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SpaceX Conducts Full Thrust Firing of Falcon 9
Toren Altair sends us this excerpt:
"Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) conducted the first nine engine firing of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on July 31st. A second firing on August 1st completed a major NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) milestone almost two months early. At full power, the nine engines consumed 3,200 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second, and generated almost 850,000 pounds of force — four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft. This marks the first firing of a Falcon 9 first stage with its full complement of nine Merlin 1C engines. Once a near term Merlin 1C fuel pump upgrade is complete, the sea level thrust will increase to 950,000 lbf, making Falcon 9 the most powerful single core vehicle in the United States. The Falcon 9 will launch SpaceX's spaceship Dragon with up to 7 humans from 2009 on."
We discussed SpaceX when it won the NASA competition to provide low cost commercial transport to the ISS, and also when it launched an earlier design. Basic specs for Falcon 9 are available, as well as a more technical paper (PDF).
To hell with the Ares system. If NASA can buy equivalent capability at a lower cost within the United States, what is the point of developing a new launching system?
The Falcon 9 will launch SpaceX's spaceship Dragon with up to 7 humans from 2009 on.
I bet it won't.
Launching human beings into orbit is hard to do. For a start you need to demonstrate that your launch vehicle is reliable enough to be considered man rated. Then you need to develop your lander and validate that.
They may get there eventually but I doubt they can do it in one year.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Now wouldn't they feel dumb if someone invents an earth to space teleporter next year? jk we totally won't have teleporters for hundreds of years if they work on star trek technology
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Uuuuuuuuh. Okay, Beavis.
Full [Fr]ust Firing of Falcon Five.
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I go to Baylor University, which is close to the SpaceX test site. A bunch of engineering students (myself included) got to take a tour of the facility. We rode this rickety little elevator to the top of of the test stand. The test stand is a gigantic concrete superstructure that is like 300 ft high or so. I had to pee really bad. Luckily there was a port-a-potty at the bottom.
It was really exciting to see real rocket work going on in person. The "mission control" room was such a nerd fantasy. There was a big swath of giant flat screen monitors, each glowing with thin, phosphorescent lines of data. The glut of wires, tubes, ratings, warning signs, and big pieces of scary looking equipment made it a fantastic afternoon overall.
I wish Elon Musk all the luck in the world, and I hope someday I can afford to drive around in a Tesla Motors car.
Oh, and the test site is located at an old weapons test site. There are all these weird looking bunkers peppering the surrounding countryside. It felt like a scene from a Marvel comic or something. Unfortunately nothing went wrong and I failed to develop super powers due to radiation exposure.
I fully realize this comment contributed almost nothing to the discussion of the article, except to brag that I've been there and to share my excitement over all the loud, large, and complicated stuff they have.
Quote: "Much like a commercial airliner, our multi-engine design has the potential to provide significantly higher reliability than single engine competitors."
WHAT "single engine competitors"?? No U.S. to-orbit vehicle of which I am aware has EVER been "single-engine"!
Kind of like saying, "Our plane flies better than any other wingless vehicle!"
The Falcon 1 failure. Not that other programs haven't had failures... but keep it in mind.
Those guys are getting busy. There's this and a Falcon 1 launch any day now. I'm all giddy with excitement.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
This is awesome news. But why did I sign up for the newletter if they always release their stuff to spaceref or spacedaily first? Just saying...
Moderation: +1 pwnage
Oh, and the test site is located at an old weapons test site. There are all these weird looking bunkers peppering the surrounding countryside. It felt like a scene from a Marvel comic or something. Unfortunately nothing went wrong and I failed to develop super powers due to radiation exposure.
Brings to mind the novel Rocketship Galileo by Robert Heinlein. Maybe Elon is actually going to the moon to battle Nazis.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Nothing wrong with bragging, and Slashdot is known to cause superpower-generating mutations, which is why CowboyNeil does so well in the polls all the time.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
you would actually have to count the last50km or so of the launch. The first 50 uses 4 engines.
I just realized, Spaceship Two is not orbital anyway, so it doesn't count.
...making Falcon 9 the most powerful single core vehicle in the United States.
Even Apple is using dual-cores now.
This is great news for the SpaceX team. But there is nothing "commercial" about the NASA COTS Program. The only difference between COTS and every other NASA program is that NASA is contracting for a service rather than the hardware itself.
This is a step in the right direction, but this vehicle isn't satisfying any "commercial" requirement.
...I had to pee really bad. Luckily there was a port-a-potty at the bottom.
You mean they didn't let you just pee off the top?!?!?
our problem has been that NASA has not been willing to use redundant systems. Even now, NASA has given spacex a COTS-C contract (cargo), but is fighting giving spacex a cots-d contract(humans). COTs-D is where the real money AND need is. Even now, EU has their ATV for putting up cargo, and Japan is looking to have theirs next year. After the shuttle retires, That will leave the world with only 2 human launchers; Russia and China. Russia is fine with that. They are currently charging 50 million / PERSON. Spacex is looking to charge 50-100 million for 7 ppl. And it gets worse. If something happens to Russia (say a new flaw shows up), then it would only be China that could keep the ISS going.
America NEEDS spacex (and Orbital Transport as well). So does the rest of the ISS team.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"You mean they didn't let you just pee off the top?!?!?"
Oh, he peed off the top. He was just saying he was glad to have something to aim at!
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
If I wanted to hear what someone sounds like on PMS, I'd go to a tampon convention !!
I get a kick out of this. Looking at your postings and several other newbies in here, it is obvious that you folks are working in the space industry. More importantly, you are working within the NASA system on Ares. SpaceX had a spectacular failure on the first go. But top ppl at both NASA and DOD said that the 2'nd launch had minor issues, that were easily correctable. Yes, I think that we all remember that falcon I failed. OTH, do you think that they will continue to have failures? And once falcon I works (most likely today or tomorrow), do you think that it will require more than 2 launches to get the falcon 9 working? Then once they compete dragon WRT COTS-C, do you really think that they will NOT be doing humans within 1-2 years? My bet is they will launch first humans by 2011, maybe sooner.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'll admit it... This is a hearty and VERY jealous, "Fuck you." ;)
Green with envy is not applicable. Maybe neon green.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
When will we stop playing with toy rockets?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
Although there is murmuring it will have another test launch today.
I think the idea of them launching a 7 man capsule in 2009 is, to be honest, fantasy. So far they've shown an unrealistic view of their own capabilities even in the face of repeated failure. I wish them luck, but I am keeping my skeptical hat on until at the very least the third falcon 1 pulls off a successful flight.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
a beowulf cluster of these?
So what he's saying is, they can afford to have engines become nonfunctional (obviously not explosively so.)
Actually, from what I read, the Merlin 1C engines are protected with respect to the catastrophic disassembly of one of their fellows. I'm not sure how big a boom the Kevlar shielding can take in terms of preventing a multi-boom situation, but it's there to stop debris from a failed engine from turning into a chain-reaction failure.
Its not as bad as me... I called my roommate for next semester up last night to see about moving arrangements, and he was out there to watch the test, with my old roommate who works out there... and I was in Virginia.
"I had to pee really bad. Luckily there was a port-a-potty at the bottom."
Those are called helmets, one of our engineers wants a word with you Forrest Kyle.
"What the *beep* is an 'Aluminum Falcon'!?"
but the solution is incomplete. There are (non-obvious) physical limitations on aerospikes that limit their effectiveness in this regard. Still, all is not necessarily lost... as I mentioned, there may be ways around these limitations. I realize that this might sound like just so much hot air, bit in fact it would be unwise for me to say more at this time.
... I am a software engineer, and I do not work for NASA or any government agency. But I do have, well... other interests, too. :o)
I am not trying to slam SpaceX. On the contrary. More power to them, and to anyone who thinks they can make this whole thing work better than it does. May they have the courage to try and keep trying.
But let's not forget the failures, lest they be repeated. For many Americans, Challenger still burns. And NASA may never have fully recovered.
fact is that they might be able to succeed with one engine failure, or even one failure and one partial failure. But there is no way in hell it would ever make it to orbit with only 4 of nine engines functional using today's technology. Nobody in their right mind would design something so inefficiently.
So until our technology gets much better, we will still have to accept some risk. I daresay that the actual reliability is well below 99.9%. But one can hope that it is at least in the high 90s.
Spacex Launch III just failed. Sux.
I'm pretty sure that it is actually the site of a (long demolished) WW-II era munitions plant, and the "weird looking bunkers" were for the storage of the completed bombs while they await transport. So an old weapons factory rather than an old weapons test site.