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Falcon 9 Launch Aborted At Last Minute

Posted by Unknown on from the timothy-camping-on-launchpad dept.

ClockEndGooner writes "Sadly, SpaceX had to abort its launch of the Falcon 9 to the International Space Station this morning due to higher than expected pressure levels in one of its engine chambers. NASA and SpaceX have another launch window scheduled for early next week." Probably better than an engine failing during launch; hopefully everything is worked out for Tuesday.

6 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Re:technical problems != technicalities by cryptolemur · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I understood from the live footage that it was actually the computer on the Falcon that cut off the engines right after ignition, not any engineer or manager. I may be wrong, though.

    I also noticed that if SpaceX had to build the launch pad, the infrastructure, the launch control and the flight control centers, they might come up with bigger bill. But then again, NASA wasn't building the earlier rockets either, was it? So what exactly is new in this endeavour?

  2. Agreed...mostly... by neoshroom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd have to agree with you entirely, minus the misdirected political assumptions.

    The journalist is looking at it from the standpoint that SpaceX was supposed to launch today and something went wrong, so it's a setback. In reality, what happened today was somewhat impressive in-and-of itself. The Falcon rocket auto-detected a problem with software and half a second before liftoff shut itself down without any damage.

    Would NASA have ever been able to do that? No. NASA would have sent the rocket into space with the problem because it had no such software. This already seems way better and safer.

    However, the journalist probably just didn't think about it that in-depth and so sees the failure to launch as a small failure (which it is, albiet not a serious one and a strong success at the same time). His talk of government is just boilerplate background not a biased pro-government agenda.

    --
    Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
    1. Re:Agreed...mostly... by dpilot · · Score: 4, Interesting

      For onething, at least one launch was aborted after the SSMEs fired, 6 seconds before the SRBs were set to fire. Did you never listen to the radio control patter, especially during the early shuttle launches. They were careful to say what "window options" were open during each phase of the flight. There was "abort to launch site", "abort tranatlantic", (to Spain, I believe.) and "abort to orbit:". Beyond that, there were points where various abort or even mission completion options could be accomplished with a one-engine fail, or later on even with a two-engine fail.

      Much as it may be fun to bash NASA, they've probably forgotten more about such mission control aspects than private industry has had the chance to learn yet. While we're still bashing NASA, they've probably forgotten many of their own lessons.

      --
      The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    2. Re:Agreed...mostly... by DarrylM · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As someone else posted, an engine cut-off just before launch happened several times during the Shuttle program. There was even a case where a main engine shut down during flight, forcing an abort to orbit (ATO) - do a Youtube search for the launch of Challenger mission STS-51F.

      One of my favourite space-related quotes came from STS-41D (Discovery), which had a main engine cut off at T-6s. Apparently the situation was rather...tense, with a fire starting after the engines shut down. One of the crewmen broke the tension: "Gee, I thought we'd be a lot higher at MECO!" (Main Engine Cut-Off).

    3. Re:Agreed...mostly... by spitzak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You changed the "EEEEVILILL EPA CRASHED THE SHUTTLE!!!!" rant. There was plenty of articles saying "oh because they could not use Freon the foam was weaker!". Actually NASA was well aware of foam breaking off and ran tests on the new formula (by flying samples on the wings of jets) and it appeared to flake off less. So I thought it pretty hilarious that you changed it to "the old foam was safer because it broke up better". It also does not help the rant that the piece that fell off was not sprayed on, but instead a glued-on "bipod ramp" that was cast out of the *old* foam! It was glued to the metal structure.This same piece had been observed to fall off before.

      NASA did screw up in lots of ways, but you damage your credibility by stating urban legends as facts.

  3. Delta II blew up in 1997 by C0L0PH0N · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The technology to abort a takeoff in the last 1/2 second is truly amazing, and because of high combustion pressure in an engine is a perfect catch. If the Boeing Delta II in 1997 had had the same type of status checking, it might have discovered the 17 foot crack in the booster, and aborted also, instead of blowing up on launch: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9701/17/rocket.explosion/index.html. And a Delta III had a rocket engine failure in 1999, which ruined the mission: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19990626&slug=2968601. So the ability to detect an engine problem and shutdown before liftoff is again an amazing feat, and shows advancing technology. SpaceX is doing this right!