SpaceX launches today? WTF?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

according to their site, they managed liftoff. I laughed again that within five minutes they stated that there was anomaly.


Children playing with big toys.

Let's Reinvent the Wheel! Including the 60% failure rate of the first rockets back in the 50's! (this generously assumes that if they somehow get the funding to do this another eight times, four of them will succeed.)

[Shroom Man 777]

But what happened to the power of the Free Market? I'm sure the big bad guvmint is trying to put these guys down!

Man, their "launch pad" is shitty. Won't those trees catch fire?

[Sea Skimmer]

The more I read about SpaceX the more it sounds like a scam with some of the rather fantastic claims they’ve been making. I’d say it was completely a scam brought on by NASA incompetence if not for the fact that the owner has supposedly thrown a great deal of his own money behind it. Why they don’t just air launch the booster (an idea that which has been proven feasible by full scale tests repeatedly since 1958!) to drive down costs is beyond me.

In fact the Pegasus rocket has been doing just this since 1990 but it only seems to have one or two launches per year. You eliminate almost all ground facilities and weather delays with air launch, while also saving a huge amount on fuel and booster size, not to mention gaining the ability to launch into any orbit the booster can physically reach via simply moving the plane around.

Let's Reinvent the Wheel! Including the 60% failure rate of the first rockets back in the 50's! (this generously assumes that if they somehow get the funding to do this another eight times, four of them will succeed.)

Yeah with the plan of building and launching the things with virtually no personal on staff from the middle of nowhere that seems likely to be the case. It is funny though how in one interview Musk dismissed the first two failures as not mattering because Atlas kept blowing up on the pad. Course I guess its lost on him that Atlas was literally the bleeding edge of world technology at the time, while say for example the much latter and yet elderly by today’s standards MX ICBM went through 14 test launches without a single failure.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

That's the launchpad? If the Rocket blew up on the launchpad, the damage is going to be horrendous, to say nothing of the buildings which are very close by.

[Starglider]

while say for example the much latter and yet elderly by today’s standards MX ICBM went through 14 test launches without a single failure.

I agree with your general point, but the MX comparison is a little unfair, as the LGM-118A used a solid fuel booster and there is a lot less to go wrong with those compared to a liquid fueled rocket.

[Starglider]

Apparently the staging failed;

The webcast documenting the launch showed via the aft facing onboard camera that the first stage violently recontacted second stage seconds after the separation. Several seconds later major portions of the second stage were torn away with the first stage. The second stage was observed to tumble and propellant covered the camera lens. Shortly thereafter a major explosion was observed and the video signal was lost by the receivers on the ground. Telemetry data continued as the second stage re-entered on a trajectory slightly north of the first stage. The second stage appeared to never ignite.

This company is supposed to be developing a manned capsule and was awarded a contract by NASA in mid 2006 to fly it to the ISS in a 2010 timeframe, but that must be looking rather unlikely now.

[nickolay1]

Won't those trees catch fire?

Perhaps not the trees, but the American flag was certainly incinerated.

[Flagg]

But according to "Penn and Teller: Bullshit" the private space industry is superior to NASA in every way! Clearly this is a government conspiracy of some kind.

[nickolay1]

But according to "Penn and Teller: Bullshit" the private space industry is superior to NASA in every way! Clearly this is a government conspiracy of some kind.

Pfft. Libertarians aren't constrained by petty facts!

[Flagg]

But according to "Penn and Teller: Bullshit" the private space industry is superior to NASA in every way! Clearly this is a government conspiracy of some kind.

Pfft. Libertarians aren't constrained by petty facts!

I used to be able to tolerate their Libertardian shit because they were up front about it just being their opinion, but they lost me when they declared that handicapped parking spaces shouldn't be mandated by the government because somehow legislating compassion is wrong.

[PeZook]

Man, their "launch pad" is shitty. Won't those trees catch fire?

Dude, that rocket is pitiful. They're stuck in the fifties, the Falcon 1 barely exceeds the V2 in capability

[MKSheppard]

Solution to cheap space access? Go to Lockheed Martin, or whoever made the Peacekeeper. Ask if you can have the production line restarted for the Peacekeeper Stage One.

Cluster as many of those as necessary and concentrate on developing the liquid fuelled boost stage that puts the stuff into it's final orbit.

[docfrance]

Hi, I've been lurking at this message board for quite a while now, and I felt like jumping in on this topic.

I was at Kwajelein in 2005 when SpaceX made their first attempt with the Falcon 1. It was quite a magnificent show: the launch vehicle went up, and then straight back down into the nearby reef. Fortunately our satellite not only physically survived the impact, but was ejected from the nose cone and landed in the same storage shed that its shipping container was held in. Of course, all its vital systems were utterly destroyed, but it still looked like it was in one piece, which is a lot to say for a cubic meter of metal in a terminal velocity impact.

After that incident we decided to launch the satellite we were currently working on in an Atlas V in 2006, which was a much better plan. That bird is still orbiting and performing its missions as we speak.

I think it's a shame that SpaceX hasn't had a fully successful launch yet. This is something that I'd realy like to see succeed, but after three unsuccessful attempts, things aren't looking too bright.

[phongn]

The more I read about SpaceX the more it sounds like a scam with some of the rather fantastic claims they’ve been making. I’d say it was completely a scam brought on by NASA incompetence if not for the fact that the owner has supposedly thrown a great deal of his own money behind it. Why they don’t just air launch the booster (an idea that which has been proven feasible by full scale tests repeatedly since 1958!) to drive down costs is beyond me.

They want to build bigger rockets (Falcon 9) which cannot be air-launched. Falcon 1 is pretty much their "learn how to build rockets" design.

Course I guess its lost on him that Atlas was literally the bleeding edge of world technology at the time, while say for example the much latter and yet elderly by today’s standards MX ICBM went through 14 test launches without a single failure.

The other part is that Musk kept claiming that the Falcon series was a very conservative design in many respects.

[Patrick Degan]

But according to "Penn and Teller: Bullshit" the private space industry is superior to NASA in every way! Clearly this is a government conspiracy of some kind.

Pfft. Libertarians aren't constrained by petty facts!

A pity Voluntaryist isn't around anymore. He'd be a load of laughs just about now.

[Straha]

OH BLOODY FUCKING HELL! Sure the rocket blew up, but that's not the worst of it:

Space X hasn't just lost a rocket, though. The flight was carrying a trio of small satellites belonging to NASA and the DoD. Perhaps less seriously, but probably more newsworthy, the ashes of over 200 people were also on board, including a pair of rather well known astronauts, one actual, one fictional. They were Gordon Cooper, one of the original Mercury 7, and "Scotty" himself, James Doohan.

I guess Scotty wont be being beamed up.

[Flagg]

But according to "Penn and Teller: Bullshit" the private space industry is superior to NASA in every way!

Did you even watch the episode? They pointed out several times that NASA did and still does a lot of great things that they don't think private industry will ever beat, so their opinion is that there should be a combination, letting NASA focus on its scientific tasks and the private enterprise go for launching people (!) recreationally and compete for launching cargo.

I don't agree with them, but there is no need to misrepresent their position.

Yeah, I also recall them saying that private enterprise does it better and ignoring the fact that all private spaceflight is built on the shoulders of NASA. They also had a couple of little punk kids touring space camp and talking about how boring and dumb NASA was. Not hard to read between the lines there, genius.

[Flagg]

Yeah, I also recall them saying that private enterprise does it better

You remember wrong. They said NASA has its fuckups and private enterprise has its potential. They did not say that private enterprise does it better (but did imply that it would be better at some things in the future), and specifically said that NASA would definitely be better at doing science.

and ignoring the fact that all private spaceflight is built on the shoulders of NASA.

True.

They also had a couple of little punk kids touring space camp and talking about how boring and dumb NASA was.

The point behind that was to show that space isn't considered special anymore; it doesn't inspire kids the way it used to. This isn't saying private enterprise is currently or would necessarily do better.

They did go out of their way to say how much they loves NASA, but it came off as the following analogy:

God your mother is a stupid, ugly whore. She has constant fuckups, a drug problem, and herpes so bad you can see the bumps in her camel toe. But we really love her, I mean she's great.

[Sea Skimmer]

I agree with your general point, but the MX comparison is a little unfair, as the LGM-118A used a solid fuel booster and there is a lot less to go wrong with those compared to a liquid fueled rocket.

A liquid fuel rocket has more parts for sure, but technologically high efficiency solid fuel is pretty hard to pull off. Casting rocket motors that big without a single air bubble or crack isn’t easy.

They want to build bigger rockets (Falcon 9) which cannot be air-launched. Falcon 1 is pretty much their "learn how to build rockets" design.

I see the Falcon 9 is supposed to use no less then 9 first stage engines… I’m sure that will work out real well… the Falcon 9 heavy with 18 booster engines followed by a 9 engine second stage looks epically brilliant. Have these people never heard of the N-1? They want to reuse these shitloads of engines too… not very compatible with minimal staffing and operating costs.

[PeZook]

This whole "NASA vs. private business" schtick is pretty stupid, anyway, because NASA isn't a design bureau. It handles launches and mission control (and the science, yeah), but the vehicles themselves are actually designed and built by contractors.

Which really is why the Falcon 1 is so pathetic: they're reinventing the wheel, basically starting with just a step up from the Atlas/Redstone, while private enterprises worldwide already have succesfull rockets that handle large payloads.

What exactly is SpaceX's plan for making this particular LOX fuelled rocket so super-cheap to launch, anyway?

[phongn]

What exactly is SpaceX's plan for making this particular LOX fuelled rocket so super-cheap to launch, anyway?

Relatively simple engines, reusable first stage and IIRC some sophisticated production methods.

[Vympel]

*sigh*

It's called Soyuz, you incompetent ninnies. Can't match it? Then hit the road.

[phongn]

The SpaceX CEO posted an update on what happened:

On August 2nd, Falcon 1 executed a picture perfect first stage flight, ultimately reaching an altitude of 217 km, but encountered a problem just after stage separation that prevented the second stage from reaching orbit. At this point, we are certain as to the origin of the problem. Four methods of analysis – vehicle inertial measurement, chamber pressure, onboard video and a simple physics free body calculation – all give the same answer.

The problem arose due to the longer thrust decay transient of our new Merlin 1C regeneratively cooled engine, as compared to the prior flight that used our old Merlin 1A ablatively cooled engine. Unlike the ablative engine, the regen engine had unburned fuel in the cooling channels and manifold that combined with a small amount of residual oxygen to produce a small thrust that was just enough to overcome the stage separation pusher impulse.

We were aware of and had allowed for a thrust transient, but did not expect it to last that long. As it turned out, a very small increase in the time between commanding main engine shutdown and stage separation would have been enough to save the mission.

The question then is why didn't we catch this issue? Unfortunately, the engine chamber pressure is so low for this transient thrust -- only about 10 psi -- that it barely registered on our ground test stand in Texas where ambient pressure is 14.5 psi. However, in vacuum that 10 psi chamber pressure produced enough thrust to cause the first stage to recontact the second stage.

It looks like we may have flight four on the launch pad as soon as next month. The long gap between flight two and three was mainly due to the Merlin 1C regen engine development, but there are no technology upgrades between flight three and four.

Good Things About This Flight

* Merlin 1C and overall first stage performance was excellent
* The stage separation system worked properly, in that all bolts fired and the pneumatic pushers delivered the correct impulse
* Second stage ignited and achieved nominal chamber pressure
* Fairing separated correctly
* We discovered this transient problem on Falcon 1 rather than Falcon 9
* Rocket stages were integrated, rolled out and launched in seven days
* Neither the near miss potential failures of flight two nor any new ones were present

The only untested portion of flight is whether or not we have solved the main problem of flight two, where the control system coupled with the slosh modes of the liquid oxygen tank. Given the addition of slosh baffles and significant improvements to the control logic, I feel confident that this will not be an issue for the upcoming flight four.


--Elon--