SpaceX Conducts Full Thrust Firing of Falcon 9 79
Toren Altair sends us this excerpt:
"Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) conducted the first nine engine firing of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on July 31st. A second firing on August 1st completed a major NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) milestone almost two months early. At full power, the nine engines consumed 3,200 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second, and generated almost 850,000 pounds of force — four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft. This marks the first firing of a Falcon 9 first stage with its full complement of nine Merlin 1C engines. Once a near term Merlin 1C fuel pump upgrade is complete, the sea level thrust will increase to 950,000 lbf, making Falcon 9 the most powerful single core vehicle in the United States. The Falcon 9 will launch SpaceX's spaceship Dragon with up to 7 humans from 2009 on."
We discussed SpaceX when it won the NASA competition to provide low cost commercial transport to the ISS, and also when it launched an earlier design. Basic specs for Falcon 9 are available, as well as a more technical paper (PDF).
Re:So...only a year to go? (Score:5, Interesting)
In any case, thorough testing of the launch vehicle is absolutely necessary if for no other reason than to know the weight limit for the manned payload. But the design of the launch vehicle is robust (it can withstand various failures without scrubbing). Also, they'll be using these same engines (the Merlin 1C) in smaller launch vehicles, so they'll have plenty of reliability information.
To top it off, they're running a couple months early. As far as I see, they shouldn't have too many difficulties for a 2009 launch. *
* - God willing and the creek don't rise. **
** - Er, that is, God willing and the funding don't dry up.
-fsh PS - Although I don't have personal experience in the aerospace industry, I'm doing research at an observatory right now. Not that that means anything, I just like telling people that I'm working at an observatory right now!
I've been there. =) (Score:5, Interesting)
It was really exciting to see real rocket work going on in person. The "mission control" room was such a nerd fantasy. There was a big swath of giant flat screen monitors, each glowing with thin, phosphorescent lines of data. The glut of wires, tubes, ratings, warning signs, and big pieces of scary looking equipment made it a fantastic afternoon overall.
I wish Elon Musk all the luck in the world, and I hope someday I can afford to drive around in a Tesla Motors car.
Oh, and the test site is located at an old weapons test site. There are all these weird looking bunkers peppering the surrounding countryside. It felt like a scene from a Marvel comic or something. Unfortunately nothing went wrong and I failed to develop super powers due to radiation exposure.
I fully realize this comment contributed almost nothing to the discussion of the article, except to brag that I've been there and to share my excitement over all the loud, large, and complicated stuff they have.
Re:hehehe (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Duh (Score:3, Interesting)
One problem the aerospike has suffered from has been common to all single-stage-to-orbit engines: a nozzle of one shape may give optimum thrust at rest, at sea-level pressure, but be relatively inefficient at high velocity in the upper atmosphere. Optimize for one situation and you lose efficiency at the other. I know of an innovation or two that just might help the aerospike overcome this limitation, to an extent not possible with conventional nozzles. We shall see.
--
"As a matter of fact, I am a rocket scientist."
Re:So...only a year to go? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah but NASA are fantastic engineers. Their interface design and validation are orders of magnitude ahead of anybody else.
NASA didn't design the LEM, Northrop Grumman did. Spacecraft are designed by aerospace companies (like Northrop-Grumman, Boeing, Rockwell, and now SpaceX), and then NASA picks the design they like best. The best engineers are typically at the private companies because the pay is better than at government run NASA.
Consider the first shuttle flight. [...] And it worked first time. They were hot at the time, coming off the experience of Apollo.
Well, the first space shuttle, the Enterprise, never went to space. It's easy to have a successful first flight when you have the resources to build a full size scale model to 'test' with. And they weren't coming hot off Apollo; the space shuttle was about a decade later.
The most complex and unlikely machine (pretty much) ever built.
They made it needlessly complex. This is why they have had, and continue to have, so many problems. The designers promised several launches each month and a payload cost in $50-$100 per pound range.
The scientific community at the time said much the same things about the shuttle design that they currently say about the ISS; that it's too much money for too little return. Some even go so far as to suggest these overly-complex plans, pushed on the unsupportive science community are essentially aerospace company welfare.
Mod parent up (Score:5, Interesting)
America NEEDS spacex (and Orbital Transport as well). So does the rest of the ISS team.
Re:hehehe (Score:2, Interesting)
Absolutely!
Don't forget the number of launch failures that happened at Cape Canaveral / Cape Kennedy. Some of the more spectacular ones happened when the Gemini missions were going, and they had some fairly spectacular aborts / KATOs with the early Saturn I test launches, along with some equally spectacular engine failures for both the F1 and J1 engines, along with the early tests of the STS Engines - the bells were apparently not as robust as planned, and the engine bells went into a harmonic coupling that made them look like they were made of jello...and then abruptly collapsed at the test stands at Marshall. "Rocket Science" only works after you've destroyed several prototypes in the design and test process.
No, I don't work for NASA, but I'd do it in a heartbeat.
--ScottKin
Re:So...only a year to go? (Score:3, Interesting)
And they weren't coming hot off Apollo; the space shuttle was about a decade later.
Actually they were coming hot off the Apollo. Nixon gave the go-ahead for the shuttle project while still being in office. It's just that by the time the first shuttle was finally launched into space, after many setbacks and delays partly due to the needless complexity (mandated by the military who wanted greater glide capability), Apollo started to become a distant memory.
Not obviously, actually. (Score:2, Interesting)
So what he's saying is, they can afford to have engines become nonfunctional (obviously not explosively so.)
Actually, from what I read, the Merlin 1C engines are protected with respect to the catastrophic disassembly of one of their fellows. I'm not sure how big a boom the Kevlar shielding can take in terms of preventing a multi-boom situation, but it's there to stop debris from a failed engine from turning into a chain-reaction failure.
Re:So...only a year to go? (Score:2, Interesting)
No, those were just drop tests to see how the shuttle glided. The shuttle is notable in NASA history for being the first manned vehicle to not have an unmanned test in full launch configuration. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo all had unmanned test launches of the vehicle. The first time a shuttle (Columbia) was sent into orbit, there were two crew members on board.