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SpaceX's Falcon 1 Destroyed During Maiden Voyage
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."
Its interesting to compare this with the scram jet trials currently scheduled by Qinetic (British Defence Contractor thats just been privatised)
Qinetic are about to test fire a £1 million scramjet directly into the ground. If it works it will fire for 6 seconds before it hits earth at mach 7.
The problem with seeking venture capital is the the investors usually want a return of their investment within a specified (Probably too short) time frame.
Successful space exploration takes man decades not man hours.
I dont read
Since the payload was a student project, it has no doubt already accomplished it's primary mission: to give engineering and science students experience in a large-scale, real world project designing and building a satellite and it's experiments. It's sad that they won't get to see the final fruits of their labors and the product of their effort was destroyed, but this doesn't really affect their overall education. The science loss is pretty small, as I'm pretty certain other satellites have studied similar phenomena in the past.
I think the Air Force giving SpaceX a launch contract was partially throwing them a bone to help get another launch provider off the ground (no pun intended), and partially saving money. No doubt had SpaceX not happened to be up-and-coming as they are, this would have gone up on a Pegasus or piggybacked with another satellite on a bigger rocket, like I believe the first Falcon-Sat was.
NASA's first failed attempts at orbit also had payloads on board.
Actually it is the "partially" in the sense that the first stage should parachute and be reused, but the second stage is space junk.
This is the right way to do it, too. Lower stages are larger, so you can save more money making them reusable. They're less important for overall rocket performance, so when making them reusable reduces their performance it's not so bad. They don't reach orbital speeds, so you can recover them without reentry shields or even without flyback capability. If we're going to move toward reusable rockets (which could be a very good idea) at a gradual pace (which the Shuttle program has proved is a good idea), the way to start is from the bottom up.