Second SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Now Being Assembled

FleaPlus writes "Six weeks after the first launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, the first stage of the second rocket has finished production/testing, and has arrived at Cape Canaveral for a launch as early as September, depending on the pace of a methodical review of the Dragon capsule systems and minor rocket modifications/fixes being made based on data from the inaugural launch. The rocket will launch the first operational unmanned Dragon cargo/crew spacecraft into orbit, where it will perform tests and then reenter off the California coast. CEO/CTO Elon Musk made the intriguing remark that Dragon's heat shield is strong enough to enable a return not only from Earth orbit, but also lunar orbit or Mars velocities as well."

Comments

Stories today

[instagib]

I see 6 great aircraft & space related stories on /. at the moment, but the single Apple story has way more comments than all these combined. Go figure ...

Re:Stories today

[mangu]

I see 6 great aircraft & space related stories on /. at the moment, but the single Apple story has way more comments than all these combined

I suppose this means it's safe to hold the SpaceX Falcon 9 with your left hand?

Meanwhile, back in the Senate . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Because they cannot control what SpaceX does, or where it spends its money, Senators are throwing temper tantrums, screaming hysterically and jumping up and down like their assess were on fire. Live from the Senate:

"Dirty, dirty, dirty! I want spending for my state! Bad, bad, bad! Darn, darn, darn!"

Senate staffers hope to placate them with a large supply of Happy Meals. Unfortunately, when they do calm down, they will immediately consider legislation that will put SpaceX under their thumb.

I'm sure NASA could do some really amazing stuff . . . if it wasn't for those meddling kids in the Senate . . .

Re:Meanwhile, back in the Senate . . .

[Loadmaster]

You forgot where they chant, "The government can do nothing right. The government can do nothing better than private industry." Then turnaround and declare, "Only NASA can build rockets. The private industry sucks balls on space."

I will never understand, other than pork and earmarks, why some in Congress see SpaceX as bad. I, for one, am really excited by the possibilities opened if SpaceX can wrest some control of space away from the government for private industry. The government has put up the ISS which is great, because it shows us what can be done in space and why. But Bigelow aerospace is already building inflatable habitation modules and has contracted SpaceX to take them to space. Private industry is ready to open up earth's orbit.

reusability

[strack]

heres hoping they can recover the first stage this time. i mean, if they cant have a reusable first stage, the only new thing spacex would be doing to reduce costs is assembly line manufacturing of rocket engines, and the ability to have a engine fail on the first stage and still complete the mission. while those are neccessary and excellent steps to take, my bet is being able to fish 9 barely used rocket engines and avionics system out of the sea, hose it down, pop another upper stage on it, and launch it a week later, will be the largest factor in reducing costs. the shuttle fucked it up, it was only reusable in the way a drag racer is reusable, with a complete overhaul between uses. but the merlin engines on the falcon 9 have been shown to be infinitely more reusable and reliable.

Re:reusability

[tibit]

They don't only reduce costs in assembly and manufacturing. Their whole corporate culture is, AFAIK, built on achieving understandable goals and working towards the end result, not towards placating external or internal politicians. All of their costs are lower, across the board -- sometimes by as much by an order of magnitude. That includes R&D, facility management, you name it. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure their employee morale beats any government bureaucracy hands-down, and also should be beating that of other government contractors.

SpaceX's immediate future may be mostly funded from government checks. Yet their long-term future in absence of another brilliant startup is pretty much destined to be global market takeover for launch services. That's my opinion at this point. On one hand I wish they went public sometime, on another hand part of their success is their independence...

Re:reusability

[trout007]

You are missing a very important reason for recovering the stage. It is a great for engineering to see what the engines/ect look like after a flight. You can get a lot of data on a test stand but nothing beats flight testing.

Re:reusability

[trout007]

I saw a great interview with Musk and he said the way he cuts costs is by building everything they can't buy off the shelf. This is directly opposite to what most major defense contractors do. The reason is simple. If it's off the shelf you can buy it because the development costs were already paid for and there is an existing market. If there isn't a off the shelf product available you may as well design and build it yourself to cut out the middleman. This isn't rocket science it's rocket engineering. Elon isn't breaking any scientific ground with the Falcon which is why it's so cheap. He learned the lessons of the past and spent his money trying to make it cheap.

Re:reusability

[glitchvern]

The space shuttles engine is reusable 0 times without a complete and total dis-assembly and rebuild.

This hasn't been true in a long time. It was true for the first major version of the Space Shuttle Main Engine, but they are on at least the fifth major version of the SSME now. They are taken off the orbiter for inspection every two flights now and taken off for rebuild every four flights. An SSME costs about 75 million to build. A delta IV rocket engine, which is made by the same company and is roughly comparable to an SSME, costs about 25 million. I've never been able to figure out the maintenance cost on an SSME. The SSME has a very excellent safety record. One of the reasons for this is because being reusable they can test the hell out of it. It is one of the best rocket engines ever. The shuttle taken as a whole may not be very good, but most of the parts are fantastic, and the SSME is definately a fantastic part and an example of one of the things they got right with a reusable vehicle. The shuttle is the first and only reusable launch vehicle ever built and we have learned many things on how not to design a reusable launch vehicle. The shuttle is a sample size of one and should not be taken to mean reusable launch vehicles are inherently bad, expensive, or impossible to build.

Sweet

[tibit]

I think that SpaceX are really in business of making affordable LEO deliveries. Their low costs are an indication of what we should really be expecting from corporations. Many people have raised the non-issue of lack of bureaucracy somehow making their efforts less safe. That is quite laughable -- NASA's illogical bureaucracy for its own sake (papers and presentations without real content) and internal isolation are some of the factors pointed out by Feynman as contributing to a culture that's set up for failure.

Just think of the bills you'd be getting had Elon Musk founded a major hospital and medical center somewhere. I'm pretty sure some procedures would cost about as much as some people are paying in "copays".

Re:Sweet

[queazocotal]

Paragons of safety - certainly not.

There are some good reasons why they are potentially safer than some ohter designs though.

For example, the fact that the engines are runup and develop full thrust while the vehicle is still tied down, and can be shut down if they do not perform to spec removes a large slice of hazard.

Several thoughts

[WindBourne]

Once the dragon is flying cargo AND has flown living samples UP and DOWN, it seems to me that we should send a dragon up as a lifeboat. The reason is that 3 of the sleeping quarters are on the other side of the station. As such, it makes sense to have one lifeboat on the US/Western side. Lose the middle, or even the entire russian side, and you still have an ability to get ppl to safety.

If Musk gets this flying in Sept, then it should be possible to push back against that recent jobs fair bill being pushed by the Senate panel, that masquerades as a NASA bill. In fact, BA, OSC, etc should be pushing hard for getting Bolden/Obama's plan moving fast. One idea is to offer up X-Prizes to really push commercial space. These should start high and descend in value over time.

For example, offer up a 1 billion X-Prize for a Tug/Fuel Depot that delivers in 2013. Then have it drop by .25B yearly after that. Give requirements for docking (such as using CBM).

Another useful one would be for human launches. Offer up 5 guaranteed human launches in 2013; followed by one less each year. The idea being is that the first craft will have more launches then those that arrive to the scene later. Why do it that way? To encourage groups like SpaceX to get funding, or for Boeing/L-Mart to invest their own money and build out human rated systems QUICKLY.

Finally, it will costs a great deal of money for NASA to get to the moon. So, why not offer up an X-Prize of 10B to put a base there. It would run until 2016, and then decrease by 1B each year.

Now, why do these and in this fashion? To get private space moving QUICKLY. In particular, this would encourage ppl like Gates, Allen, etc to chase these prizes. The sooner that you develop, the larger the pay-out. Require that the work be in America, or amongst those nations that also contribute to the X-Prize (it allows the possibility for UK, EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc to jump in as well).

re the first Falcon 9 flight...

[ridgecritter]

Has there been any commentary or explanation from SpaceX about the increasing roll rate that showed in the on-board video towards the end of that video? I've looked, haven't found any. Just curious.

Re:re the first Falcon 9 flight...

[mostly_functional]

You didn't look very hard then, its in TFA. My very first slashdot post and you're making say RTFA. Shame on you *grins*. Quoted from TFA:

A few minutes later, the second stage began a dramatic spin as the rocket reached space. The roll was captured in views from an on-board camera.

"The roll on the second stage was also a non-fatal situation. We think the actuator may have overheated due to radiative heating from the nozzle," Musk said. "This is speculative, but we can trace the problem down to the roll actuator itself."

More insulation will be added around the actuator to prevent the same problem on the next launch.