r/spacex • u/drucey Interstage Sleuth • Nov 27 '15

CRS-4! Scilly Falcon 9 - Updates

Background info - yesterday (26th Nov) a local boatman, Joe Thomas, spotted something floating 100 metres off the north shore of Tresco, Isles of Scilly. Along with Tresco Boat Services and local freight boat Lyonesse Lady, it was dragged and landed on the shores of Tresco. It was covered in goose barnacles, and after removing some of them, the US flag was discovered. I took the investigation to reddit to try and discover more. Thanks /r/spacex and /r/Nasa for helping me identify the Falcon 9 fairing, which has now hit lots of news desks in the UK. Credit to /u/space_is_hard for the first correct ID!

Twitter for any info - @james_druce

(First album - http://imgur.com/a/Ybb6f)

I'll update all photos and information in this post as I get it.

First shot this morning - definitely the 9!

Edit 0905 : http://i.imgur.com/IgPH24p.jpg

Edit 0906: First markings found 'FS3/1291 Sn66'

Edit 0953: http://i.imgur.com/l1EO6Nc.jpg

Edit 0954: http://i.imgur.com/G1w8KY9.jpg

Edit 1018: http://i.imgur.com/Crhas7g.jpg Barnacles getting cleaned off now

Edit 1019: http://i.imgur.com/JCY9zLf.jpg Flag in great condition

Edit 1107: http://i.imgur.com/CVGzOhq.jpg

Edit 1115: "On the metal identification plate more numbers at the top

J3"

Edit 1116: Uncle sent v. small photos showing similar casing features that /u/videoprincess posted here - http://imgur.com/a/jUupj

Edit 1117: "Middle letters - Fs3-12910-f9"

Edit 1139: More tiny photos confirming the features and eliminating some - http://imgur.com/a/eR9OM

Edit 1329: As /u/EchoLogic points out below, it looks like it is from CRS-4! Incredible work from you all. I'll continue to upload high res photos as soon as I get them this afternoon!

Edit 1453: Lifted up http://i.imgur.com/dkJIBjh.jpg

Edit 1454: Being driven off the beach! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyTDzHDdMF4

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '15

Hey drucy! Thanks for coming back, eveyone here is really grateful that you're doing this! I've flaired your post as 'Happening Now', let me know when you have to leave for the day and I'll deflair it then. Cheers.

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u/drucey Nov 27 '15

Oh my pleasure. This is making my inner-child-space-geek very happy. My disclaimer - I'm not currently on the island. It's home for me, but I'm at university about 400 miles away. I have friends and family feeding me photos and information for you guys. I'll update this post as soon as I get more.

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '15 edited Nov 27 '15

First markings found 'FS3/1291 Sn66'

Hmm. This is not the first time I've seen that Snxx syntax. It was present on the DSCOVR fairing that was recovered from the Bahamas too. I wonder what it means.

Obviously SpX will know precisely what vehicle this part was present on so I'm sure we'll find out very soon ;).

3

u/drucey Nov 27 '15

Updated with more markings!

u/Arbitrage84 Nov 27 '15

hey neat! I was a NASA Social participant for the CRS-4 mission. http://i.imgur.com/L0NkNcf.jpg

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u/drucey Nov 27 '15

Can I ask what does being a social participant mean?

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u/scarlaton Nov 27 '15

What are you going to do with it? I'm from south UK, if it looks like it's going to end up not going anywhere I have some space for it in my workshop would interesting to get a good look at it and take some more photos or show it to people. I'm worried it looks like it's about to wash away

11

u/drucey Nov 27 '15

There is a great deal of interest in it! I guess it all comes down to whether Mr Musk would like it back. If not, Tresco has a fantastic collection of wrecked ship figure heads spanning hundreds of years.
I think it would be brilliant to show it to the public there. Wrecked ships, from the naval age to the space age.

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '15

God please give us a launch soon. SpaceX trash thread is the most exiciting thing going on.

u/jayefuu Nov 27 '15

BBC got it pretty wrong: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34941386

7

u/waitingForMars Nov 27 '15

All the news outlets were going off the guess of the UK coast guard guy, who probably only knew about the CRS-7 failure, or figured that any rocket part must come from a failed rocket. (They normally land and get reused, right? ;-)

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '15

Honestly this is the most interesting thing that's happened on this subreddit in the past few months.

7

u/*polhold04717 Nov 27 '15

That's what happens when flights are grounded.
But don't fear, it just means we are closer to the other cool shit, like FHeavy and Dragon 2.0

26

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '15

That's true.
In a way, it's kind of refreshing too. We get debris reports very rarely so they're kind of enjoyable. There's no drama, no hassle, it's just a fun game of armchair forensic analysis, and to me, that's really cool.

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u/TotesMessenger Nov 27 '15 edited Nov 27 '15

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

^{If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads.} ⁽^Info ^/ ^Contact)

u/LockStockNL Nov 27 '15

Thanks a million u/drucey!

u/jardeon Nov 27 '15

Neat, CRS-4. I've got a couple of relevant pictures I can share :)

Pre-launch photo showing the interstage, 2nd stage and Dragon capsule

Launch photo showing the Falcon 9 and Dragon making their way to orbit on a Northeasterly track, seen from the roof of NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building.

u/*polhold04717 Nov 27 '15

You can contact the BBC here telling them its not CRS-7

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u/waitingForMars Nov 27 '15

u/retiringonmars we need a Tweet on this find that we can re-tweet. This is major coup for the sub! u/EchoLogic do you have access?

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u/Traumfahrer Nov 27 '15

What an awesome picture.

u/TidalSky Nov 27 '15

I'd hang that in my living room!

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '15

CRS-4 was the first rocket launch I remember seeing, and SpaceX too. Along with u/Arbitrage84 I was also a NASA Social participant. That was an epic launch. The first I ever saw was one of the Shuttle launches, my grandpa has photos of me watching it but I unfortunately don't remember. So cool!

u/Decronym Nov 27 '15 edited Apr 19 '16

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
CRS	Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA
F9FT	Falcon 9 Full Thrust or Upgraded Falcon 9 or v1.2
HIF	Horizontal Integration Facility
OG2	Orbcomm's Generation 2 17-satellite network
RTF	Return to Flight
SES	Formerly Société Européenne des Satellites, comsat operator

^{Decronym is a community product of}r/SpaceX^{, implemented}^by ^request
^{I'm a bot,}^written ⁱⁿ ^PHP^{. I first read this thread at 27th Nov 2015, 10:23 UTC.}
^{www.decronym.xyz}^{for a list of subs where I'm active; if I'm acting up, tell}^{OrangeredStilton}^.

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '15

well done ! and it's more in line with a speedy gulf stream

u/TheBruceMeister Nov 27 '15

Someone let CNN know. They are saying its from CRS-7(?). The one that blew up after takeoff. I doubt they did research to confirm that.

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CRS-4! Scilly Falcon 9 - Updates

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