SpaceX rocket recovery test fails

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: BBC

The American SpaceX firm says its experiment to bring part of its Falcon rocket down to a soft landing on a floating sea platform did not work.
...
But once the first-stage of the rocket completed its part of this task, it tried to make a controlled return.

The company CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the booster hit the platform hard.

"Close, but no cigar," he added. "Bodes well for the future tho'. Ship itself is fine. Some of the support equipment on the deck will need to be replaced." And he continued: "Didn't get good landing/impact video. Pitch dark and foggy. Will piece it together from telemetry and... actual pieces."

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30752515

[Gothmog]

1. At this stage of development, this not unexpected

All new concepts and technology have issues early on

[F4lconF16]

2. +1

Rocket science is actually pretty tough (not that I think anyone would disagree).

[Gothmog]

3. That is why it is called rocket science

[Duckhunter935]

4. Too bad

I was hoping to see live feed this morning but never did. They will get it down.

[christx30]

5. I was shocked when I heard the plan,

thought it was absolutely loony, in a good way. I mean... Landing a friggin rocket on a barge in the ocean? How crazy is that? And I'm suprised it ended as well as it did. A 'hard landing' sounds much better than a 'crash' and complete failure. And if only some of the support equipment needs to be replaced, it can all be patched up, the team will learn, and they'll give it another shot.

I congratulate the people involved in the whole thing. This stuff is amazing. I tell my daughter (age 5) all the time about it, trying get her interested in science and technology. I tell her I'd love for her to do something like that, but I support her in anything she wants to do. I don't care what it is, as long as she is happy.
I watched the animations of the Curiosity EDL sequence, and I thought that was crazy too, but they pulled it off flawlessly, and it's driven over 10km on the Mars surface in 2 1/2 years.

[question everything]

6. But is it still on its way to the International Space Station

with supplies?

[eggplant]

7. Yes.

This was just the bottom part of the rocket, which helps it get off the ground, and then falls back to earth so the rest of the rocket will weigh less. Normally these things fall into the ocean and are lost, making them really expensive. The goal here was to try to recover it so it could be reused. This was the first experimental attempt. It wasn't expected to work so much as it was an attempt to understand the problems involved.

[question everything]

8. Thanks. Good to see that we are still in space research and technology (nt)

[ripcord]

9. Musk had said there was lesss than a fifty fifty chance it would work

But this is the way of science, you learn a lot from your failures.

[reACTIONary]

12. The way of engineering . ..

... not science , Engineering ! Ok, I'm nit picking , but as an engineer who works with scientists the difference is significant to me.

[City67]

10. This is what they have done before in testing

[eggplant]

11. Yep. The next step was to try to do this on a moving target in the ocean.

Certainly a step up in difficulty. They'll get there eventually.

The really good part is that they can do this with rockets already planned to go up, so it isn't a matter of building prototypes solely for testing this concept.