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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.""
'More is learned from failures than successes in most engineering endeavors.'
:)
Come again? 'Trial and error', is that what all those millions are funding? Is it that easy to pry monies away from investors? Or is it because it's not your monies going down in flames...?
Sorry, but that is one of the lamest excuses I've heard - engineering related or not - Maybe on a headstone, but if you submitted a project update to me with that little tidbit of wisdom framing your take on current status, you'd be watching the next launch attempt (if there was one) from the comfort of your living room, courtesy CNN.
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.