SpaceX's Falcon Launches... Sort Of 164
JHarrison writes "Spaceflight Now is running a story on the SpaceX Falcon 1 launch yesterday. Those of you watching the stream will have no doubt noticed the telemetry failure at 04:50, and turns out that was more than them turning the webcast off.. "A year after its maiden flight met a disastrous end, the SpaceX booster lifted off at 9:10 p.m. EDT (0110 GMT Wednesday) from a remote launch pad on Omelek Island, part of a U.S. Army base at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Controllers lost contact with the Falcon during the burn of the second stage that would have placed the rocket into orbit around Earth. "We did encounter, late in the second stage burn, a roll-control anomaly," Elon Musk, founder and chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said in a post-launch call with reporters. Live video from cameras mounted aboard the rocket's second stage showed increasing oscillations about five minutes after liftoff, just before the public webcast was cut off. The rolling prevented the necessary speed to achieve a safe orbit, instead sending the stage on a suborbital trajectory back into the atmosphere.""
pfft (Score:3, Funny)
Cup half full (Score:3, Funny)
Look on the bright side. (Score:3, Funny)
Incoming message from Slippy: (Score:5, Funny)
Oh the irony. (Score:5, Funny)
Comment:
Sig:Babelfish of limited use here... (Score:3, Funny)
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"Rocket fall down go boom."
Actually I think I know what the problem was. As it is son-of-paypal-entrpreneurism, the actual button for turning on the roll control was tiny and at the bottom of a large screen offering to upgrade to super turbo rocket engine pumps and 3% off your next tank of LOX.