SpaceX Conducts First On-Pad Test-Fire of Falcon 9 109
FleaPlus writes "On Saturday, SpaceX successfully conducted a launch dress rehearsal and on-pad test firing of their completed Falcon 9 rocket, with the 15-story tall rocket held down to prevent launch (videos). SpaceX is one of several likely competitors (ranging from the upstart Blue Origin to the more experienced Boeing) in NASA's new plans for commercial crew transportation to low-Earth orbit. SpaceX has been cleared by Cape Canaveral for the Falcon 9's first orbital launch next month, carrying a test model of the company's Dragon cargo/crew capsule, although CEO/CTO Elon Musk has cautioned that they're still in the equivalent of 'beta testing' for the first few flights."
Re:15-stories? (Score:5, Informative)
I know americans have problems with units for length but really "15 story tall"? Exactly how tall is a story?
How tall are you? A story is a bit taller than that, to account for ceiling mounted HVAC ducts and lighting. Intuitively its going to be about 10 feet per story, to one sig fig. Or about 3 meters. So, figure around 150 feet, or around 45 meters.
I agree that it is about as annoying as specifying all computer related measurements in "libraries of congress".
It would have been much more interesting if the journalist compared it to the size of a common launcher, like a space shuttle stack. Its 25% taller than a ready to launch shuttle stack or whatever it turns out to be.
Re:Great! Keep (slowly) driving down the cost... (Score:5, Informative)
1) Will the bureaucracy actually be reduced? I suspect not.
You could staff 30 SpaceX companies with the number of people downsized by the shuttle program ending. Or in other words, its not a good time to be an aerospace engineer. (Has it ever been a good time to be an aerospace engineer?)
Downsize 27000 jobs as regards the shuttle shut down. Note that is a delta, for the industry not just NASA.
I know its an industry wide figure because NASA only employs 17900 people per wikipedia.
http://app1.kuhf.org/houston_public_radio-news-display.php?articles_id=1267053819 [kuhf.org]
SpaceX employs 900 people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX [wikipedia.org]
Re:Great! Keep (slowly) driving down the cost... (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I'm actually Asian American (with both parents being Asian). So while I might be (overly) nationalistic I don't think I'm being racist. And while I'm not living in China, I'm living in a country right next door.
By the way, since African Americans can say the "N" word without opprobrium, can I use the "C" word. ;)
Re:This is NOT the first firing! (Score:3, Informative)
Still, my point was that if the first firing had failed on a NASA vehicle it would have been (correctly) called out for it, while anything NewSpace is fine and dandy and they can do no wrong. My "flagrance" is a result of this submitter always spinning his submissions and having conveient omissions (the first failure in this case).
I would have to disagree in this case. NASA has had launch aborts on very public launches, including the Space Shuttle. They weren't decried as catastrophic or the end of the mission and loss of vehicle. It was merely an abort that forced a recycle of the launch. For the Shuttle, that implies a 24-hour turn around at a minimum to perhaps a week in delaying the launch for the next attempt. This abort for the Falcon 9 was no different, and if anything this test firing also tested that abort procedure in an excellent fashion. What is interesting about the Falcon 9 is that this abort, fix, and re-attempt can happen in as little as 10 minutes for SpaceX, as has been demonstrated already with the Falcon 1.
SpaceX needed some test data from lighting up the engines on the pad. Instead of one test, they got two, which to me sounds like SpaceX got a bargain including seeing an error condition they hadn't seen previously at the test stands in McGregor. Some heads rolled and some procedures are being changed as a result of that mess up too, so all wasn't lost in the effort, and the engineers have data from two launch attempts already to compare before the real thing happens.
Hopefully the engineers at SpaceX will make use of that data in a positive way to get the Falcon 9 off the launch pad without a hitch.