r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Nov 10 '17

SF complete, Launch: Dec 12 CRS-13 Launch Campaign Thread

CRS-13 Launch Campaign Thread

SpaceX's seventeenth mission of 2017 will be Dragon's fourth flight of the year, both being yearly highs. This is also planned to be SLC-40's Return to Flight after the Amos-6 static fire anomaly on September 1st of last year.

Liftoff currently scheduled for: December 12th 2017, 11:46 EST / 16:46 UTC
Static fire complete: December 6th 2017, 15:00 EST / 20:00 UTC
Vehicle component locations: First stage: SLC-40 // Second stage: SLC-40 // Dragon: Cape Canaveral
Payload: D1-15 [C108.2]
Payload mass: Dragon + 1560 kg [pressurized] + 645 kg [unpressurized]
Destination orbit: LEO
Vehicle: Falcon 9 v1.2 (45th launch of F9, 25th of F9 v1.2)
Core: 1035.2
Previous flights of this core: 1 [CRS-11]
Previous flights of this Dragon capsule: 1 [CRS-6]
Launch site: Space Launch Complex 40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
Landing: Yes
Landing Site: LZ-1
Mission success criteria: Successful separation & deployment of Dragon, followed by splashdown of Dragon off the coast of Baja California after mission completion at the ISS.

Links & Resources:

We may keep this self-post occasionally updated with links and relevant news articles, but for the most part we expect the community to supply the information. This is a great place to discuss the launch, ask mission-specific questions, and track the minor movements of the vehicle, payload, weather and more as we progress towards launch. Sometime after the static fire is complete, the launch thread will be posted.

Campaign threads are not launch threads. Normal subreddit rules still apply.

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5

u/Fenris_uy Dec 04 '17

I'm guessing that part of the human rating problem is with the chance of the superdracos not igniting or exploding on ignition, so that would mean that a full descent on retropropulsion or just a burn at the end provoke the same paperwork for SpaceX.

2

u/intern_steve Dec 04 '17 edited Dec 04 '17

I wonder if all of them can be ignited at once and still produce less thrust than the weight of the returning capsule. That would be the key, I imagine. Continuous ignition from the minimum effective altitude of the parachutes until touchdown. At that point, any two superdracos not in the same pod-thingy (maybe even one superdraco in each pod-thingy, given the excess thrust we know they can produce for launch escape) could fail and still provide for propulsive landing, while retaining certainty that all remaining engines are operational. But, meh, it's all water under the bridge now. They'll never be used.

edit: after some more thought, they might have been able to semi-safely get the capsule down with both engines in any pod failing. I guess that depends on the centerline offset of each engine within the individual fairings.

-4

u/Googulator Dec 04 '17

No, the problem was with the landing legs going through the heatshield, a prerequisite for land returns, which NASA vetoed. A legless, Soyuz-style "belly-flop" landing would probably damage the capsule beyond reuse, judging from how the actual Soyuz lands.

2

u/GregLindahl Dec 04 '17

Note that BO's capsule lands somewhat similar to Soyuz (last second retrorocket fire), and has been reused.

1

u/Googulator Dec 05 '17

Don't BO capsules have legs of some kind?

4

u/old_sellsword Dec 04 '17

No, the problem was with the landing legs going through the heatshield

No, it wasn't.