Slashdot Mirror
SpaceX Successfully Launches Falcon 9 Rocket
leetrout writes "SpaceX has successfully launched a two-stage rocket, the Falcon 9, into Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. 'Liftoff came after hours of delay, sparked initially by launchpad telemetry problems, then by a sailboat that strayed into a restricted area of the launch range. The day's first countdown was aborted at virtually the last second, due to a problem with the engine parameters, but the launch software was adjusted and a second countdown went all the way to the end.'"
Update: 06/04 20:16 GMT by S : Reader mrcaseyj points out Spaceflight Now's coverage, which includes a number of pictures from the launch.
Good news for Obama and his vision for private industry servicing the ISS. Hopefully they won't delay their first ISS mission until 2011.
It's not the elimination of the NASA manned rocket program. It's about the descoping of the poorly conceived and poorly executed NASA manned rocket design and manufacturing program; whose significant purpose was employment in Alabama congressional districts. A private contractor will not decide on the mission goals or the payload. One can have robust manned space program without designing the rockets.
In 1965 NASA had to design and build its own microcomputers. NASA does not do so any more; astronauts use standard laptop computers on the ISS.
Loss of SpaceX craft: a few million $$
Loss of Space Shuttle: a billion+ $$
Space Shuttle is also a little larger and a little more complex. I'm using "little" in the loosest possible way. Comparing SpaceX to Shuttle is like comparing F-150 with Peterbuilt (there you go, a truck analogy :)
Well done Elon, Here's hoping you can stay afloat a little longer to get us back into space!
To be fair, comparing reboot on the shuttle to this is a little unfair, since STS launched for the first time with people on board. Nonetheless, quite impressive.
As far as the liftoff occurring early -- I see it too. The stream was laggy, so that could be it, but it also seemed like the engines were running rather hot (second stage engine cutoff was early but it nailed its target orbit), so it could be that the sensors detected that it was dangerous to continue to hold it down and let go early.
During the second stage burn, the vehicle appeared to start to rotate, gradually accelerating as the burn continued. Does anyone know if this was part of the planned ascent profile, or something gone wrong?
It's hard to tell due to the angle of the rocketcam camera, but it didn't appear to be rolling around the vehicle's axis --- which makes it more of a tumble. OTOH, that might have been an optical illusion. I gather that the Dragon demonstrator that was being launched didn't have any propulsion, so this could have been planned to spin-stabilise it, but... it did look odd.
I don't want to put any dampeners on the launch, though. For a first launch of a prototype rocket, it's still a fantastic achievement to get to orbit first time.
Actually, the crazy ones are the ones who hold on to their wealth. Money is for spending, it has no other worthwhile purpose.
BUt obviously, out of the thousands of things that could go wrong it was silly to claim the landing gear as the only thing that needed manual control.
They just wanted to fly spacecraft...
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
So at $55M a pop, this could really be disruptive to the whole space industry.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.