March 20, 2021

Epic Second-flight Rocket Booster

On March 16, The Falcon 9 vehicle, took off at Droo Space Center. It broke through the atmosphere before landing on recovery site. This is the second test that has been conducted with the first stage booster.


(Falcon 9's first stage and second stage)

The launch seemed to proceed just fine for the first crucial minutes, but about 3 minutes into the launch, the second stage lost control.

According to Chaotic Graviton, Falcon 9 ascended up and had issues when it came to stage separation which had to be manually initiated. After separation, the second stage ignited it's engine, and lost control. Both the second stage and the test payload were lost in the second launch, the first flight of this boosters test payload was successfully put into orbit.


(Graviton has successfully landed a rocket twice)

Fortunately, the first stage after separating successfully performed its boostback, reentry and landing burns. Chaotic Graviton said "the booster most likely will not fly again as the code will have to be changed".

Landing a rocket is only the first important step toward rocket reusability. In order to save money for customers, a launch provider must be able to safely and reliably relaunch recovered rockets. With today’s launch, Chaotic Graviton has now successfully landed a rocket twice.


Bussiness as Usual

iSpace is gearing up to launch Beta's 1st commercial mission (Business as Usual) as it prepares reusing its Beta rocket booster, and you can watch the mission webcast online. The company is now targeting 9:00 a.m. EDT on April 1.


("A new version(v1.1) of the Beta's grid fins would introduce greater controllability to the first stage rocket booster" iSpace said)

The upcoming launch will be the 2nd overall for the two-stage, 60-meter-tall (196ft) iSpace Beta, which gives small satellites rideshare flight to orbit.


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15 Comments

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    1,032 pabloplataa

    Really Cool Report as always. The Project Blackbird team (aka Chao's team) is preparing some really cool releases really soon. We have put some decent amount of work in improving our landing accuracy, orbital insertion accuracy, and realism in different portions of flight.


    Main issue on the ORFT-1 mission (the first reflight) was the stage separation system and auto Craft switch. Team is working on a new system for craft switch called ACID, otherwise known as Automated Craft ID Detection. We have also fixed the Stage Separation mechanism.


    Other issues not mentioned above were engine ignition on the pad, and active command chip control. Solutions to that are not clear at the moment and we'll give out more info as it becomes available.


    As to the cool releases we mentioned, team is considering a possible Falcon Heavy code with 2 simultaneous RTLS Booster landings and an expended Center Core, aswell as examining the possibility of enabling droneship landings on F9 on our next release version.


    Dates for possible next releases:

    Beta Testing Round 2: ~8 Days
    Falcon 9 v0.8.0: ~7-10 Days
    Falcon 9 Full Release: NET April 5th
    Falcon Heavy v0.6.0: TBD


    Next Launch:

    ORFT-2: NET March 29th


    Sincerely,
    Alpha, Main Software Engineer for Project Blackbird

    Pinned 3.6 years ago
  • Profile image

    @TheSpaceHedgehog And shoes on, we're just getting started

    +2 3.6 years ago
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    I thought iSpace would win but hats off to chaoticgraviton

    +1 3.6 years ago
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    @pabloplataa okay. I personally have not been working a lot on reusable first stages in the past week or two. I am going for a landing from orbit. With help from @GoldenShadowGS and @Patelsh24 because I was struggling with the impact position. I wish that the lat and long delta worked for orbital landings.

    3.6 years ago
  • Profile image
    1,032 pabloplataa

    @Tweedle_Aerospace we'll consider that option, as of now though, we already have someone willing to give us a very similar controller

    3.6 years ago
  • Profile image
    1,032 pabloplataa

    @Tweedle_Aerospace @iSpace Honestly, full reuse is easier for auto Craft switch to an extent. Current plan is to store the S1 ID in the second stage by looking at all of the craft IDs in the game, and picking the closest one, same concept for S1 to get S2 ID

    3.6 years ago
  • Profile image

    @iSpace what I do is broadcast to the craft and set the variables that dictate whether or not it is landed to false or 0. Now it will be hard if I ever reuse a second stage.

    3.6 years ago
  • Profile image
    29.0k iSpace

    @pabloplataa Indeed, craft switch issue is a tough nut to crack for automatic reusable rocket.

    +2 3.6 years ago
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    @YaMomzBox420 okay, second-flight XD

    +3 3.6 years ago
  • Profile image

    @pabloplataa

    Nice report!

    +2 3.6 years ago
  • Profile image
    1,176 YaMomzBox420

    @GalaxyEye Second hand makes it sound like something you bought in a thrift store. Or when you have to wear your older siblings old clothes instead of getting new ones. I do get what you mean though, it just has a weird connotation when you say it like that

    3.6 years ago
  • Profile image

    @ChaoticGraviton second hand booster.(reuse)

    +2 3.6 years ago
  • Profile image

    @pabloplataa I am working on a PID controller for no-player crafts. If I ever complete it you guys could use it.

    +2 3.6 years ago
  • Profile image
    1,176 YaMomzBox420

    @ChaoticGraviton I think he means that it's been reused. It did strike me as an odd choice of words though too

    3.6 years ago
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    not sure what you mean by second-hand

    +1 3.6 years ago

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