Ye Olde Rocket Forum

Go Back   Ye Olde Rocket Forum > Weather-Cocked > FreeForAll
User Name
Password
Auctions Register FAQ Members List Calendar Today's Posts Search Mark Forums Read


Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
  #1  
Old 03-02-2019, 01:45 AM
blackshire's Avatar
blackshire blackshire is offline
Master Modeler
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
Default T-4 and counting...

__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old 03-02-2019, 02:05 AM
blackshire's Avatar
blackshire blackshire is offline
Master Modeler
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by blackshire
Dragon is in orbit, the first stage landed successfully on the drone ship (and the video feed from the drone ship didn't freeze or blank out this time!).
__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 03-02-2019, 02:43 AM
luke strawwalker's Avatar
luke strawwalker luke strawwalker is offline
BAR
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Needville and Shiner, TX
Posts: 6,134
Default

As Bernie said on the Sagitta Cantina, "beautiful night launch"...

Great liftoff shots, the plume was absolutely gorgeous during the stage one burn, particularly past max q when it started to spread out... at one point shortly before staging, there was the typical expanding orange plume like we see in the daylight launches, but instead of the carbon soot looking outer ring, it was glowing a brilliant sapphire BLUE ring around the flame plume... absolutely stunning! Staging proceeded normally along with the second stage burn to orbit, shutdown at +09:05 mission elapsed time (MET) from the TV/Youtube feed (I put it up their feed on YouTube and brought it up on NASA TV, and synchronized the two (NASA-TV was delayed a bit). The reentry burn of the first stage was equally gorgeous, again with the blue ring around the yellow/white flames from the engines. The landing was slightly off the center but spot on and very gentle by all appearances-- first stage was gonna be buttoned down and heading back to port. They said they were about 220 miles or so offshore. That would be about the distance from here to San Antonio... LOL

Now they've gotta chase down the ISS and should be docking shortly before 6 am EST, which would be around 5 am here near Houston...

Here's hoping for all the best! Kudos to the SpaceX team and hope all goes well. It's ABOUT TIME that the US was capable of launching its own astronauts into LEO again... Been a national embarrassment IMHO having to send our astronauts with packed bags and an $80 million dollar check to Roscosmos to ride Soyuz for the last 8 years IMHO...

Later! OL J R
__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old 03-02-2019, 07:08 AM
blackshire's Avatar
blackshire blackshire is offline
Master Modeler
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by luke strawwalker
As Bernie said on the Sagitta Cantina, "beautiful night launch"...

Great liftoff shots, the plume was absolutely gorgeous during the stage one burn, particularly past max q when it started to spread out... at one point shortly before staging, there was the typical expanding orange plume like we see in the daylight launches, but instead of the carbon soot looking outer ring, it was glowing a brilliant sapphire BLUE ring around the flame plume... absolutely stunning! Staging proceeded normally along with the second stage burn to orbit, shutdown at +09:05 mission elapsed time (MET) from the TV/Youtube feed (I put it up their feed on YouTube and brought it up on NASA TV, and synchronized the two (NASA-TV was delayed a bit). The reentry burn of the first stage was equally gorgeous, again with the blue ring around the yellow/white flames from the engines. The landing was slightly off the center but spot on and very gentle by all appearances-- first stage was gonna be buttoned down and heading back to port. They said they were about 220 miles or so offshore. That would be about the distance from here to San Antonio... LOL

Now they've gotta chase down the ISS and should be docking shortly before 6 am EST, which would be around 5 am here near Houston...

Here's hoping for all the best! Kudos to the SpaceX team and hope all goes well. It's ABOUT TIME that the US was capable of launching its own astronauts into LEO again... Been a national embarrassment IMHO having to send our astronauts with packed bags and an $80 million dollar check to Roscosmos to ride Soyuz for the last 8 years IMHO...

Later! OL J R
I noticed that, too--it was just like Pioneer 4's launch on March 3, 1959 (on a Juno II), that impressed viewers with the same luminous blue "exhaust flame sheath" during the stretched Jupiter stage's 187-second firing. I liked the new "arced," bottom-of-the-screen "instrument panel" layout showing mission events, and also the closed-captioning along the bottom edge (I could hear the commentary just fine, but when overlapping audio feeds occasionally garbled what was being said, the text ensured that no words were lost).

I suppose they may have done something to improve the "durability" of the live drone ship video feed (extra dipoles in an array, perhaps), but the touchdown did look very gentle, as the stage didn't suddenly "jar" to a stop, or shake the deck (both of which I've seen happen in previous landings). Also, the first stage downward-looking camera view didn't seem to get noticeably "cruddy"--as I've seen happen before--during any of the three return flight burns; maybe they've found a good "lee sweet spot" where the camera's clear cover or lens doesn't get significant amounts of exhaust soot settling on it.
__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old 03-02-2019, 01:00 PM
luke strawwalker's Avatar
luke strawwalker luke strawwalker is offline
BAR
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Needville and Shiner, TX
Posts: 6,134
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by blackshire
I noticed that, too--it was just like Pioneer 4's launch on March 3, 1959 (on a Juno II), that impressed viewers with the same luminous blue "exhaust flame sheath" during the stretched Jupiter stage's 187-second firing. I liked the new "arced," bottom-of-the-screen "instrument panel" layout showing mission events, and also the closed-captioning along the bottom edge (I could hear the commentary just fine, but when overlapping audio feeds occasionally garbled what was being said, the text ensured that no words were lost).

I suppose they may have done something to improve the "durability" of the live drone ship video feed (extra dipoles in an array, perhaps), but the touchdown did look very gentle, as the stage didn't suddenly "jar" to a stop, or shake the deck (both of which I've seen happen in previous landings). Also, the first stage downward-looking camera view didn't seem to get noticeably "cruddy"--as I've seen happen before--during any of the three return flight burns; maybe they've found a good "lee sweet spot" where the camera's clear cover or lens doesn't get significant amounts of exhaust soot settling on it.


I wasn't that crazy about the new "dashboard"... I kinda preferred it up in the corner out of the way. I could read the data just fine up there, and not have it covering up part of the view, particularly of the contrail/exhaust of the rocket at altitude, like it does when it's across the bottom of the screen. I'll give them kudos for making a neat-looking design; the clock, mission timeline, and speed/altitude meters are all well integrated and displayed, but the "arced" timeline to make room for the clock underneath just sorta takes up more room on the screen and obscures part of the view, whereas the top corners of the screen are usually pretty empty real estate and don't block anything. I didn't see or wasn't aware of the captioning- glad that worked for you. As I'm getting older and my hearing is deteriorating (from too many years running extremely loud farm equipment, shooting, etc... particularly those old cotton pickers where you sat right in front of two screaming high velocity blowers all day with cotton seed scouring the inside of the 10 inch steel pipes on either side of you, and the occassional loud BONG! of a green boll getting pulled into the path of the cast aluminum paddles and ringing them like a bell as it was smashed to bits and shot up the pipe like a cannon!) I find that I increasingly use closed captioning, particularly on shows like "Vikings" where the heavy accents and low speech or high ambient noise can make understanding what they're saying impossible for me.

Anyway, the "dashboard" thing is a minor nit-- could have been far worse, and all in all it wasn't "bad". I think they wanted a distinctive new look from how they do it on cargo Dragon, just to help differentiate the two I guess...

Everyone keeps saying online that the view was "unbroken" between the first stage from liftoff to touchdown. In the live stream I saw, which was identical to the NASA-TV coverage (but the NASA-TV feed was delayed by a few minutes for some reason-- I synchronized my computer to the NASA-TV display so that the audio would be synchronized and not be distracting, as I had both on at the same time during the launch) the first stage coverage dropped out and was replaced by the Falcon symbol after the reentry burn-- no video of the landing burn and leg deploy and touchdown from the rocket cam was to be seen. They cut to the landing ship cam which basically caught the touchdown, and that was it. If there's other footage out there I certainly want to see it! I tried last night before I went to bed, but the only video I found was a truncated version of the full launch video, showing the same views...

Loved that they named their "test dummy" Ripley... pretty funny homage to the Aliens movies... I didn't see the "zero G indicator" Earth-shaped beach ball or whatever it was float out of the seat when the second stage engine shut down... it wiggled a bit but that was about it LOL Hope we get more interior footage and maybe shots out the windows or something...

Watching the replays on NASA-TV, the reentry burn was particularly spectacular. Since it's a "retrograde" burn in the upper atmosphere, the plume curls around backwards as the vehicle flies through the center of it. The blue fire-ring halo effect was even MORE pronounced on the reentry burn, quite visible and beautiful. Obviously the same thing happens in daytime flights, but the blue light from the kerosene soot in the plume is simply overpowered and washed out in daylight, and isn't visible... why the plume looks like sooty smoke in daylight. It's similar to a phenomena I used to notice at night when I was doing heavy tillage on the farm with the old 6600 tractor, which the muffler had busted on and Dad replaced it with the biggest "glass pack" straight-through muffler he could get. At night doing heavy tillage where the motor was REALLY working hard, there would be a distinctly visible cone of glowing red carbon particles from the diesel fuel coming out the top of the stack, like a Mach diamond, but what it was was, the burned diesel exhaust from the engine was full of microscopic particles of carbon "soot", which were still glowing red hot after traveling straight up the dimpled tube inside the glass pack, and as the exhaust jetted out the top, it formed a cone as the glowing exhaust particles cooled down rapidly from the outside in to the center once in the atmosphere. In daylight it was just a thin plume of slightly sooty exhaust, slightly darker than the surrounding air (and creating a lot of ripple distortions from the heat of the plume) but at night it was spectacular. Dad said he used to see the same thing on his gasoline-burning Super M at night-- only burning gasoline it would produce a blue cone at the top of the stack. The regular multi-chamber muffler he had on it would glow red hot at the bottom at night, too. I've seen that myself when I was running the old Case DC at the brother-in-laws, putting corn in the bin at night when it was running the auger, cleaner, and swing-away system... Very cool to see different phenomena at night that are obscured during the day...

Looking forward to docking tomorrow just before 6am... fingers crossed all goes well!

Later! OL J R
__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old 03-03-2019, 03:53 AM
blackshire's Avatar
blackshire blackshire is offline
Master Modeler
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
Default

We're now about an hour and a half from docking, if their schedule is still holding. It could be my screen's aspect ratio, but the new "instrument panel" (maybe it is intended for Crew Dragon flights) didn't obscure my view noticeably enough to matter. (If you suggested another arrangement--say, a vertical one along one edge of the screen, perhaps with a tape-altimeter display--they might change it.)

I had the same first stage video drop-outs that you did (flying backwards through that plume is, "RF-wise," not terribly different from the capsules' reentry ionization radio blackouts; they differ in degree rather than in kind--and it will be interesting to see if the Dream Chaser lifting body [its first cargo version launch is next year] can, like the Shuttle, maintain communication throughout its re-entry).

My closest experience to your motorized farm equipment ones is seeing the luminous white plumes from DC-3 exhaust pipes as they flew overhead at night in Miami, but I think those were plasma. (In his experiments report on model rocket motors' safety, with regard to igniting--and failing to ignite--paper and other common materials at various distances from their nozzles, G. Harry Stine wrote that such brightly luminous reciprocating engine exhaust glows [on racing cars and airplanes] are plasma.) The kerosene rockets' blue glows (around and below the brilliant yellow, radiating, carbon-rich flames) may also be plasma (containing volatized exhaust particles); the KSLV-II TLV videos show it well: www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kslv .
__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR
Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump



All times are GMT -5. The time now is 12:55 PM.


Powered by: vBulletin Version 3.0.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Ye Olde Rocket Shoppe © 1998-2024