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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.
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.
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?)...
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.
"...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As for the corporate "masters", your assessment, while totally understandable, is absolutely wrong. First of all no one is making much money on launching rockets. LM and Boeing management would love to get rid of the space launch divisions. They are packed with risk and produce very little money. Boeing has not made a cent on the Delta III and IV. They are billions in the hole. LM just had their first year in recent memory where Atlas broke even on operating costs- but they are still hundreds of millions in the hole.
The space launch business has nearly dried up. There are a few commercial launches but those mostly go to the Russian- built vehicles like Proton or Zenit. You can have a decent capability and pay the engineers a few hundred a month. The successful American vehicles are left with government business. Profits on government services are strictly limited- no one would ever invest a lot of money on that biz given the poor rates of return.
The ability to develop new machines is then strictly limited by small amounts of money that are available. We make slow but steady progress - but only because the financial math doesn't justify much more. It is extremely annoying when folks out of the blue come up with hundreds of millions and then piss it away on showboating ( Spaceship 1- what a joke) or repeating the past (Conestoga, Roton, Beal, SpaceX et al).
We are all space enthusiasts and would love to see some next steps made. It is within our grasp to make vehicles that can make real lunar exploration an economic possibility. And believe me the NASA CLV and CaLV vehicles are NOT the way to go. You could scarecely pick a less effective path. It will be a miracle if even one makes it to first flight. So instead of making educated next steps all the major resources are squandered on crap. Wouldn't you be a little pissed off too?
I personally would like to see some people on Mars before I die. At the present rate of development that is not going to happen. It could though. We could be on Mars in 15 years with a serious exploration effort if we took the right paths. So keep all this in mind when you get all excited about some newbie's attempt to lift 1000 lb to LEO.
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.
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