SpaceX Pausing Launches to Study Falcon 9 Issue on Crew-9 Astronaut Mission (space.com) 30
"SpaceX has temporarily grounded its Falcon 9 rocket," reports Space.com, "after the vehicle experienced an issue on the Crew-9 astronaut launch for NASA."
Crew-9 lifted off on Saturday (Sept. 28) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aloft aboard the Crew Dragon capsule "Freedom" [for a 5-month stay, returning in February with Starliner's two astronauts]. Everything appeared to go well. The Falcon 9's first stage aced its landing shortly after liftoff, and the rocket's upper stage deployed Freedom into its proper orbit; the capsule is on track to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday afternoon (Sept. 29) as planned. But the upper stage experienced an issue after completing that job, SpaceX announced early Sunday morning.
"After today's successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9's second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause," SpaceX wrote in a post on X.
Indeed, a Falcon 9 had been scheduled to launch 20 broadband satellites for the company Eutelsat OneWeb from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday night, but that liftoff has been postponed.
"After today's successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9's second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause," SpaceX wrote in a post on X.
Indeed, a Falcon 9 had been scheduled to launch 20 broadband satellites for the company Eutelsat OneWeb from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday night, but that liftoff has been postponed.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
- NASA 14 (Challenger / Columbia)
- SpaceX 0
Pretty high success rate for SpaceX.
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You should probably also count Apollo 1 there.
Re: They plus or minus on NASA success percentage (Score:3)
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Crew Dragon also underwent ground human testing before being deemed flight worthy, although I admit it's not directly comparable to an Apollo module.
Re:They plus or minus on NASA success percentage n (Score:5, Informative)
In context NASA has performed 179 human spaceflights (135 were Shuttle) and SpaceX is at 15
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:They plus or minus on NASA success percentage n (Score:5, Insightful)
Also NASA's space flights started near the beginning of manned space flight in a much more difficult environment. SapceX is a continuation of NASA's existing knowledge and has had their support at all times. Not to say that SpaceX's achievement is nothing, just that the comparison is not fully fair.
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What about USSR?
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USSR is not relevant any more, Russia is making itself obsolete slowly.
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160 human flights since 1961
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Look you are talking to someone who thinks SpaceX is cool as shit and deserve all their praise for those successes but that doesn't mean we can just throw stats out there with zero context to what they actually mean. If we want to compare unmanned flights to manned then lets do that but this whole, and no offense to you, but Musk-obsessed fanboys constantly think SpaceX's success means we have to rag on NASA as if they are some staunch competitors when the opposite is true.
NASA and SpaceX are a shining ex
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Just wondering where the privates stand compared to NASA on the failure percentages with this tally in a different column.
Let me put it that way. There's no way I'd sit on a rocket riding to space even if you paid me to do it, I hate even flying normal airplanes, but if someone forced me to, I'd sooner go to space three times over on a Falcon 9 than once on anything else, SLS included.
Re: They plus or minus on NASA success percentage (Score:1)
Re: They plus or minus on NASA success percentage (Score:4, Informative)
STS: 135 flights, 2 catastrophic failures.
Falcon 9 block 5: 322 flights, 1 catastrophic failure.
Falcon 9 has definitely had a few issues of late, though.
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That family of companies fires people for capricious reasons.
Maybe a key employee is now ex-.
SpaceX, you're being too picky (Score:2, Troll)
Just go with the Chinese approach. Launch your rockets and cross your fingers that none of the rocket parts lands on a city!
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The whole point of TFS is that SpaceX was intentionally dumping this second stage into the ocean, and they missed their target zone. The joke was to contrast that against what the Chinese do with their launches, since their stages have come down in various odd places - such as Australia.
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It's surely a matter of opinion whether Australia is an odd place or not, although there may be unanimity with respect to Canberra.
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Re:Automation is the answer (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometimes it is manufacturing defect, but rarely. Space is hard
Re: Automation is the answer (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)d generally disagree with that when it comes to falcon 9 block 5. The one catastrophic failure was a manufacturing defect. Various landing failures have been either design issues or engine reconditioning issues.
Re: Automation is the answer (Score:1)
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More vibration than normal during the livestream (Score:3)
SpaceX is not Boeing (Score:5, Insightful)
With Starliner, Boeing KNEW it had problems even before launching it... but they convinced NASA to go along with the decision to fly anyway. It was entirely predictable that a vehicle with problems in the relatively benign environment of Florida would only get worse in the hostile environment of space.
With SpaceX, development vehicles can be flown with some uncertainties... Musk has said that if you're not breaking things, you're not moving fast enough [in innovating and experimenting]. With mature systems and paying customers, however, [like Crew Dragon atop Falcon9] they exercise all sorts of wise caution. It's rather ironic that NASA considered Boeing the more experienced, mature, wise, and capable vendor when selecting bids for commercial crew and thus gave Boeing twice as much money as SpaceX, and here we are watching SpaceX show itself to be the more professional and experienced company with wiser leadership.