SpaceX's Falcon Launches... Sort Of

JHarrison writes "Spaceflight Now is running a story on the SpaceX Falcon 1 launch yesterday. Those of you watching the stream will have no doubt noticed the telemetry failure at 04:50, and turns out that was more than them turning the webcast off.. "A year after its maiden flight met a disastrous end, the SpaceX booster lifted off at 9:10 p.m. EDT (0110 GMT Wednesday) from a remote launch pad on Omelek Island, part of a U.S. Army base at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Controllers lost contact with the Falcon during the burn of the second stage that would have placed the rocket into orbit around Earth. "We did encounter, late in the second stage burn, a roll-control anomaly," Elon Musk, founder and chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said in a post-launch call with reporters. Live video from cameras mounted aboard the rocket's second stage showed increasing oscillations about five minutes after liftoff, just before the public webcast was cut off. The rolling prevented the necessary speed to achieve a safe orbit, instead sending the stage on a suborbital trajectory back into the atmosphere.""

Comments

That's how it works

[dreamchaser]

More is learned from failures than successes in most engineering endeavors. Hopefully they'll continue to refine their systems and will enjoy more success next time around.

Re:That's how it works

[fbjon]

They will. In fact, Elon stated that all the difficult problems were surpassed, another test launch probably won't be needed, and the next launch will have actual payload.

Re:That's how it works

[Suzuran]

Oh please. If this were NASA everyone would be clamoring for someone's head and talking about how we desperately need privatization, or making jokes about crews dying. Failures are failures.

Re:That's how it works

[dreamchaser]

NASA has had plenty of failures too, and I am not one who would start screaming that the sky is falling when they have another.

This is real life, and the reason one has test flights. Of course understanding real life involves leaving mom's basement, something a lot of the armchair would be rocket scientists here are hesitant to do. I'm not referring to you in particular, just a large portion of the slashbot crowd.

Re:That's how it works

[Bozdune]

I'm not referring to you in particular, just a large portion of the slashbot crowd.

Hey, this is slashdot. Best to refer to him in particular, get with the program.

Re:That's how it works

[elrous0]

Yeah, it could mean that you've just got to work out some kinks. Or it could mean that your engineers and fundamental design suck ass. Only time, and a lot of money, will tell.

Re:That's how it works

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course understanding real life involves leaving mom's basement, something a lot of the armchair would be rocket scientists here are hesitant to do.

The majority of the losers here on Slashdot is always yakking about how NASA-should-do-this-NASA-should-do-that-they-are-a ll-stupid-I'm-smart, but they would shit their pants at the mere thought of lighting up a wet firecracker. That's why nobody should care about slashdotters' opinions.

Re:That's how it works

[Keebler71]

Did anyone else watching the video notice the apparent contact between the 2nd stage nozzle and the interstage? I wonder if a TVC actuator was damaged leading to the nutation...

Re:That's how it works

[MikeyTheK]

1) So did they figure out where pieces parts would have come down? Since Kwaj is just under 5,000 miles from Cali I'm assuming that splashdown was in the Eastern Pacific 2) Too bad they won't do another test launch. Kwaj's facilities are second-to-none, the weather is always great, and the diving is the finest on the planet (and the fishing isn't bad, either).

Re:That's how it works

[khallow]

Or it means that he's out of money for more test launches. He has demonstrated two difficult aspects, liftoff and stage seperation. So I'm optimistic. But as I recall, he's said in the past that he'll evaluate the program after the first three launches. So far, he's had one utter failure and one that lost control in the second stage. He still needs to put something in orbit.

Re:That's how it works

[WindBourne]

If I had cargo for the next launch, I might be a bit concerned, but not much. I have little doubt that they will make it work.

Re:That's how it works

[Keebler71]

I just watched it again and there was certainly contact between the interstage and the 2nd stage nozzle. You can even see the nozzle deform and spring back to shape. Now I am wondering if this altered the shape of the nozzle or damaged the ablator material on the inside which could have caused misaligned thrust.

Re:That's how it works

[fbjon]

I did see a rumour somewhere that he was considering pulling the funding. As I see it, however, they did reach the finish line, just didn't get to cross it. But that's what test flights are for, right?

Re:That's how it works

[khallow]

It depends on the value of the payload. I doubt the odds of a successful deployment are better than 50% right now. But if I had multiple cheap payloads and could afford the loss rate, then I'd go for it.

Re:That's how it works

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Musk did state last night after the loss of telemetry that he had been in contract with the Air Force and Malaysia, their next two launch customers, and described them as optimistic in light of the rocket's performance.

I'd give odds of 70/30 for them launching the next flight as planned, with the Air Force TacSat onboard.

Re:That's how it works

[Suzuran]

Oh yeah, I forgot, pointing out Slashdot bias is trolling. My apologies. Maybe this should be integrated into the lameness filter? I could have spared my karma if I had a warning, something like "The post you are about to make is counter to Slashdot groupthink, are you sure you don't want to post anonymously?"

I still stand by my point, "trolling" or not: If this were NASA losing a ship Slashdot would be throwing a fit. Nobody complains when ESA, Energia, or some private venture blows up equipment, but everyone is all over NASA like lawyers on lawsuits when they have the slightest problems.

Re:That's how it works

[Megane]

If the cost of launch goes down as much as they say it will, then if the cost of a second payload and second launch is on the order of the insurance costs, it's a no-brainer.

Why build one when you can build two for twice the price?

Re:That's how it works

[khallow]

If the cost of launch goes down as much as they say it will, then if the cost of a second payload and second launch is on the order of the insurance costs, it's a no-brainer.

Pretty much, but only if you have multiple payloads to launch.

Why build one when you can build two for twice the price?

Because they don't have the money for two? And frankly, I'd like to have three at this rate.

Re:That's how it works

[icedcool]

Shit man, more is learned from failures than success in most everything. It is a requirement for success.

Re:That's how it works

[pjt48108]

Interesting, because towards the end of the video, the bell appears to begin glowing red in some areas. It could be the lighting, but Iswear it appeared to be heating radically.

Re:That's how it works

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a nice saying but it's not true. If there was no failure than it would be an indication that they already have the knowledge. However sice it failed it indicates that they don't. That's all. Hopefully they learned from this as you say. However a failure if analysed wrongly can do more harm than good.

IMHO they don't have the right formula to make it safe. First flight failed due to rusted screw. Yet they intend to reuse the first stage. Having liquid fuel does not help either.

Good luck to their endavor. They will need it.

Re:That's how it works

[Phil Karn]

Yes, I also noticed the apparent collision between the 2nd stage engine bell and the interstage fairing at separation, and I'm surprised there has been zero mention of this in the media.

It's common to see engine nozzles glowing like this, although I am also wondering about the irregular pattern.

I can't find a definitive statement on SpaceX's website, but it appears from a drawing that they use regenerative cooling of the second stage nozzle. So one theory that occurs to me is that collision damage to the nozzle could have caused a leak and a roll moment that either grew too big for the roll thrusters to correct or ran them out of propellant gas early.

Video from other upper stages, such as Delta, show very stable systems. You can hardly tell that the video is playing except by the clouds moving slowly by underneath. Falcon 1's upper stage flight was very different. There was a lot of attitude noise throughout the burn, culminating in an undamped nutating or coning motion toward the end of flight, and then a slow roll to the left. None of this could have been normal.I can think of several other possible failure mechanisms: a combustion instability; numerical instability in the guidance system; fuel sloshing in the tank; and fuel swirling as it flows into the engine, imparting a roll moment.

Rocket Science?

[Shnyzx]

Well I guess it really is rocket science. They need to get their act together and possibly outsource some help from NASA or Lockeheed or somebody. If they keep this up they are going to run out of money/steam and be out of the race. I'd hate to see that as this is a hopeful to add more competition to the comercial space race that I hope will allow myself to one day leave this planet.

Re:Rocket Science?

[Aladrin]

Maybe they just need to keep like they are doing. The whole reason that these guys exist is that 'NASA or Lockeheed or somebody' aren't good enough at it. They are slow, extremely cautious, and amazingly expensive. Outsourcing to them would be the same as doing nothing and is definitely not going to get them where they want to be, business-wise.

Re:Rocket Science?

[aadvancedGIR]

Maybe Rocket science is like computer science. You can have your payload on orbit, still working or for cheap, choose at most 2.

Re:Rocket Science?

[Billosaur]

How do you figure? They got their rocket off the ground and up 200 miles, and had some control problems that kept them from getting into orbit. That's pretty good, considering the myriad other ways this thing could have turned out. I think you're not giving them enough credit -- NASA was blowing up rockets pretty regularly in the early days of theie space efforts before they got the hang of it. These folks seem to be doing all right.

Re:Rocket Science?

[savuporo]

No, its plain old engineering. There is hardly any science in building a two-stage liquid rocket in 2007. They arent doing something that isnt done before. What _is_ novel here is that for the first time, an orbital space launcher is built primarily with the profit motive in mind. No other company has really attempted that before ( or they have, but never gotten so close to pulling it off ). Thus also different design choices, different incentives and ultimately a price tag couple of times lower than your regular cost-plus aerospace contract would yield.

Re:Rocket Science?

[drooling-dog]

They are slow, extremely cautious, and amazingly expensive. Just maybe... That's the formula for success in space flight?

Re:Rocket Science?

[Teancum]

You got the quote wrong, and I would say that this is a general engineering principle as well:

You can have your product done:

1. reliably
2. quickly
3. cheaply

Please choose only two of the above options!

In the case of Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, they choose options 1 and 2. In the case of SpaceX, they have instead choosen options 1 and 3. This is where they are indeed doing something different than the more traditional companies. That Mr. Musk has deep pockets helps some, but he is trying to do it on the cheap and is willing to have some delays before he can have his dream. For government operations, they have to get results in four years or their budget will be cut (in the USA).

If SpaceX were run like a government agency, they would have had their funding cut already, or some congressional oversight committee that would have mucked up the process by demanding more "oversight" in the form of increased paperwork and bureaucratic Bu**s***. Lucky for them, they only have to answer to one person who nearly everybody in the company knows on a first name basis... and he knows them too.

Re:Rocket Science?

[Overzeetop]

Bad news - there are no rocket scientists left at NASA (okay, not many). Ronald Reagan made sure that all NASA corporate knowledge was transferred to the contractors which service NASA. The administration is not mostly a few scattered PIs and engineers, with the bulk of the workforce in contract administrators (though many of those still have engineer in their titles).

NASA as an innovative entity is not really in existance anymore, except in very limited areas.

Re:Rocket Science?

[khallow]

They apparently have already hired a lot from Lockheed and Boeing. I think much has been said elsewhere of the relative immaturity of their operations and the resulting failures (eg, running out of lox and having to abort a launch, lost first mission to a fuel leak caused by human procedural error). SpaceX probably should steal someone to tighten up that aspect. It's too early to say whether this failure was a "get your act together" error or not.

Re:Rocket Science?

[Aladrin]

If nobody tries, we'll never know. Personally, I don't believe it IS the formula.

It may just be that we don't have the technology needed to do it cheap, yet, though. We also won't know that unless they try.

Telling them 'go ask the old guys how they used to do it' is NOT the answer.

Re:Rocket Science?

[GooberToo]

And these guys are standing on the shoulders of what NASA previously did. If they were still blowing up motors at this point, they should pack up and go home. When NASA was blowing up rockets all this stuff was pretty new. At this point, you can get an education which teaches you most everything NASA had to figure out at they went. In other words, these guys are starting several legs up from where NASA was inventing and discovering how not to blow up a rocket.

While this is rocket science, they are traveling a well paved road.

Re:Rocket Science?

[badasscat]

Telling them 'go ask the old guys how they used to do it' is NOT the answer.

Bullshit. That's always the answer.

What you're saying is exactly the same thing as all those "new media" types who in 2000 said "oh, the economy works different now" and "we don't need profits to be successful" because that was the old way of doing things.

I mean, not to equate economics with rocket science (although they actually are similar in some ways) but the point is in almost every field you get people who come in and think they can do better with no experience and only a little knowledge than guys who have been doing it for decades and have both extensive knowledge and tons of real-world experience. But real life does not work like that. Experience does count, almost certainly more than even book knowledge.

NASA has obviously had their share of failures, but they've also had thousands more successes than any private space enterprise. People forget that. How many payloads have been successfully launched into space by any private company to this point? How many by NASA? NASA's got about a 99.5% success rate with their manned missions and probably around a 95% success rate with their unmanned missions.

I'm not saying private entities shouldn't try. I do agree with you on that. But the answer is not to keep trying to reinvent the wheel, nor is the answer throwing away 50 years of experience in successful space flight simply because you'd have to ask a bunch of "old guys" how they "used to do it". These guys should be trying to build upon NASA's success and emulating what they can while streamlining the rest; they shouldn't be ignoring all we've learned about space flight to this point.

Re:Rocket Science?

[Aladrin]

We are still, to this day, building better light bulbs. How many do you think they destroyed before they managed to make the compact fluorescent work?

When you are exploring new ways to do things, you can't stick to the old ways! You have to try things, and trying new things almost always means failures and setbacks. They aren't blowing up 50 year old rockets. They are blowing up new rockets that are purposefully designed differently.

Re:Rocket Science?

[Rei]

It's not really the fact that it's not from one of the bloated aerospace giants that makes this cheap (although I'm sure it doesn't hurt). It's also not true that they're not doing something that hasn't been done before. For example, I'm having trouble thinking of any rockets that use their particular mix of pressure and structural stabilization. For example, some Atlas stages use "balloon tanks" that will outright collapse under their weight if not kept pressurized. Most other rockets are structurally stable that, were it not for the lack of propellants, they could launch without being pressurized and remain intact. Pressurization is just added support. The Falcon concept is a hybrid of this: it has enough support that it can be transported and erected unpressurized... barely. This makes transport and handling costs cheaper and less error prone than for balloon tank-based rockets, but gives a higher payload fraction than rockets which have better structural support.

It's not without it's risks, of course. For example, it made the Falcon vulnerable to an accident a while back on Kwaj in which a reduction of pressure when draining a tank caused the tank to buckle. But in general, I think it makes for a nice design.

Falcon really is, for the most part, a "from scratch" rocket, so there's a lot of new ground covered. Not everything is from scratch, of course; I seem to recall, as an example, that their pintle injectors for the Merlin were pretty much borrowed as-is from Apollo. They're also not having to do much materials science, although they helping pioneering some fields (for example, friction-stir welding; a few older rockets have switched to using it as well, but it's still pretty new to rocketry).

Re:Rocket Science?

[khallow]

I mean, not to equate economics with rocket science (although they actually are similar in some ways) but the point is in almost every field you get people who come in and think they can do better with no experience and only a little knowledge than guys who have been doing it for decades and have both extensive knowledge and tons of real-world experience. But real life does not work like that. Experience does count, almost certainly more than even book knowledge.

The mistake often made here is to assume that the new guys are just repeating what the old guys did. This is certainly not the case in rocketry. There's a huge amount of research by not just the US out there. But none of the big companies have tried to make a cheap launcher. So yes, I think the new guys are doing new things and the old knowledge doesn't always apply because it is often based on having Uncle Squeeze (or equivalent) around to soak up research costs.

NASA has obviously had their share of failures, but they've also had thousands more successes than any private space enterprise. People forget that. How many payloads have been successfully launched into space by any private company to this point? How many by NASA? NASA's got about a 99.5% success rate with their manned missions and probably around a 95% success rate with their unmanned missions.

Their manned missions are around a 98% success rate. Unmanned may be around 95%, I'm not sure. Some other areas are a pure disaster. For example, they've failed to develope a replacement for the Shuttle out of at least half a dozen tries over the past two decades. Of those "thousands" of successes, most have been buried never to see the light of day.

I'm not saying private entities shouldn't try. I do agree with you on that. But the answer is not to keep trying to reinvent the wheel, nor is the answer throwing away 50 years of experience in successful space flight simply because you'd have to ask a bunch of "old guys" how they "used to do it". These guys should be trying to build upon NASA's success and emulating what they can while streamlining the rest; they shouldn't be ignoring all we've learned about space flight to this point.

NASA experience is both useful and useless. First, NASA doesn't build their own rockets. I don't even know if they could design one. The Ares series is their first attempt since the Space Shuttle. We'll see if that works or not. Private companies have easy ways to grab experience. SpaceX, for example, supposedly hired engineers from Lockheed and Boeing. That strikes me as the way to go. Second, as I mention above, that experience often can't be directly applied to building cheap transport system. Ie, they weren't solving the same problems back then. Third, I don't see the signs that the new generation is ignoring old research. That appears to be a conceit of the grandparent poster and not something reflected in the industry. SpaceX clearly is building on older work. That's the only way they could have gotten their Merlin engine working in a few short years. Scaled Compositions had decades of experience in building composite planes. And they used a hybrid engine based on decades of experience. Finally, Bigelow Aerospace uses inflatable technology that was mostly ignored by NASA. There's plenty of examples among non-profits too.

Re:Rocket Science?

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears you're mistaken.

      1. reliably
      2. quickly
      3. cheaply

Of these three options, they seem to have selected 2 and 3. If 1 had been selected, they would have orbited, right?

Re:Rocket Science?

[BillyBlaze]

No, it's not quick, in the sense that it may take a few launches before it becomes reliable and cheap.

Re:Rocket Science?

[gfreeman]

Catch-all quote: "Faster, better, cheaper - pick two".

Re:Rocket Science?

[Teancum]

If you compare this attitude to the Apollo program, where the attitude was "damn the costs, we need to get to the Moon now!", you had a project that consumed nearly 10% of the U.S. Federal budget. It didn't even start to get cutbacks until it started to significantly affect the ability of the generals to carry on the Vietnam War.

It is precisely this sort of legacy that gives us the $200 million per seat cost to get to LEO that NASA is currently doing with its astronauts. Is there anybody who really thinks this is working? I know you were arguing here that SpaceX is trying to do it cheaply (in response to an AC comment), but consider that the total cost of setting up SpaceX has been about $200 million, with cash reserves left over as well. And they have been doing manned spacecraft development on top of that. I don't see SpaceX burning through another $200 million before they actually get to the ISS in their Dragon capsule, even if they need to have more than several launches to get there. And those are launches that are on their flight manifest right now.

Re:Rocket Science?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just want to correct you on that "fuel leak caused by human procedural error". That was the initial apparent cause, but they later found that it was due to subsurface corrosion of the aluminum nut that caused the leak.

Re:Rocket Science?

[GooberToo]

My point being, there is a striking difference between developing a new technology (high power rocket engines - what NASA did) and the evolution of an existing, proven technology (what these guys are doing - based on NASA's previous efforts). As far as I can tell, their effort is strictly evolutionary. If I'm wrong here, let me know.

Re:Rocket Science?

[Aladrin]

Even 'evolutionary', you can't just do the same things and come out with something better. They -have- to try things. They have to experiment. I'm sure most of the talk is along the lines of 'well, it's usually done with X, but if we modify this part and make it out of Y instead, we save a bunch of cost and the computer calculations say it's still plenty strong enough.' etc. Real world material does not always behave like computer predictions. In fact, I doubt it ever does. A certain amount of failure is expected when making changes.

pfft

[djupedal]

I roll-control anomaly in your general direction!

Re:pfft

[C0rinthian]

Press R twice to do a Roll-Control Anomaly!

Re:pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Am I witnessing the birth of a new /. meme?

What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[Shivetya]

Hell they made it higher than anything Rutan has put forward and the way people act Rutan is the second coming.

Look, they are doing a great job. Second flight at they reached 200 miles! Thats beyond the ISS.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[morgan_greywolf]

Hell they made it higher than anything Rutan has put forward and the way people act Rutan is the second coming. I, for one, welcome our new suborbital rocket plane-making overlord.

No, but seriously, Rutan has more hype. He's flamboyant, knows how to work the press, and well, SpaceShipOne just looks cool. If actual results were all that mattered, nobody would be talking about Vista; hence Rutan and Scaled Composites get all the hype, while SpaceX has actually produced the better result.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[Anonymous Coward]

ISS orbits at about 220 statute miles altitude. So Musk's latest misadventure falls short. 0 for 2 doesn't sound like such a good record to me. The roll control failure is a basic engineering oversight.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[jezor]

Different result, not "better result." Rutan's Spaceship One is good for one valuable task (human suborbital flights); SpaceX's rockets for a totally different one (cargo lifting orbital flights). Both were formerly the sole province of the governments, so both add to the possibility of private exploration of space. {Prof. Jonathan}

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[Klaus_1250]

Falcon flew far beyond the "edge" of space, typically thought of as around 60 miles. Our altitude was approximately 200 miles, which is just 50 miles below the International Space Station. According to their own website, the ISS is at 250 miles, though other sources place it a bit lower (wikipedia: approx. 220 miles).

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[ausoleil]

Considering that the Rutan/Scaled Composites and the SpaceX efforts had two completely different sets of objectives, and that Scaled met their objectives completely, that is, winning the X Prize, while the SpaceX second attempt failed in its own mission, what exactly is the point here?

To be sure, Rutan and company had setbacks in their early efforts. They engineered around them and ultimately met their goal and took home not only the prize but also the investments necessary for funding another generation of their technology. SpaceX will likely do the same, as it seems that they have a handle on what it was that caused the premature end of their test mission yesterday. That said, however, there is little basis to compare the two companies on. SpaceShip One was never meant to fly as high as is the Falcon. Nor was Falcon designed to carry human payloads, which entails another couple magnitudes of design complications and considerations.

Instead of negatively trying to compare one to the other, perhaps it is wiser to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[wjsteele]

The Space Station varies it's orbit depending on a lot of factors. It's in a continously decaying orbit (intented) which will always make it return to Earth at some point. It's orbit is occasionally boosted by the Space Shuttle or by the various Russian cargo ships. For example, right now, NASA is letting the orbit decay to around 205 miles so that the Shuttle can bring up the largest (and heaviest) component without having to push it all the way. With ISS in a lower orbit, less fuel is needed to get the heaviest components there. Later, a service module will boost it back to a higher orbit.

Bill

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[Darth_Foo]

ISS has a higher nominal orbital altitude than 200 miles. And altitude isn't the issue - sounding rockets having been going up higher (and falling back down) for decades. What matters for orbital flight is velocity.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[TommyBear]

I was just about to make the same comment. I mean the edge of space is like, what, 60 miles (96km)? And to go 200 miles... that is truly an achievement. I mean, come on, I have enough trouble launching out of bed in the morning. Give these guys a break.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[elrous0]

It's hardly just hype. Rutan, did something NEW. He actually built a truly REUSEABLE spacecraft (what the original shuttle was actually sold as). SpaceX is just a cheap conventional rocket. SpaceShipOne can take off, land, refuel, and take off again--with minimal time and expense. You don't lose the vast bulk of SpaceShipOne every time it takes off (like the shuttle and conventional rockets), nor do you have to virtually rebuild the damn thing it every time it lands (like the shuttle).

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[elrous0]

Height wasn't the issue. This isn't SpaceShipOne. They are selling this thing as a cheap, reliable vehicle for putting satellites into orbit. It doesn't matter what altitude they reach, if they can't consistently deliver the payload to the right place, no one is going to trust them with their satellite (and they go out of business, the end).

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[khallow]

SpaceX is just a cheap conventional rocket.

In other words, Falcon I is something NEW.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[elrous0]

In the sense that conventional rockets have generally not been cheap, yes. In the sense of "This is a design that does things in a truly novel new way," no.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[Eternauta3k]

though other sources place it a bit lower (wikipedia: approx. 220 miles).

So... has ISS's altitude tripled in the last six months?

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[drinkypoo]

He actually built a truly REUSEABLE spacecraft

Wake me up when it can orbit.

I agree that the shuttle is a stupid design, but this thing doesn't do what the shuttle does, either. Which is to say, go to space and stay there for a while.

I do agree that it is a stunning achievement, but it's not useful for anything other than space tourism. If that. The second generation should be more useful...

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[khallow]

But cheap is what is truly novel here. And that's really what's exciting about Rutan's design as well. If the Falcon 9 can deliver on the order of magnitude lower price per kg than the EELV's, then you have a revolution in launching stuff into space. Rutan's design promises similar level of savings for manned launch over similar time frames.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to embed myself in the SpaceX vs. Virgin flamewar, but Rutan didn't really do anything truly novel either. Suborbital manned airlaunches were done in the 60's with the X-15, which incidentally achieved a higher velocity than SS1. Hybrid rocket engines have been toyed with for decades, but their reliability previously never justified their poor performance for anything more than hobby rockets.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell they made it higher than anything Rutan has put forward

Um, Rutan got his spaceship back in one piece.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[bidule]

Rutan came back. When SpaceX does that, it will be the 3rd coming. Until then, it's just a nice try.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[SailorBob]

Actually I think the ISS is at 250 miles.

Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of"

[BillyBlaze]

Actually, the first stage of the Falcon is intended to be reusable. Granted it doesn't have a quick turnaround time, but if you have lots of them in the queue, that doesn't matter very much.

Saying SpaceShipOne succeeded in being reusable while the shuttle failed is a bit like saying my Prius is more fuel-efficient than an M-1 tank. Well yes, but the tank has to do a lot more.

Why shutdown at that point?

[nietsch]

There was something unexpected happening, so they shut down the engine and it plunged back into the atmosphere. What I don't get is why let some potential problem (ok maybe it didn't much of a chance) ruin the whole flight? You are up high/fast enough anyway so why not take every chance you got and just ride it untill it breaks. Stopping will surely break it so you have nothing to loose. Or do they?

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[Scutter]

Stop it *while they still have control* you mean. A rocket tumbling out of control back to earth is a danger.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[voice_of_all_reason]

There was something unexpected happening, so they shut down the engine and it plunged back into the atmosphere.

While that makes sense now, I would hope this protocol will change by the time they get around to human passengers.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[pipatron]

For safety. If it goes out of control near the ground, you don't want it to just accelerate into any inhabited areas. 200 miles up in the atmosphere, it probably doesn't matter that much.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not clear to me that ground did shut down the engine; the article mentions sloshing of the fuel.

Disregarding that, it's usually better to stop a test in a fail-safe way when you still can, rather than keep your fingers cross only to find out a piece of hardware landed somewhere where you don't want it.

In the first case you can try again in x amount of time, in the second case you might have caused harm to human beings and/or their property, which is bad enough in itself, but also harms your reputation and delays the project >x amount of time.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[mulvane]

Its better to shutdown when you know where your drop point is going to be instead of let flight continue and possibly endanger life with an unpredictable drop point.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[hmbcarol]

They never said they intentionally shut the engine down. The shutdown was an unavoidable side effect of a strong roll. Their quote was "If you have a significant roll, what could happen is that the propellants can centrifuge out."

If the spacecraft is spinning, all the fuel is pushed to the outside walls of the tank and away from the fuel outlet at the center of the tank bottom. This leaves the fuel pumps with nothing to pump. Engine shut down. Rocket fall, go boom.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[Ihlosi]

Stopping will surely break it so you have nothing to loose. Or do they?

Yes, they don't want to have a large piece of space junk loose in a random orbit. This isn't the first space race - putting something into a random orbit doesn't win prizes, but might smash things that are already up there on purpose.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[glitchvern]

Stopping will surely break it so you have nothing to loose. Or do they?

The first stage is designed to be recovered and reused. The rolling motion caused the propellent to act like a centrifuge potentially damaging the engine. Considering it was the second stage which was not designed to be recovered damaging the engine is probably not a problem, but the control software was probably designed similarly to the first stage where not damaging the engine may be a higher priority than a successful flight if you can still recover the first stage.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[nietsch]

If you only shut down the engine during unexpected roll events, you basically have a rocket tumbling out of control. They did. What was your point again?

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[deroby]

Since the fuel is liquid, wouldn't it stay 'motionless' while the 'outer hull' revolves around it ?

(the outer layers might take some of the whirling around due to friction, but I'm guessing it would take quite some time before it actually gets pushed to the sides... )

Just wondering...

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[nietsch]

It was five minutes into the firing of the second stage. You'd think it would be a bit highere than close to the ground...

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[fotbr]

Doesn't take very long at all. There's friction between liquid molecules as well.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[Goaway]

You know where it will land at that point.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[khallow]

Why should they change anything? A 100% failure rate is more than good enough for any manned program. It's perfect actually.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[khallow]

Remember that to get permission to launch from the Feds, they need to demonstrate that the rocket has an extremely low chance of killing anyone. In particular, they need to know where it could possibly go when things go wrong. So having the rocket shut off when it goes out of control like this is part of the reason they were allowed to launch in the first place.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[hmbcarol]

Fuel tanks have baffels to reduce slosh during flight. Those baffels will do a great job imparting rotation to the fuel.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[Teancum]

If an event like this (the roll control issue) happened on a manned spaceflight (it did BTW, with Gemini 8), there would be abort procedures to get people out of this. In other words, this is a "survivable" accident. The earlier launch, where the 1st stage blew up 35 seconds into the flight, would have been quite a bit tougher to get out from on a manned spaceflight. Not impossible, but it would have required an automated abort system and something like a launch escape tower.

Let's just say I would rather be riding on one of these rockets with some good safty precautions than riding the Shuttle, where engine failure means destructive loss of the vehicle. And skydiving from 300 km is not my idea of fun, even though somebody is bound to try it out some time in the not too distant future.

Re:Why shutdown at that point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clarification:
The first flight didn't blow up. A fuel leak caused a fire which damaged the nozzle control. The engine shut down and the rocket hit the water at T+29 seconds. An escape tower would've worked here, as well.

The Dragon capsule will be launched with an escape tower.

Re:Insightful...?

[Billosaur]

This is not trial and error; they didn't simply go to a junkyard, wled a bunch of pieces of interesting stuff together to make what they thought was a rocket, and then fired it off hoping it would work. They started from first principles, used known technologies and augmented them, then attempted to launch the thing, and will use the telemetry to improve the design. Trial-and-error was more what Robert Goddard was doing in the New Mexico desert.

Re:Insightful...?

[The Dobber]

"Failure is not an option"

Haven't we been sending rockets up into space for quite some time now. I'd think the fundementals should be down pretty pat now, the time for spectacular failures has past.

Videos are up

[savuporo]

For those of you who didnt catch the webcast:
YouTube : launch
SpaceX official, high-res: http://www.spacex.com/video_gallery.php

Five minutes of fame !

Note to self:

[FirmWarez]

Refer to any and all future firmware bugs as "anomalies".

Cup half full

[toupsie]

Just change the description of the vehicle from a spaceship to a ballistic missile and its a successful launch.

Re:Cup half full

[Anonymous Coward]

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight...

Henry Wadsworth (X Prize) Longfellow.

Look on the bright side.

[Rob T Firefly]

Maybe it landed on Chris Kattan.

Engine bump and second stage control

[decaym]

Did anyone else notice the bump the Kestrel engine took during stage separation? On the 40MB video from SpaceX, it happend at 3:28 in or at T+00:02:52 on the screen clock. Maybe this is normal for the engine, but it was rather odd looking to me.

Also, there was a story earlier that the 2nd launch was delayed "due to concerns over a thrust vector control pitch actuator on the Falcon 1 booster's second stage". I wonder if this came back to bite them?

Finally, I'm impressed as hell that they could experience an abort after engine start yet still cycle back and launch in just another hour! When the Shuttle once aborted after engine start it took them a month to change out the engines and try again.

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Did anyone else notice the bump the Kestrel engine took during stage separation? On the 40MB video from SpaceX, it happend at 3:28 in or at T+00:02:52 on the screen clock. Maybe this is normal for the engine, but it was rather odd looking to me. So far as is known, it didn't materially affect anything. The nozzle is made of Niobium which is quite malleable, and small dents only mildly modify the efficiency of the engine, and that's one of the known advantages of Niobium over other high temperature metals, and partly why it was used. So it probably only got dinged because they knew they could safely reduce the gap without worrying about the nozzle shattering or something.

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[decaym]

I had read about the Niobium nozzle being able to take a dent. I'd be more concerned about the bump damaging the vectoring hardware for the engine. It was also really interesting to see the glow coming through the nozzle. I was really worried we'd see a burn through of the nozzle, but I guess the glow is just the normal behavior.

Some of the early comments by Elon talked about spin causing centrifuge effect on the fuel supply to the 2nd stage engine. In the video, although the nozzle is oscilating back and forth the craft itself is not spinning up to the point where the video ends. You can tell by the Earth horizon staying mostly stable. It will be interesting to hear the analysis in the coming days or weeks.

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[WolfWithoutAClause]

On the arocket email group the consensus seems to be that it looks like fuel slosh being driven by the control system moving the nozzle in a circular mode. Eventually the magnitude of the control inputs seems to have created a roll angle, and that's what killed the telemetry and the engine apparently is likely to have shut down shortly afterwards.

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't they use a separation ring between the stages? Drop the first stage, ignite the second, then release the ring. Seems more prudent, no?

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[decaym]

Interesting. Guess it is time for some slosh baffles in the fuel tank.

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[decaym]

Shouldn't they use a separation ring between the stages? Drop the first stage, ignite the second, then release the ring. Seems more prudent, no?

Seems like it, but weight may be an issue. Two separation points means more hardware which means more weight. I wonder if something simpler, and lighter, such as guide rails could be used to direct the first stage past the second stage nozzle. The rails could drop after the stage is away and should be less likely to impact on the nozzle than what we saw last night.

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[EvanED]

There is another point, which is right before the second separation events (from the nose; I don't know what it's called and can't get a timecode right now), there's a ring that comes off of the 2nd stage engine. Anyone know if this was normal?

Finally, I'm impressed as hell that they could experience an abort after engine start yet still cycle back and launch in just another hour!

Yeah, I was like "they're done for the day" and turned off the webcast. (Actually I turned it on apparently about 2 minutes after abort...)

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[decaym]

There is another point, which is right before the second separation events (from the nose; I don't know what it's called and can't get a timecode right now), there's a ring that comes off of the 2nd stage engine. Anyone know if this was normal?

In the transcript from a post flight interview it was said that these rings are titanium and applied to the edge of the nozzle with a bonding agent. The rings are there to protect the nozzle during the first part of the firing. Once the rings heat up the bonding agent breaks down and lets the rings fall away at the point where they are no longer needed. Apparently, this is normal behavior.

From Spaceflight Now: "What you might have seen was basically titanium half-hoops that are used to stabilize the nozzle on ascent. However, once you get to a certain temperature the bonding agent for those titanium rings comes off and the titanium rings float away, which occurred as expected."

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[EvanED]

Gotcha, thanks.

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[brentonboy]

i wondered about that too. their site says the kestrel nozzle is made of a niobium alloy less resistant to cracking--"An impact from orbital debris or during stage separation would simply dent the metal, but have no meaningful effect on engine performance." but i seriously doubt it could withstand being hit by the entire first stage without adverse affect. i woudl expect a bump like that to tweak the thruster causing wobbles and ... oh wait. that's what happened.

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[khallow]

Or perhaps bigger baffles. It would be somewhat surprising to me if they didn't put baffles in. I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't do so, but then I don't have that experience.

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[decaym]

I've looked at that video something like 10 times now. After the bump the second stage did skew sideways a bit. As soon as the second stage motor fired, it straightened back out. You can use the falling away first stage as a directional guide. The oscilation didn't start up until about a minute later. After that the ocilation built for about a minute until the signal cut out.

You can tell the craft is trying to compensate. Remember that the camera is mounted on the 2nd stage body. You can see a very slight wobble in the horizon which shows the body is moving. You see a lot of wobble in the engine nozzle, which means the nozzle is moving around relative to the rocket body. The vector control system must have been working like hell trying to stabilize the craft.

Of course, this is all arm chair speculation. It will be really interesting to see what SpaceX has to say. Hopefully they won't keep us in suspense for too long.

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[Teancum]

A positive feedback loop? In other words, the software was over compensating for the bump and couldn't get stabilized.

I've seen this with the Armadillo Aerospace flights (including a couple of spectacular crashes), and it isn't a trivial thing to fix like Mr. Musk has suggested. Of course, as you mentioned, I'm not a SpaceX employee who has been working with this stuff nor actively employed in the aerospace industry.

I hope that the "fix" for this problem will be as trivial as is suggested. Unfortunately, even for proven designs like the Soyuz and Delta rockets still have spectacular failures even after hundreds of launches.

Re:Engine bump and second stage control

[Spy Hunter]

The video that is on the SpaceX website is a tiny bit shorter than the live webcast. Just before the live webcast cut out, the oscillation got much worse, and the slight roll visible at the end of the video turned into a full-blown rolling motion. The entire spacecraft rolled over and the Sun illuminated the side of the rocket just as the feed cut out. (not everyone saw this last part, perhaps due to Windows Media Player caching?)

I also thought it was odd when the ring around the base of the rocket nozzle fell off (just before fairing separation). It didn't look like that was supposed to happen. Anyone know more about that?

Incoming message from Slippy:

[dosle]

Do a barrel roll!

Re:Incoming message from Slippy:

[Anonymous Coward]

I do believe you mean Peppy. PRESS Z OR R TWICE!
captcha: aborts !

Oh the irony.

[devnullkac]

Comment:

Hell they made it higher than anything Rutan has put forward...

Sig:

Winners compare their achievments to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others

Re:Oh the irony.

[rickb928]

We oughta have a +6 for items just like this one.. Darn.

So nice.

Re:Oh the irony.

[khallow]

Life would be so boring if I weren't brazenly displaying my hypocrisy. The grandparent though, he can't do that.

So then, ummmm....

[AugstWest]

Where did it land?

Babelfish of limited use here...

[jpellino]

"We did encounter, late in the second stage burn, a roll-control anomaly"
=
"Rocket fall down go boom."

Actually I think I know what the problem was. As it is son-of-paypal-entrpreneurism, the actual button for turning on the roll control was tiny and at the bottom of a large screen offering to upgrade to super turbo rocket engine pumps and 3% off your next tank of LOX.

What was it carrying?

[Mizled]

I read somewhere where they were carrying "cargo" into space...does anyone know what they were carrying? Was this going to the ISS?

Just wondering. =p

Re:What was it carrying?

[decaym]

It was carrying a demo sat, which is just a simlulator for an actual sattelite. There was no paid cargo on this flight. They did have a couple of small test packages from NASA for relaying flight data through the NASA tracking network and testing in flight destruct commanding (not to an actual destruction package I believe). Nothing was going to be in permanent orbit and the Falcon 1 i snot intended to go to the space station.

Re:Insightful...?

[fotbr]

And Ford had been building cars for the better part of a century and they still produced the Pinto.

Re:Insightful...?

[ePhil_One]

Haven't we been sending rockets up into space for quite some time now. I'd think the fundementals should be down pretty pat now, the time for spectacular failures has past.

And yet we've lost two Space shuttles in recent memory. Space is not easy, rockets are enormously powerful devices that require light weight and experience a vast array of environments. Here a relatively minor thing went wrong, too much rotation, and the whole thing is now gone. Knowing how to do something and actually doing it are radically different things...

Flight Control

[Chayak]

This is what you get when you cut back costs of flight control systems by using windows ME out of the bargain bin...

!!!!!eleven

[eMbry00s]

BUT I'M ENCOUNTERING UNEXPECTED INTERFERENCE!

Don't read this text. It was added to fill out the form so that my excessive capslock usage would be accepted by the anti-spam system. VIAGRA.

Re:Insightful...?

[khallow]

Haven't we been sending rockets up into space for quite some time now. I'd think the fundementals should be down pretty pat now, the time for spectacular failures has past.

SpaceX hasn't been doing that for decades. And the latest failure wasn't spectacular. And "Failure is not an option"? As I understand it, the phrase means that if you have a choice between doing one more thing and failing, you do the one more thing. It says nothing about eliminating failure. You can and will continue to experience failure, it just means that you don't chose to fail. I don't think that's appropriate for a commercial business running a cheap unmanned launch vehicle since the more failure you chose to try to avoid, the most expensive you make the flights.

The Pinto actually was a pioneering effort, sorta

[elrous0]

In all fairness, Detroit had mostly produced giant land barges in the past. The Pinto was an early effort at actually producing a car that didn't snort gas faster that Nicole Ritchie with a paper bag. When they were cutting the car down, it just never occurred to them that the bracing between the bumper and the fuel tank wasn't just there to support fins.

Re:Insightful...?

[khallow]

No, it's a statement of the obvious. If a mission succeeds flawlessly, you just know that the combination worked that time. Ie, you're in the envelope where things work. A failure means the mission was outside that envelope. That's usually new information unless you're hapless enough to repeat an old failure.

And yet

[WindBourne]

nearly every new rocket in history has one or 2 failures. That is the track record. Take a look at Brazil, EU's Aris, or even china's copy of the souyz. All in all, it is common to have at least one failure. Most also have a 2'nd failure.

Best coverage

[Tawg]

The only thing better than watching this live was being on the SA forums (i hear the nasa forums were good for the same reason) where not only was everyone free to comment on what was going on, there were people in the know who could guess what was going wrong at each step in the launch. Within 2minutes of the feed being lost, Someone had a gif posted of the final few frames of telemetry.

Someone had actually come up with an idea as to what happened to the shuttle and they were spot on.

Re:Best coverage

[decaym]

What or where are the "SA forums"? Link, please.

Re:Best coverage

[Anonymous Coward]

forums.somethingawful.com

Re:Best coverage

[mcguyver]

Most likely here: http://www.saforum.org/home
Or maybe somethingawful...not sure

Re:So what?

[Glock27]

I started writing a reasoned explication of the pointlessness and irrelevance of this whole story, but I made myself too angry with the uncritical "private space colonisation" fanboy mentality that says we'll all be living on Starship Enterprise in a century's time. To those people (probably everyone on this thread) I say this: turn off the damn Star Trek DVDs and get a life. Colonising space is an infantile fantasy.

Full of sophomoric cynicism today are you?

You sound a lot like the folks back when who said we'd never drive at 60 MPH 'because it will suck all the air out of your lungs', or the engineer who claimed that 'rockets will never work in space because there's nothing to push against'. Few people in 1900 would have predicted airliners, satellites, nuclear weapons and ICBMs less than 70 years later.

Colonizing space is the only hope for our species to last more than a few more millenia IMO. It's good to see the visionaries pushing forward despite Luddites such as yourself.

Congratulations to SpaceX, and kudos to Elon Musk for doing something worthwhile with his fortune!

Re:The Pinto actually was a pioneering effort, sor

[fotbr]

Thats pretty much my point. Saying "they've done this before" doesn't mean a new design will be perfect, or that "spectacular failures" are impossible.

Re:Insightful...?

[bberens]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is the way every real engineering project works. Some call it prototyping, some call it beta testing... Those are the breaks. You work really hard, you run all the tests and simulations but eventually you gotta light the fuse and let that thing take off. Having your empty test rocket not make orbit is a success because you hopefully have learned from the failed attempt and you managed not to get pressured into putting people or other valuable payloads on your rocket before it was ready for prime time.

Re:Insightful...?

[EvanED]

Haven't we been sending rockets up into space for quite some time now. I'd think the fundementals should be down pretty pat now, the time for spectacular failures has past.

11 years ago we had been sending rockets up for quite some time too, and yet there was still the little Ariane 5 thing. I have seen two suborbital rocket launches; the second one disintegrated at T+9. (There was another even smaller rocket that I saw go up too; that one failed as well. That makes 2/3 failures.)

Rocket science is still a tricky business.

From the Website...

[Mizled]

Falcon flew far beyond the "edge" of space, typically thought of as around 60 miles. Our altitude was approximately 200 miles, which is just 50 miles below the International Space Station. The second stage didn't achieve full orbital velocity, due to a roll excitation late in the burn, but that should be a comparatively easy fix once we examine the flight data.

Re:The Pinto actually was a pioneering effort, sor

[Alien Being]

Actually, they did realize that there was a big problem with the fuel tank but they decided it would be cheaper to let a few people die than to fix it. Still, it was much safer than a VW Beetle.

Re:The Pinto actually was a pioneering effort, sor

[elrous0]

And both were safer than Dodge's ill-conceived "Dodge Diecast: The car made from cheap zinc alloy!"

This is awesome.

[xx01dk]

Yep, nay-sayers be damned, but to think this isn't a big, government corporation undertaking this, wasting our tax dollars with endless beaurocracy. This is the product of back yard and garage tinkerers (albeit several generations removed). Who can't look at that webcast and imagine seeing that for real, in the 1st person, someday? It gave me chills when the curvature of the earth came into the frame. I've seen dozens of rocket launches and shuttle launches, but that was pretty unique. Reminds me of when I was in grade school back in the eighties, watching the shuttles go up.

Regardless of the success or failure of the launch, this is mightily impressive. My hat's off.

They should have had a servo engineer

[BroncoInCalifornia]

If this was just due to a control system oscillation, then this may have been easily avoided. There is a body of knowledge called control theory . It is about the analysis of feedback control loops. An engineer applies this to the desired control system performance and guarantee control loop stability.

This control theory stuff is abstract, somewhat difficult and time consuming to learn. But if you have feedback control in a mission critical application it is essential to bring this body of knowledge to bear on the problem. If this is done properly there should be no control loop oscillations unless there is a hardware failure.

Because control theory is abstract, it can be an uphill fight to argue for the application of this body of knowledge to people who do not understand it. This is especially true in an environment run by PhD physicist who think engineering is just a subset of physics. This rocket may have failed due to hubris.

Re:They should have had a servo engineer

[AndersOSU]

Control theory is great, but the difficulty doesn't just lie in applying the concepts - it isn't really that hard once you understand Laplace transforms sufficiently well. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, but I learned enough to put a bit into practice in undergrad mechanical engineering.

Anyway, like I said the problem isn't in concepts it is anticipating and modeling all the spurious inputs and having a fast enough controller. If control theory were as easy to put into practice as you make it sound we'd have a lot more dynamically walking bipedal robots running around - after all that is the prime example of a control system problem. I don't really have a any basis for this statement, but, but I'd venture that sub orbital control is on the same order of difficulty as dynamic walking.

I'd also doubt that anyone designing a control system for such an application would have any hang-ups talking having someone who understands feedback control do the work.

Re:They should have had a servo engineer

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think this was a servo problem

The tumble started just after the seperation - it hit the 2nd stage engine and I suspect did some damage - that was no gentle shunt

That camera was fixed and it looked like the engine worked loose

To reiterate Elon Musk's point...

[caywen]

It took something like 12 launches of the Atlas rocket program to get to success. This was SpaceX's second launch, and the fact is, until the final roll / oscillation problems, the performance was flawless. I have no doubt that the third launch will not just hit orbit and deliver its payload (it won't be a test launch), but that they'll have created an incredibly reliable rocket that will reduce orbit insertion costs by an order of magnitude. After this, I really can't wait to see how their Falcon 9 will fare. It supposedly will be more reliable than the Falcon 1 due to redundancy of 9 engines. It will also be incredibly cool to see them launch Bigelow's Nautilus modules into space in 2010. Yesterday's launch gives us every indication that it's achievable.

Mod Parent Up

[icedcool]

MOD PARENT UP. Very informative.

First Stage Recovery

[obladioblada]

The first stage is supposed to be recoverable and reusable. Does anyone know if the stage was recovered? The stage's successful recovery, refurbishment, and reuse should be considered a critical goal in this test.

Re:Insightful...?

[iamlucky13]

This is a pretty common misconception, usually brought up whenever NASA has a problem, but history shows it's misbegotten. In fact, there are only a few systems that have the kinks worked out really thoroughly (Soyuz is one, and believe it or not, the shuttle is another with 92 consecutive successful launches, 116 total. I'm counting re-entry seperately), but others still have occasional launch problems.

The Ariane 5 program, Europe's most successful heavy launcher, almost perfectly mirrored the Falcon on it's first two flights. The first was self-destructed 37 seconds into flight because of a critical software bug (Falcon 1, 29 seconds, fuel leak). The second shutdown early because of a roll control problem (Falcon 1, shutdown early due to roll control problem). Since then the Ariane 5 has had 27 successful launches and 2 failures.

Other recent rocket failures:

Last year Boeing launched their first Delta IV Heavy. A faulty fuel level sensor caused premature engine shut down and the payload didn't reach the intended orbit.

Just 2 months ago a Sea Launch Zenit exploded on the pad (google the video if you want to know what 500 tons of rocket fuel burning in 2 seconds looks like), for a 21/24 total record.

In July 2006 a Russian Dnepr booster crashed in Kazakstan. The Dnepr program is still on hold due to this.

Even the vaunted Soyuz, the king of rocket success stories with over 1700 flights by various versions, is not immune. A 2002 launch failure killed one ground crewman and injured 8. Another Soyuz failed to reach orbit in 2005.

So you can easily see the days of failures, even a occasional spectacular failures, are not yet behind us.

Next time, don't have an open mic :^)

[Pvt_Waldo]

Perhaps the most amusing part of the live webcast was just after the last second launch halt, when someone on the open mic was heard saying "Ah fuck" and a few other utterances.

Re:Insightful...?

[The Dobber]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is the way every real engineering project works. Some call it prototyping, some call it beta testing.

You must be one heck of an engineer.

Kids, don't waste your fortune

[iamlucky13]

Congratulations to SpaceX, and kudos to Elon Musk for doing something worthwhile with his fortune!

I wholeheartedly agree. Every now and then the Powerball jackpot hits $300 million and everybody starts asking each other what they'd do if they won (I guess I'd have to buy a ticket first...). Until I heard about SpaceX, I really didn't know. Everybody else just spends it all trying to fill their time since they quit work. I don't think I could stand more than a couple months of no responsibility and no accomplishment. Musk decided to actually take a very big risk and join a difficult industry with his.

Now I know what I'd do if I came into a bunch of money: I'd find a field I'm interested in with a high price barrier to entry and start my own company. It's a win-win-win situation

1. I get something to keep me occupied and motivated.
2. I have at least some chance of return on my investment (as opposed to buying lots of fast cars, drugs, and prostitutes).
3. I contribute to society by developing new products, technologies, or competition.
4. I contribute further to society by creating jobs.
5. I have an excuse for ignoring freeloading relatives ("I spent it all on my company").

Re:Kids, don't waste your fortune

[Anonymous Coward]

I have at least some chance of return on my investment (as opposed to buying lots of fast cars, drugs, and prostitutes).

You could always take the tried-and-true route of financing an exotic car company with drugs, and using prostitutes to help sell them. Win-Win-Win!

Makes you appreciate NASA

[heroine]

When you see how hard it is for the private companies to do anything, it's hard to believe NASA actually launched the first space shuttle with humans in one attempt. Maybe it's a statement of how devestating government pension plans and entitlement programs have been, since private individuals are now taxed so severely that they can't achieve anything close to what their government can.

Re:Makes you appreciate NASA

[Teancum]

NASA hardly has a good track record here themselves. When the test rockets were being developed for the original Mercury Project flights, there was some serious concern that a rocket would even get launched at all. Dozens of flights occured where the rockets literally blew up just seconds into the flight or in a few cases even before the rocket could leave the tower. That is why "the rocket has cleared the tower" is such a huge deal for most rocket launches: They have already beat some of NASA's earlier attempts.

As far as launching STS-1 on the first attempt... that was indeed a huge gamble. John Young and Robert Crippen have been distinguished as one of only 10 people who have not posthumously received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor explicitly because they did place their lives in grave danger by flying that mission. It was a big deal, and information since it was launched indicated it was a larger problem than either of them could have anticipated.

The upcoming shuttle launch that is likely to be in April is such a different spacecraft that you can hardly call it the same thing that these two men flew back in 1981. On the pleasant side of that, however, is that the things that have changed were done incrementally and tested in a controlled environment.

Of course, by the time NASA flew this first shuttle mission, they had already been quite experienced at flying spacecraft, including all of the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab missions.

Dare I say it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Soviet space program never had this particular problem, because in Soviet Russia, roll controls YOU!

Re:So what?

[OriginalArlen]

I propose we invest a trillion dollars in constructing huge candy-striped balloons at the bottom of the ocean. We can all go and live there! It's a pointless waste of money and will never work, true, but if you disagree you're a Luddite!

You sound a lot like the folks back when who said we'd never drive at 60 MPH 'because it will suck all the air out of your lungs', or the engineer who claimed that 'rockets will never work in space because there's nothing to push against'.

Those assertions were trivially disprovable when (if) they were made. However, the balance of proof is reversed when it comes to space colonisation, because the first railway engine didn't cost trillions of dollars, was economically viable, (which was why it was such a roaring success -- hint, hint) and it actually achieved something useful -- it moved people from Stockton, a large well-established human settlement, to Darlington, a well-established settlement (I won't call em human... I've /been/ to Darlington.) There were lots of people who wanted to go from A to B, and indeed from B to A. The only people who want to go to Mars are a very small number of ego-tripping over-achievers, and a vast army of delusional geeks.

Few people in 1900 would have predicted airliners, satellites, nuclear weapons and ICBMs less than 70 years later. Right, so anything that would have been thought impossible fifty or a hundred years ago, must be practical now. Why, with our technological might, we can achieve anything we want! Bad news: you can't engineer human societies or economies with new materials the way you can engineer rocket engines with new alloys. (Many have tried: check your local history textbook for details.)

My "cynicism" (realism) in this matter is founded on tendentious things like Newton's laws and our understanding of the conditions on the surface of Mars. Believe me, you don't really want to go there.

Colonizing space is the only hope for our species to last more than a few more millenia IMO

If we're going to destroy ourselves living here on Earth, where let's face it we are quite nicely tuned to survive by 4 billion years of evolution, what makes you think things will be different on Mars, where you can kill someone in seconds by sticking a rusty nail through their suit?

Do yourself a favour kid, go read up on some actual orbital mechanics, some rocket and spacecraft engineering, and a smidgen on the Martian environment before trying to patronise me. You might like to throw in a dash of sociology and psychology, and perhaps think a bit about historical precendents for trapping people in an enclosed spaces for an indefinite period of time. Re-examine your assumptions: they are wrong.

P.S. Sophomoric? I watched Apollo at the time! Lordy... I thought the days of feeling insulted by having my age underestimated were long gone! ;)

Re:The Pinto actually was a pioneering effort, sor

[Anonymous Coward]

>In all fairness, Detroit had mostly produced giant land barges in the past. The Pinto was an early effort at actually producing a car that didn't snort gas faster that Nicole Ritchie with a paper bag.

Well you did say "mostly", but your sweet metaphor will be what's remembered and give the wrong impression to people.

Staying just with Ford, they had produced the Falcon for years. These were very good 170, 200, and 250 cu.inch six-cylinder compact cars for the thrify. The basic carcase was re-bodied as the Maverick in 1970 at $1999 specifically to take on the VW Beetle.

(I've had both a 70 Maverick and 70 Beetle. The ugly Ford was a little better on all counts - gas, power, heat, comfort, reliability, cost to repair, you-name-it - except student cred.)

What none of the big three had done was a sub-compact, so they were starting to lose headlines and customers to the new Toyotas and Datsuns. Hence we got the Pinto and Vega.

And yes, those were bloody awful. Detroit hadn't engineered a completely new vehicle of any sort for decades. So they didn't have the talent, either in engineering or management. It wasn't as much an early effort to design a smaller car, as it was an early effort to completely design a car. That was, oddly enough, alien territory to Detroit.

Re:Insightful...?

[Peristaltic]

You know, what the poster is trying to say is that after 35+ years of designing, building and launching space vehicles, we should have a high level of mastery of the subject. The following applies more to established organizations than to spaceflight "start-ups":

I propose that this is more a question of emotional intelligence rather than engineering skill. The question is: Do you want to get something into orbit, or feel good about sexy new innovations implemented into spacecraft design? I remember the argument I read in the 80's regarding using the Shuttle vs Large Soviet-type rockets to launch the components for the space station, that went something like this: If the goal is to get chunks of this thing into orbit, why build the most complicated machine known to man, with myriads of potential points of failure, when you can use something big and stupid to man-handle stuff into LEO? We all know which technology won that debate. It seems as if time and time again, in fields that employ marvelously skilled people, that the elegance of a solution trumps the reason for doing it in the first place, whether we're talking about rocket science or software.

Re:Insightful...?

[ePhil_One]

I remember the argument I read in the 80's regarding using the Shuttle vs Large Soviet-type rockets to launch the components for the space station, that went something like this: If the goal is to get chunks of this thing into orbit, why build the most complicated machine known to man, with myriads of potential points of failure, when you can use something big and stupid to man-handle stuff into LEO?

1. National Politics. The Shuttle was ours, we had fallen behind on behemoth launchers, and if I recall, efficiency and safety was not a strong point of the Soviets designs. The Soviets assigned a much lower cost to human life, most safety systems were there to avoid embarassment to senior party officials rather than out of concern for Cosmonauts lives
2. The main goal was to get stuff up there, but if you needed someone nearby to do any work with it, then having a shuttle handy is very useful. It also includes a safety aspect, putting something in close orbit to the ISS is the most dangerous time, having the shuttle around for emergencies is handy.

You know, what the poster is trying to say is that after 35+ years of designing, building and launching space vehicles, we should have a high level of mastery of the subject.

And I was pointing out technical mastery of a subject does not equate to success. I have the physics of the slam dunk down, that helps me very little when it comes time to put the ball through the hoop. These guys knew how fast the rocket should rotate, but whatever system(s) they built to control that rate failed when exposed to the heat/vibration/pressure/other forces that the rocket actually generated. They'll now analyze the data to see if a weld broke, the software failed, or whatever triggered the the problem so they can adjust. Mistakes lead to progress. If we always listened to your type we'd still be throwing rocks and hoping to scrape together enough food to survive another week. Farming is an enormously complicated thing versus wandering about gathering berries, too.

First stage hits the engine nozzle at separation

[Grevling]

At T+00:02:52 one can clearly see the first stage hits the engine nozzle of the second stage. The second stage looks like its being set a bit out of course by this also. Im no rocket scientist but i doubt that those parts should make contact.

Re:Insightful...?

[lgw]

I used to work for a company that created and sold servers (the most servers sold in its day) and there were always a dozen or two prototypes in succession before the "limited production" run, then additional tweaks before the "for sale" manufactuing began, then further design changes to future models based on data from the field.

Car design works the same way. Commercial jets go through far more protoyping and test flights than SpaceX.

In what engineering field do you get everything right without even building a prototype? Maybe building a bridge that's different by a few percent in load and span from the last one?

Re:Insightful...?

[Teancum]

You obviously havn't been an engineer.

I've been involved with far too many "public prototypes" that actually were shipped to paying customers, when we as an engineering team knew that the product wasn't "ready for prime time". This practice is far more common than you would believe.

And one of my projects I was involved with had a price tag of over $20 million dollars.... more than a Falcon I. I won't say what it was, but I'm sure you've seen it as I have seen photos of that project on the front page of the New York Times. I should add that the project was not in New York City either, but somewhere on the U.S. west coast.

Let's just say that I spent nearly two months on site with that project, and I was a software engineer. The mechanical and electrical engineers should have rented out a house for the amount of money they spent on hotel costs alone... or the company should have even bought a house in the location and later resold it for a (modest) profit.