SpaceX Launch Fails To Reach Space

azuredrake and many other readers have written to tell us: "The New York Times reports that the third SpaceX launch has failed following the second-stage ignition of the Falcon 1 rocket. The SpaceX launch had three satellites on board, all of which were presumably destroyed in the incident. This marks the third failed launch for SpaceX — twice they failed to reach orbit, and once the Falcon 1 rocket was lost five minutes after launch. While the company vows to carry on, this certainly raises some questions about the likelihood of successful privatization of the Space industry." Reader Nano2Sol points out a video of the launch from a camera on Falcon 1, and notes a small oscillation just prior to the footage being cut off. Spaceflight Now ran a mission update blog leading up to the failure, and they also have more coverage on the loss of the rocket.

Comments

One company doesn't succeed at once

[Anonymous Coward]

...and a whole industry is pronounced dead. Can you be more dramatic?

Re:One company doesn't succeed at once

[dstates]

Actually, the private space industry is as active today as it has ever been despite decades of failed companies. But the Wall Street Journal reports that SpaceX has received several hundred million dollars of taxpayer investment that is now being reconsidered. Military planners had anticipated using the company's Falcon family of launchers to boost smaller, less-expensive satellites. NASA has a partnership with SpaceX to develop a rocket to resupply the International Space Station.

Re:One company doesn't succeed at once

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

"While the company vows to carry on, this certainly raises some questions about the likelihood of successful privatization of the Space industry."

---

*yawn*

If Fiat fails, will we call into question the entire automobile industry? There are many companies working on private space flight. Elon Musk's company is only one of them. And given that Musk seems to be VERY well capitalized, I don't see them taking their ball and going home any time soon. Burt Rutan had a pretty spectacular explosion in their engine development process last year that resulted in a few fatalities, but I don't expect them to roll over and play dead either. I'm sure there will be even more failures peppering the process as time goes on...just like in every other industry.

Too bad about the lost satellites.

Cheers,

Re:One company doesn't succeed at once

[ThreeE]

Or you could consider them to be the most successful in their industry.

More ambition than sense

[damburger]

Musk's Giant Firework Company seriously believe they can have Falcon 9 up and running in a few months, and have people inside it 'soon' afterwards.

I've said it before and this seems to confirm it - entrepreneurs aren't good at rocket science. They look at government funded space programs, and see the redundancy as waste and the precision as bureaucracy. Then when they try and do space cheaper without these things, there are predictably explosions.

Re:More ambition than sense

[meringuoid]

Quite a lot of rockets blew up in the early years of NASA, even rockets carrying humans

Only one NASA rocket carrying humans ever blew up, and that was in 1986, killing seven. They lost three to a fire on the pad in 1967, and in 2003 seven more were lost when their vehicle broke apart on re-entry.

The Soviets have had rockets explode on the pad killing many ground crew, but they've only ever lost four cosmonauts - IIRC, all to re-entry problems.

Re:More ambition than sense

[chuckymonkey]

You know it is quality control. Where I work I have to be NASA certified in ESD(Electro-Static Discharge) and let me tell you, they are crazy about all the little things. For instance when a bit of equipment is in the high bay you have to go through the clean room, you have to be grounded not only on your hands but your feet as well. Before you every plug anything in to a socket you have to run it over a fan that blows ions at it to negate any electrical charge. They have the craziest quality control that you have ever seen and they still have shit go wrong sometimes.

Re:More ambition than sense

[Teancum]

The cost of the fuel on a spacecraft is so minor that in most cases it is covered as a part of the "overhead" of the rocket instead of even being considered as a significant cost center for rocketry development. Something like about 1% of the cost of actually sending something up. Even if you triple the cost of kerosene, it will be something still so minor that it is hardly something to even bring up to the customer.

The expense of rocket design has do to with the engineers and exotic metals, as well as production workers who have specialized skill like aviation-grade aluminum welding experience. Paying somebody to do that sort of work doesn't come cheap.

Keep in mind the engineering adage that you can have things built:

1) sooner (or faster)
2) cheaper
3) reliably

Choose only two of the above options!

A great many consumer electronics tend to select options 1 & 2. Most of the major military contracts concentrated on options 1 & 3, with the idea that cost really isn't a huge concern for a government like the USA. It is far more important that we have an ICBM that can get up *NOW* instead of sometime next year. The Apollo program especially was one that was "screw the cost, let's just get it done now!"

SpaceX really is trying to see if they can build a rocket that may take a bit more time to develop, but can be done far cheaper and still maintain reliability. What I hope doesn't happen is that SpaceX engineers and technicians don't get under the pressure to get things done right now as well, in which case you simply end up with an expensive, delayed, and unreliable device. If you try all three approaches at once, you end up eating engineers and throwing lives away in one form or another.

Scotty's final trip

[dstates]

The New York Time reports that the rocket was also carrying the ashes of 208 people who had paid to have their remains shot into space, including the astronaut Gordon Cooper and the actor James Doohan, who played Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, the wily engineer on the original "Star Trek" television series.

Re:Scotty's final trip

[pizzutz]

From James Doohan's wikipedia article:

"This article contains information regarding a deceased person who has recently been involved in a launch failure."

That's a new one....

Question likelihood of privatization?

[BoldlyGo]

this certainly raises some questions about the likelihood of successful privatization of the Space industry.

The government failed quite a few times before they got anything up. Let's not write off private space travel because of three failures.

It Happens

[abarrow]

Hey, I'm a child of the 60s. I watched every launch, and attempted launch, that I could. I can't tell you the number of times that NASA blew things up in those early days. Had they quit after only three failures, the world would be a very, very different place today.

Keep launching SpaceX! You'll succeed and the world will change again...