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

[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

[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

[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?

pfft

[djupedal]

I roll-control anomaly in your general direction!

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"

[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"

[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: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: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: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.

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 !

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.

Cup half full

[toupsie]

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

Look on the bright side.

[Rob T Firefly]

Maybe it landed on Chris Kattan.

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.

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

[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."

Incoming message from Slippy:

[dosle]

Do a barrel roll!

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

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.

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: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...?

[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...

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.

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: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!

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: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).

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.

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.