SpaceX Falcon rocket explodes on landing after delivering satellite to space

SpaceX actually got very close to sticking this landing. Sea conditions were reasonably rough, with 3-meter waves. It&#x27;s also the first time SpaceX launches in fog, IIRC. Everything about the landing except the stuck leg seemed to be perfect.<p>So IMHO, the fact that the rocket exploded is not the most pertinent fact about this experiment. The main piece of news is that SpaceX is exceedingly likely to be able to recover rocket boosters intact from sea, even in non-perfect weather conditions.

&gt; explodes on landing<p>This is a pretty unfair characterization. It actually made the landing for most purposes, then a specific failure occurred - a leg failed to lock and it fell over. And yes, when a rocket falls over it will often explode.

Speaks volumes for Mr. Musk&#x27;s character that they&#x27;re being completely open and honest about this problem. Turns the conversation from &quot;What happened? What are they hiding?&quot; to &quot;Interesting Engineering problem. How can it be addressed?&quot;

This is progress. They got a good landing, then the landing gear collapsed, and not because of a hard landing. Next time they&#x27;ll have a design that forces the landing gear down and locked, ice or no ice. Somewhere down in Hawthorne, someone is probably freezing one of those mechanisms in a cold chamber right now.<p>This is way better than back in July, when the booster blew up because of a strut failure. That was a major quality control failure.

This just in: Elon Musk has reportedly terminated all employees who uttered the phrase &quot;Break a leg!&quot; before launch.<p>In all seriousness though, this was by and large a successful landing, not to mention that they successfully put their payload into orbit without a hitch. The number of things that have to go right to even get that rocket to touch down on the barge is mind boggling. Truly impressive, and bodes well for the future of SpaceX.

I like to think that with these videos SpaceX is also making a very worthy contribution to more realistic movie special effects.

That was pretty much exactly what I expected to see from the video given the description of a broken landing leg yesterday.<p>Elon&#x27;s twitter comment about the ice is interesting because it adds some interesting twists. If the stage is icing up as it descends it would change the mass calculation, however it does not seem to shed ice when it lands in the video. He suggested that ice at launch may have interfered with leg locking, which would mean that ice survived travelling supersonically through the atmosphere. But hard to figure how that could be.

The rocket exploded because it fell over, not the other way around. Had one of the landing gears not malfunctioned, it would have been fine.

This is the second time something like this happened. Why not put 4 tall posts up - equidistant from each other - a square.<p>Then a wire net between the posts.<p>When it tips over, it can just fall into the wire net.... they could even have motors to unwind a little while it leans over on them to allow &quot;soft catching&quot; the rocket. Foam over the wires would help here.<p>Actually... why not skip the barge &amp; the dramatic landing and just catch it with a big underwater net? I suppose getting the rocket wet with salt water is not good? (the inside is covered with liquid spill indicators which void the warranty?)

Perhaps landing into a tank of non-corrosive liquid would prevent such collapses? Or on some kind of &quot;glue&quot;&#x2F;alloy that quickly freezes.<p>You can also have spearguns firing cords from the top of the rocket to the ground after landing, to hold it.

I want to know what exploded - I wouldn&#x27;t have expected it to have very much leftover fuel at that point...

Is there a reason not to design the rocket with more legs, say 6 legs instead of 4?

An exact bulls-eye, absolutely amazing.

See also: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10923582" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10923582</a>

Congrats to the guys at Space-X! Love to see me some hardware blowing up.<p>Seriously, I&#x27;m not being facetious. We make aeronautical hardware safe by flying the crap out of it. That means lots of flights. Lots of accidents. The more you fly it, the more problems you have, the safer it is.<p>Congrats guys. Every time gets closer and closer. A few more and you&#x27;ll have this thing nailed. That&#x27;s good for all of us.

They are getting really close to sticking a landing on a barge. I would be surprised if we don&#x27;t see a successful barge landing this year.

Am I the only one who was surprised by how violently the rocket exploded when it fell to its side?

They keep getting better so quickly! I&#x27;m in no way qualified to say this but I would have to guess the tip over after landing is a very trivial problem to overcome compared to atmospheric entry with 180 degree flip and burn to slow for landing. Go SpaceX!

I wonder if they&#x27;ve considered side curtain airbags to catch the rocket once it&#x27;s really close like that, sort of like Amazon traps your item in 3 or 4 of those big bags, instead of lots of bubblewrap.

Could someone explain to me why they attempt this? Wouldn&#x27;t inflating a set of floating devices when it goes down the ocean an easier way of retrieving it? Or something other than this REALLY HARD TO PULL OFF maneuver? Genuinely interested.

The landing could be made safer by something like cushioned walls that deploy towards the rocket after touchdown, to avoid such explosions. Think of a giant Christmas Tree stand like this: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.christmastreeland.co.uk&#x2F;product_images&#x2F;v&#x2F;428&#x2F;761_.." rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.christmastreeland.co.uk&#x2F;product_images&#x2F;v&#x2F;428&#x2F;761_...</a>. but with cushioned hooks on the barge. You can&#x27;t always hope for all 4 legs to be in perfect condition, or that there aren&#x27;t high waves in the ocean. That rocket is huge and seems to fall too easily, while a stand with hooks can&#x27;t be too expensive, unlike a complete new rocket...

Why is the barge landing part so important to them? Seems unnecessarily difficult.<p>Big world out there...surely some suitable location can be found that is less wobbly for a start.

At least the barge looks like it should be reusable.

Didn&#x27;t it land, then fall over and explode?<p>Also, didn&#x27;t this portion of the rocket land before the satellite was deployed?

Amazing! If they want to use this tech for landing people on Mars (or anywhere) they still have some way to go though!

Can&#x27;t wait to fiddle with the landing source code after they release it in 10 to 20 years time :D

Would it be possible to have locking mechanisms directly in the dock itself?<p>ie. maybe the rocket descends several feet INTO the dock into a hole which then locks around the body of the rocket?<p><pre><code> || || ==||== dock (which opens wide for decent and then closes) || ^^</code></pre>

is there a reason they can&#x27;t like come to a stop over the water and then land in it and just expand some floats?

they just need airbags installed on the barge so the moment rocket lands the airbags inflate and hug the rocket.

a) isn&#x27;t this from last year? IIRC they had two failed barge landings. This looks like the first one.<p>b) The headline makes this sound like a miserable failure - still beats &quot;fell into the ocean never to be found again&quot;, as all other current first stages do.

Technically, it exploded well before it delivered the satellite.<p>edit to add some facts since this seems to be getting downvoted pretty quickly: Stage 1 landed and exploded at around T+10min, the satellite was deployed at T+56min. This was just two minutes after it was delivered on its final orbit. Both of those could be considered &quot;delivered to space&quot;, neither of which happened before the failed landing.