Quite. Doesnt stop Bell though.

Doug

It's worth noting their idea of designing to try to avoid the most common launch killers still has merit.

A first launch is always at the mercy of design bugs. Even when something flies perfectly and surprises everybody on the first try, like Saturn 501 and Surveyor 1, marginal design can bite you on the <deleted> on the Second flight... Saturn 502 failed major flight test objectives when it didn't lob the CSM into a high elliptical orbit for a Lunar-return like heatshield test. Surveyor 2 was killed by fuel contamination.

Musk himself kept pointing out the 50/50 record of first flights.

Since this flight only got 25'ish seconds of useful flight data, unfortunately, it didn't prove a good fraction of the total vehicle design, so flight #2 will be nearly as "at risk" of first flight defects as this was.

After a successful flight, you know you have a vehicle that can work. Then you're trying to catch marginal design elements before they catch you, and prevent random manufacturing errors (quality control) from nailing you.

The static test on the ground only lasted 3 seconds. Anyone know if they ever performed a static test lasting the full 3 minutes?


Bob Clark

From http://kwajrockets.blogspot.com/

The satellite was thrown high into the air when the rocket impacted and came crashing down through the roof of our machine shop, landing mostly intact on the floor!

It's incredible !

I'd like to point out one or two things...

First, one reason SpaceX is having a really hard time getting these test flights in the air and proving out their engineering is they keep having to kludge together fixes and workarounds based on the lack of liquid oxygen on their base island. If part of "cheap access to LEO" is based on choosing not to develop *required* elements of infrastructure (like an oxygen liquification plant on the same land mass as your launch site), then that element of "savings" is not really valid. It's just a *deferred* expense.

Second, from what little detail can be seen in the RealPlayer version of the launch video, I'll bet you any money that the thing failed because the jerry-rigged insulation blanket (that was supposed to be ripped off the rocket at launch, but wasn't) flew back against the motor housing (and into the engine plume) and ruptured a fuel line. If a NASA rocket had suffered a failure because some similar kludged-up fix had backfired, most of the people here urging patience with SpaceX's travails would be calling for the heads of the NASA managers who "ought to know better." What makes it OK for SpaceX *not* to know better? Is it because they're promising "cheap" access to space, so it's OK to cut corners?

Hey, I want SpaceX to succeed as much as anyone here. But I've seen this many times before -- people loudly proclaiming that *they* know how to provide cheap access to space, only to utterly fail to deliver. Those who have succeeded to even a small degree have done so only by using second-hand military hardware that has already been proven to function and already been fault-tested by its manufacturers.

I will call Scaled Composite's contributions to the field a success when they put something into orbit. It's one heck of a lot easier to do a stunt pop-up out of the sensible atmosphere, going relatively slowly, than it is to achieve orbit. So far, neither they nor SpaceX has shown me an ability to get anything as far as LEO, and the history of the industry tells me that no one has yet lived up to the vaporware they've tried to sell us.

I guess this has just been a really long-winded way of saying I'll believe it when I see it, and not a moment before...

-the other Doug

Yes we don't judge spaceX and great space administration on an equal basis. Great administrations are not "ours", while having accounts to report to tax payers. They have the best engineers and tools available. No stupid failure or fiddling is allowed.

SpaceX is sort of amateur. It is you and me, in a way. Of course there are 1,5 billon dollars that we don't have. But if I had 1,5 billion dollars, most probably I would do something like that. We cannot all be spaceX and build our own rocket to orbit, but spaceX is our ambassador into space.

Ah, to say "my rocket" and not "state's rocket".

It isn't. The problem is that no matter how elaborate your fault tree analyses are, they are no better than the reliability data you put into them, and you can only get those in service (the theoretical values manufacturers put in to estimate the reliability of systems that don't exist yet aren't worth sh*t in my opinion, and I do have some practical experience of making FTA's on complex systems). Fly-fix-fly is still the only way when it comes to really new flight hardware.

tty

Actually, SpaceX is the one private launcher development company that Jeffrey Bell has any respect for; he's said for some time before this launch -- and maybe still thinks -- that they have a real chance of pulling this off. But we have just had another demonstration that the free market is not a magician, and that it does not repeal the fact that launchers are damned complex and expensive to develop. Libertarians tend to think that the world would instantly turn into paradise if those Evil Government Bureaucrats would just disappear, as socialists used to think the same thing about those Evil Private Businessmen. No such luck.

The first ones, usually has the highest rate of failure. It is a learning process. I don't blame it unless they recognize the causes of that failure.

SpaceX was founded in June 2002 by CEO/CTO Elon Musk, who had also co‐founded startup companies Zip2 and PayPal, and who so far has invested in SpaceX about $100,000,000 of the fortune he gained through the sales of his two previous companies. Although Musk has stated that he could financially handle a couple of early‐launch failures, he also has said "If we have three consecutive failures […] it's not clear to me that we know what we're doing and maybe we should go out of business."




The lesson for them, study well of the failure, plan with calm (I have seen that they were hurried against the clock which I didn't like since it pushes further to the failure) and do accordingly to the plan with calm. The slow advancement but firm so that the launch of Falcon 1 would be successful before than three launches. The first failure, has already costed more than US 6.7 millions...

SpaceX man, back again and start to work again.

Rodolfo

Our rockets always blow up
---

In the aftermath of Friday's failed launch of SpaceX's Falcon 1
booster, many people claimed that most first launches of new rockets
have failed. Dwayne Day checks how accurate a claim that is.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/585/1

Jeff Bell has some more sour comments -- including the most plausible theory I've seen yet of how the failure might be due to that impromptu LOX insulating blanket:

"I used to like SpaceX because they were the only Mom&Pop Rocket Shop with a technically workable approach to COTS. Most of the others seemed to base their vehicle design on science-fiction stories.

"But the more we see of the detailed implementation of the concept, the more it looks like all the previous fiascos. SpaceX seems to be making a lot of dumb mistakes that make me question the competence of the technical staff Musk has hired.

"First, they made a big mistake trying to develop a new orbital launch facility on a sandbar in the middle of nowhere. Sure, nearby Kwaj Island is a US missile base, but

"A) most of the stuff there is highly classified, so SpaceX personnel must be highly restricted in their movements.

"B) the rockets fired there are all solid-fueled, so there aren't any support facilities for liquid-fueled rockets. E.g. the LOX fiasco.

"C) it is extremely hard to get there from civilization.

"Musk should have made a few flights from Vandenburg or Canaveral before trying this South Seas adventure.

"Then we heard a list of screw-ups from Kwaj that is exactly the same as the mistakes made in the early days at Canaveral, or Peenemunde for that matter. It almost seems that no one in the company has any launch experience, or has read any books about early rocketry.

"Now they are putting in a bunch of screwy new ideas. For instance, they lose a lot of LOX through boil-off and have a lot of ice forming on the tank. This is inherent in having a small booster in a hot and super-humid environment. (Actually this winter in Hawaii has been unusually cool.)

"Now the real solution would be to have your own LOX generator and a top-off pipe in the pad, like every booster has had since the V-2. But instead of doing some proper engineering, they kludge up this insulation blanket that is held on with Velcro and is supposed to tear off during the launch. Anybody with a brain could see that this system is stupid, because the Velcro is likely to get frozen solid with ice. Basically they launched with the booster tied down to the pad with ropes. They were lucky to get as far as they did.

"Most of these problems don't seem to be related to the sheer lack of funding and engineering staff relative to any other sucessful booster program. So I really am starting to fear that this is another Keystone Rocket Scientist operation. If so, private space flight is dead, because no one else has a hope of doing it."

...Which also limits the exposure of (other) potential failure modes.

Privatizing space was a big Reagan dream...but all he did was push many satellite launches off the shores of the US and into other public domains.

Although Jeff bell has some relevant arguments, I think he is a much of a lot too much pessimistic.

Far too pessimistic, but that's the modern journalistic way unfortunately - no story without criticism. He has some valid points but in some places he's just, well, wrong. Point C is no more valid than for Sea Launch for example, or even Kodiak, Point A is true of any launch facility, they're all ultra high security places, and they WANTED to launch from Vandenberg for their first launch but were forced to move it out to the Atoll. Furthermore, they were already addressing the LOX issue before this launch. It's almost as if Bell's never read the SpaceX news pages or the launch blog.

Doug

Well, they certainly didn't address the LOX issue very well -- they were totally unprepared for the effects of any significant launch delays, which is why they came up with that Boob McNutt detachable blanket. Given the likely effects of ice on it, I suspect that Bell is right in pinning the failure on it.

Maybe what happened was that the blanket turned to an ice sheath. And this ice caused the fire with hitting some engine part. EXACTLY like with the shuttle, darn misfortune with dark humour.

With my opinions they should seriously address the LOX issue, use perhaps th erector as an insulation (it is removed only some minutes before launch).

The early French Diamant rockets were launched from Algeria, and used shaped foam panels which were stacked against the first stage and simply fell away during the first second or so of launch. They worked fine, though the photos do make it look as though the whole vehicle is falling apart at liftoff!

Bob shaw

Yes I remember these amazing photos, giving the impression that there was some structure breaking appart.

They had too a serious problem of liquid oxygen. When the first rockets were launched at Hamaguir they had no oxygen plant! they used a truck to transport it. But the first truck failed for some reason, they just had to release the oxygen. After they came with an oxygen plant. The rocket launches started during the war in Algeria, and the Diamant rockets just after!


The first french satellite, Asterix (from a well known french comic) was assembled by a team of only five or six persons in... three months! We are not far from the Falcom conditions! If Diamant succeeded into such conditions, falcon can...

I believe earlier Ariane (Up to Ariane 4 even ) vehicles ued something similar - it looked like the thing was buckling in the middle. I'm assuming the earlier Ariane family was a derivative of the Diamant family.

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/launch...riane403950.jpg
http://mek.kosmo.cz/nosice/esa/ariane/arv99.jpg

Doug

I guess all these stuff falling away from the Emeraude launchers were also foam pannels (which were later re-used for Diamant launchers).

-- Rakhir

Click to view attachment

ROCKET SCIENCE

- Falcon Images Show Fatal Engine Fire

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Falcon_I...ngine_Fire.html

El Segundo CA (SPX) Mar 27, 2006 - New images released by Space Exploration
Technologies Inc. of the launch of the Falcon 1 last Friday clearly show the
beginning of an engine fire that ultimately caused mission controllers to
destroy the rocket less than a minute into its historic flight.

- Musk Vows To Launch Falcon 1 Again Within Six Months

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Musk_Vow...Six_Months.html

- Falcon 1 Lost In First Launch Attempt

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Falcon_1...ch_Attempt.html

- Vinci Cyrogenic Motor Shines In CNES Tests

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Vinci_Cy...CNES_Tests.html

NASA need rocket but the ones they have are too expensive, the boysNgirls at NASA have been running the numbers and the budget for the VSE, astrobiology and the future robotic probes and its starting to get ugly. The budget number for US science just doesn't look very good thanks to the Katrina fiasco and Iraq bills clocking up so NASA and the USA badly want the private sector to give them something good and as the USA's debt clock rises we are now starting to see we may not be able to afford the stuff we though we would do 2-4 years ago ( TFP, Shuttle to Hubble, Moon missions, Mars missions, CaLV, LISA... ). The USA have no heavy launchers today, although Atlas seems to be coming along rapidly and could be good and Delta might get there despite its problems ( the Boeing-4H December orbit started to decay raipdly ). The United States is forced to use Ariane for its JWST launch and since the grounding of Shuttle they have no manned craft to keep the USA in Space and need Russian rockets. NASA has been running the dollar figures and it can no longer afford space but asking Russia, Europe or China for a lift to the Moon would be a huge embarrassment for the United States. So they came up with this new idea ( let's hand out more millions/billions to go Private and let's outsource ).
I hate to give the sour Bell any credit but I'm nearly going to have to go with Jeff on this one. I think its wrong to call Musk a space-fraud because he's the only good thing we got but the fact remians that he is attempting to sell a Falcon-9 but he has yet to get the Falcon-1 off the launch pad without blowing-up in a fireball. Even if this Falcon-I gets moving and launches a 800 kg payload he'll still be putting many tons less in LEO than Sputnik era R-7 in its config today. Keep in mind just because you put the word 'Private' in front of something doesn't mean it will work and sometimes you do need big-government for big space plans. A Russian communist government with a Soyuz type launcher set the mark back in the early days with launches of Sputnik and Gagarin. Russia leads the world in launches because they have rockets that began life over-sized, the Sputnik launcher was overkill but it was later adapted for manned Soyuz flights - the French/ESA Ariane is another leader providing great GTO payload lift. I hope the Private boys keep trying to put payloads into Space but I think we've all seen this kind of story before, new folks come along and promise us the stars on a shoe string budget but I fear it ain't gonna happen.

There is something like that. Likely by the same teams. In between there was the Europa rocket project, but as far as I remember there was only one or few disastrous tests.


Note that the emeraude launcher never made to orbit. It was rather a development model, or used for studying high atmosphere, or testing entry head (for nuclear missiles).


That the falcon team tries to reach orbit from the first launch is just bypassing what took twenty years to develop for France. I f they success to the second test, or even the third, it would be a pretty nice achievement. Thanks to engineers, but thanks too to many technical progress such as computer which allow to put on a laptop what took a large control room thirty years ago.





SpaceX has to start with a small rocket, to develop their flight capacity first. A failure with a small rocket costs much less, but learns as much.

Eventually this fire seems to have no relation with the problem of the blanket.

Don't start me on the Europa rocket, what went wrong, and the way it destroyed what remained of the UK launcher industry, but, in summary - integration between nations just didn't seem to work. The UK Blue Streak booster was the first stage, and it worked every time - but the upper stages always failed, and finally ELDO gave it all up as a bad job. And Lo! ESA was born...

Think 'Canadian Arrow'...

Bob Shaw

Short videos of first launch now up with March 31 update. None, so far, showing Falcon's demise.

How great of a problem can that cloud of dust/sand/vegetation cause? How much of a priority should it be to make a pad with a greater diameter, thus reducing dust?

Regarding ELDO: There were four test flights. The French "Coralie" second stage gave them fits during ground tests (the ground crew took to referring to it as "de Gaulle's Force de Fart") -- but during all four actual flights, it worked, while the previously reliable West German third stage always failed.

First flight success isn't the whole story
---

Last month's failed first launch of the Falcon 1 raised the question
of just how successful the first launches of new rockets are. Tom
Hill points out that those rockets that have successful first flights
often have a great deal of flight heritage.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/590/1

Maybe it's time to start a Falcon 9 thread, with both 1 and 9 as subtopics of SpaceX, under Private missions. Check out the last half of this article from space.com:

22nd National Space Symposium Begins Today

Will further Falcon 1 tests be done prior to the Falcon 9 1st stage static fire?

Contrary to popular belief, the Falcon 9 is now even more in the future. You don't built a Delta IV class vehicle AND all the infrastructure in two years.

Here's the picture the SpaceX team didn't *quite* catch!

Bob Shaw

Maybe we should combine this thread with the "blowed Up Real Good!", A Place for Spectacular Failures" thread until further notice or should I say "awaiting further developments"....
Bit harsh?..

If the loss of Falcon 1 is down to human error as reported by space.com then that's not such a bad place to be. I wouldn't be writing these people and this craft off quite yet.

I have the impression that the mistake was due mainly of the sensation of anxiety of the first launch that is very common. That state of anxiety of the personnel to get the thing working will lead many blind mistakes. Hope that the next time, all personnel will be calmer due to the more experience and confidence.

Rodolfo

Bad, Good, and Great

First the bad: Newsweek finally noticed SpaceX. In twenty words they made at least three errors, not the least of which was putting the Falcon 1 launch under the heading of "Space Tourism". They want to cancel "their" seet on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip 2, not that they have one, even though that's an air-launched, hybrid rocket, winged...... you get the picture.

Then the good: The April 3 edition of Aviation Week has a full two page article on the launch, titled "First 30 Sec. Good..." It is a good article in classic Av Week fashion (Blackstar TSTO not withstanding ). There is even an enlargement of one of the very early photos with more clarity than I have seen showing the fire before the rocke is half way past the transport cradle. It appears that the fire is inside some blankets attached to the tubular (blue painted titanium?) thrust frame. They have a great image of the engine from a few years back for context. There are no pictures of the wreckage, but I don't blame SpaceX for not being THAT forthcoming. Lots of quotes that I have not read to date.

Then the great: The top half of the Av Week back page is an editorial titled "Two cheers for the new rocketeers". It sums up what many of us "fans" have felt for years: this was never going to be easy, it is harder than many thought even when being "realistic", but there is a lot riding on the success of SpaceX, and we have good reason to believe that they will succeed to a good degree, at least technically.

We just have to wait for the official report to see which wild guess was closest to the true failure mechanism.

Here is launch video

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3843552474868248168

Very good movie. The camera was bobling with the wind, after the rocket blast, a wooden house was shattared, nice movie during its climbing until crashing!

Rodolfo

It is difficult to guess, it is a matter of a glimpse of an eye, but it seems that the very first flame to appear was where there was the fire, after.

SpaceX has said that fuel was leaking for four minutes prior to liftoff. The fire was seen withing a second or two of liftoff, but probably began when they ignited the engines two or so seconds before liftoff.

I don't believe that the movies shows impact. It is not long enough. I have calculted that the flight continued about a half minute after after the engine was turned off by the valves after the He line was cut and they lost pressure.

According to Jonathan's Space Report Number 563:

"It's been reported from Kwaj (kwajrockets.blogspot.com) that the
payload fell back to Earth through the roof of SpaceX's machine shop."

http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html

Er... ...old news, I fear - this is what the Falcon Blog (written as an 'unofficial' record by Elon Musk's brother) had to say:

"Saturday, March 25, 2006
Someone's looking out for that satellite...

The team is on Omelek collecting debris.

The rocket impacted on a dead reef about 250 ft away from the launch pad, so most of it is recoverable for analysis.

Amazingly, the satellite was thrown high into the air when the rocket impacted and came crashing down through the roof of our machine shop, landing mostly intact on the floor! One helluva' return trip.

The hole in the machine shop roof is the only significant damage to the island."

http://kwajrockets.blogspot.com/

It may have been old news, but that was the first I'd heard of it.

It would be cataloged as Ripley magazine! Incredible.

Rodolfo

According to Dwanye Day, the latest news has the next Falcon going out of Kwaj,
probably with no payload. This will not happen until this fall, apparently.

Why no payload? Not even some test equipment?

I guess it means they'll chuck something on top, but not a 'customer' payload.

Doug

http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_isdc_musk_060504.html

Falcon re-flight

Also addressing the opening day of the ISDC meeting at a “Space Venturing Forum” was private rocketeer, Elon Musk, chairman and chief executive officer of El Segundo, California-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX).

The SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket failed March 24 of this year, shortly after liftoff from a launch pad on Omelek Island. The private rocket’s maiden flight suffered a fuel leak, leading to a main engine shutoff, Musk recounted.

“The rocket business is a tough business,” Musk said.

Musk said that an on-the-pad processing error by a couple of technicians the day before launch doomed the vehicle. SpaceX engineers are now putting in place improvements in several areas, particularly in processing the rocket booster for launch—incorporating “fool proof” design changes, as well as improving a health-monitoring software check system used on the rocket, he added.

“We’ve had hundreds of engine tests … and not once did the problem that occurred on launch day show up,” Musk stated. “When we make it … it sure won’t be luck.”

The problem cropped up, ironically, in the part of the booster that ground personnel check for leaks in the engine, Musk explained.

Next flight of the Falcon—a demonstration flight—is slated for September, Musk advised.

Musk said that SpaceX has some 11 launches that have now been sold.

Asked about his company’s interest in building a crew capsule, Musk said that if SpaceX wins soon-to-be-announced NASA crew and cargo transport work, the entrepreneurial firm will accelerate building of the hardware.

Given the NASA win, the crew capsule would be available roughly three years from now, Musk said. Without the contract work, a scaled-down version would be available in 2011, he said.

Thanks, LJK4-1. I've been hoping to hear more Falcon news.

I want to mention something that I just found. I know it's not directly related to Falcon, but it is related to Elon Musk. Yesterday, I noticed that Business 2.0 posted an article about electric sports cars. It mentions that Elon Musk is an investor in Tesla Motors. Tesla's site is not yet announcing much about it's product, but one of it's former employees has some interesting news about his new vehicle, the X1. Check out the video there.

So I guess Wrightspeed and Tesla Motors are in competition.

I'm curious what Musk's company is cooking up to rival the X1. That guy has alot of irons in the fire.

A quote from the Business 2.0 article:

Like the SpaceX site, there is a mailing list sign-up on the Tesla Motors site.

If this takes off for Elon, then perhaps it could further fund his work with SpaceX.

First flight facts
---

Recent articles have discussed the odds of the failure of the first
launch of a new vehicle in the wake of the Falcon 1 launch failure in
March.

Wayne Eleazer provides another look at the statistics of
launch failures to demonstrate just how likely new rockets will fail
on its early flights.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/616/1

They do say that there are "Lies, Damn lies and Statistics" but I have to say that I'm quite impressed by this review of the probable success rates of early launch attempts.

sept launch??
be nice if its true