Status of Falcon 1 Flight 4 First Stage?

In article , Anthony Frost
wrote:

Could be, although there were times it looked like neither of them knew
they were actually on air. Given amateur presenters they'd probably have
been better off using a traditional floor manager to keep things flowing
a bit better.

Given that the worst thing that happened on this launch of a previously
unsuccessful rocket was that the webcast had some dead air, I think
that it was a pretty good day for SpaceX.

--
David M. Palmer (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)

David M. Palmer wrote:
In article , Anthony Frost
wrote:

Could be, although there were times it looked like neither of them knew
they were actually on air. Given amateur presenters they'd probably have
been better off using a traditional floor manager to keep things flowing
a bit better.

Given that the worst thing that happened on this launch of a previously
unsuccessful rocket was that the webcast had some dead air, I think
that it was a pretty good day for SpaceX.

It was the best rocketcam webcast of all time.

Even better than the night launch of the Delta IV Medium, where the
finger of flame snaked up the side and everyone thought it was gonna
blow right there just leaving the pad. That's a hard act to beat too.

OM wrote:
the chutes were to be made out of woven
metallic mesh... that certainly wouldn't be light to carry on the rocket.


...Which begs the question as to whether there's been any tests with
chutes made of such material.


I dug out my copy of "Across The Space Frontier" to check up on more
details of the system...the chute is made out of woven _steel_ wire
mesh, and is 217 feet in diameter when fully deployed... as I said, this
ain't going to be light.
The chute deploys circumferentially from the base of the stage and is
supported by shroud lines attached to the stage's front, which appear to
have some sort of shock absorbing sections like bungee cords or springs
near their base.
It also deploys right after stage separation at 24.9 miles and 5, 256
mph and starts slowing the stage down immediately to keep its apogee as
low as possible, and it reaches a maximum altitude of 40 miles before
beginning to descend.
The first stage impacts the ocean 189 miles from the launch site, its
final descent velocity being cut to zero by firing ten solid-fueled
landing rockets mounted in its nose when it is 150 feet above the sea,
which generate a total of 2,730 tons of thrust for two seconds (that's
54,600 pounds thrust each BTW - does anyone know of a existing solid
rocket from that time period that generates that thrust? I thought they
might be Nike boosters, but those generate far more thrust, and the
Aerobee booster generates far less thrust than that. )
No data on how high the second stage reaches before it begins to descend
under its parachute, but separation speed is 14,364 mph, and its chute
is 75 feet in diameter.
Back to the recoverable Saturn V, I found this in my copy of "Frontiers
Of Space". The recovery options for the first stage were investigated by
Boeing on behalf of Marshall Space Flight Center, and included fixed
wings, parachutes, hydrogen filled balloons, drag brakes, ballutes,
paragliders, and rotary systems of spinning parachutes.
They finally settled on a water landing system using drag brakes and
parachutes (as shown in the earlier post's artwork).
After separation, a reaction control system would get the booster
properly aligned for reentry, and it would survive reentry heating via
ablative thermal protection material covering the exterior of the
forward Lox tank dome.... this gets jettisoned at around 500 feet above
the ocean so the pneumatic shock absorption system can work, and is
probably the only non-reusable part.
Assuming 60 Saturn V launchings over a ten year period (figure out the
likely crew of Apollo 55 sometime ;-) ), total savings were estimated
at $500 million if each booster could be launched a minimum of three times.
Sal****er corrosion would be dealt with in various ways... the exterior
of the booster would be covered in a epoxy resin paint that would
protect it for up to 15 days after landing, and although some switches
and gauges would need replacement, most of the electronics could get
flushed out with freshwater and alcohol and be reused if they were
properly sealed.
Total mass of the recovery system was to be 48,700 lbs.

Pat

In message
OM wrote:

On Sat, 04 Oct 2008 09:39:01 +0100, Anthony Frost
wrote:


http://www.vtoldboys.com/ might be of interest to you.

...Bookmarked. Looks like Mark Wade's site is going to have
competition for occupying my spare time now. Site looks rather deep,
which is not a bad thing at all!

:-)

* About 50 reels were nothing but commercial backups recorded in
proper sequence. Take an entire day's commercials, make two copies of
them played in their exact sequence, with a 30-second black between
each commerical break, and have them ready for the next day's
broadcast. This wound up being easier than taking small reels and
having four 2" monsters tied up just for commercials and two extra
guys swapping tapes - sometiimes *during* breaks!

We used RCA TCR-100s for comms at the ITV station, 2 minutes of quad
tape in a box, belt held 22 of them and they were loaded alternately on
two vertical decks based on the TR-70. 15 second cycle time, so 10
second comms only allowed at top and tail of the break. We started
compiling two or three breaks ahead as they became more unreliable and
eventually moved to Ampex D2 based digital systems.

* Quite a bit of NASA coverage. Gemini 12, Apollo 4, one of the Saturn
I launches - no audio, so I'm not sure which one it was - and, of
course, the A11 landing. All See-BS coverage.

Dragging vaguely back on topic... One space event I worked on at the
Beeb was the first shuttle launch. Due to the postponement of the launch
the booking for the studio in TV Centre had run out, there wasn't
another one free anywhere in London, and the closest one that could be
found was in BBC Bristol. Unfortunately they had no spare VT capacity so
it landed up with me, a colleague and the most junior PA from the
production team in London and everyone else 120 miles away in Bristol.
I think we got a day or two overtime so the poor girl didn't have to
deal with multiple engineers and I got to be the London technical
advisor (I think I'd been overheard talking about the launch in VT
Control (4050, We've got the men if you've got the money) a week or so
before) as well as putting together a bunch of programme inserts and
network promos. Immense fun being allowed to just get on with it at our
junior level, and it all worked.

* Quite a bit of raw news footage. This was stuff that was film
chained from the 16mm news cameras they used in the 60's, and dumped
on tape almost in a kinescope process. This wound up being faster than
swapping the film chain out, and the tape was far less prone to
breaking.

* And a whole bunch of other assorted crap, like community access
shows, some religious programs, and one reel loaded withi "Woody
Woodpecker" cartoons. We ported over what was worth saving, and bulked
the reels. The whole process of ~300 reels took 11 of those 14 months.
Fun, but it was also tadamount to lifting weights - those 2" reels
aren't exactly light.

Not having to
worry about advertisers does help a lot,

...Agreed. Here in the US, it's quantity above quality unless the
quality isn't detected right off the bat in the ratings.

[thinks]

...I was about to observe that the BBC never had anything like
"Dancing with the Stars", but you guys *did* have "Bullseye", right?

Got to have a bit of Bully, let's see what you could have won...

Strictly Come Dancing I suspect is the equivalent over here, not sure if
it's your revenge for Pop Idol/American Idol or just the latest
installment of our revenge for something. Nobody wants to pay me to
watch poor TV these days, cheapness is favoured over experience, so I
don't know how they compare.

Anthony

On Oct 4, 9:07*pm, OM wrote:
On Sat, 4 Oct 2008 11:43:31 +0100, Dr J R Stockton

wrote:
Correction : proven windbag media loudmouth.

...So, rather than accept the accurate word of *two* TV professionals,
you'd rather resort to insulting me.

There is no reason to believe that media professionals are
intelligent; indeed, you demonstrate the contrary. You're just not
smart enough, in the profession, to realise it.

In that Webcast, the Falcon signal was lost gor about a minute.
During that time, the presenters continued to pass on all available
information, without distracting trivialities. That is what the
technically-competent part of the audience will have wanted.

--
(c) John Stockton, near London, UK. Posting with Google.
Mail: or (better) via Home Page at
Web: URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/
FAQish topics, acronyms, links, etc.; Date, Delphi, JavaScript, ....|

On Sun, 5 Oct 2008 15:30:33 -0700 (PDT), Dr J R Stockton
wrote:

There is no reason to believe that media professionals are
intelligent; indeed, you demonstrate the contrary. You're just not
smart enough, in the profession, to realise it.

....John, I'm going to show you how intelligent I am.

PLONK

....There. You obviously want to play "Argument Clinic" on this.
Doesn't work with me, you've been around here long enough to know that
by now.

Bottom Line: You've lost, now begone!

OM
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