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.""
That's how it works (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of comment is "Sort of" (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, they are doing a great job. Second flight at they reached 200 miles! Thats beyond the ISS.
Re:Rocket Science? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why shutdown at that point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Insightful...? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not trial and error; they didn't simply go to a junkyard, wled a bunch of pieces of interesting stuff together to make what they thought was a rocket, and then fired it off hoping it would work. They started from first principles, used known technologies and augmented them, then attempted to launch the thing, and will use the telemetry to improve the design. Trial-and-error was more what Robert Goddard was doing in the New Mexico desert.
Re:What kind of comment is "Sort of" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Rocket Science? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Rocket Science? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can have your product done:
Please choose only two of the above options!
In the case of Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, they choose options 1 and 2. In the case of SpaceX, they have instead choosen options 1 and 3. This is where they are indeed doing something different than the more traditional companies. That Mr. Musk has deep pockets helps some, but he is trying to do it on the cheap and is willing to have some delays before he can have his dream. For government operations, they have to get results in four years or their budget will be cut (in the USA).
If SpaceX were run like a government agency, they would have had their funding cut already, or some congressional oversight committee that would have mucked up the process by demanding more "oversight" in the form of increased paperwork and bureaucratic Bu**s***. Lucky for them, they only have to answer to one person who nearly everybody in the company knows on a first name basis... and he knows them too.
The Pinto actually was a pioneering effort, sorta (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Full of sophomoric cynicism today are you?
You sound a lot like the folks back when who said we'd never drive at 60 MPH 'because it will suck all the air out of your lungs', or the engineer who claimed that 'rockets will never work in space because there's nothing to push against'. Few people in 1900 would have predicted airliners, satellites, nuclear weapons and ICBMs less than 70 years later.
Colonizing space is the only hope for our species to last more than a few more millenia IMO. It's good to see the visionaries pushing forward despite Luddites such as yourself.
Congratulations to SpaceX, and kudos to Elon Musk for doing something worthwhile with his fortune!
Re:That's how it works (Score:3, Insightful)
This is awesome. (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of the success or failure of the launch, this is mightily impressive. My hat's off.