Space-X rocket lands and then tips over while landing

Barge landing def looks tougher to do than land, however every attempt so far on barges seem to improve, its only a matter of time before they successfully land on one.

I believe the next two launches are going to require a barge landing, I wouldn't be surprised if they do it in one of those two attempts

 

Playing real life KSP. It's a learning curve, but they'll get there eventually.

 

That's some bad QC on those support stands. Still better than EK's tho..

They were really close if it hadn't caved in. I'm sure they will make the same mistake next time. :thumbup:

 

Condensation from the fog in the morning supposedly froze the collet and stopped the leg from locking the way it should have. Not so much bad QC but definitely an engineering oversight.

 

What a waste.

 

It's pretty impressive that they can get rockets to land in the first place IMO, new tech, gonna be a lot of quirks to iron out

 

man that thing went up in a big ol' ball of fire

 

Agreed - seems a lot of people don't really realize that the phrasing "rocket science" describes something immensely difficult and complicated for a reason. People greatly underestimate how difficult it really is, so I'd say landing a rocket even partially successfully is a testament to engineering.

 

Exactly, it's still hit or miss to even get them to launch without blowing up, let alone landing again

I think we need to start looking at a different type of propulsion than fire, no idea what, but lighting a match under a few million dollars worth of tech, and humans is fairly stone age stuff and amazingly dangerous

When you look at all our latest technology, the base is still the same as it has been for centuries, steam and fire

 

Mega explosion must of watched it 10 times now Very impressive to see a rocket coming in to land like that .
Give them time they will get there for sure , new feet and that thing will be landing good every time without fail .

 

Quite the explosion, good thing there were no people around.

 

Was this a whole new rocket or was it them finally 'reusing' the engine that made the successful landing last time?

 

Whole new rocket. Afaik they aren't reusing the first one, they retested the burn and doing tests on it but they are going to museum it probably.

 

Seems to me like the supports weren't strong enough or not balanced properly.

 

Those engineers really know to do the statics calculations, or maybe they made it a hyper-static structure (the supports) hence the collapse. Even a freeway/motorway portico, that shows directions, is rocket science.

 

The one strut didn't lock properly.

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/w...80142535131_9066034225079286346_n-627x655.jpg

There is a collet that is supposed to lock, but it was frozen due to condensation prelaunch. At least that is their current working theory as to why it failed.

 

Are they planning on making the rocket re-usable?

Otherwise what's the point of having it land again?

 

Yeah the goal is to make it reusable. But the first few they are taking apart to run tests and whatnot. So those aren't going to be reused most likely. After a few they will start re-launching them once they feel confident they can be reused properly.

It costs millions of dollars to launch on top of payloads that cost millions. So they probably want to be sure that the reused rocket isn't compromised in some way before sending it up again. So I'm sure the first few rockets that land will be dissected completely and end up in museums. NASA barred use of reusable rockets for human flight as well, so we won't be seeing that anytime soon.

Also they still need to recover the second stage, which they also plan on doing at some point. They also eventually plan on refueling the rocket on the barge and relaunching it again from the barge and return to the original launch location. Although I really don't understand that one.

 

Yea that's a weird one, if it runs out of fuel and needs to come back to Earth to be refuelled, it's just gonna run out of fuel at the same point again once it goes back up, would make more sense to refuel it in space

Maybe just a test to see if it's possible on Earth before trying it in space