (i dont think they Will waste time and money to replace the engines on a 3 flights old booster)
There will be backup pumps for BFR because when you are landing humans you will want to have redundant systems in place. These Falcon 9's didn't have a redundant system in place for the grid fin hydraulic pumps, because landing the rockets weren't considered mission critical. But when BFR becomes a reality, landing humans will absolutely be mission critical.
@Youcrafter_73, That maybe true for current materials and technology (and certainl the current Falcon 9 won’t be that after a salt water dip)… That’s why I suggested learning things. For example… It is well known that if you drive a car in to salt water there is a high chance the body can start rusting from somwhere and usually the electronics are done for… However if you disassemble the whole car and was everything down it is possible to save almost everything except some of the connectors. Cars are not built for water ingestion. You can build a rocket for water landings.. If you have the resources it is easier to for example make all wiring looms continuous without any connectors etc.. Of course there remains the problems with the engines etc… Perhaps wash the rocket down within a few hours and then fire it again to clean possible ingestion in to the turbo pumps etc. Then when going further you can start replacing the engine parts that are affected by the salt water and cannot be cleaned… And once you’re there, slab on some solar panels and a propeller that can drive the stage back to shore after landing ;) (I mean, even picking up the thing from the sea by a ship could be automated, choose your poison)
What we all fail to realize is this is actually a success as it show the nay sayers that were worried of an out of control 1st stage coming back to land on land that the trajectory takes it toward water to that last second then there is a dog leg kick that takes it over the landing zone. Today that dog leg kick was not initiated plus he always has that self destruct button that can be triggered. If he was to trigger the self destruct then that is a lot of clean up and red tape. I feel SpaceX showed today even with an anomaly of a stalled pump that they can still control decent with 3 grid fins and 3 back booster engines. Way to go SpaceX.
@Joe Biden If it had been piloted, the impact looked well within the limits of a proper seat+harness+suit. The old saying is, if the pilot walks away, it was a good landing. :)
@@wage0048 Not quite. The F9 actually 'glides' to an extent using only the gridfins for attitude control. That obviously didn't happen according to plan here, hence the wet landing.
The Navigation system is a beast. The center engine would have pulled it off if it had somehow got to land. It was fighting those stuck grid fins all the way till the vehicle was slow enough that the grid fins lost their effectiveness..
Зачем ты вообще это написал? Или ты политиком заделался? Запускают не политики, а инженеры в тех условиях в которых могут, не ты ни кто другой не может это изменить. Будь добрее.
Analyze the endurance spin. Get ready to match our spin to with the retro thrusters. It's not possible No, it's necessary! Cooper, we are lined up! Initiating spin! Come on TARS! We are locked! Easing out! Main engines on! Come on baby! Kill main engines. Splash down :) Somebody dub the music on video, would be cool!
A lot of folks are seeing this as a fail, but in fact it's a total win. Not only was the rocket able to recover stability on it's own, but it also managed to orientate into a vertical landing mode and softly touch down. The damage from tipping over is well worth the amount of data Space X got from this.
Very happy with space x, even on hard failure, they are still in control. Water as just a safety measure. The booster would landed perfectly in safe parameters. Huge victory and hard work proven 110% battle tank :)
a 'water landing' is a failure. The stage one booster is not reusable now. It is, however, amazing that it did not go completely out of control, and slowed down to a zero velocity 'landing' in the water.
@Rui Wang even if it had survived physical damage the Salt water will destroy the engines, and this is the reason why spacex land their boosters in a barge instead of the water
one of the MOST MOST expensive things about these Boosters are the Titanium Grid fins.. :) and they will be reusable no problem! They safed millions with this water landing alone with the Grid Fins!
Honestly that booster is prolly gonna be relaunched again just to see what it can do. It's a total loss from commercial re usability but that is very much a launch-able rocket come next spring/summer.
@@Th3Shadowwalker - I would be surprised if they do more than a static fire of this one. There's not much point of relaunching a first stage that flips over in the ocean when no customer is willing to pay for it. A new second stage and fairings need to be built for it, after all. It's possible SpaceX might put a batch of StarLink sats on top, but that's the only launch scenario I see for this. And attempting a landing of that first stage would be too risky - not worth damaging LZ-1 or one of the droneships. Other than another StarLink demo launch, there's no point in devoting SpaceX's already packed launch ops resources to launching only a first stage with fairings "just for fun."
sbmphr my question is what causes more stress. Max Q or tipping over in water. A couple friends and I were debating whether this would be the rocket they use to test the dragon IFA
@sbmphr I'm thinking the sideways impact was pretty minimal. But maybe the engines and grid-fins will fly for the IFA if the whole frame doesn't. I'm almost positive Space X will use this or parts from this mission for the crew dragon test. Anyways even if it does go to a museum this water landing was a successful crash landing
I'd say that it also depends on wether the impact was softened a bit by the water, (letting it glide along the side into the water or if it was bent by a wave or just smashed down flat. It is meant to take some serious vibrations and must be a bit flexible, so there are some odds for it surviving.
I’ve seen a video that shows it coming down that shows the spin rate decrease...so now Falcon 9 has some experience trying to control spin out...so that’s a good part too. Hopefully lots of the stage will be reusable.
The booster could have landing at the LZ. It was spinning because of it's velocity. Once the Rocket began to hover there was no longer air passing through the grid fins and thus it stablized at the last moment.
I like the fact they knew something was wrong and didn't attempt to land it on the barge. No need to risk damaging it. My guess is one of the fins hydraulics malfunctioned causing the spin.
It was going to be landing near the launch pad on land. As a failsafe, the rocket is initially aimed towards the shore during its approach. When it's slowed down, it then manouvers to the actual landing area. So what you're seeing here is a successful failsafe engaging.
I'm sure they will find the problem, fix the rest of the fleet so this doesn't repeat. Great job steering wounded 1st stage away from land so they had no collateral damage
Well at least the failed grid paddle (right paddle in video) remained undamaged after the failed landing. This should help in figuring out exactly what went wrong. Does anyone know if these have failed before?
Thank you for posting this. But SpaceX should never censor in real time. It taints the integrity of the project, and it's creators. We can handle failure. Some of the live editing is horrible also. Get some pros in there to film these historic space shots. Too many kids at the wheel.
This landing "failure" seems contrived for the sake of testing on the behest of Elon Musk. The landing ability of the vehicle in an extreme environment under duress is a huge challenge and had they stuck the landing, which they almost did, it would have been monumental. As it was, the missed landing wasn't that bad and it proved to be a true space vehicle that can still perform well under adverse conditions. Or was it just an accident?
jesus christ, i thought that thing was gonna go up in flames, it basically landed perfectly just missed the target, given that one of the goddam fins wasnt working this is incredible. The poor thing even put out its landing feet before it touched the water haha
Why do people care so much about this? 10 years ago we just made let the stages go and explode in the ocean at least they tried. Better than NASA does.
It's not a good thing stopping to show the video signal in main broadcast when stage 1 starts rotation............. failures are part of reality, not things to hide..............
The Little thrusters tried and tried, but could not make Mr Booster land in the right spot. They did their best, but just couldn’t convince Mr Booster to go to the landing pad. Mr Computer was not doing his best.
Anyone know if this is AI fully controlling it? either way if it was pilot or AI, the pilot or programmers did a damn good fucking job with quick decision making!
