The big news is how fast the FAA was to shut down SpaceX. Time to take the FAA to court, the Supreme Court just decided policies are not law. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen
@@Danny-bd1ch no one's panties are bunched. Stop being an average redditor. This commentor is 100% right. SpaceX landing a booster isn't news worthy at this point. But losing one is.
Yep. All a learning experience. No one got hurt, mission to deliver what it was supposed to deliver was a success. What more could you ask for? Some are just hating on SpaceX and Elon....Shameful of them.
It's great they get more data to learn and make their rockets better, not so great they are grounded with out reason, losing millions in revenue, and need to convince a Kafkaesque bureaucracy and wait form weeks or months to let them fly again.
this wasn't about aging, it hit the deck too hard. There could have been a throttle or a computer glitch that made it land too hard, or it could have been a wave.
Yeah, I'm sure that SpaceX expected this to happen sooner or later and will use what they learn and apply it forward. They seem to be pretty good at doing that. And 267 landings of multiple stages is a damn fine record that they'll probably beat if anyone can.
If the 'life' of a 'rocket' used to be measured in minutes, then we are talking about the under 3 minutes of flight time. Comparatively booster 1062 'lived' around 3 hours of flight time. Each launch and recovery lasted around 8 minutes.
When I first saw a headline that a booster failed a landing I was like "Geeze, what is going on in the space industry right now. So many seemingly random failures." Oh what's that? It was the 23rd time it was flown?! Yeah, that makes sense.
I was at that launch as a Polaris Dawn guest. Quite an honor to be there. The best part was that SpaceX sent a guy out to give us a presentation on the Starlink launch. He made a big deal about how it was the 1st ever 23rd use of a booster-a new record!. During the touchdown and subsequent crash, he was like “Ohhh, ohhh, oh nooooo!!! Sayonara baby!!” Haha, easy come, easy go for SpaceX I guess. On to the next crazy challenge.
@@juicebyme7078 *Are you trying and failing to text 'hydraulic'?* _What is your point, if any?_ Addendum: *Ah, but soft: A play on the word 'alcoholic', perchance?* Then again ...
Time to drop the quote: “I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die”.
Each time we get to question the limits of reusable SLVs/components is a positive step in the future of rocketry. Cannot wait for a full report and analysis on such an unusual anomaly.
Scott, funniest thing to note from your intro. Almost all other rocket companies land their rockets in the seas, disposed and no one makes a fuss. SpaceX misses landing at the 23rd attempt...it's a disaster 😂
right, but I blame the Greek god Poseidon for this failure, he's very unhappy not getting structures, from SpaceX, for his sea creatures to use as a basis for making coral reefs and other useful things from the disposed of space craft and rocket boosters!! ;D LOL
ULA and other rocket suppliers have had every missile they launched crash into the sea or land. Why wasn't there an FAA investigation on each of them? I believe the big money and political connections of some people are still interfering with Space X unfairly. Other than that, thanks to Scott for a very good look into the possible cause to this landing failure. Instead of the blaw blaw blaw of most reports, we are given a good look at possibilities of the cause. Thank you, Scott, for in depth look at all the space news that you do.
Yeah... I feel it'd be highly unfair to make them delay launches when every single other commercial launch around the world right now ends with the booster on it's side.
I was born in 2006, and even in my lifetime I've gone from being amazed watching the shuttle land and fly again to being surprised when an ordinary booster *doesn't* land successfully. It's amazing how far we've come, from massive spaceplanes being the only thing that could ever fly again to ordinary boosters that work so well that it's unusual to see one fail.
Spacex has better cameras than Apollo did, so I appreciate being able to watch in real time. Camera flare was also a problem when watching "one small step for mankind" live.
Born in 1951, and classes in grade school were put on hold and we watched the live broadcasts of every manned flight. We never knew if the rocket would fly or be scrubbed. A few times several days during the week were put on hold as we watched with awe and wonder.
They’ve gone 3 years without a single booster failure as well (excluding Starship, cause it’s still in testing) I can’t believe people think SpaceX is incompetent and will never be able to contribute to things like the moon mission plan and eventually mars, no other space agency is even close to their tech. Their rockets are fully renewable and reusable, and there’s no guarantee the “shelf-life” of these things is 20-ish launches since this is the first time a performance proven booster has failed, it could easily be an anomaly that could’ve flown double or triple that amount of it hadn’t had a bad hydraulic.
Stuff happens, these boosters are flying several times more than originally expected (I believe 10 flights were the theoretical max?) - and old boosters are only used for starlink. Anything of real importance goes on new(er) boosters with at most a few flights, so this will be resolved in a few days.
I only half-read space news from regular sources. If it's rockets, I wait for Scott Manley to tell me about it. If it's stars and planets, I wait for Dr. Becky to tell me about it. If neither one talks about it, there's a good chance that whatever I read was hyperbole from a 'science reporter' with no knowledge of space or physics.
@@Karackal What can "figure" "itself" means to star stuff or sun stuff? Some more grandiose, Sagan-eque mumbo-jumbo. This said, Sagan got a lot of the operational science right. He made a fool of himself when he went out of his domain in historical science, and single, non-repeatable events, which science MUST NOT fiddle around with. Anything repeatable, verifiable, under given known conditions falls in the domain of science.
@@vincentpinto1127 I've never read Sagan. I quoted Delenn from Babylon 5. Sure, it might be a logical fallacy to antropomorphize the entire universe, but that is not the point of the quote. It is about preserving the inner child they looked at the night sky and was filled with wonder. It is about heeding the call of inborn curiosity that is so inherent in the human condition. Never stop dreaming.
23 is an amazing number. Would have liked to see more, but 23 was unheard of back in the day. If they can get 20+ out of every booster, that is an amazing savings in launch costs.
The engine bell touching the barge would have ruptured the cooling jacket which is under high pressure with RP1. Clearly a raw RP1 fire so a contact with the bell on the barge and a few more fps of terminal velocity that the landing legs could not cope with. The residual pressure in the engine may have popped the vehicle up off the surface and toppled it but the leg did seem to already have failed by that time.
Did you not pay attention to the video and Scott's highly informative commentary? He did point out that other F9 boosters had 'hard' landings like this without any problems, in the case of this booster it appears that a failed strut was the cause of the tip over. If the landing had been nominal would the result have been the same? Hard to say, but a strut shouldn't fail like this one did under the circumstances.
It is insane how governments are STILL failing to get off the launch pad. Meanwhile it’s news that there is any SpaceX crash, and it was after 23 successful launch deliveries trying to land. As much as Boeing is complicit for its failures, I’ve started to more adopt the position that SpaceX is just such a massive exception in capability. So much innovation at a fraction of the price of government space agencies
The difference between having a blank check and a limited amount of money to use to start. The current aerospace industry got its start during WWII where the government spent cash so fast many industries couldn't use it fast enough to keep up. It was a time of unlimited spending and fixed cost pricing was never in the cards.
You do realise that SpaceX receive government subsidies under different forms - R&D money from NASA, contracts with the military and so on. While on paper they are still a private company, a lot of their funds come from the government, especially in the first few years. The price is not a fraction and naturally SpaceX will not divulge publically how much the government subsidies cover their budget.
@@8wayz2shine Those are not subsidies, those are payments. You pay for work. It is not free. Just because the Gov is paying them for service does not make it a subsidy. Yes, SpaceX is fiscally responsible and can do more with less money. You seem to think that is a bad thing? You would prefer to pay Russia billions to do less? Also, the Gov owes Starlink billions that they refuse to pay. Starlink is the single biggest reason Ukraine has not been annexed by Russia.
@@davidbeppler3032 The R&D subsidies from NASA are just that - grants/subsidies, call them whatever you want. SpaceX did not have a final and functioning product, the US government gave them money in advance (and to a few other companies) to develop it, before they started flying missions. We are talking hundreds of millions of USD for development. Then the regular government contracts for flight missions can be considered a sort of subsidy. Government contracts guarantee you a steady flow of funds for years to come, unlike private companies that might hire you to send satellites this year and then wait 5 more years before they have again need of your services. I have no idea why you bring in Russia in this. SpaceX has no dealings in Russia or the russian government. If the US government is still running missions on Soyuz rockets, there must have a good reason for that. Case in point, Boeing and their resent issues with crewed flights.
I’m not some Elon fanboy or anything, but it does seem kind of unfair that SpaceX gets grounded after a successful mission where the only thing that went wrong is their booster failed to land for the 24th time, and yet everyone else gets to just chuck their boosters into the ocean without a second thought.
Absolutely......... And even when they fail, the competitors are allowed to carry on regardless even standing their own test pilots. Being so embarrassing for Boeing is a likely reason for them to push NASA and the FAA into believing that Starliner is safe after all as they didn't have a booster explosion.
Yeah, it's pretty crap that this one rocket has more flight time than entire launch providers. And because it didn't land ideally, they are going to ignore all of the successes and focus on the one blemish and then shout it is not safe. It's stupid !
It's not unfair at all. The only thing the FAA care about here is that a vehicle follows the agreed flight plan - because people don't want unpredictability from rocket launches. So yes, dropping a booster into the ocean *as planned* is much more acceptable than an unplanned crash-landing.
@@simongeard4824 Actually it was a planned landing that landed before crashing but hey...... it's all about giving Boeing and Blue Horizon etc a chance to catch up with SpaceX.
@@fabianmckenna8197 Except it didn't successfully complete a landing. If it achieved a stable, stationary state before falling over, that would be a successful planned landing. In this case the landing was not stable, and until root cause can be identified it can't be said for certain the problem won't appear elsewhere, either on other landings or elsewhere in flight. This is why starliner is coming home empty, they couldn't establish a root cause. Hopefully it is just an age issue and maybe boosters get expended at 20, or get a larger refurb/overhaul at 20. Maybe it was the result of an engine failure which needs to be identified or maybe it was defective or damaged telemetry or filght control hardware that will require other flight control sensors or controllers to be inspected and repaired/replaced to ensure reliability of other flights. Maybe it was a control software edge case that hasn't appeared before that needs to be corrected. The investigation of the recent 2nd stage failure ultimately revealed an unnecessary weak point in the engine design that was able to be identified and corrected quickly, allowing a rapid return to flight with what was ultimately a more simple and reliable system. Unless you want SpaceX to slowly decline on the coattails of its own reputation like Boeing, these investigations should be championed, not condemned.
Yeah it looks like it was broken before touchdown or not fully deployed and locked and then collapsed There seemed to be the green flash of the starter gas/fluid too a just as the fire flares up
I expect that is extremely sensitive IP. Nobody else reuses keralox engines like this, but Blue Origin wants to. As do a few others. SpaceX has a massive competitive edge in this, one it will take rivals a decade to match.
@@markiangooley well yeah, no doubt there are some. But maybe there’s enough non-sensitive info like just in general what kinds of inspections do they do, and what do they typically have to replace vs refurbish. Anyway, I understand the reasons it might never happen. I just think it would be interesting.
A metric crap-tonne (1000 kg / 2204.6 lb) is slightly less than an imperial long shit-ton (2240 lb / 1016.0 kg), and about a 10th more than an imperial short shit-ton (2000 lb / 907.2 kg). Funnily enough there is actually an imperial unit named "ship-load", which is very big at (949,760 pounds / 430,800 kg / 430.8 mt). 😏
@@adenwellsmith6908Have you seen the photos of the Soyuz boosters on the ground? They look almost refurbishable, except the locals smash them into pieces for scrap metal before the authorities arrive lol.
@@robmc3338 There are images of them being chopped up. But they look a little dented from the landing. Google "Local scrap metal dealers collect and recycle them"
@@adenwellsmith6908 The boosters of the space shuttle were also reused. I don't think you can call a spashdown a "landing" but reuse is reuse, even if that meant disassembly and then reassembly at large cost.
Another option, if you look at the downward camera approaching the barge, the top right leg doesn't look like its extended properly. That matches up with the topple.
this craft has four legs, the Apollo LEM was once designed to have five, but the fifth one was not added to the final configuration, to save weight, reasoning four should be fine, even if one failed. Good thing they never did in the 6 moon landings! : )
I could swear that the reason for the failure was that one of the legs wasn’t down and locked by the time they hit the deck. We’ve seen uneven and nearly late leg deploys before. I think that rocket could’ve kept flying if it hadn’t been for the slowleg
The running theory in the public is that the hydraulics in one or more of the legs weren’t up to snuff and wasn’t able to stop the engine bell from impacting the platform, causing a fire that finished off what hydraulics were still able to hold the rocket up.
I’ve always wondered why they wait until the very last second possible it seems to extend and lock the legs. I would think that adding at least a couple seconds to that time frame would give you better odds against this issue.
@@AdeoyeSoluade I am not saying that all of the landing legs are like this, I suspect there were poor inspections to the leg before launch, also the booster doesn’t have the same landing legs throughout its life, they do get replaced, so maybe they just replaced them and one was slightly weaker than the rest due to a manufacturing error but we will likely never know
@@1flash3571 relax, they're just pointing out how it's just old and "used up". At least they can learn which parts of the rockets age faster than the rest so it can be built better in the future.
I would LOVE some updates when the SpaceX team releases more info on how it failed exactly, and what, if anything, they will do on future rockets to make them last longer.
Fabulous summary of the FACTS that can be observed. Props to you for having the patience to put that video under a proverbial microscope. It's been two days since this happened and I've gotten no equivalent-quality analysis from anyone else. Well done!!
I feel like we should also be thankful that we actually saw what happened. It wasn't that long ago that a booster landing on a drone ship would scramble the video signal.
SpaceX DO learn a metric tonne from these failures. It is because the systems are so reliable and resilient, any failures represent an opperchancity to validate the science behind theoretical limitations.
Great analysis as always from Scott. Seems like the only thing that would delay further missions is an engine underperformance since obviously that could happen on the way up as well as the way down, potentially resulting in a mission failure. If indeed it is a landing leg failure or failure of the landing system to judge speed/distance, well none of that should be cause to ground the rocket since all of that stuff is purely optional. I'm assuming they could very quickly rule out an engine issue with all of the telemetry. Looking at the video, I agree with Scott that it appears that the rate of deceleration matches other landings which would likely rule out an engine issue.
Even if they rule out engine failure tonight the FAA will still keep them grounded for a few weeks and take months to conclude their investigation leaving them hanging on their whim. Just like last time.
Depends what their exact reuse economy is. It is clear from even super simplified math that there are diminishing savings for each further launch. If you can split the cost of building a booster over 5 launches vs 1 that is amazing. But 20 vs 25 is a much smaller saving, and the cost of recovery and any refurbishment is either fixed, or more likely only increasing with each additional launch, as you have to do deeper and deeper refurbishments. And there are very reasonable parameters that you can pick that show that it's somewhere in the 20s where it's not worth it to fly a booster anymore. The same happens with airplanes too, it's just that there the point where it's no longer worth it is measured in years (usually 15-25 for commercial airliners), not dozens of flights. The way to push that number out is exactly what Starship is about, that's why it's only doing RTLS and they specifically want to catch it with the tower, and no barges. Operating those barges and moving boosters is expensive infrastructure that you have to pay for every time.
man, full lift capacit at twenty times service life?!? I salute thee, 1062, every launch was once considered impossible! Additionally, 3:22, the rear spar has taken a hit from striking early, the vibration/deflection is visible...
I've helped develop many military technical manuals. Equipment and vehicles have a " Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services" (PMCS) schedule. I wonder what type of PMCS is performed on these boosters. This incident could inform adjustments to create a schedule of at least inspection/refurbishment/replacement. of stressed components and extend the life of these boosters.
Indeed, though no amount of preventative maintenance can catch everything, the odd failure like this is to be expected anyway - how many jet engines eat a bird etc?
@@attichatchsound-bobkowal5328 I expect you are right, just making the point there may have been nothing wrong and nothing to learn here - sometimes the failures are those unpredictable shit happens moments no amount of maintenance can prevent. That said with how many launches some of these boosters had done now they very likely were intending to run them to failure, and probably wouldn't put a paying customer on one quite that old now - can't learn the weak links without actually having some failures, and SpaceX have always been a fail often learn quickly approach.
@@attichatchsound-bobkowal5328 Right, like the old adage: "if it ain't broke don't try to fix it"! Well, it finally broke; and that gives useful data too, "painful" data, but still data. And data, be it "good, bad, or ugly", (cue the music from that great old western here) don't care! :D
@@ronschlorff7089 Yep that seems to have served SpaceX well. However, some elements of reuse wear and failure are quite foreseeable and preventable. Maybe a matter of cost to maintain/refurbish as opposed to the cost to replace after 20+ uses. At least SPaceX has the luxury of having both options.
I agree with you 100%, I think the failure was the leg and the cause was its age. I suspect it'll be a metal component that failed. When you heat and cool metal repeatedly it succumbs to "work hardening" and becomes brittle. In this case, I suspect that rod that held its knee together failed. It was a little geriatric and its knee gave out. LOL
Looking at telemetry it is clear it hit the deck at over twice the velocity of a normal landing. This looks like a radar proximity failure maybe due to sudden swell causing the barge to rise up at the last moment.
@@schrodingerscat1863 Thanks for the heads up. I was basing my comment solely on the way the leg kind of slowly gave way and went into a topple. Like an old man with his knee giving out. hehehe
At 6.58 minutes into the flight , just after the booster re-entry burn had concluded I saw some plasma/fire coming from the booster tail area. Now , I've watched a lot of these launches and never seen that before... maybe the thing burning up was something critical to the landing struts... I only mention it because Scott didnae. :-)
Oh ho ho ho, that's a real knee slapper. How rich of them, calling SpaceX unsafe while their recent crew launch to the ISS determined the return launch will be on Crew Dragon.
They mentioned a couple of things that weren’t mentioned here, but Scott mentioned a couple of things they didn’t. Between the two I think we’ve pretty much gotten everything you can get without acces to SpaceX data.
Got a leaky toilet? ... don't call Scott Got a knock in your truck engine? ... don't call Scott Got a ? about anything space? ... you better call Scott! What a fine analysis! ... Thanks Scott! On second thought, call him about the leak and the knock!
@@scottmanley another thing I noticed about this launch is the MVac stiffener ring didn’t seem to separate after SES-1 - it normally expands upon nozzle bell heating and jettisons itself - but this wasn’t observed at SES-1 and then at SECO-1 you can see a glowing red ring around the bell end so I don’t believe it separated.
The booster did NOT fail. It's did it's mission perfectly well. It just met it's end of life with a flare. Given 99.9% of other boosters end their life on thier first mission - it was an exteremely successful booster - and ALWAYS delivered its payload successfully.
Now that we see that legs are were the first fail point for oldest booster, I again appreciate their decision to get rid of legs for super heavy by catching it, hopefully catching arms will have more tolerance to hard landings.
Instead they've got to design for unusual loadings on the catch pins on the top of the booster. Which could also fatigue with repeated impacts. And the engines need much faster gimbals and quicker reacting valving and turbo pumps to achieve the hover. It's not a slam-dunk design win, it also has significant costs.
Great analysis! I think you've come up with the definitive answer. As long as the barge is okay, maybe this failure mode will define the service life of future boosters.
I look at two possible issues Wind shear causing descent speed increase beyond single engine capability to null speed at touch down or center engine degradation during landing burn. Leg deployment timing is based on expected speed and there have been slow deployments in the past but I could see on the telemetry readout velocity was high during descent.
This was an issue with the booster DURING LANDING when no people would be onboard. This has nothing to do with the crew dragon capsule, 2nd stage engine, or anything related to the Crew Dragon capsule coming back to earth via parachutes. I don't see why the FAA put a delay on that fight based on this booster issue. Even if the booster for the Polaris Dawn mission were to land the same way and fail and fall over upon landing, that would not impact the mission with the astronauts AT ALL. I would call this over precaution vs just a precaution.
Easy answer, it might be a bigger issue that does affect ascent safety. So investigate, pinpoint the cause and go from there is the only right thing to do.
This landing was at sea, many landings take place on land. If something that flies fails, the FAA under the law must find out why and discover how to fix things so it does not happen again.
Disagree. It - could - be something less obvious that caused the issue. Like a guidance system sensor error, hydraulics leak, engine under performing... which this time only resulted in a hard landing, but might have affected another launch during the ascent. Anything unexpected needs investigating.
My mind is blown by how crazy good Space X's quality and workmanship is. Thing land's like a good soldier, salutes and falls over dead having worked til' it's very last moments. How amazing.
You only see it on stuff that gets pushed to the top. Almost like that's what you get when you pay certain entities for engagement boosting, or something. Neat, huh?
@@camojoe83 Nah, the bot farms just target the channels with the biggest audience as they're more likely to get thirsty rubes clicking through to their porny scam site linked in the channel bio. I report every one I see, and they're so obviously following a pattern, but youtube seemingly does absolutely nothing to counter them.
Just one more step towards a booster that can launch and land 40 times, maybe even more. I wonder if the newer boosters already have more robust landing legs, but even if they don't I'm sure they'll come up with some sort of mitigation. Probably the easiest solution is to swap the legs out every ~20 flights, but like Scott said they might already replace the legs on a set cadence.
great timing lol, I was trawling through other videos and gave up trying to find good coverage and decided to wait for a Scott Manley video. 12 minutes later... amazing!
Not even close to worn out, Rough Seas! The camera is fixed to the deck, and doesn't show the sea conditions. The deck rose with the swell and the booster was expecting the deck to be 17 further away.
I checked the math and it wasn't a metric craptonne of Starlink satellites, it was a US crapton. It may not seem like a big difference but a metric craptonne would be slightly heavier and may lead to some error in the fuel weight calculations and affect the landing. Always double check everything before launch.
Remember in the early days of booster landings, when we said Spacex will have really succeeded with their reusability, when booster landings will not be newsworthy anymore, but landing failures will? We have reached that point. It's crazy how fast we got here!
Hullo Scott! How about doing a video on the Booster Recovery Team and the barge crews?? I've never seen anybody show details about those brave men & women, and they should have their stories told!
Yes. Engine bell hitting the deck is likely to cause fire. And collision could have something to do with the heaving motion of the drone ship - an unlucky event! But grounding all Falcon 9 launches is definitely much overstretched by the FAA!
Scott, great analysis of the probably cause of the landing failure and thank you for putting everything into the proper perspective. 23 successful launches is an amazing accomplishment.
Looks like they gotta replace landing legs like we gotta replace our car tires. Also, that purple exhaust is beautiful, probably ultra toxic, but beautiful.
I think sea state may be significant here, as in shortfall of gravitas may have been rocking in swell and rose up to meet the rocket earlier than anticipated.
I swore that before the landing burn I saw light reflecting on the right grid fin and wondered to myself if there was a fire already going. As always, thanks for the great analysis and catching that bounce that most likely caused the engine bells to hit the deck. I’m sure that caused a lot of internal damage.
