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Commercialization

SpaceX Launch Set For Tomorrow

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 21, 2012
Filed under , , ,

SpaceX Launch Attempt Set for 3:44 AM Eastern on Tuesday, May 22nd
“Tomorrow, Tuesday, May 22nd, at 3:44 AM Eastern, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) will attempt to launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft to orbit in an exciting start to the mission that will make SpaceX the first commercial company in history to try to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station. Sending a spacecraft to the space station has only ever been accomplished by four entities – the United States, Russia, Japan and the European Union.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

33 responses to “SpaceX Launch Set For Tomorrow”

  1. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    Let’s hope that Spacex’s fast turn-around with the Falcon repair helps put another nail in the coffin of ‘cost plus’ contracts. In a cost plus situation, any delay makes the company money. Not launching is profitable for them! They’re only too happy to add more analysis, devise new tests and simulations because regardless of what happens, they still make a profit (It helps greatly to not have any competition).

    Unlike the NASA/prime contractor model, Spacex combines the efficiency of complete design control and the motivation for mission success in one place.

    Cost plus contract: Our design must meet with the customers satisfaction. If they screw up… so be it.

    Fixed price contract: Our design must succeed to satisfy the customer.

    Fast turn-around (successful fast turn-around) of problems is something that Spacex is selling and it’s one of their proprietary technologies that will be difficult (if not impossible) for the ‘big boys’ to reproduce.

    Ask yourself this. Would the F-35 be as bogged down as it is if the contract was fixed price, paid in milestones and with prohibitive penalties for production delays?

    BTW: I’m almost glad that Falcon stayed on the ground this time. I watched the attempt on NASA-TV but should have been watching the Spacex feed. I saw it afterwards and it was pretty cool. Check it out.

    See you there 🙂

    tinker

    • DTARS says:
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      When musk said HE made the decision to go with 9 engines, not less, wasn’t that like obvious he made that choice to get on with it??? You guys are funny sometimes.

      Tinker 

      All this talk about number of engines. Engine out capability has me thinking about your falcon 7 core/ one Merlin2 per core 3 stage to orbit HLV again.

      This one. Only with Merlin 2 in place of the 9 merlins

      “justatinker
      1 hour ago
      DTARS:

      You might as well make your Falcon 6 pack into a 7 pack, a core stage with six strap on Falcon stages. That’s 63 Merlin engines with four staging events. The outer six boosters cross tank fuel/oxidizer and drop off in pairs as they empty. The fourth stage is the center core which is air-lit just before the last two strap on boosters are shut down and jettisoned. This configuration exceeds the payload capacity of SLS at 150 tonnes to LEO (doing ‘back of the envelope’ calcs) and doesn’t even need an upper stage (the core stage is the ‘upper stage’ and makes orbit). Better throttling of the Merlin engines would make a configuration like this feasible because it provides for a slower climb through the lower atmosphere, unachievable with solid boosters. It’s the same cross tanking scheme I used in my mega launcher applied to the Falcon 9. It wasn’t until I ran the numbers a couple of times that I realized I hadn’t taken the core stage thrust into account (although I did account for it’s fueled mass).

      So, mull over that. And thanks, DTARS, I wouldn’t have bothered to tinker that up if I hadn’t seen your post.

      Cheers:

      tinker”

      At launch it would have 6 merlin2s all firing at once right?? With cross tanking determining when each pair of stages dropped off right? Well could such a vehicle have engine out capability??? Would the cross tanking pumps have to change directions on the fly to change staging events to get it to orbit? 6 engines seems like a pretty good number to get you to orbit with possible engine out capability to me. Then you light your center core for BEO boost right???

      Guess if you have engine out, your center core engine could lite early with cross tanking back to the central core maybe.

      The central core could be hydrogen if you want it for clean Space Real estate right????

      SLS first stage with two merlin2 falcon heavies bolted on the the first stage all liquid right??? 

      Would you bolt the cores together in an H pattern or have all the strap-ons hug the central core? Wouldn’t H pattern be easier/simpler/cheaper?

      Safer, all liquid

      Simple, only seven engines including your BEO stage

      Engine out capability? 

      With truss platform over the cluster able to lift huge heavy/volume loads.

      Small cores, easy to manufacture

      Could be manufactured in same plant as the falcon 9, falcon heavy.

      With three staging events to Leo the first to events should happen at relatively slow speed so recovery and reusability should be pretty easy to do with same system Space will soon be using on it’s falcon heavy one year soon. 

      Maybe Horizontal integration for the two pair 3 core clusters.

      With fast simple mating to center core on pad.

      Have engine trouble before launch, roll out a back up cluster, tested ready to go lol

      Built by Spacex under cots so a tenth the price of SLS and much sooner than never, leaving NASA with money to do cool stuff this decade instead of flushing it down the SLS jobs program.

      Maybe heavy lift isn’t good for launch rate, But is you share cost/manufacture with your small and mid size LVs seems to me could become affordable sooner than later ???? 

      Doesn’t take a rocket scientistt

      Lol just thought I’d think about what might/should happen after this launch! Lol

      Parallel lines
       

      • John Gardi says:
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        DTARS:

        Spacex has Merlin engines that have been fired for the equivalent of twenty missions of three minutes each, over an hour, without being overhauled. The Merlin is tough!

        Using twenty seven Merlins on Falcon Heavy shouldn’t be an issue if they can work out the little bugs early on. Falcon has never flown on time but, except for the first flight of Falcon one, every Falcon has had a successful first-stage flight.

        All of my cross-tanking multi-core launch vehicle ideas have one thing in common… to get the core tank (hopefully the largest one) to orbit. It’s just another way to not throw things away. The strap-on stages would be reusable, returning to Earth to carry out more launches. The core tank that makes orbit is useable as real-estate, storage or even, eventually, raw materials. By starting with that one rational, the configuration, design considerations and commercial opportunities dramatically change.

        Here’s one configuration of my Million Pound Launcher that I call the ‘Yacht Club’ (a variant of my ‘Immigrant Special’ capable of putting 1800 souls on orbit with full launch escape for every one).

        So, the yacht club members chip in, buy their core tank and find a customer to deliver it to on orbit. During the year the yachters work on their ‘boats’, all built to the same form factor on the outside. Once everybody is ready to go, the core tank is mounted to the launch platform. The six ‘Tugs’ would be mounted around the bottom of the core tank. The tugs would carry all the rocket engines and fuel or oxidizer for the flight (The design is flexible to different fuels, types and numbers of engines, it’s the philosophy that’s different). The yachters boats are attached above the tugs around the core tank.

        Off they go. Launch! If everything goes well, the core tank, two tugs (rigged for orbital operations) and the yachts make orbit. The yachts get set free to spend a few weeks on orbit then return individually to Earth. The core tank and it’s tugs continue on to deliver the tank to the customer. The two tugs then return to Earth for reuse.

        The yachters make a profit on the tank sale which helps pay for next year’s tank and another fun ride in space.

        tinker

        • dogstar29 says:
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          The Merlin is tough, but no more so than the famous Reaction Motors XLR-99, the engine which powered the X-15, which was also good for a full hour MTBO. Until (irony of ironies) Thiokol (now ATK) bought Reaction Motors and  decided to shut it down. Perhaps reusable liquid propulsion wasn’t something that fit in with their philosophy.

    • Stuart J. Gray says:
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       “In a cost plus situation, any delay makes the company money.”
      OR designing things that do not need to be designed.

      I have personally witnessed this. example – Cost plus contract means we developed a custom analog circuit with FPGA, made PWB, PWA, did development testing all to read one analog voltage and turn on the “Blue light special” to indicate that the spacecraft was powered. It probably cost ~$50,000 dollars of taxpayer money just for the development.

      If this had been a fixed price contract, one front panel meter with alarm function from Omega would have cost $200.

      • John Gardi says:
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         Stuart:

        Thanks for that.

        I’m sure it’s the thousands of situations just like your example that make up the brunt of over-budget development costs… which lead to over-budget operations costs (If it’s ever operational).

        tinker

        • DTARS says:
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          Cost plus churches always took twice as long to build than fixed price and cost twice as much. I did both. Cost plus was always a RIP-OFF plane and simple!

          • John Thomas says:
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             Too bad you didn’t work on any challenging cost-plus contracts. The ones I worked on had significant unknowns making for a challenging design and test effort.

            I hope you don’t think that all cost-plus programs are rip offs as they are the only way to get things built when pushing the envelope of knowledge. A perfect example are probes to the planets including orbiters and landers.

          • DTARS says:
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            I can understand that Mr. Thomas, I would think another good example of a good use of cost plus would also be the moon program. The goal was land on the moon. By the end of the decade. The goal is achieved but the price to the customer is still high. Don’t you think that your work could have been done cheaper on a cots type fixed price only the time factor may have changed if the quality had stayed the same????

          • no one of consequence says:
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             Apollo Saturn made it to the moon. But did so for about the same as the cost of the Interstate highway system.

            The Interstate highway system has brought in 50 years of GDP. To bring in significant GDP from space, one won’t be able (if ever) to spend like Apollo Saturn.

            The model has to change. We can’t work it like Apollo Saturn. Its that simple.

            Leave cost plus for what commercial can’t (yet) do – like always in space vehicles.

          • ASFalcon13 says:
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            “Don’t you think that your work could have been done cheaper on a cots
            type fixed price only the time factor may have changed if the quality
            had stayed the same????”

            Not necessarily, it might not have been done at all.

            In a fixed-price contract, the contractor is likely betting a nontrivial fraction of its net worth on the project.  If it takes an approach that subsequently fails, then the failure could take a decent chunk of the company with it.  Because of that, a company on a fixed-price contract is more likely to take as “safe” an approach as possible, meeting the program goals but achieving little else.  In order to minimize risk and maximize profit, the contractor has no incentive to deliver anything beyond the minimum required to fulfill the contract. Or, if no known safe approach exists, the customer may not find a contractor with the ability to fulfill the contract goal that’s actually willing to take on the work.

            Conversely, if the customer wants the contractor to push the envelope a bit, maybe take a more high risk/high reward sort of approach that will yield gains in technology and market growth beyond the original goals of the program, then a cost-plus moves some of the risk off of the contractor and gives it enough security to be able to take those risks.

            For what it’s worth, SpaceX isn’t really pushing the envelope much at the moment.  From a technological standpoint, they’re launching cargo and capsules into space using kerosene-fueled chemical rockets…we’ve been doing that since the ’60s.  On the business side, Elon’s just applying lean manufacturing concepts and business models…again, not exactly revolutionary thinking.

            I’m not necessarily saying that NASA’s approach to fixed-price versus
            cost-plus is the correct one, I’m just saying that there are situations
            where a cost-plus is more advantageous than a fixed-price.

          • John Thomas says:
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             DTARS, there was NO cots equipment available that could accomplish what was required. Piece parts perhaps (although now rad hard parts are hard to find or expensive), but for a unique design in a high radiation environment over a long lifetime, there is nothing out there to support that. Not only are exotic, even custom parts required, unique testing is as well.

            Even for typical land based designs, cots products frequently fail. I had a batch of standard processors that failed to work at the low range of their specified temperature.

    • ASFalcon13 says:
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      So, let me get this straight…as discussed in a previous thread, if Falcon 9 scrubs, it’s a good thing, but if any other launcher scrubs, it’s a bad thing?

      “Not launching is profitable for them!”
      …considering that scrubs due to vehicle problems would likely have a negative impact on the contractor’s award fee, I’m not sure that scrubbing is as profitable as you seem to think it is.

      For what it’s worth, out of the missions I’m involved with in some way that were launched by ye olde cost-plus launch provider last year, two of the the three (Juno and MSL) went on the first window.  The third, GRAIL, had four scrubs which totaled a two-day delay in getting off the pad, but all but one of those were due to upper-level wind shear.  If launch scrubs are some sort of profit generator, as you seem to think they are, ULA hasn’t seemed to be taking advantage of them recently.

  2. meekGee says:
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    It’s beyond just the cost+ contracts – it’s the mentality that they set. Take ULA, for example, which was formed when Boeing and LM, who really despised being on a competitive fixed-cost contract with the AF, decided to merge operations.

    The AF went along with it, supporting the dubious spin that there was not enough market to support two EELVs (bogus, since there’s the entire civilian market – which is not using the EELVs because, right, they are too expensive)

    So now you have the customer’s purchasing department, which in a sane world should have said “over my dead body” going along with the charade, since even without a formal cost+ structure, they’re all in cahoots and they all win.

    It got so deep into the psyche, that when SpaceX came along with a true competitive and innovative spirit, there was a sense of entitlement to the exorbitant rates they were charging (both for development and for operations) and therefore a sense of being disenfranchised. SpaceX became the ENEMY…

    My god, they are putting “vision” in front of “near term revenue”. 

    Gladly, SpaceX has been able to brave this, and hopefully in a few year’s time this entire episode will just be a chapter in the history books.

    So back to the topic at hand:  GODSPEED DRAGON!

    • John Gardi says:
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       meekGee:

      My god, they are putting “vision” in front of “near term revenue”.

      Like I said… only better!

      tinker

      • meekGee says:
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        Glad to be of help…  Years of pent up frustration with the usual suspects…

        And then an extra helping when I witnessed the ice-cold reception they received from the space community.

        I so much hope we’re seeing the end of it now.

    • dogstar29 says:
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      Anyone know who the contracting officer was for the EELV program at the time? Maybe he would care to explain.

      • meekGee says:
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        I’d love to have this conversation – it’s not the first time I’ve ranted about cost+ and ULA, and if there’s a concrete explanation here that I’m missing, I’d want to be taught it.

  3. DTARS says:
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    Nice to have a NASA watch Spacex thread up to comment in before Spacex makes history tonight.

  4. James Lundblad says:
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    I expect Dragon’s solar panels will make it visible during flyovers?

  5. John Gardi says:
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    James:

    At 58 feet wide and painted bright white, we may be able to see Dragon at that. It would help greatly if the ISS were around for reference… and it will be on the orbit after Falcon/Dragon launches!

    Go here: http://www.heavens-above.com to track the ISS. They may even put up a Dragon link if they can get the data.

    At exactly 5:15 a.m. EDT on Tuesday morning, the ISS will be directly over Detroit, Michigan. Type in your location on the heavens-above site to get a ground track with a timeline. If you live within a few hundred miles of the southwesterly to northeasterly track centered on Detroit you have a good chance of seeing the ISS. The Dragon will be somewhere on the same orbital track behind the ISS. But how far behind? There’s the rub.

    Can anyone tell us how many minutes behind (from a ground observers point of view) that Dragon would follow the ISS?

    There are also opportunities to see Dragon and ISS much closer together on Wednesday and Thursday mornings on either side of the Tuesday morning track.

    I’ll give ‘er a try for sure, weather permitting.

    tinker

  6. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    Heck, we can do this! A picture tells…

    [edit] My best ball park figure puts Dragon less then ten minutes behind ISS.

    tinker

    • Steve Pemberton says:
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      Tinker, I read your post this morning but I wasn’t able to reply until now. I was figuring 12 minutes based on the following – ISS passed near KSC at about 3:36:30 am,  7.5 minutes before Falcon launch.  I figured I would add 4.5 minutes to that (approx 9 minutes to orbit / 2) as a guestimate, which would make the Dragon flyover 12 minutes after ISS.  This morning I saw the ISS fly over, just barely through an opening in the clouds, unfortunately I was not able to see Dragon as the clouds got worse in the next few minutes and so I was not able to check my estimate.   Did you have any luck sighting it?    A side note – all of the pre and post launch info that I could find said a launch time of 3:44 am.  I was thinking that with a one second window the odds of 3:44:00 are one in sixty so most likely that wasn’t the exact launch time.  Shuttle launch press briefings there were always reporters asking for exact launch time.  It makes a difference if you are watching a launch in person (which I wasn’t today).   Just wondering what was the exact launch time this morning.  Not that I will lose sleep over it if I don’t find out, I already lost that this morning! 

  7. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    With tears in my eyes, I christen thee (without authorization) the “Anne Inez McCaffrey”. She would have loved to see this. #DragonLaunch RT

    tinker

    • DTARS says:
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      It is a great moment Mr. Tinker 🙂

      All that we have dreamed about here on NASA WATCH may come to true SOON!!!!!!

      • John Gardi says:
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         DTARS:

        Yeah man, I was stunned! Did you check out the #DragonLaunch hashtag on Twitter? The enthusiasm was amazing. This was different from other launches because this is our rocket, our spacecraft. Not the governments or some huge corporations, but the peoples!

        Did you check the ground track above? Are you in range of the pass?

        tinker

        • DTARS says:
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          My old eyes couldn’t see it but I’ll check with Roper Mountain Science Center near me and see if they plan to have their telescope on it over the next few days. It should be interesting to see if their is any local excitment here. I pretty much follow this alone.

        • John says:
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          This was different from other launches because this is our rocket, our spacecraft…..

          What?  Dragon and the launch vehicle ARE owned by a corporation… NOT ‘the people’ nor the government.  Space-X is in it for the money, not for a heartfelt contribution to our society.  Take the money away and they are gone.

          • DTARS says:
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            Spacex is in it because Elon Musk wants to build a railroad into Space and take US humans to space to make life for US humans safer and better. The money is just a tool that makes that dream possible unlike the piggies, congress, the primes, some in NASA that have been conspiring or fumbling along ALL these years! that has resulted in our space future being ripped off!!!

  8. richard schumacher says:
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    Woo hoo!  Now comes the real fun.  Presumably SpaceX can load software while in flight, y’know, just in case.

  9. Joe Cooper says:
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    Yeah, they launched, but what SpaceX fanboys and apologists fail to realize is that they had multiple delays. This puts them well behind competitors like… And… Well never mind, but the point is it’s bad and you should feel bad.

  10. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    From the pictures of the launch:

    NASA’s star is rising.