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A Failure For SpaceX: Falcon 9 Explodes During Ascension
MouseR writes with bad news about this morning's SpaceX launch: About 2:19 into its flight, Falcon 9 exploded along stage 2 and the Dragon capsule, before even the stage 1 separation. Telemetry and videos are inconclusive, without further analysis as to what went wrong. Everything was green lights. This is a catastrophe for SpaceX, which enjoyed, until now, a perfect launch record.
TechCrunch has coverage of the failure, which of course also means that today's planned stage one return attempt has failed before it could start; watch this space for more links.
Update: 06/28 15:06 GMT by T : See also stories
at NBC News,
The Washington Post, and the Associated Press (via ABC News). According to the Washington Post, what was a catastrophe for this morning's launch is only a setback for the ISS and its crew, rather than a disaster:
A NASA slide from an April presentation said that with current food levels, the space station would reach what NASA calls “reserve level” on July 24 and run out by Sept. 5, according to SpaceNews.
[NASA spokeswoman Stephanie] Schierholz said, however, that the supplies would last until the fall, although she could not provide a precise date. Even if something were to go wrong with the SpaceX flight, she said, there are eight more scheduled this year, including several this summer, “so there are plenty of ways to ensure the station continues to be well-supplied.”
Of note: One bit of cargo that was aboard the SpaceX craft was a Microsoft Hololens; hopefully another will make it onto one of the upcoming supply runs instead.
Elon Musk has posted a note on the company's Twitter channel: "Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data."
Elon Musk has posted a note on the company's Twitter channel: "Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data."
Here's a gif of the failure: http://imgur.com/SYwUIbI
Looks like:
1. Second stage comes apart in a cloud of oxygen and fuel.
2. Dragon spacecraft falls off / gets overtaken by first stage.
3. First stage is destroyed.
I slept in and missed the launch, but here's a video of the CRS-7 launch and subsequent explosion.
SpaceX has been very forthcoming with their telemetry data and analysis, so hopefully we'll hear what happened soon.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
I wrote it fast. I was off the timing too. It assploded at 2:19. Not 2:40.
Well, it is a bit like Musk's version of capitalism: nationalize the risks, privatize the rewards. What's the surprise?
Those private space insurance premiums should be skyrocketing....
/. will be a lot more forgiving than if this were a NASA failure.
I'm guessing
The fuck are you talking about? This launch was undoubtedly, like all launches: insured. Also how the fuck do you figure they nationalize any risk? Development of the Falcon 9 has been solely on spacex, with nasa simply buying rocket launches at what is a competitive price.
Troll elsewhere
Funny how when Russian rockets fail it is because of those "no good drunken Russians", but when a US rocket fails, its because rocket science is complex and challenging.
'It blowed up. It blowed up real good'
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
The good news is: the scheduled rocket landing attempt won't fail, this time. I promise!
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
See, *everyone* fails sometimes, even your hero Elon Musk.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The breakup certainly looks to initiate from the upper stage, rather than the firing fist stage if you step through the video frame-by-frame. Right at the same time the commentary is explicitly stating that the trajectory looks nominal. It must have been round and about Max Q - simple structural failure? RSO Intervention?
A mighty wind?
More like a methane-y gust
Aside from throwing a couple of names out there, what information do yo provide to make, much less back up any of your claims?
Or, is this some 'clever' scheme from Ted Cruz to push Pace-X into changing the x into a cross on all of their logos?
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Isn't funny that Musk's name isn't mentioned in the Summary or article? Every other time SpaceX is mentioned, his name is featured prominately.
That's because we were able to include "Microsoft" in the summary. Every time you can combine "Crash" or "Failure" or the like with "Microsoft", the /. crowd is satisfied.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Those private space insurance premiums should be skyrocketing....
Actually launch insurance is expensive enough that if you are doing a significant launch campaign, many companies will go without. If you were going to build, insure, and launch 3 satellites, it's actually cost effective to build/launch 4, and skip the insurance. That way, if one of them goes boom, you still get your three, and if one of them go boom, you wind up with an on-orbit spare.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Do we want a nation of Ayn Rands merely writing about technology, or do we want to actually implement the technology? If the latter, government spending is essential because the market is way too shortsighted and prefers to take risks on balance sheets, with derivative instruments, rather than push the envelope of technological development.
better now then when crew is on board
Space travel is hard and the environment is unforgiving.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Yeah, and you didn't manage to work Kardashians into it because, you know, every news items has something to do with Caitlin and the girls
WTF is up with a media cycle that cannot handle observation and analysis when there are conclusions to be jumped to and blame to be spread around
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Self promotion is the name of the game, just like Kim Kardashian.
Who??
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
It is a NASA failure. NASA paid $278 million to develop the rocket and then NASA paid $1.6 billion more for 12 launches that should have happened since 2nd quarter 2008: the first launch was delayed more than two years to December 2010, the first two launches were just test launches, the contract said "delivery of a minimum of 20 metric tons of upmass cargo to the space station" while the actual cargo delivered is half that after 8 launches (9 with the failed one), the fabled objective of reusable stuff is still far away.
NASA spent a lot of money to gain nothing, beside the fact that they can blame SpaceX in case of failure, but that was probably the plan all along. It fails? Its SpaceX fault. It works? We managed it well.
And this you write, after seeing what SpaceX has achieved as a private company, and what the publicly funded programmes has (not) achieved in the meantime?
"The only alternatives to SpaceX are NASA's AtlasV and the Russian offerings. That's well known."
Well, apart from Arianespace (the Ariane V medium-lift and Vega small-capacity launcher), the Japanese H2-B launchers (one will fly a cargo resupply mission to the ISS in August), the low-cost Indian PSLVs, the Chinese Long March series of man-rated launchers etc. etc. That's well-known.
Saying that this launch failure has certainly put a crimp in SpaceX's plans to nuzzle up to the DoD/NSA funding teat.
All organizations have to worry about sabotage, it's part of the organizational process that must be in place and part of the reason why things are so expensive. The reason aerospace is possible is not the cad drawings of the rockets or manufacturing capabilities (the parts that everyone sees), but the organization behind them.
If the latter, government spending is essential because the market is way too shortsighted and prefers to take risks on balance sheets.
Because politicians are known for their long term thinking? All of the problems you state have to do with governments and central banking and have zero to do with free markets.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Ariane 1 - second and fifth launches failed
Ariane 2 - only 6 launches, first failed
Ariane 3 - fifth launch failed
Ariane 4 - eighth launch failed
Ariane 5 - first launch failed, two partial failures in first 11
Atlas A - only 8 launches, 5 failed
Atlas B - only 10 launches, 3 failed
Atlas C - only 6 launches, 2 failed
Delta - first launch failed
Delta II - first nineteen successful, partial failure on the 42nd launch which substantially reduced the satellite's operational lifespan (55th was first total failure)
Falcon 1 - only five launches, first three failed
Falcon 9 - nineteenth launch failed (Secondary payload on the 4th launch aborted as a precaution)
Long March 1 - only 2 launches, both successful
Long March 2 - first launch failed
Long March 3 - no complete failures in first 11, but 1 and 8 were partial failures
N-1 - only four launches, all failed horribly
Proton - third launch failed
Proton-K - second, third, fourth and sixth launches failed
Proton-M - eleventh launch failed
Saturn I - only ten launches, all successful
Saturn IB - only nine launches, all successful (unless you count Apollo 1 - it didn't launch but still killed three astronauts)
Saturn V - second launch (Apollo 6) failed, Apollo 13 doesn't count because it was a payload, not launcher, failure
Soyuz - third launch failed, with fatalities
Soyuz-U - seventh launch failed
Soyuz-FG - first nineteen launches successful (all 49 to date completely successful, including lots and lots of astronauts delivered to ISS)
Space Shuttle - nineteenth launch a partial failure (ATO) (25th was first total failure)
Titan I - fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth and tenth launches failed
Titan II - ninth and eleventh launches failed
Titan III - first and sixth launches failed
Titan IV - seventh launch failed
Zenit-2 - first and second launches failed
It was a good run, but the game is over. Falcon 9 slots in to the rankings as fourth in the history of rocket development, with a success record exceeded only by Shuttle, Soyuz-FG, and Delta II.
Maybe Falcon 9 Heavy will have better luck.
Musk tweeted: There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause.
Maybe the Russians should launch a "Not a single cosmonaut lost since 1971!" marketing campaign.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
There is a listing and pics of the lost cargo here.
The Dragon SpX-7 mission was to deliver supplies to the International Space Station and return cargo to Earth. Dragon remains the only visiting vehicle of ISS that can return a significant mass of cargo to the ground, aside from the crewed Soyuz spacecraft that can ferry a few dozen Kilograms of return items back to Earth along with its three crew members. The SpX-7 mission will carry 1,952 Kilograms of cargo to the Space Station and return 675 Kilograms to Earth at the conclusion of its five-week mission.
Crew Supplies - 676kg
Systems Hardware - 461kg
Science Cargo - 529kg
Computer Resources - 35kg
EVA Equipment - 166kg
External Payloads - 526kg
Interesting to note that part of the science cargo was the Meteor study. The Meteor study, going by the full name of ‘Meteor Composition Determination,’ was to be the first of its kind to be deployed in space, solely focused on the analysis of meteors entering Earth’s atmosphere and pin-pointing their composition through their optical emissions when burning up in the atmosphere. The original Meteor hardware was expected to arrive aboard the International Space Station in October 2014 on the Cygnus Orb-3 resupply craft that unfortunately was lost in a launch failure of its Antares launch vehicle just seconds after lifting off. Coincidence or someone really does not want this study to go ahead.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
You are aware that NASA paid almost $300 million dollars to develop this rocket, right?
Not saying it is a certainty — but rather a possibility, which should not be ruled out.
Russia today is proudly claiming legacy of the country and organization, which once sent agents to kill John Wayne — for trying to drive Communists out of Hollywood. Compared to that, crippling an enemy's space program is a perfectly normal and even noble thing to do.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Fascinating video.
Elon's said it was a 'counter-intuitive' overpressure of the 2nd stage oxygen tank.
It was about Max-Q as others have said, before the 1st stage started shutting down engines for sep. & boost back to Of Course I Still Love You
Oxygen tank bursts. 2nd stage collapses - Dragon falls clear - left behind as 1st stage rapidly accelerates with loss of mass. Flies though the 2nd stage debris, but looses trajectory as it's too light. Range guys reach for the big red button... RED (Rapid Explosive Disassembly) from the safety systems.
This guy has to do everything big
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Wait, SpaceX is doing all this without those huge, multi-year injections of cash from the US government?
Probably they should publicise that more. Because you know, the actual records show them taking a colossal amount of money, straight from the US government, to do this. Without that money, SpaceX wouldn't exist or would still be doing cheap sub-orbital experiments.
The US government loaned a huge amount of money to Musk to start his car dealership. They keep paying him for 'green' cars that do not fulfill the payment requirements.
And Tesla paid back the loan in 2013, nine years early. You can still argue it was a poor choice for the US government to loan it to them in the first place, if you want, but to the best of my knowledge it's inaccurate to imply that they're still on the hook for that cash.
Lamp-post. Lamp-post beckons...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This one?(0:50)
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Where's the Ariane Vega, or the Japanese H2 launchers or the PSLV in that list?
Vega - five launches, five successful.
H2 (A and B variants) - thirty-two launches, one failure.
PSLV - twenty-nine launches, one total failure (the first), one partial where the final stage underperformed but the payload satellite used its own propulsion system to get to the correct orbit.
That moves the Falcon 9 down the listings a bit, I think.
There are more than 500 billionaires (> $1,000,000,000 each) in the US alone. There are more than 1800 all over the world. Together they own more than $7,000,000,000,000. If that's not enough funny money to produce at least a bunch of rockets without government subsidies, then we should think about taking the money from them and giving it to more innovative people.
Video stream
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia...
if you're gonna have a launch failure with total loss of all stages, at least this seems to be one of the better outcomes. First stage is very expensive and complex, fixing a major flaw there could take a long time and lots of money. But it looks like the first stage was working fine all the way to the (fiery) end, and it was a ruptured tank on the 2nd stage that caused the failure. Much better than the first stage exploding soon after liftoff.
Remember before they changed their name a few years ago how they had "better" quality videos? Now you gotta go to bestgore or similar to see what use to be on Ogrish(sp)
You are confusing "ascension" with "right ascension". Just plain "ascension" (not capitalized) is pretty much a synonym for "ascent".
A few dictionaries define "ascension" as an astronomical term referring to the rising of the star above the horizon -- in other words the increasing of altitude in the alt/azimuth coordinate system -- but this definition doesn't appear in lists of astronomical terms so either this usage is uncommon or obsolete.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"You should quite smoking. It's not good for you."
He probably has.
It's hard to smoke after you disintegrate. Though, I am impressed he still was able to post to Slashdot.
Musk has discovered the path to silicon-based spiritual enlightenment?
Perhaps OP meant ascent?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Ascension is generally more metaphorical than ascent.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Did this Dragon have SpaceX's new SuperDraco thrusters to allow emergency escape? It's disappointing that the rocket blew up, but it's really too bad they couldn't use this to demonstrate that their escape system works. That could have turned this from a big setback to a minor step forward in approving this thing to carry people.
Elon Musk would be launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome.
He still has that option.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Yeah, pretty much. SpaceX doesn't get a Federal budget, being as it's a privately owned, publicly traded company initially financed by Musk himself.
Wanna try again? Double or nothing? MAYBE some citable sources, this time?
"Privately funded, it had a vehicle before it got money from NASA, and while NASA’s space station resupply funds are a tremendous boost, SpaceX would have existed without it."
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
citations absolutely required. Tesla and SpaceX were started by Musk with his own money.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
source?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I thought there was something being set up for the RD-180 clone to be built on American soil?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
no such thing as an Hawaiian native, they're all nomadic Polynesian islanders.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Nope. Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning with their own money. Musk bought in with other investors later on, and then fired the founders and made up the story about him founding it.
Musk and other investors raised a total of about $180m between 2003 and 2009. Tesla was always on the brink of bankruptcy until this: http://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesl... happened.
Read the SpaceX story as a homework.
try again. SpaceX *had* a launch vehicle *before* they even approached NASA for contracts.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
point ceded but mine stands: no public funding went in to development of either company. The only public money that's gone in was as remission for contracts. SpaceX can survive without NASA.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Most U.S. car manufacturers have gotten help from the state, I don't see how this is much different.
Those private space insurance premiums should be skyrocketing....
I'm guessing /. will be a lot more forgiving than if this were a NASA failure.
The higher failure rate of SpaceX is expected. Setting aside Musk's marketing machine, it's understood that the medium-term goal here is to offer a higher-risk alternative (LEO prices below):
1. Western launch, traditional way: $4000-8000/pound (larger launches cheaper/pound). Low failure rate.
2. Non-western launch: $2000-3000/pound. Slightly higher failure rate.
3. SpaceX goal: $500-1000/pound. Slightly higher failure rate.
Long-term, SpaceX could achieve the same low failure rates through process refinement, but it's silly to expect that in the next decade.
Look, if your choices are $5000/pound with a 1% failure chance, or $1000/pound with a 5% failure rate, which do you pick? The rational answer depends entirely on the price to replace the payload, as two launches with a 5% failure rate have a very low chance both will fail. If your payload is "fuel" or "supplies" or something else cheaper than $5000/pound to replace, the added risk is completely the way to go.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Worshipers? We are PR professionals, paid by Musk with his own money (no government money here)!
yes... lets just rob people of their money because *YOU* know what it could be better spent on.....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
This is rewriting history. In december 2008 SpaceX was at the end of its tether. Musk himself wrote that they had virtually no money left in the bank when they finally got the NASA contract in the nick of time. So it was rather a close thing:
In the meantime, at SpaceX, Musk and top executives had spent most of December in a state of fear, but on Dec. 23, 2008, SpaceX received a wonderful shock. The company won a $1.6 billion contract for 12 NASA resupply flights to the space station. Then the Tesla deal ended up closing successfully, on Christmas Eve, hours before Tesla would have gone bankrupt. Musk had just a few hundred thousand dollars left and could not have made payroll the next day.
Balls of steel but also tremendous luck.
The problem is: the rocket they had (Falcon 1) sucked hard. It was only *after they got money from NASA (a lot of money) that they built a half decent rocket.
You made my point well. Great rationalization!
who is lockmart?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
They agents were Russians or send by Kennedy, as he feared that John Wayne would march on Washington.
Naw. We can just take it away from them temporarily, then send it back via PayPal.
That's really the only Musk enterprise that's in the black, so it makes good sense.
Why would you be happy?
This is a setback for humanity.. You included.
You're childish and ignorant.
Wrong on all counts. The first signs of failure didn't occur until after max-q, and if you were sober when you saw the video it's very plain that it involved neither the first stage or the interstage.
"NASA" hasn't built a launch vehicle since the Saturn 1 in the early '60s. Everything since then has been built by private contractors, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, North American, etc. And only the first eight Saturn I's were built by government personnel (von Braun's group in Hunstville). The last two were built by Chrysler -- it was a big deal to pass the assembly to them (I think it may have been only the first stage at that time). As far as schedules are concerned there is no schedule pressure now for anyone like there was for NASA with Apollo in the '60s.
What alternatives are there?
Railguns (or any other sort of ground-based propulsion) physically cannot put something into orbit, and practically speaking, they can only provide a moderate boost. You'd still need at least a full rocket stage, possibly two, to actually get to orbit.
Ground-based laser propulsion might work, but it's never been tested at scale. And if there is a catastrophic failure, it will be on the ground-based components, not the vessel. In other words, the big explosion will be on the ground instead of the air.
Air-breathing rockets are even more dangerous than traditional ones, since they spend more time in the atmosphere at extreme speeds and temperatures.
Electric rockets (ion engines of various types) don't have the thrust to break out of Earth's gravity.
Nuclear thermal rockets might work, but they won't be much safer IMO.
The problem ultimately boils down to "it takes too much energy to get to space". You're going from at best 400-something m/s to Mach 20+. That takes a lot of energy, and so we have to use very energetic means to do so.
Maybe I don't understand your point? What's being "rationalized" here? Or are you unwilling to participate in honest discussion here? I rather suspect you're just trolling.
You seem to be saying that it's unfair that /.er's don't hold SpaceX to the same standards of NASA? Of course not, that was never the goal, never the point, and no reasonable person ever expected that. SpaceX is cheap - a goal of 10% of NASA's launch costs. There will of course be trade-offs. That's as expected, and it's still a good thing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm curious as to whether all of these rather similar, ridiculous posts are coming from ULA/Boeing/Lockheed Martin employees or what.
As a bacon lover, I would say the "Great Genus Of Our Times" has got to be Porcus.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I even read a news article stating "NASA's Falcon 9 fails at launch".
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
LOX becomes big bright white like that as it flashes past its boiling point returning to a vapor. You see the same with Challenger when the LOX tank fails. Kerosene looks different when aerosolized (the Kerosene is not super-cooled to become a liquid like Oxygen must be). It's not really an explosion until very late in the process. If you look carefully, you will note that the 1st stage is still flying fine as all the LOX is dumped and becomes a giant fluffy looking cloud THEN an explosion (complete with bright yellow flash) occurs probably as the Kerosene tank fails and its contents get ignited. That's the moment the 1st stage is destroyed.
It appears that the second stage ruptures its LOX tank, dumping the contents which flash to gaseous, then the Dragon capsule falls free as the upper stage structure crumples, then the upper stage Kerosene ignites and blows the stack apart.
Sadly, is seems the cargo Dragon (which appears to survive the failure) has no abort mode and therefore no commands to deploy its chutes if it suddenly finds itself plummeting Earthward and unattached to a launch vehicle when it is supposed to be ascending and accelerating. Had it been so configured, I believe the odds are pretty good that all of the payload from within the capsule (sadly not the IDA from the trunk) would have ended up bobbing safely in the ocean awaiting recovery and re-launch.
SpaceX is NOT living off the government in the "subsidized" sense (i.e. getting a pile of cash because they have political connections)
SpaceX is getting cash from the government in exchange for work performed (just like the gas station that sells gas to be pumped into a government car, or the soldier who collects a pay check, or the paper mill that delivers a massive roll of blank paper to the treasury department). Even the commercial cargo/crew development contracts SpaceX won were openly competed and the government gave FAR more of the cash to Boeing who has yet to design build and fly ANYTHING to the ISS (Reminder: Although Boeing likes to pretend otherwise, Douglas designed and built Mercury and Gemini, North American and Grumman did Apollo, and North American Rockwell did Shuttle - Boeing has no experience in designing and building vehicles for manned spaceflight or space station cargo flights).
The willfully-dishonest internet propaganda that attempts to confuse the general public into not knowing the difference between [1] SpaceX getting a multi-billion dollar contract for 12 cargo deliveries to the station and [2] ULA getting a billion dollars per year for "assured access to space" (in addition to any charge for an actual flight) seems to be aimed at shielding our remaining big three defense-contract-dependent mega-corps (Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and Northrop-Grumman) from any scrutiny. THEY seem to have made getting huge contracts, then under-performing and late-delivering (and then getting new contracts and cash infusions to fix their screw-ups rather than fixing at their own expense as everybody else who signs contracts seems to have to do) into an art form.
LockMart is a portmanteau of Lockheed-Martin, you'know the aerospace giant.
I thought SpaceX was going to cut costs by reuse, talking about 40 reuses. To make this possible they need a low failure rate like 1% or less. So I don't think SpaceX agrees with your explanation.
This is a catastrophe for SpaceX, which enjoyed, until now, a perfect launch record.
Everyone has a perfect record before the first failure.
Only an idiot thinks there won't be a failure.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
you have a giant heat exchanger to the biggest sink in existence
Which is what? You know that vacuum is a very good insulator, right? You basically have to radiate your heat away.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Railgun - payload has to survive the stupendous acceleration - General Atomics Blitzer for example *only* reaches Mach 5 (22% of LEO speed) but experiences 60,000g.
Skylon - great on paper. It's British so I'd like it succeed, but I'm not holding my breath.
VentureStar - never made it off the paper, and it's been cancelled.
SpaceX's launch system isn't revolutionary, however it's recovery system is. People have talked about it for decades, but nobody else has even tried it (no the Delta Clipper doesn't count - it's record flight was 142 seconds up to 3,140m). Airbus & ULA have their powerpoint concepts - nothing else.
Saying that this launch failure has certainly put a crimp in SpaceX's plans to nuzzle up to the DoD/NSA funding teat.
Probably, but it shouldn't - it's not like ULA have had a perfect record*
* Actually, I looked that their success rate for Delta II, Delta IV, Delta IV Heavy & Atlas V and they're all pretty damn good. Lockheed and Boeing have been in the game since the start however, and they also know how to charge for their services.
If they get even 10 re-uses, It will be remarkable, and allow much cheaper prices to orbit. I don't know what SpaceX expects in the next decade, but I don't expect them to reach their "!0%" pricing or a 1% failure rate that quickly: process refinement takes serious time. They don't need to to become a new, appealing alternative for launch.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
What does "given a pass" mean? I'm sure we'll hear what went wrong, and what they're changing to prevent it, before they launch again, just as with the failed landings. And of course we don't know what the failure rate is yet - my point was that "cheap" will make a higher failure rate acceptable for a lot of payloads. Of course I'd hope that as their process matures they'd continue improving both cost and reliability, but realistically it will take hundreds of launches to have a chance of both "good" and "cheap".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The real cause of failure? Russian sabotage! Possibly by a deep mole Russian within SpaceX.
I'm interested and curious since this was modded 4-Insightful. How exactly the falcon 1 "sucked hard"? Can you elaborate?
Elok
First we need to develop time travel technology that lets you go back in time.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
This launch was undoubtedly, like all launches: insured
Their insurance premiums must be
*Puts on sunglasses*
astronomical.
YYYEEEAAAHHH!!!
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If the latter, government spending is essential because the market is way too shortsighted and prefers to take risks on balance sheets.
Because politicians are known for their long term thinking? All of the problems you state have to do with governments and central banking and have zero to do with free markets.
In a sense you are fright that this has zero to do with free markets, for the simple reason that they do not exist, have never existed and will only ever exist in the imaginations of libertarians.
Meanwhile in the real world, capitalism depends absolutely on banks and those banks appear to require evil government central banks to prop them up in extremis.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
yes... lets just rob people of their money because *YOU* know what it could be better spent on.....
I prefer to use the word tax, but yes, that money should be put to better use than constructing ever bigger yachts.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Easy. Five launches: 3 complete failures, 1 test launch, 1 commercial launch of space debris. First fully "privately" developed rocket: its first 3 launches were all bought by US government agencies (NASA, US Army) and all 3 failed. After its only successful commercial launch, it was scrapped because none wanted to use it: so much for SpaceX could exist without NASA money. Reusable rocket, that never was reusable (but but but falcon 9 will be, believe). Ridicule payload.
It was a complete commercial failure, which is quite a problem when your aim is to make money.
and thats not your decision to make. you cant simply say you know what? they guy has a lot of money that i think id rather have.... it doesnt work that way (nor should it)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
SpaceX is the ONLY significant player in commercial launch vehicles that ISN'T using decades-old technology. They developed their launch vehicle (including engines) from scratch on their own. Orbital Sciences is launching forty year old technology with no potential for doing it better or cheaper than it was done in the past. SpaceX is on a trajectory to cut LEO insertion costs by a factor of 10. Don't hate Musk because he is a better engineer than you will ever be - try to learn from his innovative approach, drive, and business acumen. One failure out of nineteen launches for a new, from-scratch rocket design is pretty impressive, IMO.
A railgun LITERALLY cannot put something into orbit. It can do suborbital trajectories, and it can theoretically do escape trajectories, but orbits are impossible. You end up with an apogee of however high, and a perigee of SEA LEVEL. Bare minimum, you need a rocket to raise your perigee above the atmosphere. And since the ram pressure during launch would be so tremendous, in practice I doubt a railgun can be built that breaches the Karman line with a worthwhile load.
Skylon is a very, very high-risk proposal. An air-breathing rocket needs to maximize the amount of time it spends in the atmosphere, thus it follows a much more depressed trajectory, thus reaching far, far higher speeds while still in the atmosphere, and the end result is that the thermal load placed on the craft is tremendous. And because Skylon burns LH2, it's an extremely bulky vessel as well, which exacerbates the problem.
SpaceX is following a calculated path. The first-gen rocket was tiny, and completely conventional. The second-gen rocket used a conventional layout, conventional fuel, conventional combustion cycle, but it did everything extremely well. It has the highest thrust-to-weight ratio of any rocket, and the highest specific impulse of any gas-generator LOX+RP1 rocket. They've been slowly pushing towards first-stage reusability, which gets you 90% of the benefits of SSTO, with none of the drawbacks. Their planned third-gen rocket is absolutely massive, uses a cutting-edge combustion cycle, and burns an innovative fuel. They aren't instantly revolutionizing the field, but they're on track to do it.
ive never seen it written that way before is all. its always just lockheed in anything i ever see
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Look up the history of free banking. When banks (or any business for that matter) are permitted to fail they tend to act more responsibly. Of course it is in the politicians interest to have a central bank so they don't have to limit spending to what they can tax and borrow voluntarily at market rates.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.