Slashdot Mirror
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.""
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.
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.