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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."
Sounds a bit like the early days of our space program.
Anyone know if it crashed or the RSO destroyed it?
Of course, it's never a good thing when your downward-pointing cam shows sky and clouds - spinning...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I thought it a bit odd that the static test was for only three seconds and took place the day before the launch. I would not be surpised if the accident was a by-product of them pushing their schedule.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
That will be reusable as in "We are all reused parts of supernovae" or "We all have a billion atoms of Julius Caesar's body incorporated into our own" and not "Just pick it up , dust it off and we're ready to go again!"
Watching the webcast it looked to me like the vehicle had a guidance problem; the on-board view seemed to be spinning. The feed didn't really provide enough to tell, however.
It definitely cleared the pad and I think it got to a few thousand feet.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Now it's the world's first privately funded satellite crater.
I've got two tickets for the maiden flight of Falcon 2! I guess this means I should get my ride soon, huh?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
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.
I am confident that if this is a decent company whose mission is positive and positive things will come from their success, then in the long run they will succeed despite short term failure.
State Farm Rocket Insurance, obviously.
Looks like engine failure or some kind of catastrophic tank or plumbing failure.
Quoting Spaceflight Now (a real space news site!)
http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon/f1/status.html
326 GMT (6:26 p.m. EST)
Here is the official statement from Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX:
"We had a successful liftoff and Falcon made it well clear of the launch pad, but unfortunately the vehicle was lost later in the first stage burn. More information will be posted once we have had time to analyze the problem."
2250 GMT (5:50 p.m. EST)
A further look at the imagery seen from the onboard camera mounted to the Falcon 1 shows a noticeable change in the color and shape of the flame coming from the Merlin first stage main engine as the vehicle seemed to roll. It was at that point the webcast provided to reporters covering the launch immediately stopped. Repeated efforts to reconnect to the feed were unsuccessful.
Its not uncommon in the commercial launch business. Launches are so expensive that full-up testing is usually infeasible without a paying customer.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
insurance. It's not costing them a dime and since it was a student satellite it's not that important. Plus at $6 million it's pocket change for the DARPA and a hell of a lot cheaper then how much they put into the other rocket programs for development.
Live video was shown of the vehicle's ascent from an onboard downward pointing camera. Within a few seconds the feed started to become intermittent. The small amount of imagery available showed a bright yellow glow protruding away from the normal exhaust pattern, as the rocket began to roll violently. The ascent profile also appeared to be more horizontal than what would be expected for that stage of the ascent. The video then cut out completely - with SpaceX confirming the rocket had been lost just moments later. - http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?id=4394
$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.
Call it "Star Wars". People like Star Wars, so they'll like SDI more if it's called by that name.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Perhaps they should have called it 'Vista'.
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
Unconfirmed reports state that Chuck Norris was seen leaving the scene of the accident with a blow-pipe in his left hand.
I'm pretty bummed out about this, but hopefully they'll figure things out and the next flight will go better. My sentiments are pretty much the same as this commentary from Clark Lindsay:
Well, this is fairly typical for the first launch of a new vehicle. I hope they will figure out the problem soon and be ready for a second attempt not long after. Elon Musk has said he can afford up to three straight failures before he will decide if they should give up or not.
Also, an interesting comment from that page:
According to Astronautix, the Ariane 1 had failures on the 2nd and 5th launches and Aerospatiale spent a lot more than SpaceX.
Both SpaceflightNow and the forum on NasaSpaceFlight are speculating it was an ablative engine failure. If so, I would imagine they'll hold off on any more launches until the regen Merlin 1B is ready. According to an SpaceX update in mid-2005, they should already have a dozen 1Bs by the end of the 2005. Or it could be the turbopump which according to SpaceX engine page is also responsible for roll control. That might explain why it started to roll after launch.
Spaceflight Now observed:
A further look at the imagery seen from the onboard camera mounted to the Falcon 1 shows a noticeable change in the color and shape of the flame coming from the Merlin first stage main engine as the vehicle seemed to roll. It was at that point the webcast provided to reporters covering the launch immediately stopped. Repeated efforts to reconnect to the feed were unsuccessful.
Seems to be a problem with the engine, a leak, or pump failure. A turbopump that has seized could induce a sharp roll.
an ill wind that blows no good
I hope they have enough flight data to re-create (virtually) what happened in the lab. I'd be very interested to find out if this was a software error... and if so, what could have prevented it - different language (Ada95?), better test tools (www.polyspace.com?)...
Thats $6M to a paying customer, not $6M in cost to SpaceX. SpaceX is built to be a profitable entity. I think Elon jumped the gun.
The other important thing to note is the Falcon system sports a reusable first stage and a disposable second stage. However the first stage has never been tested as to its reusability. You would think a resuable system would be tested for... reusability. Maybe stick a dummy load on it and try to fire it, let the dummy upper stage ballistically reenter, recover the first stage and see how the reusability works. Long story short he was trying to check off too many points on his checklist in 1 flight and I think he paid the price. Of course its easy to say this from the armchair, and even easier in retrospect...
There was a plume coming out the side of the rocket in the last few frames of the SpaceX feed, normal to the body of the rocket - not the direction of flight. Most likely due to an engine/turbopump failure. This could possibly cause adverse roll/pitching. It looks like a physical problem; I doubt it was a guidance problem.
In general, I agree with everything you've got down except one thing....
and when you add in that everything's going to be insured, it makes finantial sense.
You sure about that? The US government normally does not insure launches. It's self insured and eats the cost of failures.
Even private entities do not always insure launches, since the premium is a good chunk of replacement cost (sometimes as high as 25%). A new launcher may not even be able to secure insurance, which is why I suspect SpaceX pursued government customers initially (DARPA is interested in funding development and swallowing the cost of failure to build national launch assets, while a commercial customer would not be).
Worst...sig...ever!
Since the satellite was a student project, most of its value comes from the education and experience they get designing and building the satellite and its experiments. Not actually getting data of a phenomenon that has no doubt been investigated in some depth before is a small loss.
Paypal has its ups and downs. I for one haven't had any problems with them, but I don't use them very much. It's also the first major service of its kind, and given the number of customers it has, a very small percentage of problems translates into a lot of total complaints...I think they're still behind Microsoft in that department though.
"...before range safety got to it?"
That reminds me of an interesting talk I attended by an X-ray astro-physicist back in college. He had been involved in several launches. Not surprisingly, they are very personally invested in the payloads, since they spend quite a few years fighting for budgeting and designing and building, and plan to spend several more years analyzing data. He said there was one launch where the rocket went off course and the Range Safety Officer gave the order to blow it, but the lead scientist jumped on the guy in charge of the button in a rather desperate attempt to save his project (which was doomed anyways). Since then, the customers have been kept in a seperate room from the RSO's.
Smells of a tall tale, but probably based on fact.
RIP Andreas Katsulas, May 18 1946 - Feb 13 2006
"I believe that when we leave a place a part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go anywhere in these halls, when it is quiet, and just listen. After a while you will hear the echoes of all of our conversations, every thought and word we've exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voice will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. But I will admit that the part of me that is going will very much miss the part of you that is staying." -- G'Kar
2.3 MB WMV.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Shuttle NEVER flies flawlessly. It survives due to redundancy, the efforts of the people working on it, particular the foresight of some engineers, and in no small part, luck. When it fails, it fails due to lack of redundancy, a failure to be creative enough to foresee the failure mode, and an unforgiving environment.
So Elon was absolutely right but the true comparison is with software that may not be perfect but must at least handle problems gracefully (particularly with manned spaceflight) so that maybe the mission is degraded, but not finished. How do you get there? Shuttle still hasn't figured it out, so Elon can't really be faulted for a failure on the first try. He might even survive a second failure. Third time would be a death knell to commercial activity, even if he wanted to try further. It was mentioned elsewhere in the discussions that he'd stop if he got three failures and no successes--it'd be appropriate.
Our office (one of our jobs is to estimate rocket failure probability) pegged the likelihood of failure at 70%, so we weren't surprised. We were hoping he'd succeed, just realistic. Hopefully they'll learn from this one and succeed on the next one, but if you have an even money bet on his next launch, take failure.
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.
Going to space is hard, and risky. To get it right will take a few brusies. Thankfully no one had to die to learn todays lesson.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For example, if the blanket wrapped around a feedpipe for the engine and then got tugged by the plume or the airflow it could easily have disabled the engines.
Blankets like that are a known reliability issue, that's why the Shuttle has spray-on insulation on it's ET (not that that's been exactly briliantly reliable either, but it's probably more reliable than it would have been if it had had external blankets.)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Maiden flights are perilous things. They got a full minute of flight data that they didn't have before. I'm sure the next one will be a success.
Seastead this.
I don't see what this private funding hype is all about. As far as I can tell, I don't see a significant difference in their business model from other contractors. Perhaps we should respect the past 45 years of government funded rocket research and the government contractors in the established launch business. I know that the space shuttle has turned into a boondoggle, but the real rocket business is in satellite launches, and the space shuttle hasn't handled routine satellite launches since the 80s. In the US, rockets have traditionally been made by private companies under government contract like Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and Rocketdyne (now part of Pratt & Whitney). I can understand why we should be excited at the prospect of re-usable rockets at 1/10th the price, but I don't understand why we should be so excited that a bunch of dot-comers have raised some VC money and entered the game. I don't see anything wrong with the fact that the current generation of rockets have been developed under government contracts. Let's face it, government funding is responsible for a lot of cutting edge research, and if you wanted to be in the rocket business the government is going to be a big source of funding that's too big to pass up. For that matter, you can be certain that the DoD would love to launch spy satellites for 1/10 the price, and it's in the DoD's interest to invest in technology make it happen. If these guys at SpaceX are serious about getting the job done, they would be crazy not to take money from the government. So, I had a look at their web page. If you go to the customer list, under the company tab, their customers base pretty much matches the customer base of Boeing or Lockheed-Martin. The first non-test launches are US DOD--DARPA and OSD/NRL. There's another unnamed US government launch early in the schedule, and there's also mention of a $100 million USAF contract through 2010. So yes, their start-up money was private. What's the big deal about that? I don't see how they're any more private than any other contractor.
The customer assures us that they were launching a legitimate satellite, but they have been unable to get a response from SpaceX customer service.
This space available.
Do you really think they only tested the engine for 3 seconds? They've been testing the engine for 3 years now. From all accounts the engine was not the problem either.
I thought the Pegasus rocket by Orbital Sciences Corporation was the first privately funded launch vehicle? Or does corporate money not count?
--- Standard disclaimer applies.
'That whole Jules Verne thing about underwater ships and traveling to the moon is just science fiction. There's no way we'll be able to build a rocket with enough delta-v and payload capacity to send men to the moon...'
One of my college professors passed out a paper which made roughly the above argument. They made what seemed like very reasoned, mathematical arguments to that effect. Of course, the naysayers were wrong.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
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.
The original plan for sending a man to the moon assumed that one ship would lift off from earth, land on the moon, then take off and return to earth. The required size for the rocket at liftoff from earth was staggering - many times larger than the Saturn V. The paper you're talking about was probably assuming the same thing. Then someone at NASA came up with the concept of having a small lander that would seperate from the main craft, then later dock with the craft in lunar orbit. At the time, the idea of getting two spacecraft to dock in orbit seemed way too difficult. But they finally decided that was the only way it could be done. One of the main reasons for the Gemini program was to learn how to get spacecraft to dock in orbit
The bottom line on space flight is that if you plan on moving enough mass to orbit to make a profit the machine cannot be a performance pig. WIthin the engines and most other systems are objects that are highly stressed- and simply adding mass is normally not a solution. You are compelled to make elegant and efficient designs. That will cost more than the hardware in your espresso maker.
BTW Atlas V reduced costs to LEO by 50% from previous vehicles. A little known fact. And you can actually buy one and launch it next year if you want. Whether Elon can even match that is yet to be seen.
Lets be realistic- Elon is yet another rich guy who has a fascination with an expensive hobby. He is an outsider who had no prior spaceflight experience. And like most newbies he confused the booster operation with serious spaceflight. The smoke, noise and flames always does that. Yes a booster is necessary but it is only a first step. Reinventing it with some mediocre rocket engines will not push us to another level.
True progress in spaceflight is all about the performance of the upper stage and its in-space capabilities. If you don't make progress there then all the wonderful space missions we all want to see done are out of reach. Elon should have picked up the phone and called the Atlas team. For a fraction of the money he has spent he could have gotten a long-duration Centaur that could have opened up commercial manned missions to lunar orbit. His kind of money and attitude could have really made a difference. And he wouldn't have to create a new team to do it. He could have stood on some shoulders. You get farther that way. You just have to readjust your pride settings and focus on the real goal.
Every damn "space entrepreneur" does the same damn thing- and they mostly piss away hundreds of millions of dollars to do what has already been done. There is not a thought about what to do next. This is mostly because it is much, much harder to do. If these guys gave it a moment's thought they would just go see the experts. We are as smart or smarter than they are- but don't have the luxury of millions in VC or buyout money burning a hole in our pockets. If you add money, an enthusiastic customer and a mission trust me- we will deliver some amazing machines. Essentially they could add their innovations and ideas to ours- and get something better than either could do alone
And its not like we are sitting around doing nothing- the next four generations of launchers and upper stages are already in conceptual design. But there is no mission yet that needs these new capabilities. Cost reductions to $1300/lbm to LEO can be done with present technology but the investment is significant. With present launch rates there is simply no business case. But if you wanted to make a commercial lunar orbiter that could be done in less than four years for less money than you think.
The weird and perversely funny thing is that another newbie- Mike Griffin - is doing exactly the same thing as Elon but with taxpayer money to build a few more mediocre vehicles with a virtually newbie team that has never designed a rocket. It is highly probable that they too will follow this painful path. But education is a good thing I suppose. But we could have gone so much farther as a NASA-industry team. Sad.
Therefore... what? Everything is possible? It doesn't follow.
If I understand the general critique of the space establishment from the "rich hobbyists" is that you may well have any number of very bright engineers, but your corporate masters make a hell of a lot of money off cost-plus contracts using the same old stuff and have no incentive to actually build anything new and better. Even if somebody like Musk had have come along you wouldn't take his money because the tech that gets developed would ultimately reduce the value of future government work.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Actually, "underwater ships" already existed by the time Jules Verne wrote his story.
As for traveling to the moon, that's just not comparable. The physics for going to the moon were well understood and within reach; that was just a question of technology and engineering.
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. And the technology being developed by SpaceX is completely irrelevant; it's a commercial launch vehicle, and an inefficient one at that--it has nothing to do with interplanetary or interstellar travel.
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.
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.
Space is far too hostile and Homo Sapiens is far too frail and squishy for any large scale space travel. Somebody during the Apollo program made an estimate (conceivably pulled out of their butt) that there was a 10% chance per flight that there would be a solar flare large enough to kill the crew or at least abort the mission. There actually was a lethally large flare between Apollos 15 and 16. (Note that this doesn't mean it was all a hoax and they didn't go: it means they were heroes).
I firmly believe that intelligent life from Earth has a great future ahead of it in space. I just don't think it will be human life.
rockets shouldn't be the only way of getting up there. there should be some better way, and someone should go research that.
How come on the failed Sci-Fi show Master Blasters, they could shoot a Mini-Cooper 1000 feet successfully with a week of construction, but these guys, with a real rocket, built over months, couldn't do any better?
Is there something I'm missing here?
We have very well-known research that dates back to Goddard and a little later, the V-2, which launched successfully from cruder facilities.
Why is it that we continue to have a non-bulletproof system after all these years of engineering? This is like building cars 50 years later that still only go 12mph and sputter and smoke and backfire, and have to be cranked to run. How is it that we have cars that go 100mph easily, that are comfortable, fairly safe, and affordable by the average person?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Wow, I never imaged engineering people for space travel.
:)
But when you put it that way, why would anyone want to go?
Suppose you find another Earth... but your body isn't capable of living and being happy on it.
Or you float around in interstellar blackness for a lifetime? That would get depressing. So you engineer the hybrids never to get depressed so they don't kill themselves. The cynical governments in charge of such efforts might as well engineer people not to think critically while they're at it.
So I always wonder... why do people want to leave Earth? There is no other place than this. What are we trying to accomplish? Really... the only thing anyone can do is live and love... that's done just fine from here.
(And BTW, I'm not a curmudgeon... I just hate Star Trek
But know this: the technology for getting to orbit and beyond is not tapped out. There are so many directions for improvement that it represents enough work for thousands of engineers for decades. Structures, engines, avionics, fabrication even aero can all be hugely improved. But they are trapped in near stasis by lack of resources. NASA, who used to take on these technological challenges, has become consumed with making rockets that replicate already existing capabilities and going to the ISS to do ant-farm science. It is basically a jobs program where the jobs are fancy but not too hard. Since they have most of the resources for development and are wasting them on old crap these great advances are stalled. But they are so obvious to anyone with any real insight that they will be addressed slowly and steadily- probably by the Chinese.
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
Interplanetary travel is quite well understood. It'd take some months but hardly out of reach. [...] Even the most theoretical scenarios I've seen [for interstellar probes] using ungodly amounts of antimatter as fuel takes about 20 years.
You're still thinking about moving chunks of mass around, not "travel".
Yes, with an enormous effort, you can move a small habitation module and a couple of occupants to Mars (might as well make it a one-way trip, since they're going to be sick anyway). But that's not the same as "interplanetary travel" in the sense that Star Trek fans are thinking of. With current technology, every single manned interplanetary trip is going to be a huge, multi-nation effort; unlike Game Boys or PCs, it doesn't get much cheaper because you make more of it. In order to have anything resembling manned travel requires new physics: new power, new shielding, etc.
Sending a small interstellar probe is also going to be a huge multi-nation effort. The antimatter generation would be hugely expensive, and there would still be a lot of engineering to be done. But such an effort wouldn't claim to be anything other than a one-time expensive science experiment--it's not about travel, mining, or colonization, it's about knowledge.