SpaceX successfuly launches Falcon 9

[Kane Starkiller]

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SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket enjoys successful maiden flight
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has enjoyed a successful maiden test flight after the first launch attempted was aborted.
The rocket, which could one day carry astronauts, blasted-off from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1545 GMT.

The California-based firm developed the vehicle with a large subsidy from Nasa.

Friday's first launch attempt was aborted at the last second because an engine parameter fell out of limits.

According to the Spaceflight Now website, a SpaceX spokesperson said the rocket achieved orbit, but they were not sure of the altitude or inclination.

US President Barack Obama, who inspected the rocket on its pad in April, has said he wanted the business of taxiing astronauts to and from the International Space Station handed to the commercial sector.

Many commentators believe the Falcon is in a prime position to win that business.

Before the rocket can be allowed to launch humans, it has to first demonstrate performance and reliability in the role of lofting robotic spacecraft.
Lofty ambitions

The Falcon 9 in its simplest form is a "single stick" vehicle with a two-stage configuration. A cluster of nine SpaceX-developed Merlin-1C engines will power the rocket off the pad.
A single Merlin on the second stage will complete the task of pushing the payload into orbit.

For its maiden flight, the Falcon 9 carried a cut-down version of its Dragon freighter - a blunt-nosed, 3.6m-wide capsule that will collect engineering performance data during the ascent.

On future flights, Dragon will be filled with supplies for the International Space Station.

Historically, the maiden flights of rockets have a notoriously high failure rate. Some two-thirds of the rockets introduced in the past 20 years have had an unsuccessful first outing.

Millionaire Elon Musk set up SpaceX in 2002 and has already flown a much smaller rocket called the Falcon 1.

To keep costs as low as possible, the Falcon 9 uses many of the same components and systems, including its kerosene/liquid-oxygen-burning Merlin engines.

SpaceX was awarded a $1.6bn contract by Nasa in 2008 for up to 12 Falcon/Dragon missions to the ISS.

The Dragon freighter, once operational, is expected to be capable of hauling six tonnes of food, water, air and equipment to the platform.

The company says it has designed Dragon in such a way that it can be converted relatively easily into a crew ship, if Nasa so desires it.

The company claims that it would be ready to launch astronauts on the Falcon within three years of being given an ISS taxiing contract.
However, other space companies and their rockets will almost certainly be in competition for such work, including some of the established industry names like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

SpaceX hopes the Falcon 9 can also take a sizeable share of the commercial satellite launch market.

It is quoting prices to put large telecommunications spacecraft in geostationary orbit that dramatically undercut current sector leaders, such as Europe's Ariane 5 and Russia's Proton vehicles.

But Rachel Villain from the respected space analysts Euroconsult said many in the satellite business were being cautious about SpaceX's future prospects.

"This is not new in the industry," she told BBC News.

"When we had the maiden flight of Ariane 4, when we had the maiden flight of Atlas 3, the maiden flight of Delta 4 - all these vehicles promoted a good price for the company taking the risk of being on an early launch. I, like many in the industry, am watching to see if SpaceX can sustain these prices."

Congratulations. Looks like this whole private rocket launch business might really pan out.

[bobalot]

Congratulations. Looks like this whole private rocket launch business might really pan out.

"The California-based firm developed the vehicle with a large subsidy from Nasa." Not far without government assistance by the looks of it.

[Temujin]

Congratulations. Looks like this whole private rocket launch business might really pan out.

"The California-based firm developed the vehicle with a large subsidy from Nasa." Not far without government assistance by the looks of it.

Damn, beat me to it.

Anyway, I can see a niche for private spaceflight developing, especially in support/conjunction with a government program. But while the technological capability and the will is certainly there, the financial cost is going to be too great for companies to do it all themselves.

[Commander 598]

Congratulations. Looks like this whole private rocket launch business might really pan out.

"The California-based firm developed the vehicle with a large subsidy from Nasa." Not far without government assistance by the looks of it.

And this is still just the simple model, when they launch the ~30 engine heavy lifter, then there will be fun...

[SirNitram]

According to the Spaceflight Now website, a SpaceX spokesperson said the rocket achieved orbit, but they were not sure of the altitude or inclination.

Not what you might call a good sign.

[Gramzamber]

So it needs a large subsidy from NASA... to launch a test model.
Yeah Obama, I can see this is so much better than, you know, having NASA themselves launch stuff.

[Commander 598]

I'll be honest: I just want to see the heavy lifter half spiral back to the ground in HD color when only half of it's ~30 engines light.

[tim31]

Funny you should mention that

[Skylon]

So it needs a large subsidy from NASA... to launch a test model.
Yeah Obama, I can see this is so much better than, you know, having NASA themselves launch stuff.

Do you really think a rocket launch of a brand new vehicle was bought and paid for a few months after Obama's space initiative was launched? SpaceX was contracted under Bush/Griffin to fill the ISS cargo transport gap until Orion started flying, and possibly past that. This test launch has been on the books for a few years now.

I agree, its pretty asinine to call this true commercial space. Going with Boeing's Delta or Lockheed's Atlas rockets for a spacecraft would be just as commercial as this.

Still, good work for SpaceX as, like it or not, this is what US near term space flight plans are riding on.

[eion]

I'll be honest: I just want to see the heavy lifter half spiral back to the ground in HD color when only half of it's ~30 engines light.

SpaceX actually has a hold-down platform that prevents the rocket from launching until all the engines are lit. This at least prevents an N-1 style disaster.

Promising news, but not a success yet.

[Sky Captain]

I'll be honest: I just want to see the heavy lifter half spiral back to the ground in HD color when only half of it's ~30 engines light.

SpaceX actually has a hold-down platform that prevents the rocket from launching until all the engines are lit. This at least prevents an N-1 style disaster.

Promising news, but not a success yet.

IIRC the N1 lifted off the pad succesfully in all launch attempts. It was later in flight when problems developed. Nowdays also engine health monitoring systems are far more advanced than in the sixties so if something goes wrong during ascent it's more likely that problems with engine would be detected and problematic engine shut down before it fails catastrophically.

I'm just wondering is the cluster of 9 Merlin engines really cheaper than single Russian RD180 engine which have similar performance.

[Uraniun235]

On SpaceX's website they claim that their rocket engine has higher performance than the F-1 used on Saturn V - why do they need more engines then? Is it a matter of better fuel efficiency?

[Gramzamber]

Do you really think a rocket launch of a brand new vehicle was bought and paid for a few months after Obama's space initiative was launched? SpaceX was contracted under Bush/Griffin to fill the ISS cargo transport gap until Orion started flying, and possibly past that. This test launch has been on the books for a few years now.

I agree, its pretty asinine to call this true commercial space. Going with Boeing's Delta or Lockheed's Atlas rockets for a spacecraft would be just as commercial as this.

Still, good work for SpaceX as, like it or not, this is what US near term space flight plans are riding on.

I wasn't blaming Obama with this, rather noting his naivete that this is the kind of operation he expects to superceed NASA's.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

On SpaceX's website they claim that their rocket engine has higher performance than the F-1 used on Saturn V - why do they need more engines then? Is it a matter of better fuel efficiency?

Higher performance does not mean more powerful, it probably means more thrust per mass unit of fuel/oxidizer.

[Sky Captain]

On SpaceX's website they claim that their rocket engine has higher performance than the F-1 used on Saturn V - why do they need more engines then? Is it a matter of better fuel efficiency?

Yes, Merlin engines are more fuel efficient than old F1 engines, but they lack thrust. Single Merlin engine produces only ~500 kN of thrust that's why they need so many to lift Falcon 9.

[eion]

IIRC the N1 lifted off the pad succesfully in all launch attempts. It was later in flight when problems developed...

You're right. I'm probably transposing the N-1 with one of the early Redstone tests. I just have a mental image of a rocket blasting off with only half its engines going, and I couldn't place where it was from.

The point is though that the Falcon-9 Heavy will at least get off the ground with all the candles lit and plenty of other companies use strap-on liquid boosters in their first stage.

[sketerpot]

Congratulations. Looks like this whole private rocket launch business might really pan out.

"The California-based firm developed the vehicle with a large subsidy from Nasa." Not far without government assistance by the looks of it.

They developed the smaller Falcon 1 rocket with only private funding. It was only after the Falcon 1 had launched successfully that NASA started taking them seriously enough to help with the costs of the Falcon 9 program.

So it needs a large subsidy from NASA... to launch a test model.
Yeah Obama, I can see this is so much better than, you know, having NASA themselves launch stuff.

Do some damn arithmetic. NASA's launch costs tend to be pretty enormous. Let's consider the Falcon 9 Heavy, which is essentially a Falcon 9 with a couple of extra Falcon 9 first stages strapped to the sides as boosters. It hasn't been built yet, but since NASA is paying SpaceX $1.6 billion over the next several years to do space station resupply launches, let's be conservative and assume that developing the Falcon 9 takes all $1.6 billion. It has cargo capacity approximately equal to NASA's Space Shuttle or the Ares I. Like the shuttle and the Ares I, it can launch cargo or humans. The Space Shuttle costs about $1.7 billion to build, plus $450 million per mission. The Ares I has not been developed (and may not be developed, if Obama succeeds in cancelling the Constellation program), but its development costs are estimated at somewhere between $28 and $40 billion, and the launch costs would be high -- even the marginal cost of one more flight per year, $138 million, is greater than the $90 million estimated total cost per launch for a Falcon 9 Heavy.

Now can you see why using Falcon rockets wherever possible would be better than having NASA handle all the launches themselves? It all makes a lot more sense when you use numbers instead of vague words like "large".


By the way, some people in this thread are missing the point when they say that the Falcon 9 is nothing revolutionary, being similar in design to a bunch of previous rockets. Of course there are other rockets in operation which are a lot like the Falcon 9. The point is price. The Falcon series of rockets are meant to be as cheap as possible, especially when they ramp up in scale. The non-recurring engineering costs are surprisingly low (at least by NASA standards), they designed for relatively easy manufacturing, and their ground operations costs are minimal. (Fun fact: the Falcon 1 launch crew consists of only 25 people.) According to the Falcon 9 Users' Guide (PDF), the payload can be brought to the launch site two weeks before launch, and once it's integrated in the fairing, it can be attached to the rocket in 24 hours. After that, it takes a few days to set up the rocket on the launch pad and get ready for launch. This can all be done with relatively small crews, and they've put a lot of effort into streamlining operations, because this is where a big fraction of costs come from. The costs will only improve as they get more operational experience; learning curves are a bitch at first.

Lowering costs isn't about what type of engine they're using, or solid versus liquid propellant, or whether money is coming from NASA or from Elon Musk's pocket. Lowering costs is about looking at where the money is going in existing rocket programs, and applying careful engineering to the problem. There's not a magic bullet of cheapness; just a lot of things they have to work on. SpaceX has been doing that work, and it's starting to pay off.

[MKSheppard]

By the way, some people in this thread are missing the point when they say that the Falcon 9 is nothing revolutionary, being similar in design to a bunch of previous rockets. Of course there are other rockets in operation which are a lot like the Falcon 9. The point is price. The Falcon series of rockets are meant to be as cheap as possible, especially when they ramp up in scale.

So were other companies, like American Rocket Company, Conestoga, or ORTRAG (German Rocket thing). They all failed.

According to the Falcon 9 Users' Guide (PDF), the payload can be brought to the launch site two weeks before launch, and once it's integrated in the fairing, it can be attached to the rocket in 24 hours. After that, it takes a few days to set up the rocket on the launch pad and get ready for launch.

That's nice. Explain their 60% failure rate with Falcon 1 then. And that was a 30~ tonne rocket, not a 300~ tonne one like F9.

This can all be done with relatively small crews, and they've put a lot of effort into streamlining operations, because this is where a big fraction of costs come from. The costs will only improve as they get more operational experience; learning curves are a bitch at first.

No actually; the reason the shuttle is so inefficient to operate is that we built so few. The fixed costs of the shuttle complex at Cape Canaveral are several billion a year irrespective of whether you launch 6 flights a year, or none. So we should have just built twenty shuttles so that one is always at the pad, one is always being sent to the pad, one is being refurbished, etc.

[Sea Skimmer]

They developed the smaller Falcon 1 rocket with only private funding. It was only after the Falcon 1 had launched successfully that NASA started taking them seriously enough to help with the costs of the Falcon 9 program.

They designed the Falcon 1 with private funding yes. But the only reason they could build it and test launch it was because DARPA steered several small DoD satellite contracts to the company which they were willing to risk seeing blown up.

[Uraniun235]

No actually; the reason the shuttle is so inefficient to operate is that we built so few. The fixed costs of the shuttle complex at Cape Canaveral are several billion a year irrespective of whether you launch 6 flights a year, or none. So we should have just built twenty shuttles so that one is always at the pad, one is always being sent to the pad, one is being refurbished, etc.

I thought I'd read that part of the huge fixed cost was the enormous highly-trained staff needed to painstakingly inspect each shuttle for months before it could be sent back into space. Were those people being idled a lot between shuttle launches?

[Simon_Jester]

That's nice. Explain their 60% failure rate with Falcon 1 then. And that was a 30~ tonne rocket, not a 300~ tonne one like F9.

If they haven't managed to debug the Falcon 1 engine, how did they get Falcon 9 off the ground at all?

I don't consider Falcon 9 to be a viable replacement for Constellation or anything; I have no dog in that fight. But I don't think it's reasonable to ignore a successful first test of a reasonably capable rocket just because their last rocket didn't work out so well.

[Serafina]

Well - it would be nice to have a private market for space-related stuff.
Thing is, this market has/had to be created first - and one can argue wether this is yet possible or not.
But evidently, it can not yet create itself - goverment help is still a necessity.
However, i think that this is a worthwhile endeavour - it's not like the infrastructure for our modern market was created by the private sector, too.

[dragon]

So it needs a large subsidy from NASA... to launch a test model.
Yeah Obama, I can see this is so much better than, you know, having NASA themselves launch stuff.

The problem with that statement is that through out the last century many companies that were pionering new fields needed assistance from the goverment. Companies such as the airlines received massive tax breaks, special deals and more to get off the ground and to keep running.

Look at how much the goverment had to bail out the airlines over the decades and how much is given to companies emgaged in research.

So it's no big deal they are getting money from a goverment agency.

That's nice. Explain their 60% failure rate with Falcon 1 then. And that was a 30~ tonne rocket, not a 300~ tonne one like F9.

And how is that different than the failure rates of early pioners such as the moon landing program, the early airlines and other companies. Hell look at failure rates for biomedical companies, for every successfull product they have dozens that didn't pan out

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

So, does anyone else notice the Falcon 9 obviously starting its liftoff at t minus three seconds?

[Hawkwings]

I watched the whole thing live on the streaming webcast. Through the first aborted launch attempt and all. Definitely exciting, especially because I toured the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne and got to see all their stuff up close, including that Dragon qualification unit that was sent up.

And yes, what's wrong with SpaceX getting government subsidies while they're starting up? Now if they continue to need government assistance down the road to continue operations, then that's a fail. But there's no problem in their receiving government money in these early stages, when they're still proving their product and service.