SpaceX CRS-1 Dragon Launched and in Orbit
SpaceX Successfully Launches First Official Cargo Resupply Mission to Space Station
“Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) today successfully launched its Dragon spacecraft aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on the first official cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. The launch went off on schedule at 8:35 p.m. ET from Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The SpaceX CRS-1 mission marks the first of at least 12 SpaceX missions to the space station under the company’s cargo resupply contract with NASA. On board the Dragon spacecraft are materials to support investigations planned for the station’s Expedition 33 crew, as well as crew supplies and space station hardware.”
SpaceX CRS-1 Mission Update: October 8, 2012
“Approximately one minute and 19 seconds into last night’s launch, the Falcon 9 rocket detected an anomaly on one first stage engine. Initial data suggests that one of the rocket’s nine Merlin engines, Engine 1, lost pressure suddenly and an engine shutdown command was issued immediately. We know the engine did not explode, because we continued to receive data from it. Our review indicates that the fairing that protects the engine from aerodynamic loads ruptured due to the engine pressure release, and that none of Falcon 9’s other eight engines were impacted by this event.”
ORBCOMM Launches Prototype Satellite – OG2 satellite’s insertion orbit lower than planned
“The OG2 prototype satellite, flying as a secondary payload on this mission, was separated from the Falcon 9 launch vehicle at approximately 9:00 pm EST. However, due to an anomaly on one of the Falcon 9’s first stage engines, the rocket did not comply with a pre-planned International Space Station (ISS) safety gate to allow it to execute the second burn. For this reason, the OG2 prototype satellite was deployed into an orbit that was lower than intended. ORBCOMM and Sierra Nevada Corporation engineers have been in contact with the satellite and are working to determine if and the extent to which the orbit can be raised to an operational orbit using the satellite’s on-board propulsion system.”
Obama for America-Florida Celebrates the Success of the Space X International Space Station Resupply Mission and the Innovative Vision of the Obama Administration
“Tonight’s launch of the Space X, Falcon 9 rocket and the autonomous Dragon spacecraft marks another extraordinary new milestone in space, further demonstrating the advances we have seen in just four short years on Florida’s Space Coast. This launch is the first in 12 contracted flights to resupply the International Space Station, making it the second trip by American company Space X, to the space station following its successful mission in May of this year.”
Commercial Spaceflight Federation Congratulates SpaceX and NASA on their Successful Launch of Dragon
“SpaceX’s hard work, dedication and its incredible partnership with NASA should be commended. Congratulations to the entire team at SpaceX and NASA for their successful launch and I look forward to seeing many more under the CRS program.”
Keith’s note: Yes, there was a Mohawk at SpaceX during the launch.
Keith’s update: The previously posted SpaceX launch video has been made “private” shows the first portion of the ascent. This slow motion video gives a much clearer view of the engine anomaly. If you watch this video just after 5:18 point in the video – just after the announcer calls out “vehicle has gone supersonic” – you can see a problem of some sort with one of the engines – a flash and a puff of dark smoke.
Yet – watch the rocket itself as this apparent anomaly happens – it seems to be oblivious to this engine problem and just keeps going steadily without any apparent deviation – adjusting instantly. At the press conference it was noted that the first stage seems to have burned a bit longer to compensate for an engine problem. That’s the whole design strategy behind having 9 engines – and it sure seems to have worked per the SpaceX website “This vehicle will be capable of sustaining an engine failure at any point in flight and still successfully completing its mission. This actually results in an even higher level of reliability than a single engine stage.”
More details will be released in the morning.
Keith’s 11:30 pm update: According to a statement provided to NASAWatch by Elon Musk at SpaceX: “Falcon 9 detected an anomaly on one of the nine engines and shut it down. As designed, the flight computer then recomputed a new ascent profile in realtime to reach the target orbit, which is why the burn times were a bit longer. Like Saturn V, which experienced engine loss on two flights, the Falcon 9 is designed to handle an engine flameout and still complete its mission. I believe F9 is the only rocket flying today that, like a modern airliner, is capable of completing a flight successfully even after losing an engine. There was no effect on Dragon or the Space Station resupply mission.”
Go Flacon! Go Dragon!
Will there be live video of the launch available somewhere?
Congrats to Space X! — We get to resupply the space station without depending upon the Russians. It was a wonderful launch and the video cams were really excellent.
Way to go Space X — great job.
Folks:
Did they lose an engine about two minutes in? I saw the flash but thought it was clouds. Someone at the news conference mentioned seeing debris as well. The burn to orbit seemed a little slow from what SpaceX predicted.
tinker
There was an anomaly in one of the engines so they burned a little longer. Gwynne Shotwell didn’t have time before the post-launch press conference to get more info from the propulsion guys, so they expect to have something released tomorrow on the details.
Yup, that’s been confirmed, now.
Did they lose an engine, or was this the planned shutdown of one merlin prior to staging?
I saw something as well but I don’t have any other information at this time.
So, not a nominal launch, but on the plus side it’s a hard demonstration of the launcher’s fault tolerance.
Yeah, I’m glad this happened because it shows that the Falcon really can lose an engine and still put its payload in the proper orbit. It sounds like the engine blew apart in some way, which is even better because it shows one engine coming apart won’t cause its neighbors to be destroyed.
Except for the Orbcomm. SpaceflightNow is reporting it is in a lower than desired orbit and they are evaluating if it can be recovered.
Yeah, that is unfortunate. But the only reason the Orbcomm satellite ended up in the wrong orbit is that it was a secondary payload. They couldn’t do the second burn of the upper stage because of ISS safety concerns. If Falcon 9 had been launching only the Orbcomm satellite, the course wouldn’t have been anywhere near the ISS and the second-stage burn could have gone off as planned even with the engine out on the first stage.
So, the flight wasn’t a complete success. It was a success for the primary payload but not the secondary.
Potential primary payload customers shouldn’t be put off by this, but it makes being a secondary payload customer on a CRS flight less desirable (and likely the insurance costs for the secondary payloads will go up).
Moreso, it’s likely that any other primary payload wouldn’t have the same extreme restrictions as an ISS approach. So even with identical circumstances, it’s likely that both primary and secondary payloads would have been properly delivered.
So, last time the launch aborted at the last second, and a SpaceX
engineer had to change a bolt, or something. Took a couple of hours.
This time they lose one engine (ice, bad weather?) and they make it to orbit, no problem.
Judge by how easily difficulties are overcome. It’s a very reliable system.
The media now seem to be making a fuss about the SpaceX engine problem.
It now seems that the Delta launch last Thursday had an RL10 engine issue on the upper stage. A team at ULA have been tasked to look into it.
These things happen, and shouldn’t detract from the accomplishment.
At least two items of meter or larger size on a side. Around the time of an anomaly on engine 1.
Perhaps an engine overpressure on a gas generator, forcing the “corner” apart and into the supersonic flow.
Perhaps another reason to not have corners but an octagon of outer engines ala V 1.1?
5.23 in looks like they lost the upper right engine. I wondered about the orbit 197 x 328 km. Is that nominal altitude? The Saturns lost engines and yet performed their missions so while this is worrisome, it is good they made it to orbit.
I’m surprised NASA only loaded 882 pounds out of the 7297 pound capability. At least they’re able to return with 1673 pounds of return cargo.
Mass and volume aren’t the same thing. A lot of stuff can take up space without weighing much. This flight carried dozens of small experiments from various schools & universities, for example. I’m not saying the capsule was filled to the brim with bubble-wrap, but it’s going to be fairly rare for CRS missions to come very close to Dragon’s mass capability.
Also, considering both an HII and ATV just left ISS within the last month, their supply needs are probably not substantial right now. And those were flights planned well over a year in advance. SpaceX’s CRS approval was only received in late August, so it’s a safe bet they weren’t going to leave a potential gap in critical supplies shipments in the winter/spring of 2012 if COTS-2 failed.
Hopefully they get closer to capacity. This launch works out to $179,000 per pound.
http://www.wisegeek.com/wha…
Every launch gets us closer to saying goodbye to overpriced in-house NASA launch vehicle program – SLS.
If the heavy version is a success, that will be the end of SLS.
Not quite. It can still redeem itself if it a) were to justify itself with L2 Gateway or b) absolutely become the non HR HLV done outside of MSFC, cost and payload based. Neither of these are in the cards.
“Arsenal space” would have to get its mojo back instead of the last 40 years of excuses. You either build something optimized for an existing mission profile for what you have on hand, extremely disciplined. Or you take EELV/Saturn components (NOT SDLV!) and build a massive HLV beyond what Ares V was going to be, using economics of EELV to bring down costing (giving up on the useless solids). Either direction would be survivable (but in no way optimal from use of resources for ROI). Would get back to the root motivations for the point of NASA’s involvement in a follow on LV.
But we are leaving that behind given COTS/CRS successes. It is very likely as you say, that we’ll see commercial crew and Falcon Heavy ahead of Orion and SLS. Beyond that, its a matter of propellant logistics and mission assembly/architecture – what do you want to spent for – missions and mission hardware, or more development of rarely flown launch vehicles at 20x-100x cost?
NASA must transition to “space exploration” and leave the “big fireworks” to companies that specialize in such, given markets to do so.
Not necessarily. Elon envisions the Falcon Heavy as a supplement to the SLS missions not as a replacement. Either you accept his word on it or you may think he is just putting his poker face on and he really thinks he will supplant the SLS. It’s your choice.
I will say this, SO FAR, congress seems very serious about the SLS. We’ll have to see what happens with the up coming budget negotiations. If it gets cut then, then by default Elon will supplant the SLS with the Falcon Heavy. Then KSC, MSFC and Stennis can be made into mausoleums.
I was always under the assumption that Elon was just bidding his time, letting the SLS die of budget asphyxiation. He has already sawn the seed of doubts over the potential of SLS with his mention of Falcon X/Heavy X/XX as a possible alternative(one that is much cheaper and happens far sooner) if NASA/Congress want to keep a Super HLLV on the table. All to often people write off these concepts as mere “brainstorming ideas”, but I think he threw them out there knowing full well how ill concieved SLS was and the type of political climate we are in today where every penny saved is a vote earned.
I vote poker face. Bad mouthing SLS would needlessly make enemies; reality will catch them up soon enough.
“Now … begins the SpaceX era – the era of reliability.”
The era of dodging bullets ?
Given that there will be bullets it is better to be capable of dodging them.
Cause everyone knows the engine-out approach never got anyone to the Moon.
To be fair, the Apollo 13 engine-out took place much later in the mission. They’d already built up a great deal of velocity at that point.
And it was actually a very *good* thing that the engine cut out, as it had developed *severe* pogo. If it had not shut down, it might have ruptured the second stage fuel tanks, and led to a loss of launcher and crew. (That’s the worst case. Best case, if the third stage remained intact, would’ve been to abort-to-orbit.)
In other words, we’re *always* dodging bullets when it comes to rocket launches. It’s easy to be nonchalant and point to Falcon 9’s redundancy as a reason not to worry about an engine cutting out. But in truth, we should *always* worry about *any* anomaly.
I don’t mean to suggest it’s invincible; just a little miffed by the suggestion that it’s not a legitimate thing to do.
Except on two Apollo missions which lost a total of three J-2 engines.
Ok, I see they have confirmed that there was an “anomaly.” I am curious to know what this means, graceful shutdown or something more dramatic.
Slo-mo video of the incident. Worth noting, it happened precisely at max-Q (1:20). http://www.youtube.com/watc…
I hope they are transparent with the investigation on this. I know it’s only the 4th flight, but it would be bad precedent for commercial crew to not be completely open. Then again it is a private company.
And in any case, us gawkers need our fix.
Actually, there was an engine issue with one of the earlier flights, if memory serves.
Combine with the alleged non-relight of the second stage, this is a cause for some concern.
TMK the only engine issue was delamination of the very thin nozzle extension on the second stage engine on the first launch, fixed by cutting off the defective portion of the nozzle and apparently fixed on subsequent launches.
There was an “oxidizer-rich” event on one of the first two Falcon 9 launches. SpaceX sued someone who was running around saying “The second stage blew up.”
Later it came out — I think the actual event was later publicly documented during a safety review, with the fix being a software adjustment.
It sounds like the second stage wasn’t allowed to go because of the earlier failure which caused lessening of overall performance. Dragon mission and ISS safety took huge precedence over the secondary payload getting into correct orbit.
Folks:
Seems the engine failure has flown under the radar of the news media. Not a peep… yet, even though it was mentioned during the news conference. For any other launch vehicle I can think of, a bad day. For Falcon, glowing headlines.
It is like waiting for the other shoe to drop wondering when the SpaceX (or commercial space in general) detractors are going to chime in.
Anyone remember which two Saturn V flights had F1 engine outs?
tinker
Don’t know of any. Apollo 6 and Apollo 13 had second stage center engine outs.
The Apollo 6 second stage engine failure was in one of the outboard engines (Num. 2), not the center one. Then, as a result of a wiring error, when valves on this engine were closed to shut it down, one of the signals actually went to an adjacent engine (Num. 3), shutting it down also. The S-II continued flying even with these two adjacent engines out, although deviating from the planned trajectory. The S-IVB third stage then took over and put the spacecraft into orbit, although at 93×194 naut mi instead of the planned 100 naut mi circular. (The Dragon orbit was similarly reported to be off the planned values, but in this case with a perigee that was 70 mi low.)
The initial Apollo 6 J-2 engine failure, as well as the failure of the S-IVB J-2 to restart two rev later, was found to be caused by fatigue failure of fuel line bellows. This failure was not observed in ground testing: the bellows were inadvertently “strengthened” by ice that formed on them from air that was liquified by the cryogenic liquid hydrogen in the line.
[A good discussion of Apollo 6 is given in “Apollo: The Race to the Moon” by Murray and Cox.]
Apollo 13 and 15? 15 did lose a parachute on its way down.
As a result of the decision to purge the hypergols prior to landing, the corrosive engine plume burned through one of the parachute harnesses.
The first Saturn five launch lost TWO engines on the S-II stage. One engine lost power and when they commanded a shut down on it, the wiring was wrong and it shut down another engine.
It still made it to orbit.
Actually, it was the second Saturn V launch that lost two engines.
There is no mention of the engine loss in Von Braun’s account nor on NASA’s website – http://www.nasa.gov/centers…
Was there a coverup?
The debris looked like ice.The engine was shutdown by the computer.The computer ran the other engines longer to make up the loss.The orbit was correct and a new high,low one.Last time it was circular.
SpaceX has a contract for 12 flights and 21 metric tonnes.So about 42,000lbs.That comes out to 3500lbs per flight.So they are already 2500lbs short.If the capsule is maxed out they will have to use the trunk or make a bigger capsule.If the cargo has to be climate controlled,they have a lot of work to do to fulfill their contract.This load is embarrassing when ATV is 14,000lb.,HTV 8000lb. and Progress 6000lb.8.8lbs. of clothing!
You never stop do you? It’s like a broken record.
And the ATV cost $400 million per launch.
Don’t forget that each cargo craft is also volume limited, so how much goes up with each flight is actually a function of the cargo’s effective density as well as its shape. As Dennis pointed out, ATV is 3x more expensive. Calculating things using your number then gives SpaceX lifting 18,000 lbs for $399 million versus ATV’s 14,000 for $400 million. SpaceX wins, then, using your metrics.
Yeah, it has the potential to carry upwards of 143,000 lbs in the next 11 flights. So what is your point?
Also these flights are much cheaper than ATV (not to take anything away from the ESA) as Dennis mentioned. On top of that as I have mentioned countless times across NW and other space affiliated websites; There is more to launch restrictions than weight. I.E. VOLUME!
I was wondering how the SpaceX contract is written. Does the 21 metric tons in the contract and 60 metric tons mentioned by Gwynn Shotwell include down mass as well as up mass? USPS, Fedex, UPS all charge for both. Just a thought as to why the amounts quoted seem higher than what we saw. If it is up mass + down mass then the total on this flight is closer to 2500lbs.
nm
S13:
Falcon/Dragon have been flying light these last two flights. They can carry six metric tonnes payload, 3 pressurized, 3 in the ‘trunk’. Once NASA starts getting it’s Orbital Replacement Units lined up as unpressurized cargo, you’ll see Dragon carrying full loads up to ISS. They’ll triple their contracted payload weight easily.
tinker
NASA chose what to send up on this flight. As others have pointed out, there were other freighters at the ISS recently and NASA didn’t know if Dragon would be operational by this time until a few months ago, so it makes sense that NASA wouldn’t have a huge amount of cargo ready to go for this flight.
Going forward, it’s likely we’ll see NASA sending more up on each flight.
Hey did you ever think that NASA is using this spacex cargo program to get us a way to put humans in space again FASTEST???
The emphasis should be on a manned system that is safe, priced right, and reliable. Fastest should not be one of the criteria. We’ve already seen what happens when the emphasis is put on maintaining or pushing a schedule.
Obviously, SpaceX is in a good position because they’ve already flown a successful mission with a cargo version of Dragon, while Boeing and Sierra Nevada have yet to do so and won’t be doing so any time soon.
COTS and CCDev are different programs and thus have different goals and requirements. While SpaceX is learning a lot that will help in crewed Dragon development and NASA is learning about Falcon 9, it’s highly unlikely that any of the requirements for CCDev are being checked off.
While watching the launch live I saw a group of red bars pop up on one of the flight controller’s monitor right about the time of the anomaly, as well as heard someone say something about a “software alarm”. Anyone else catch this?
I’m in the camp of “the LV performed as designed, move ahead”. It will be interesting to discover what caused the engine to come apart, but I don’t think this calls for any sort of “stand down” on the part of SpaceX’s launch schedule, and as has been expressed by others am actually MORE confident in the reliability of Falcon9 now that it has shown that it can indeed survive a loss of engine.
No, but I’ll be sure to look for it on the replay.
Yep, heard that also. (But I didn’t notice the flare and debris :-<)
I’m glad that wasn’t my imagination. I remember hearing “software alarm”, but I can’t find it in the replay video on YouTube. And I’ve seen a couple people remark on AmericaSpace that they heard no mention of an error or alarm in the live feed. I’m disappointed the full 12 minutes isn’t archived on livestream.
I agree that it’s not necessarily a cause for putting the next launch on hold, but if I were SpaceX I’d certainly be putting some long hours over the next couple months into squeezing every bit of information possible out of the telemetry and looking for anything they can test against the engines they have built for the CRS-2.
That was one heck of a problem. It certainly looked like an explosion of some sort on the SpaceX video. We’ll have to wait for the investigation and report as to exactly what happened and how they will mitigate it in the future. While it’s great that the rocket still managed to deliver Dragon to orbit, one has to wonder how lucky they got and that the incident did not damage other engines.
Luck or design? One should credit design, but embracing the comfort that “it’ was designed to lose an engine” shouldn’t whitewash the fact that an engine was lost.
I am way past giving design credit as opposed to luck with regards to space travel. We are not that good. Luck was what made solid joints acceptable, until the luck ran out. Luck was what made foam loss from tank acceptable, until luck ran out. I would bet there is no joy at SpaceX over the “successful recovery.” I doubt this manner of failure was expected. I will go with they were lucky and hope that they will not assume that luck will work the next time.
Do they have a draco on the booster yet to try that flip manuver?? Sure would be great if they could have had this thing make a soft landing in the ocean to get a look at the sick engine.
For spacex to try to partley recover a first stage don’t they need to be doing day time launches??
How many launch oportunites per 24 hours does ISS have??
Why two night launches in a row???
No Dracos on Falcon 9 stage 1.
I am still waiting to learn the full story on the situation, but if what has been released is the full picture, it looks like the engine was intentionally shut down. Was what happened next “ok” and expected? I don’t know yet. I hope SpaceX is fully transparent, although I also realize they have competitive technologies and approaches they want to protect. As far as luck goes or doesn’t go, I was under the impression that the SRB seals were a understood problem, so that event had nothing to do with luck, bad or good. The foam is a different story. I don’t think they ever really figured it out- foam is foam. Probably a good reason to stop flying if you can’t predict the performance of a critical part of your system.
“I am way past giving design credit as opposed to luck with regards to space travel. We are not that good. … I doubt this manner of failure was expected.”
That’s nonsense. SpaceX has been saying for years that they’ve designed Falcon 9 so it has engine-out capability. The put structures in place between the engines so that one coming apart doesn’t damage the others.
SpaceX designed exactly for this contingency. It makes no sense at all to call it luck that they designed in a capability and then it worked when it was needed.
It’s not luck when the system responds as designed, and in this case the system was designed to compensate for an engine out.
I don’t know that there much luck involved with space flight. There is a lot of good planning, and there are a lot of very well trained people that are able to improvise when the unplanned happens.
Trust me on this one, you don’t want pieces of shroud and engines flying around the base region of your vehicle when it is traveling at supersonic speeds. Especially at higher altitudes. There is nothing predictable about this situation. A definite increase in risk associated with this failure. Somebody was good to their rabbits foot that nite.
I don’t think it’s lucky when the highly unlikely event doesn’t happen. Perhaps it’s just a matter of semantics.
TPS loss (debris) from the shuttle ET was considered likely, but the consequence of the event (catastrophic) was entirely misjudged. I think the term that got coined was “normalization of deviance” by various participants of the investigation teams. I’m sure some robust corrective action for this problem will be implemented otherwise lets just forget from whence we came.
SpaceX says it has designed the Falcon 9 with protective shrouds between the engines so that the catastrophic failure of one does not affect the others.
I want to apologize to ATV for posting here of how Dragon would eventually beat ATV in cargo to ISS.I was going by what SpaceX had posted.I should not have been surprised.I should have divided the number of flights into the contracted amount,a long time ago.SpaceX and NASA has made the USA look bad.
How have NASA and SpaceX made the US look bad?
Awesome! Redundancy does work.
There has been some rational speculation that SpaceX is being straightforward about the event: That the engine was shut down (not RUD) and that the sudden loss of pressure at max-q caused the nozzle to shred. This is a far different scenario from what has been bantered about so far.
I don’t like the sound of the orbcom mission however.
There was no mention of problems with Orbcomm deploy at the 10 PM news conference last night. Shotwell might not have had proper data. Or she’s borrowing ULA phraseology and using successfully to mean “We didn’t blow up the payload and got into AN orbit…”
Unless I missed it, there wasn’t any mention of the OrbComm satellite at all in the pre-flight or post-flight briefs. It’s not even mentioned in the press kit. Kind of an odd thing to not talk about, since this secondary capability is a pretty cool thing for SpaceX to offer customers with small loads that they can’t afford to launch by themselves.
As for the news conference, I’d accept that she simply didn’t have that information by then. She did mention trying to get in touch with the propulsion guys for details on the first stage anomaly. I’m sure some will say she strategically failed to get a hold of them, but even if they had gotten in touch, the conference was all of 90 minutes after the launch. Far too early to have conclusive, detailed information about what happened.
It has also just been suggested that the debris seen in the feed might be the fairing or part of it (to me it looked like an engine bell, but I could easily be incorrect). Given that the event occurred around Max Q, I suppose loss of a fairing (taking engine one with it) is a possibility. Seems like photo analysis time.
I would also expect SpaceX to take a good look at both the Merlin 1-C and 1-D to check for common failure modes. This will probably delay things just as Hawthorne wants to ramp up production.
Another possibility is that the next Falcon 9 launch will be made using the 1-D engine (I *think* there was to be one more using the 1-C). That might also delay things depending on design review and availability of the 1-D.
Tinker
When the second stage releases the piggyback satellite at 750 miles, how long does it stay in orbit after doing its job. Does it fire its engine to deorbit itself?
This flight is taking a 1000 pounds to ISS plus lifting 360 pounds to 760 miles up. Is there more left in the tank or is this about the limit of this version of the falcon nine. Trying to understand the limits by an example.
I thought the engine out recovery was cool. Can a falcon 9 lose two first stage engines and still make orbit?
When do they hope to fly the first version of falcon 9 V1.1?? and do they still plan to fly this current version as a falcon heavy first or has the falcon heavy been moved back to be built out of the Falcon 9 1.1 components???
lolol
Would it be in Spacex interest to change their second stage to run on Hydrozine like the chinese rockets so that it could be left in orbit and refueled??
lolol last question 🙂
If one was building a Spaceship that ran on water, is it possible to have an engine that ran on hydrogen gas and oxygen gas NOT liquid Oxygen and liquid hydrogen?? Is a gas fueled engine impossible or just less efficient?
LOL
Just wondering about the possibilites of making a rocket hydro/oxygen engine that was simple and cheaper. Seems to me that if you can split hydro and oxygen so easy with solar cells/NOVA that you could pump oxygen gas in a rocket chamber add a little hydrogen gas and get simple thrust?????
Making cheap spaceships that could live off the “land” lol “moon” or mars orbited water.
Joe Q non rocket scientist lol
Thanks Joe Q public wants to know 🙂
Just now saw your reading list Mr. C Thanks
DTARS:
From the second of launch the Falcon (any rocket) gets light as it goes up. Falcon probably only needs all nine engines for the first 30 seconds, if that. After a minute, maybe only six engines would get them to orbit. You see?
SpaceX would consider the second stage fuel needed to park a satellite as part of their cargo mass. So, they’d leave enough aboard to insert the satellite into it’s orbit plus enough for disposal (or recovery) of the second stage.
tinker
Pardon me, tinker.
You’re assuming that the payload isn’t maxed out.
If we’re running at close to max payload (unlike this flight), a loss of too many engines at max-Q might mean that you won’t make your target orbit. Note that even here, with a light payload, they came up short to the desired orbit.
Second stage (and Dragon) reserves can make this up. But at some point the gap becomes too large to cover with reserves.
So this (and other) anomalies this flight endanger the mission. Typical growing pains for a company and its LV – I’d be surprised if they didn’t have any.
If they want to get to the Atlas V level of success they appear to be striving for, they’ll need to stay one step ahead of these surprises.
For all other LV advocates here, remember, the same can happen to all birds. The Atlas V guys aren’t smug about it, they sweat bullets everytime they launch to keep that record.
Indeed, if Falcon were an aircraft it would be about 5% of its way through its flight test program. Such incidents remind us that the real prizes will go to the first completely reusable launcher and orbiter.
I believe SpaceX has said in the past that Falcon 9 can lose one engine at any time and still achieve orbit. Early in the flight, they can only lose one. Later in the flight they can lose 2 or more engines.
I think that’s when launching Dragon. If they’re launching a heavier non-Dragon payload that is close to their max they probably have reduced engine-out capability.
At launch, Falcon 9 has a thrust-to-weight ratio of almost 1.5. Yeah, they can afford to lose an engine.
At that point, it’s just a matter of payload ratio. The more payload, the less margin for engine-out.
FloridaToday is reporting that the engine shutdown resulted in a pressure release that caused the engine fairing to rupture.
I don’t think my insurance policy covers something like this. If the babies were grown I’d go. Also, what is the LAS scenario like at Max Q? I hope they do a full up LAS test at Max Q shutting down all 9 engines.
I hope they do a full up LAS test at Max Q shutting down all 9 engines.
You design balancing stress – max Q counter pressure is the engines. If you shutdown/”spool down” 9 turbopumps at once, you’ll lose the counter pressure and the bottom of any stage will collapse, the engines will rip out of the thrust structure, and the stage will tumble.
Won’t affect any LAS though – because it would drop acceleration.
Real tests for LAS:
Max-Q and engine(s) detonate – attempting to chaotically “manufacture” a greater than safety factor of structure. That’s pushing to the uttermost – would work likely due to the transient loads themselves lagging any transient overpressure. Because denotation transient is short lived.
More dangerous than a engine detonation is an uncontrolled engine not shutdown – because it could far exceed structural. One reason that engine controller design is critical – one of the “gotcha’s” for example in converting SSME from 3 engines to 5 for SLS is this very issue.
It’s a harder test if the engines are still running, because the LAS has to run away from the rocket while it’s being chased at full speed. Shutting down the engines means the LAS performance doesn’t have to be as good.
Sureeee I’m 56 and not a chicken lol, Still as safe as a shuttle I bet.
I’m 58 George, and I’ll gladly strap in as well.
Replying (belatedly) to a comment you made to no one of consequence,
“I’m assuming that tugs, if we ever get any, will take a lesson from tow trucks — park on the access to where trouble is most likely to occur and drink coffee until a call comes in.”
Given the energy required to change orbital plane, I wonder if the best place to “park”, given current technology, is on the ground. One orbit cycle west of the launch site (about 15°?)
With the ORBCOMM loss, someone mentioned that they might have been better off with the Falcon 1, and it got me thinking. If SpaceX can build a reusable F9, they can sure as hell build a reusable F1. In which case, having a ready-to-go reusable F1 set up in parallel with each F9 launch would provide a backup orbital-boost capacity that would drastically lower failure rates, which would lower insurance rates. (Being dropped into the wrong orbit due to early engine cut off seems to be more common launch failure than blowing up.)
As long as the cost of having a fully reusable F1 on stand-by is lower than the insurance cost, it’d be worth having the back up.
[The specialised F1 upper-stage would carry extra fuel and some way of attaching to the satellite, an MDA arm or Altius grabber. It would be the space tug v1.0.]
[[If SpaceX’s ground handling is cheap enough (and they do seem awfully efficient during scrubs), even using an expendable F1 as backup would still be cheaper than writing off the whole satellite. Since you only have the full cost of launch when needed, otherwise it’s just the cost of setting up and scrubbing the F1 in parallel with each successful F9 launch.]]
Paul,
What you’re saying makes sense to me from an energy cost standpoint, but there are other factors to consider which may (I hope) outweigh that. (Note: I’m projecting into the future in my thinking.)
First off, I am assuming that by the time we have “tugs” in place, we’ll have strategically placed fuel depots in place as well. Ideally, both the depots and the tugs would be operated by commercial independents, not governments. Assuming that we have fuel depots changes both the cost and the response time.
Second, you say, “given current technology,” which a reasonable way to look at this. However, current technology, quite honestly, dumps an awful lot of crap into our atmosphere on every launch, and also uses up Earth-provided resources on a very large scale. In my opinion, we can not afford expand our space programs simply accepting these factors. Everything and anything that can be operated and supplied from space, instead of from Earth, must be done from space, otherwise we’ll being killing off our planet an its inhabitants in the name of commerce (even more than we’re already doing). This is ethically unacceptable, so the science and anti-science people will band together to put an end to it, no doubt with a great degree of overkill. Also consider that, with time, reusability will be cheaper and easier to do on spacecraft (etc.) that never leave space. And maintenance in zero G is bound to have advantages.
If we ever expect planetary economies and “space” economies to be interacting but also be separate entities (the only way in which space development can actually pull itself up by its own bootstraps), then they have to become locationally and conceptually distinct as well. Right now, Earth is home and space is the workplace, and services exist for taking people between these two places. Home and work must exist as separate places/ideas, just like in our current lifestyles (those who let home and work become too entwined end up paying a bitter price). Now, let’s take the separation of home and work into the future.
Here and now on Earth, if you build a new large “work” facility, or an airport, where none existed before, a predictable pattern results. First off, the roads and transportation services in the area get improved. Then you get new restaurants and stores for the people who work in the area. You have people from out of town/country coming to the area (especially to an airport) so you get hotels and motels and parking lots being built. And so on; you see the pattern. Before too long, you get to the point where there are so many people working in the new area that housing becomes the next big development. Before you can blink, you’ve got whole new suburbs (and bloody traffic lights) all around the new area, with local workers and their families moving in as fast as the houses/apartments can be built, rather than driving in from another city every day. Now that you have the workers and their families, you’ve also built schools, entertainment complexes, more stores of every kind, more and varied restaurants, and so on… Like I said this is a predictable pattern. It’s happened thousands of times all around the Earth. And the real beauty of this pattern is that almost all of the new “infrastructure” to support the work place is built and operated by commercial companies, with only things like schools and medical facilities directly involving the government. This inevitably makes them all more efficient, effective, and cost-effective than if they were government run facilities.
So let’s consider space as the work place and Earth (initially) as home. Assuming that we properly solve certain scientific/physical requirements which are essential to living and working space, is there any reason why the pattern above shouldn’t, with appropriate modifications, and perhaps reordering, repeat itself in the space work place? Obviously I’ve done a lot of simplifying in presenting what is a very complicated series of events, but conceptually I don’t see any reason why the pattern shouldn’t repeat itself in space, given the necessary investment capital. It certainly won’t happen over night, but I believe that development of space would happen much faster this way than any other. It takes care of reducing the ROI times to something more acceptable; it is an incremental pay-as-you-go approach; each step builds on the ones that preceded it; it more convincingly “closes the business cases” than other proposals; it reduces the individual and cumulative risks (physical and financial); and it isn’t subject to cancellation by changing government budgets or administrations. Once a certain amount of government funded/implemented infrastructure is in place, the incentive will exist for non-government entities, working with or without investors, to build and/or operate the rest of space “development.”
To those people whose priority is to go back to Moon or to Mars (usually with little detail about what they want to be done once people get there), the entire concept above can no doubt be dismissed out of hand. But for those of us who are thinking in terms of the future of the human race, it should, I think, at least be worth thing through.
Having said all of that, I’ll go back to the initial issue and say that, on Earth, tow trucks don’t generally park in residential areas, but rather in commercial and industrial areas, or more likely along the most-traveled access routes to those areas.
This is just my vision/thinking, Paul. I don’t expect many people to buy into it, at least at first, since we all have our own strongly-held ideas, which is one of the major bumps in the road of space advocacy.
Steve
I was trying to suggest a first step to get from here-to-there, not an end destination. Before an airport, you had airfields. And before aeroplanes, you had gliders and kites (and motorbikes for the engines…)
I’m saying a modified Falcon 1 upper-stage would be a MkI space-tug. MkII or III might be permanently in-orbit, operating out of fuel depots, etc. But you have to show that such a venture is worthwhile, that it will be cost effective. A simple, disposable, “rescue-tug” booster might be one way of doing that.
Ignoring launcher reusability for the moment, just expendables. Imagine you put your $500m satellite on a $100m Falcon 9 launcher. SpaceX offers you a backup policy. They will fuel up a Falcon 1, sitting at a pad one launch window after the Falcon 9 (about 15° west of the F9 launch site, I think). If your satellite ends up short of its desired orbit, the F1 will be launched, its upper-stage equipped with a grabber-arm and some extra fuel (no other payload, see). It will grab your satellite and gently re-loft it into a correct orbit.
The cost of the F1 rescue flight is $20m, but the cost of fuelling and scrubbing an unneeded rescue is, say $2m. (Probably less, SpaceX seems to have extremely efficient ground ops.) So if you need one rescue per ten F9 launches, (9*$2m + 20m = $38m / 10 = $3.8m….) call it $4m per F9 launch. As long as you can save $4m off the cost of launch insurance on the satellite, you save money (and saving your satellite saves time, which saves (uninsured) money.)
Later on, Musk (or someone else) might say, “Hang on, why are we throwing the F1 rescue-stage away after each rescue, most of the time there’s still fuel left over, what if we offer to boost other LEO satellites in the same orbital plane up to a higher orbit, to save their own station-keeping fuel…”
Later , “And what if some of the F1 rescue-tugs dock with successful F9 upper-stages that still have fuel, they can attach and pump out the remaining fuel from the F9 stage, extending their working lives…”
…and so on. Twenty years later, you’ve got your fuel depot “airport”.
Thats dam brilliant!!!! lol
And think of the PR 🙂
Satellite in dangerous orbit. Spacex is launching there F1 within a day or so.
Watch the video as they attempt to make this save. Great drama 🙂
Wow!!!!
Didn’t everyone watch the video when they tried capping that oil well in the gulf?
COPY THAT POST AND MAIL IT TO SPACEX!!!
posts like this make NASA WATCH addictive
add 1
PAUL, Just saw Steve response and your next one. reading lolol
add 2 lolol
Plus, if spacex had F1s up and ready doesn’t that drop the price for more tiny customers???
Steve agree with your tug idea and the idea of sending more satellities in orbital highways to build on to.
but pauls point is cool and a falcon 1 launch site is cheap as I see it.
and as I just said the PR!!!
saving launches sells the new space guys and the tug idea as paul says
and as tinker would say lolol what can I do with this old junk we have lying around lolol
tinker said
“Once NASA starts getting it’s Orbital Replacement Units lined up as unpressurized “
What is an ORU tinker lol ????????
Folks:
Ah, here we go:
ORBCOMM Inc. : ORBCOMM LAUNCHES PROTOTYPE OG2 SATELLITE
“…due to an anomaly on one of the Falcon 9’s first stage engines, the
rocket did not comply with a pre-planned International Space
Station (ISS) safety gate to allow it to execute the second
burn. For this reason, the OG2 prototype satellite was
deployed into an orbit that was lower than intended.”
tinker
So, because the secondary payload failed to reach its target, is this a partial failed mission or is still considered successful because they were test payloads?
ORBCOMM probably isn’t happy. “Prototype” <> “Test” (i.e we lose it, oh well).
The satellite has made orbit and has enough time to become flight proven hardware.
I’d say this is a “break even”.
Orbcomm is a low-earth orbit constellation, like Iridium and Globalstar. Every satellite counts. If this one had been placed into its proper orbit, it would’ve been put to use right away.
Now, maybe they can still do *something* with it. But a lower orbit is going to mean a faster transit across each coverage area. It can’t really function as intended in the constellation.
Yohan:
The Orbcomm satellite is actually the first of a new generation made by Sierra Nevada Corp. to replace prematurely failing satellites made by Orbital Sciences.
Orbcomm can still get a lot of mileage out of this satellite as a pathfinder even if they don’t have enough fuel to reach it’s operational orbit.
tinker
So now that we have a fuel beam near ISS with little robot tugs docked to it. We can send one to grab this little satellite and take to where it should be right?????
It so cool that our space program has created this kind of practical capability
Nope.
How to rescue a satellite:
First, you take stock of what you have and how to use it. If you were able to calculate ionospheric height/drag along path, you’d mini/max simulate raising/circularizing manuevers to buy you as much time as possible. Sometimes you can time them, and also sometimes you can use the natural asymmetries of the earth to slightly magnify them – this is lots of fun. But that’s about it for now.
To use a tug, it would have to lie in the same orbital plane, and you’d have to be able to “phase” to it. You’d then have to dock, perhaps using Jon Goff’s sticky boom to soft dock before latching. With cubesats this might be real easy – navigate into a channel and lock. Then you’d have to accomplish two burns to raise and circularize yet again. Then release, and do multiple burns to enter parking orbit awaiting next save.
Likely this would take weeks to do, end for end. Months and majority of propellant if not in the same plane – sometimes it is more cost effective to do the plane change in supersynch or even lunar orbit – fyi.
It would surprise me if Orbcomm doesn’t get more than enough time to check out their bird, even get some customer time on it as well.
The hard part of selling a new sat/bus is flight qualified on orbit. The next hardest is lifetime. 1/2 is not bad. Better than 0/2.
add:
Mr. Steve,
Too many onramps. too distributed, too many assets to manage and keep safe/stable/fueled/refueled/tech refreshed.
Its like propellant depots, or dare I say it – “gateways”. You need everyone to drive the same way, to the same waypoints … to scale such resources.
Kep in mind how this affects total efficiencies of launch, launch window availability, and additional costs (like tracking/control/safety) to a mission.
Costs go up before in aggregate they go down. Only exception to this are “natural” waypoints like EML 1/2 … where they are by definition the most fuel efficient means. Politically, your aversary comes up with every reason not to use them … to starve you out and make things a failure. They’ll come up with false economies, false liabilities … all to wreck things. This is part of the cost going up. Long tradition.
MDA bought SS/L to pioneer in this market. Look to them to discover more about how long they’ve been working for this in the simpler case of GSO sats.
Mr. C.,
I’m assuming that tugs, if we ever get any, will take a lesson from tow trucks — park on the access to where trouble is most likely to occur and drink coffee until a call comes in. Cruising will be even more fuel prohibitive than for tow trucks. It will be interesting to see where the new guys park once the original tugs have established their territories. If space ever does take off, “tugging” just might be one of the early truly competitive off-Earth markets.
Steve
If you watched the pre-flight and post-flight briefs, you didn’t hear one word about OrbComm hardware even being on the flight. They weren’t even mentioned in SpaceX’s launch press kit. In the context of NASA CRS-1, the OrbComm satellite is totally irrelevant. So NASA certainly sees it as a successful mission. Dragon’s pointing in the right direction, unaffected.
OrbComm probably doesn’t see it that way. I’m curious what sort of terms SpaceX is writing into launch contracts with “secondary payload” customers. As this flight demonstrated, there will be the possibility that meeting the mission requirements of the primary payload compromises the secondary payload’s success, to the extent of effectively throwing the secondary payload overboard. One way or another SpaceX must be covering their ass regarding this kind of event in a manner similar to when ULA or Orbital blow up customer payloads or inject them into hopelessly degraded orbits.
Orbcomm is on record today as attempting to raise the orbit using the sat’s on-board propulsion. And they say that they have no plans to move the forthcoming two launches (of multiple satellites) out of SpaceX but plan to keep SpaceX as their launch vendor of choice.
Second stage reserves weren’t enough to allow preprogrammed decision to second burn to raise orbit for release. Only option was to release from second stage.
Because in order to make the primary mission objective, the second stage had to burn longer to compensate. There wasn’t a contingency plan preprogrammed to safely (for ISS) to use partial propellent load – the safety gate.
add:
tinker,
Slightly different. The stage is programmed not overridden. To be very specific, there was no apriori action for which it could make a choice that allowed a second burn, where the triggering event to not burn was too little fuel to maintain the safety gate.
There are reserves, and there is certain costs / dangers of a restart. The thing is on a timer so to speak and it took a path on the flowchart that was consistent with the primary mission.
Could there have been more contingency planning such that the gate and a restart could have occured? Possibly. Perhaps the hard part would be in proving that safety was still insured for ISS.
noocsq:
From what I read, the first stage burned for 30 seconds longer then planned and the second stage burned for 8 seconds longer. So, the safety gate refers to whether there is enough fuel to perform the second burn plus reserves to insure success?
tinker
I believe it refers to potential collision of the secondary payload with ISS. The margins are as large as you would expect for a multi-billion dollar, manned artifact.
Its not about capability, but about policy and liability – a LV can’t decide these in minutes.
Just to get the ability to do secondaries on an ISS mission, SpaceX had to do hundreds of hours of Monte Carlo simulations. And this was the effective agreement. That they kept.
With Spacex LAS lol or is it LES system capable of “saving” the capsule at anytime in flight, with this engine out, would this mission been aborted if it had been a dragon rider mission?
Should it have??
I haven’t had time to read this whole thread, so sorry if it has been covered.
Others said that apollo had a few engine outs but never had the in flight abort option.
The second stage was not allowed to restart because of NASA-ISS safety restrictions. SpaceX says there was fuel remaining.
Better put – NASA’s rather comprehensive theory of station risk.
You see, orbital dynamics includes many, many “chaotic/leveraging” possibilities that remotely might bite. Once in a million years unfortunately seems to occur more frequently some times.
NASA is doing its job here. SpaceX is doing its job here.
What is lost is the possibility of something more, given the capacity to “take action”. The art of improving upon our skill here is in a more flexible approach to risk management/policy that does not compromise safety – we must ask first if it is possible.
I’d take that seat.
Only 3500lbs. per flight.That is pathetic,embarrassing.6000 for Progress,8000 for HTV,14,000 for HTV so what is the Cheer?We’re number 4!We’re number 4!?NASA paid them a milestone to increase load.What was it before?They did rearrange the load. This shows that NASA knew the problem.The ISS science briefer thought there were far more than 1000lbs. This was caused by using SAA’s.Let the company design it,they will come up with the right design. Tinker I hope they can use the external to fulfill the contract.2500lbs. short on the first flight,that is a lot to make up..The contract only says weight and # of flights.I think they have a basic error and don’t have a big enough spacecraft.I had suggested to them long ago that they change to a biconic or front part of the Shuttle.The whole thing could be pressurized.Would not have to burn up the trunk.May not be able to lift the extra weight,but with the new version they could.It would be too expensive to change now,I think.SpaceX and NASA will think of something to fulfill the contract I am sure.ISS will be supplied.I just hope it does not cost a lot of money. The fuel dome released pressure and blew off the fairing.I don’t think this will delay any flights.
S13:
According to Wikipedia, combined pressurized and unpressurized cargo for Dragon is 14,000lbs split pretty much evenly between the two. Where do you get your figures?
Dragon (spacecraft)
tinker
SpaceX flys what they are give. According to Gwynne Shotwell, the density of the items in this shipment was very low, so a little mass took a lot of volume.
Whenever there is an engine failure secondary payloads will never reach their destination. Is this not a design flaw for secondary payloads? Is this a design flaw in the software not accounting for the secondary payload to be properly released because of engine failures or just purely fuel?
Nothing to do with the software, which is fairly straightforward. It’s purely a matter of physics, which means that it’s a matter of fuel.
When you lose an engine, you will burn more fuel to reach orbit, and you will also take longer to reach orbit. (The intuition is that the lower thrust-to-weight ratio gives you less acceleration, and thus, proportionately more of your thrust is spent fighting gravity and less building up orbital velocity.)
So it all depends on how much fuel margin is left for such contingencies. If you have enough margin, then you just dig a little deeper into your reserves, and everything is fine. In the case of a satellite constellation like Orbcomm, you’ll be a little bit out of position, but that’s all right. You can maneuver to fix that up later on.
But in this case, there was an additional wrinkle: the ISS. The Dragon cannot just be lofted into a orbit, but it has to rendezvous and dock with the ISS. But also, the ISS is manned, so there are strict safety protocols. The loss of the engine screwed up the timetable, such that they had to dump the secondary payload.
Yohan:
Tom makes great points on why this secondary payload wasn’t delivered where it was suppose to be. This was a special case with the ISS in the loop. If it was just a satellite launch they would have more options. One option would be to build in single engine out margins to the fuel/oxidizer load. Another option would be to jettison partial payload if possible. Falcon 9 is to carry 8 of those Orbcomm satellites next year. They could plan for the margin and only launch only 7 satellites or they can launch 8 and ditch one in a lower orbit if they have an engine out. Either way they get 7 satellites to orbit, but they could gamble on getting a ‘bonus’ satellite up if all goes well.
Falcon’s margins are about to improve soon anyway with the v1.1. It will be about 40% more powerful. The Merlin 1d engines are designed to deep throttle so they can ‘slow down’ for MaxQ like the Shuttles used to do. Also, the engines will be in an octagon with one in the middle instead of the ‘tick tack toe’ pattern of the current Falcon 9. So, no corner fairings & a lot lighter too. The stack will be 40% taller as well, over 200 feet with payload. Speaking of payload, 40% more of that too.
tinker
The second stage was prohibited from firing by NASA’s ISS safety rules. If the mission had not been Dragon to ISS, the Orbcomm sat would probably now be in the proper orbit.
“There but for the grace of God go I.” Don’t get too cocky.
A company might design mitigations against failure modes A, B, C, D, and E. On a launch, event D happens and is successfully mitigated. Yes, a measure of congratulations is in order. But at the same time, luck is involved — because unanticipated event F didn’t happen instead.
That’s what I think objose is saying when he says that “We are not that good.” We simply do not know all the things that can go wrong.
In fact, luck is also involved even when your mitigation *works*. Because sometimes, the mitigation also fails in an unanticipated way. Remember that the foam on the shuttle external tank was actually a design mitigation against falling **ice** from the external tank.
During the Columbia accident investigation, there were a lot of skeptics who said: No, it *can’t* be the foam, because we put in the foam specifically to *prevent* damage to the shuttle tiles. They got lucky for two decades — until Columbia.
Just because it works doesn’t mean that you didn’t also get lucky. Engineers are not gods. Even the engineers at SpaceX.
There will always be “unknown unknowns.” All you can do is plan for what you can imagine.
Are they out of storage space on the ISS, then?
I mean, if you don’t have any specialized cargo, you can always send up food and water, right? Because you never know if your next launch is going to fail.
Tom:
Actually, their is lots of storage space on the ISS. The last Shuttle left a Multi Purpose Logistics Module behind. It is 14 feet in diameter and 20 feet long. It’ll take them a long time to fill that up.
tinker
I can’t help noting that that module would have just about fit *sideways* inside Skylab. Oh, well.
Richard:
That’s true. Skylab was huge! And they only used the hydrogen tank as the habitat (the oxygen tank was their garbage dump). That tank was divided into two ‘floors’. The floor closest to the oxygen tank had their sleeping berths and ward room. The much bigger part was the ‘lab’.
tinker
CONTRACT RELEASE
:
C08-069
NASA Awards Space Station Commercial Resupply Services Contracts
WASHINGTON
— NASA has awarded two contracts — one to Orbital Sciences Corp. of
Dulles, Va., and one to Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of
Hawthorne, Calif. — for commercial cargo resupply services to the
International Space Station. At the time of award, NASA has ordered
eight flights valued at about $1.9 billion from Orbital and 12 flights
valued at about $1.6 billion from SpaceX.
These fixed-price
indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts will begin Jan. 1,
2009, and are effective through Dec. 31, 2016. The contracts each call
for the delivery of a minimum of 20 metric tons of upmass cargo to the
space station. The contracts also call for delivery of non-standard
services in support of the cargo resupply, including analysis and
special tasks as the government determines are necessary.
NASA has set production milestones and reviews on the contracts to
monitor progress toward providing services. The maximum potential value
of each contract is about $3.1 billion. Based on known requirements, the
value of both contracts combined is projected at $3.5 billion.
I think one of the reasons there is more cargo down than up is the vibration from launch.A lot of foam.Got to keep things from rubbing together.I don’t see how they can keep supplying ISS,at these amounts,after ATV,HTV are gone.If they divide the weight into the money and pay for 1000lbs.,SpaceX has a big loss and I wonder if they will make a profit this year.I agree,too bad their recovery system did not work.It would be nice to look at that engine.
NASA now will have too build my sheet metal rocket to supply ISS.It is the only thing they can afford.
Folks:
Just watched another safe berthing for Dragon. No apparent issues with the lidar this time is seems.
But afterwards, NASA showed a music video from JPL’s Curiosity landing team headed up by, you guessed it, Mohawk Dude! It’s a parody of “I’m sexy and I know it” (We’re NASA and we know it). Interestingly, they throw even out a gangsta style put down: “We’re better then SpaceX”.
It’s a fun video, Keith should post it.
tinker
Thanks for the informative article. I discuss a suggestion to upgrade the Merlin to another thrust level to reduce the number of engines on the Falcon 9 and improve reliability here:
Re: On the lasting importance of the SpaceX accomplishment.
http://exoscientist.blogspo…
Bob Clark