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SpaceX's Falcon 1 Destroyed During Maiden Voyage

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the more-waiting-to-become-an-asteroid-farmer dept.

legolas writes "SpaceX's Falcon 1 is the world's first privately funded satellite launch vehicle. After a successful static engine test on Wednesday, it was launched today. Unfortunately, the rocket was destroyed shortly after launch."

10 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Early days by SteelFist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds a bit like the early days of our space program.

    1. Re:Early days by susano_otter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sounds like the early days of any space program.

      I noticed from TFA that SpaceX was touting this as the first totally new rocket design.

      On that basis alone I'd expect it to be plagued with problems for several more iterations.

      I'm pretty sure originality is not a desireable feature in rocket science.

      --

      Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.

  2. This isn't... by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Insightful
    C'mon, Elon! This isn't rocket sci... oh, right. Well then, there we are.

    And to add insult to injury, we'll link your web server from Slashdot.

    Seriously, Elon. Good on you. SpaceX is doing something risky and interesting. Make as many mistakes as it takes to get the job done. Unlike NASA, the bulk of your funding comes from a free market, and you're therefore motivated to learn from your mistakes. The day you build something your investors are willing to let you slap a "man-rated" label on, I'll be in line with tickets to fly on it.

    1. Re:This isn't... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wait..you're saying private investors are more likely to have safety concerns?

      *boggle*

      I mean, we're talking about the same sort of folks who, in other industries, constantly push companies to release products as early as they can in order to start realizing a profit. Go look at the drug industry. As private companies have increasingly gained influence over the FDA through lobbyists, the number of things slipping through has increased. Private companies cannot be relied upon to have the best interests of anything but their own pocketbook.

    2. Re:This isn't... by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      they burn through several billion dollars in funding to fly nowhere,

      Except they flew to SPACE, didn't they. I think NASA has even made it to orbit once or twice since the Challenger disaster, and I dare say they've had a couple successful experiments while they were up there.

      Can private interests do this also? Probably.

      Spaceflight is dangerous. Your jokes about the Challenger & Columbia accidents are pretty fucking lame.

      --
      94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
  3. Re:First flight with a paying customer?! by hitchhikerjim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    $6 Million rocket. $800,000 payload. The cost of the payload is pretty small, all things considered. It's worth the risk to go ahead and fly the payload the first time. Saves you $5 million if it works, and cost you less than $1 million if it fails. ...and when you add in that everything's going to be insured, it makes finantial sense.

  4. Re:I had wondered... by roystgnr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just as bizarre was that they had a payload on their first launch attempt.

    The payload cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, true, but lifting it into orbit costs millions. As long as they had a better than 10% chance of success, it was a good risk to take.

  5. Re:I had wondered... by interiot · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Well, the payload was a microsatellite, so the actual hardware didn't cost a huge amount really (~$100,000?). Anybody have any idea how much the USAF Academy paid for the launch?

    Also, a large part of satellite cost is in the R&D, so if there are further funds, then building a duplicate would cost a fair bit less than the first one, right?

  6. Re:Crash and Burn Testing by O2H2 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    As a designer of very successful rockts I can tell you why making a rocket fly is much harder than making darn near any other machine function properly...you are trying to harness enormous energies which do more than just push the rocket upward. The vibration and shock environments are beyond anything you probably have experienced. A simple connector can see upwards of 300 Grms without even trying. You can reduce polymeric materials to a puddle just with hysteretic heating from vibration. And you cannot simulate and predict everything. Weird system interactions are par for the course. You can only get first flight success with a lot of painful experience. SpaceX do not have this level of experience.

    That is why demonstrated reliability cannot be replaced by calculation. Spacex bragged about their high reliability but it is all on paper. Successful rockets have tens of thousands of hours of debugging of problems built into them. You just never see it. Nothing can replace hours in the air. And they come slowly and at great expense.

    Elon is now going to learn firsthand why spaceflight is so damn expensive. It is not the lack of innovation or intelligence at Lockheed Martin or Boeing- it is the brutal reality that nature imposes on lack of attention to detail and ignorance. It ain't the metal in the rocket - its the know-how in the people. We have to dig down to root cause on even the most innocuous anomaly - hence we know a lot more about flaws in parts than damn near anybody on the planet. But this knowledge is pricey.

  7. Re:here's a hint by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For manned interplanetary and interstellar travel, it's not so much that we can make a reasoned argument against it, we don't even have a hint of the physics needed to make it work; current reactor, propulsion, and shielding technologies are many orders of magnitude away from what they would need to be for manned travel.

    Say again? Interplanetary travel is quite well understood. It'd take some months but hardly out of reach. Now interstellar is a completely different ballgame. The solar system (diameter of Pluto's orbit) is about 80 AU wide, the nearest sun is 272000 AU away.

    It's a different thing for unmanned interstellar travel: technologically, if we devote enough resources to it, we can probably send a small interstellar probe to a neighboring star system within the next century--it would be hugely expensive, but feasible.

    As in arrive in the next century? Nope. With current tech we're talking about 75000 years or so. Even the most theoretical scenarios I've seen using ungodly amounts of antimatter as fuel takes about 20 years.

    Actually, I think the most likely path to manned space exploration is to reengineer people: radiation hardening, hibernation, vacuum resistance, and changes to the skeletal system, among others. If you do that well, you could send people in small pods and they might be able to work when they arrive. But I give it a century before people overcome their squeamishness to permit genetic engineering with people, and another century to do it. But you and I are never going to set foot on another planet.

    Interplanetary I don't see any reason why we couldn't do today. As for interstellar, I think it's far more likely we'll not actually send humans per se. Even with all the genetric modifications you suggest, sending humans is horribly inefficient. I think we'd send fertilized eggs and artificial wombs, or even just a DNA sequencer to do it on-site.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings