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).

Comments

Re:So...only a year to go?

[fsh]

By far the hardest part about launching humans into orbit is building a rocket capable of getting them up there. All the stuff necessary to sustain life adds a lot of weight, but it's no more (or less) difficult to engineer than any other satellite launched into orbit. Look at the Apollo lunar lander. That thing had panels you could *punch* through. The astronauts during testing were told that the flimsiness of the lander wouldn't be a problem in space when they were weightless....

In any case, thorough testing of the launch vehicle is absolutely necessary if for no other reason than to know the weight limit for the manned payload. But the design of the launch vehicle is robust (it can withstand various failures without scrubbing). Also, they'll be using these same engines (the Merlin 1C) in smaller launch vehicles, so they'll have plenty of reliability information.

To top it off, they're running a couple months early. As far as I see, they shouldn't have too many difficulties for a 2009 launch. *

* - God willing and the creek don't rise. **
** - Er, that is, God willing and the funding don't dry up.

-fsh PS - Although I don't have personal experience in the aerospace industry, I'm doing research at an observatory right now. Not that that means anything, I just like telling people that I'm working at an observatory right now!

I've been there. =)

[Forrest Kyle]

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.

Re:Screw Ares

[geckipede]

As a backup system in case a flaw in the design of either vehicle is ever brought to light. We don't want a repeat of the shuttle days when a dangerous system was flown just because it was the only option.

Re:So...only a year to go?

[AJWM]

Well no, because seven really is the upper limit. They just don't specify the lower limit.

And you don't need to use the operational launcher to test the lander, you can use something else. It's not like the Apollo program used a Saturn V (or even Saturn IB) to develop the Apollo capsule. For some of the drop tests they didn't use a rocket at all.

Re:So...only a year to go?

[fsh]

Yeah but NASA are fantastic engineers. Their interface design and validation are orders of magnitude ahead of anybody else.

NASA didn't design the LEM, Northrop Grumman did. Spacecraft are designed by aerospace companies (like Northrop-Grumman, Boeing, Rockwell, and now SpaceX), and then NASA picks the design they like best. The best engineers are typically at the private companies because the pay is better than at government run NASA.

Consider the first shuttle flight. [...] And it worked first time. They were hot at the time, coming off the experience of Apollo.

Well, the first space shuttle, the Enterprise, never went to space. It's easy to have a successful first flight when you have the resources to build a full size scale model to 'test' with. And they weren't coming hot off Apollo; the space shuttle was about a decade later.

The most complex and unlikely machine (pretty much) ever built.

They made it needlessly complex. This is why they have had, and continue to have, so many problems. The designers promised several launches each month and a payload cost in $50-$100 per pound range.

The scientific community at the time said much the same things about the shuttle design that they currently say about the ISS; that it's too much money for too little return. Some even go so far as to suggest these overly-complex plans, pushed on the unsupportive science community are essentially aerospace company welfare.

Re:Duh

[Anpheus]

They're talking about single point of failure. The space shuttle, for example, has a single point of failure: if either of the two engines fails, the whole thing fails. The result is that the overall reliability is the square of the reliability of the two engines. 99% reliable becomes 98.1% reliable. If it were the other way around, it would be the square root: 99.99% means it fails one in every thousand launches, as opposed to one in every fifty.

So what he's saying is, they can afford to have engines become nonfunctional (obviously not explosively so.) So even if each engine is only 80% reliable, if it only takes four to get to orbit, they can use nine, and get 99.9% reliability. If each engine is 99% reliable, you're talking way better than six sigma.

Mod parent up

[WindBourne]

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.