put the screen in your front window and move back about 100 yards.

With a monitor that large, you're seing Falcon 1 slightly larger than it is in real life.

Doug

You have five minutes to get your mocha Doug.

I'm not falling for that one again...see

"I thought we'd be a lot higher at MECO"



Doug

Oooh. I've no fingernails left. How do people do this for a living...

darn

Oops - someone didn't realise his mike was still on.... But I share the sentiment. aaaargh..

I assume once they've done an ignitiion they can't then recycle for another go.....oh - and did you just head that bit of audio on the feed

Like I've been saying all along -- I'll believe it when I see it.

So far, I still ain't seen it. Lots of nice smoke and flame, just no rising rocket...

And I swear, about 30 seconds after the engine shut down and they called the abort, I heard one of the controllers' voices on the loop saying an agonized "Oh, God...!"

-the other Doug

And again. Someone really needs to tell that guy he's on air.

You don't hear that during an Atlas V launch Hell, I didn't hear so much as a "Merde" after that first Ariane V failure

Doug

I too would think once they entered ignition sequence that would be it, but I swear I thought I heard someone whisper something about trying another go-round.

SFN agrees with you..
"main engine chamber pressure was less than 0.1 percent lower than the redline limit, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX vice president of business development, tells reporters. She added they are looking to recycle the countdown. Launch has not been scrubbed."

Recycle to T-11min being touted....I'm impressed.

Doug

I herd that too. I thought I heard the same guy (he was the F*** and M**********r dude) say that it was "just 1 PSI over". Possibly I misheard but they are apparently recycling back to T-11 so it looks like we're still on.

Yep -- the last thing I heard, here, was "Verify you have no contraints for a recycle," followed by "Verified." Looks like they're gonna try again, here.

-the other Doug

I think we're seing a symptom of them bringing every limit tighter..ooo..remote camera man's going wandering. IF they get it away, or even get another count going, I'll be super impressed, not as impressed as I would be if they could fix their wireless video signals though.

Mocha didn't work, nothing didn't work, so I'm trying Apple Juice with Elderflower.

Doug

I don't know, I could live without the dropouts but the wobbly camera seems somehow fitting for a "lowest cost to orbit" outfit. No money wasted on such fripperies as solid camera mounts.

Now it looks like the weather is taking a turn.

What is that BBC supposed to mean?

They're asking if they can do a new 01:10 launch time.

Wow! Fuel loading is underway!

Will the weather cooperate until then ?
Anyway, recycling a few minutes after an aborted main engine start. I'm impressed.

I'm a bit worried because this ( could ) indicate the same old problem with the first stage engine IMO.

They're recycling to T-16:00 and trying for a launch time of 1:10 (I assume that's GMT). Am I right in my calculation that, on my side of the pond, this would be 9:10 pm EDT, 8:10 CDT, 7:10 MDT and 6:10 PDT?

Also, did anyone hear any detail whatsover as to what caused the abort? Do we have any confidence that the thing won't shut itself down again?

-the other Doug

Countdown is set to 16:00 30 minutes left in this window, then the weather will surely put a cap on any other attempts today.

Well, according to Spaceflightnow the countdown "was tripped when computers detected main engine chamber pressure was less than 0.1 percent lower than the redline limit" - http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon/f2/status.html
So, it's not a big issue...

By my figuring, that means the count ought to restart in about five minutes.

-the other Doug

From SFN :
The abort was triggered because the main engine chamber pressure was about 0.2 percent lower than allowable, says Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX vice president of business development. The low pressure was caused by the fuel being colder than desired, she said. The refueling of the rocket is supposed to correct this problem for the next launch try tonight.

Interesting. I wondered why they went through a detank-and-retank procedure on the fuel tanks. With all the problems they've had getting enough LOX on the island to support launch attempts, I can understand why they *only* half-emptied and refilled the fuel tanks.

-the other Doug

The counting has been resumed.

I'm guessing the kerosine cools down quite quickly once onboard as it's sat above/below LOX which is a bit chilly. Perhaps draining some out, filling it bac up again - ups the Kerosine temp maybe?

Doug

That water supression looks like a small garden sprinkler

She's away this time - with good onboard footage

Go baby go.

I think this camera might be on the second stage...I hope so, very cool views if it is.

450m/sec
13.9km
Past MaxQ
Main engine plume looking like it's growing like it does on a Delta II on the way up the hill

OUCH - the Kestrel engine got a HELL of a whack from the first stage during seperation - put the thing out of alignment for a moment I think - but it's all good again - beautiful fairing sep shot.

Doug

I just saw first stage separation!

They should have had this camera on the ground. Sweet.

It's getting a bit divergant on the engine pointing - and my feed has died.

Confirmed. Did you see that strange shaking?

From SFN : Telemetry has been lost, SpaceX spokeswoman tells reporters.

The last thing I say is a strange shaking and going off course as Doug said. I was some strange pieces flying around also.

My personal opinion is that one of the most dangerous things happened during flight - pogo.

The engine pointing was going around and around in increasing circles, and the whole stage appeared to be getting a little wild in response - like a pilot induced occilation.

From SFN
0115 GMT (9:15 p.m. EDT Tues.)

T+plus 5 minutes, 5 seconds. Telemetry has been lost, SpaceX spokeswoman tells reporters. The webcast provided by the company has stopped too.

Perhaps it threw itself into a full on tumble?

Doug

At separation I thought the first stage actually hit the nozzle of the second stage. Not sure though.

I saw the engine bell start to describe small circles against the Earth below, and then my feed died, too. Can't get it back, either.

The expansion nozzle was really glowing bright red, wasn't it? I hope she didn't start to tumble because of nozzle leakage -- that thing looked like it was going to burn through the side at any moment, as irregular as the bright red glow appeared...

-the other Doug

I saw that 'nudge' Cugel - the nozzle got quite a nudge during seperation, pitching the whole upper stage quite a bit - but it corrected itself quite quickly I thought. The nozzle glow didn't seem that different to similar I've seen on Delta II/IV footage really, but with an impact like that during S1/2 sep..who knows.

I also saw a ring, almost like the very bottom part of the Kestrel nozzle, come off about the same time as fairing seperation - perhaps dislodged during that recontact during stage seperation? One hell of a ride while it lasted...but it looked like it was turning into a bad session using the Orbiter sim towards the end.

Doug

I saw this ring falling too.

At least, they opened the champagne :

"I just wanted everybody to know that we in the Washington, D.C., office are celebrating with champagne. We don't have any information yet from the launch control center, but the Falcon clearly got to space with a successful liftoff, stage separation, second stage ignition and fairing separation," says Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX vice president of business development.

However, what happened during the second stage burn is not clear.

"Regardless, we're thrilled here." (from SFN)

I also saw the knock and the "ring" fall away right after stage 1 separation - it rectified itself so well that I didn't think it was a problem especially since we were getting the "stage 2 engine nominal" commentary. Just before the feed was lost it was glowing very red and oscillating very badly, considering how stable the camera (and the actual upper stage itself by inference) was against the backdrop of the earth it really did not look healthy.

Did they post any success criteria for the demoflight anywhere? By my reckoning she was about 30% of the way through the stage 2 burn when contact was lost.

Maybe the mission will be declared as a partial success. They should at least be able to recover the first stage.

The First Stage seemed great ( apart from trying to beat up the second stage on seperation ) - so hopefully they should be able to sign that off as flight worthy and see how well it does post-recovery.


That's got to have been quite a sub-orbital lob as well - Maybe they will get some telemetry back from the upper stage at some point, even if only briefly, before it gets it's swimming shorts on into the Pacific.

Doug