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