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SpaceX Launch Fails To Reach Space
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Aug 03, 2008 09:05 AM
from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed dept.
from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed dept.
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.
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Scotty's Final Mission 221 comments
Jane Q. Public writes "According to Ars Technica, the ashes of James Doohan, who played "Scotty" in the original 'Star Trek' series and several movies, were aboard the SpaceX III launch and were lost when the launch vehicle failed." Which totally wouldn't have happened if Scotty was the engineer.
Update: 08/05 00:09 GMT by KD : BoingBoing has a tribute to Doohan from his son.
Update: 08/05 00:09 GMT by KD : BoingBoing has a tribute to Doohan from his son.
[+]
SpaceX's Fourth Launch Attempt RSN 71 comments
jcgam69 writes "SpaceX's Falcon 1 is on the pad in the South Pacific Kwajalein Atoll ready for its fourth launch attempt, according to a blog post over the weekend from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The countdown is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 23, between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. PDT, though the launch window will extend through Thursday if need be."
[+]
On Fourth Launch Attempt, SpaceX Falcon 1 Reaches Orbit 518 comments
xp65 writes with the just-announced success of Elon Musk's SpaceX's long efforts to reach orbit with a privately-developed launching craft: "T+0:08:21 Falcon 1 reached orbital velocity, 5200 m/s Nominal Second stage cut off (SECO) — Falcon 1 has made history as the first privately developed liquid fueled launch vehicle to achieve earth orbit!"
dbullard adds "This was a completely new vehicle — it's not using any previously developed hardware. All developed from scratch. No government supplied hardware, Russian engines, or old ICBM motors. My hat's off to the employees of Space X — all 550 of them. (Note — no 'cast of thousands,' just 550).
They've got video of the entire launch."
[+]
SpaceX Successfully Tests Nine-Engine Cluster 182 comments
the_other_chewey writes "At their test facility in Texas, SpaceX, the privately funded space-flight company, have successfully tested their nine-engine cluster which is planned to provide the heavy lifting capability for their Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 Heavy rockets.
The firing lasted three minutes (a full 'mission duty cycle,' i.e. a simulated launch) under full power, delivering 3.8MN (or 855,000 lbs.) of thrust. SpaceX have made a video of the test available. The Waco Tribune has a short report about it, with comments by locals."
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One company doesn't succeed at once (Score:5, Insightful)
...and a whole industry is pronounced dead. Can you be more dramatic?
Re:One company doesn't succeed at once (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:One company doesn't succeed at once (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you can clue me in as to what the specific need is for this rocket to begin with. I guess NASA doesn't have a suitable one
You guess wrong. NASA has plenty of "suitability" with the Delta rocket. This program is an attempt to get the job done cheaper.
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Re:One company doesn't succeed at once (Score:5, Informative)
"While the company vows to carry on, this certainly raises some questions about the likelihood of successful privatization of the Space industry."
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*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,
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Re:One company doesn't succeed at once (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you could consider them to be the most successful in their industry.
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More ambition than sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [bbc.co.uk].
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
A large portion of NASA's overhead does not come from axillary systems, it comes from managers and politicians.
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the three launches have all failed for different reasons, and seemingly reasons not indicating design flaws but rather mundane problems and errors that weren't caught (a rusty bolt, separation failure of the stages, etc.,) it makes me wonder if this is not rather an exposure of a flaw in the business model. Essentially they are all quality-control issues. Could it be that you simply need to have a largish organization to provide the checks and redundancy to catch the flaws that are always going to crop up in a complex system?
Is this a failure not of the booster, but of a barebones, "cheaper" organizational structure that's just not up to the task?
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it is a shame (and probably a liable thing) that satellites are destroyed during this phase
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowledge and know-how don't come cheap in the rocket business.
Which raises the question of whether or not a private organization can afford the learning curve.
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Insightful)
With other factors being entirely different, it does not follow logically that you can just isolate one factor (funds being paid to politicians and managers vs. no such funds) and conclude that is the cause of SpaceX's troubles.
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Informative)
There was one failure in the Apollo program before XI: Appolo I with an electrical fire on board during a test, that killed all 3 astronauts. After that VII, VIII, IX and X were incident free, as well as XI and XII. XIII had a major problem but made it back home. Until XVII and the cancellation of the program there was no more incident.
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, there were multiple serious incidents... For example: Apollo 14 couldn't dock with the LM while extracting it from the S-IVB stage - so they (literally) rammed the CSM into the LM, exceeding the allowed force to force docking. During the landing, the LM lost the landing radar, rather than aborting the pilot continued the landing. While Apollo 16 was in orbit around the moon, and prior to separating the LM, it was discovered the wiring harness for the CSM propulsion system was seriously damaged. Mission rules required an abort of the landing and a return to Earth (so that the LM propulsion would be available as a backup) - but they waived that rule and proceeded with the mission anyhow. (Not to mention that the accident on 13 wouldn't have happened if they had investigated the faulty LOX tank rather than improvising an emptying procedure and using the equipment outside of it's design specs.)
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly right, private citizens have no right or business being in space.
If it weren't for this "bureaucracy" (NASA's incredible precision, redundancy, and lack of explosions), where would Roger Chaffee, Virgil Grissom, Edward White, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Rick Husband, William McCool, and Ilan Ramon be today?
Luckily, the former Soviet Union also has a perfect record that started at Nedelin where only 126 people died when a rocket exploded.
China and Bill Clinton also had a problem with an Intelsat 708 where it crashed into a village, but we should just stick with the facts and blame entrepreneurs.
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly right, private citizens have no right or business being in space.
You're reacting to a point the parent never made. He simply pointed out the hubris that has been so characteristic of the space privatization movement of late. Space flight is hard and requires a huge investment of money, time and talent, whether done by governments or private entities. The "free market" - whatever that is - does nothing to obviate the need for extensive testing, exhaustive engineering, and redundancy that is necessary to achieve consistent success.
I hear people on this forum and elsewhere talking about space hotels and the like in just a few years through private enterprise, and they seem like naive children to me.
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Informative)
Not for a from-scratch rocket, it isn't. Atlas, which was to become our workhorse, had an atrocious start. 3 MX-774 failures, then two XSM-65A failure. The third flew to its desired range, but that was only a mere 1,100km. 5 out of the 8 XSM-65s were failures. Then they had 10 launches of Atlas B with 3 failures, 6 launches of XSM-65C with 2 failures, The Atlas D had 135 launches with 32 failures. The Atlas E had 48 launches with 15 failures. Atlas Able had 4 launches, 4 failures. The Atlas F had 70 launches and 17 failures. I could keep on going. The overwhelming majority of these failures were early on in the program, in the 1950s and 1960s.
Yes, SpaceX has the benefit of looking back at what worked and what didn't. But they don't have the benefit of adopting already-tested technology, for the most part. And, to make it worse, they have to pull everything off in what's almost a mass-production environment.
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Re:More ambition than sense (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Scotty's final trip (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Scotty's final trip (Score:5, Funny)
"This article contains information regarding a deceased person who has recently been involved in a launch failure."
That's a new one....
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Question likelihood of privatization? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
IT raises questions about SpaceX alone... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it doesn't. It raises questions about SpaceX and their ability to produce a launch vehicle with an acceptable flight record. It raises questions about private willingness to accept failure on a design they think is fundamentally sound. It doesn't raise any more questions about the "future" of private spaceflight than when an Pegasus blows up or when SeaLaunch has a failure. The ENTIRE spaceflight communit owes a debt to and exists on a continuum of government influence. That doesn't make government the only entity that can test those waters. It just means that in the 20th century spaceflight was subsidized heavily, by and large. Since the entire industry was basically created by government action and most products either had only a government use or were dual use, even corporations who were ostensibly private relied on these pioneering steps made by governments. Even with that in mind, plenty of companies out there operate without government subsidy--and if you consider a government contract earned (and not a subsidy....but I don't), many do so. There are THOUSANDS of companies supporting private aerospace and private spaceflight, just not exclusively.
We need to get out of the mindset of "only government can do X". Sometimes that is true. Sometimes governments are the only ones who can provide certain services (or more accurately, they are the only ones willing to). But in the case of spaceflight, this is not always true. In the 1960's, only government was willing to go to space because the cost was large and the payoff in dollar terms was small (and highly uncertain). By the 1970's cable companies and phone companies were paying to go into space. IF the space race had never happened, we would probably have built launch vehicles to enter low earth orbit anyway. It would have come later (maybe much later), but it would have happened.
Failures don't represent a fundamental flaw in an industry. SpaceX had insurance, so this failure is not financially fatal for them--insurance is a good counter to the argument of "too much risk" in private spaceflight. If they fail, someone else will take up the mantle.
Re:Why We Shouldn't Run Government Like a Business (Score:5, Insightful)
Project Mercury: six manned launches, all successful. total men in orbit: four. (that's fewer than the Shuttle carries on one flight, by the by.
Project Gemini: ten manned launches, all successful. total men in orbit: sixteen different men - four went up twice.
Shuttle: 123 flights so far, two unsuccesful. total men in orbit: about 800 (I don't feel like checking each flight for actual crew count, so it's only "about")
For the Soyuz fans out there: 99 flights, four unsuccessful (defining unsuccessful as either not reaching orbit or crew dying on reentry) OR ten unsuccessful (defining unsuccessful as ay of the above or failing to complete design mission (usually a failure to dock with Salyut when that was intended mission)), total men in orbit: about 245 (some were launched on one flight, landed on another - I may have miscounted some in sorting those out).
Note that Shuttle had 14 dead in its 123 flights (about 1.6%), Soyuz had four dead on its 99 flights (about 0.8%), but on a per flight basis, Shuttle had a failure rate of about 1.6%, Soyuz about 4% (or 10%), depending on definition of "failure". Neither Gemini nor Mercury suffered any failures (by either definition) but between them they put about 2% of the men into orbit that Soyuz and Shuttle combined did.
Note further that Shuttle put into orbit more men than all other space programs combined. By a factor of three.
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