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Falcon 9 Launch & Recovery Operations
Greg Hullender
post Jun 3 2008, 04:20 PM
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SpaceX just sent a press release with an update on the Falcon 9. They successfully did a 5-engine test. They also mentioned the next Falcon 1 attempt will be late June "or July," presumably meaning "late June or early July," but you never know. :-)

Here's the full text. This isn't on their web page yet, the last I looked:

McGregor TX – Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) conducted the first five-engine firing of its Falcon 9 medium to heavy lift rocket at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on Thursday, May 29. At full power the engines generated almost half a million pounds of force, and consumed 1,750 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second. This five engine test again sets the record as the most powerful test yet on the towering 235-foot tall test stand.
The test of the five Merlin 1C engines, arranged in a cross pattern like the Saturn V moon rocket, is the last step before firing the full complement of nine engines, scheduled for this summer. With all engines operating, the Falcon 9 generates over one million pounds of thrust in vacuum - four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft.
“This is the first time that we’ve added more than one engine at a time, and all phases of integration and testing went smoothly,” said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. “As with previous tests, we saw no unexpected interactions between the engines, and are on schedule for adding four more engines.”
The first Falcon 9 will arrive at the SpaceX launch site at Cape Canaveral by the end of 2008. The next flight of SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 1 rocket is scheduled for late June or July of 2008.
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Greg Hullender
post Sep 27 2009, 04:50 PM
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I just noticed a Spaceflight Now article was posted a couple of days with some information I hadn't seen before, which they got from a phone interview with Elon Musk:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0909/24falcon/

The dragon capsule for Flight #1 will end up in a circular orbit 155 miles up, but won't have engines to maneuver itself. Nevertheless, it'll carry a payload of some sort for an unidentified customer.

SpaceX has actually requested a November 29 launch date, but Musk says that'll only happen if everything goes according to plan. He said that on the last two Falcon 1 flights everything actually DID go according to plan, but, of course, this is a brand new rocket.

It agrees with UGordan that Flight #2 won't even try to get close to the ISS, and #3 will approach but not try to dock. It implies that #4 WILL try to dock, assuming the other flights went okay.

(Apologies if there are any errors in the summary.)

UGordan: I really appreciate your corrections, clarifications, and new information -- especially since you seem to have some kind of inside information. :-) Do you know why they're not trying harder to recover and reuse the rockets? They've made a big deal in their printed materials about how important that is.

--Greg
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ugordan
post Sep 27 2009, 05:16 PM
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QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Sep 27 2009, 06:50 PM) *
The dragon capsule for Flight #1 will end up in a circular orbit 155 miles up, but won't have engines to maneuver itself. Nevertheless, it'll carry a payload of some sort for an unidentified customer.

No, the first Falcon 9 was supposed to carry a (tentatively government) payload and use the large 5m payload fairing, but the customer dropped out at one point so the plan until now was to fly a dummy payload (similar to F1 flight 4). Since Avanti, their 1st F9 customer, also dropped out recently and switched to Ariane 5 or Soyuz, the immediate need for demonstrating the 5m fairing went away. Along with the fact it's apparently a pacing item in development, they decided not to postpone the inaugural F9 flight any more than necessary to wait for the fairing and just fly a Dragon structural qualification unit instead. But there won't be any other payload onboard. It'll be just an instrumented shell. Maybe they'll throw in some bricks to simulate mass, but that's it...

QUOTE
UGordan: I really appreciate your corrections, clarifications, and new information -- especially since you seem to have some kind of inside information. :-) Do you know why they're not trying harder to recover and reuse the rockets? They've made a big deal in their printed materials about how important that is.

No inside information here, I've just been closely following them. Regarding stage recovery the story goes something like this: back after flight 2 (or 3) they realized the first stage gets cooked on the way down so they need to improve its thermal protection system. Since flt3 was a failure that destroyed the 1st stage and they wanted to go ahead with flt4 ASAP (it went just 2 months after No.3), there was no time to fix the known TPS issue. Then came F1-05 and Razaksat and they decided they wouldn't try recovery on it yet - in fact they had to remove the recovery hardware to install a vibration dampener system for the satellite once the vibration problem was discovered. They said they'll make a bigger effort in recovering 1st stages with the Falcon 1e.

As for Falcon 9, Elon did say they were going to try recovering the 1st stage on the first flight (not 2nd stage yet), but that was several months ago and I wouldn't be surprised if schedule pressure made them drop recovery again. He stressed this is something that's untrivial to pull off and it might take them several flights and years to work out - hence why their pricing assumes no stage recovery.


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Greg Hullender
post Sep 27 2009, 05:44 PM
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QUOTE (ugordan @ Sep 27 2009, 10:16 AM) *
But there won't be any other payload onboard. It'll be just an instrumented shell.

You know, on rereading the article, it's clear you're correct, but on a first read it definitely seemed as though they were talking about the contents of the Dragon capsule. The human ability to read what one expects to see -- regardless of the actual text -- is very strong . . .

It's a shame that the stage recovery is so difficult. I'd guess the loss of the engines is the worst part, just in terms of expense.

Do you actually think they'll ever be able to recover the second stage? I'd have thought it would burn up on reentry. Especially if even the first stage is "cooked."

--Greg
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ugordan
post Sep 27 2009, 06:00 PM
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QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Sep 27 2009, 07:44 PM) *
It's a shame that the stage recovery is so difficult. I'd guess the loss of the engines is the worst part, just in terms of expense.

They're expensive, no doubt, but I believe the majority of the vehicle cost is concentrated not in the first stage, but in the upper stage where all the expensive avionics and air-startable/restartable engines are.

QUOTE
Do you actually think they'll ever be able to recover the second stage?

Don't know; probably nobody knows that yet. They are planning on flying a heat shield on the stage similar to the Dragon one, but that and deorbit propellant comes directly from the vehicle's total payload capacity so it's a tradeoff between getting max payload and getting the stage back.
Reentering a stage which has its center of gravity at the back (the engine section) is dynamically unstable so active control is needed etc. Keep in mind salt water exposure is one of the bigger problems in recovering stages - the thing is corrosive, it harms avionics and engines.


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Posts in this topic
- Greg Hullender   Falcon 9 Launch & Recovery Operations   Jun 3 2008, 04:20 PM
- - jekbradbury   Wikipedia quotes June 23, 23:00 GMT for the next F...   Jun 14 2008, 04:02 PM
- - Greg Hullender   In all the excitement around the Falcon 1 launch e...   Aug 21 2008, 04:13 PM
- - Greg Hullender   Another Falcon 9 update. They claim they're s...   Sep 10 2008, 02:46 AM
- - dvandorn   So Falcon 9 will be using the old Titan III pad, e...   Sep 10 2008, 04:10 AM
|- - MahFL   So we can expect a huge explosion there then when ...   Sep 10 2008, 04:44 PM
||- - ugordan   I'm hoping that the launch is successful even ...   Sep 10 2008, 06:02 PM
|- - mchan   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Sep 9 2008, 09:10 PM) S...   Sep 14 2008, 09:54 AM
- - GravityWaves   I heard range safety or ground safety and personne...   Sep 18 2008, 03:28 AM
- - Greg Hullender   I just noticed that SpaceX has added a document di...   Sep 24 2008, 07:18 PM
|- - mcaplinger   QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Sep 24 2008, 12:1...   Sep 26 2008, 10:55 PM
- - Greg Hullender   Elon apparently did an online interview with the W...   Sep 26 2008, 08:46 PM
- - nprev   A little birdie just told me to check spacex.com o...   Sep 27 2008, 12:01 AM
|- - ugordan   A major milestone in Falcon 9 development was comp...   Nov 23 2008, 04:49 PM
|- - MahFL   Wow, that sounds powerful.   Nov 23 2008, 10:06 PM
|- - ugordan   Just a heads-up for those of you who are intereste...   Dec 22 2008, 11:30 PM
- - jekbradbury   Apparently SpaceX has won 1.6 billion dollars in f...   Dec 24 2008, 01:47 AM
|- - Del Palmer   QUOTE (jekbradbury @ Dec 24 2008, 01:47 A...   Dec 24 2008, 02:39 AM
- - Rakhir   It's impressive to see for the first time a Fa...   Dec 31 2008, 10:14 AM
|- - ugordan   A couple of images via Flickr: http://flickr.com/...   Jan 6 2009, 03:26 PM
- - OKB001   That is one nice looking rocket, for sure. I just ...   Jan 6 2009, 04:00 PM
|- - ugordan   Another Falcon 1 is slated to be launched before t...   Jan 6 2009, 04:13 PM
- - dvandorn   Now, my understanding is that this particular Falc...   Jan 6 2009, 05:58 PM
|- - ugordan   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 6 2009, 06:58 PM) N...   Jan 6 2009, 07:12 PM
|- - Vultur   QUOTE (ugordan @ Jan 6 2009, 07:12 PM) As...   Jan 15 2009, 04:55 AM
|- - ugordan   I'm not personally betting on it. I can imagin...   Jan 15 2009, 09:41 AM
- - Zvezdichko   SpaceX announces, that Falcon 9 is now vertical: ...   Jan 11 2009, 10:34 AM
- - DarthVader   That is pretty neat indeed. That's one good lo...   Jan 11 2009, 10:04 PM
- - dvandorn   I dunno -- from some angles, it looks a lot like m...   Jan 11 2009, 10:09 PM
|- - ElkGroveDan   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 11 2009, 02:09 PM) ...   Jan 12 2009, 01:54 AM
|- - ugordan   Several new nice looking pictures are now posted a...   Jan 12 2009, 08:51 AM
- - Pavel   I'm worried that there have been no news from ...   Mar 8 2009, 04:47 AM
- - imipak   Nothing to worry about; see post #23 and #24, abov...   Mar 8 2009, 12:52 PM
- - stevesliva   37-page presentation to the Augustine Comission. (...   Jun 19 2009, 01:23 PM
- - Greg Hullender   New press release from SpaceX about Falcon 9. Not...   Jul 29 2009, 08:08 PM
|- - ugordan   It's a slow news month from SpaceX so in the m...   Aug 21 2009, 04:20 PM
- - djellison   That video is from quite...err...close. Wow. Wo...   Aug 21 2009, 10:17 PM
- - climber   From Spacefightnow: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/...   Aug 24 2009, 08:21 PM
|- - MahFL   That page appears empty to my IE browser.   Aug 26 2009, 02:52 PM
- - djellison   Still fine here ( Chrome, Firefox, Safari )   Aug 26 2009, 03:08 PM
- - Greg Hullender   SpaceX e-mailed an update this morning -- it's...   Sep 24 2009, 05:19 PM
|- - ugordan   QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Sep 24 2009, 07:1...   Sep 24 2009, 05:26 PM
- - Greg Hullender   I just noticed a Spaceflight Now article was poste...   Sep 27 2009, 04:50 PM
|- - ugordan   QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Sep 27 2009, 06:5...   Sep 27 2009, 05:16 PM
|- - Greg Hullender   QUOTE (ugordan @ Sep 27 2009, 10:16 AM) B...   Sep 27 2009, 05:44 PM
|- - ugordan   QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Sep 27 2009, 07:4...   Sep 27 2009, 06:00 PM
- - Greg Hullender   Another press release: http://spacex.com/press.php...   Oct 21 2009, 09:16 PM
- - imipak   Full nine-engine test firing: http://www.youtube....   Oct 21 2009, 09:55 PM
|- - ugordan   imipak, that's the last year's test. This ...   Oct 21 2009, 10:17 PM
|- - ElkGroveDan   QUOTE (imipak @ Oct 21 2009, 02:55 PM) Fu...   Oct 22 2009, 01:34 PM
- - imipak   D'oh! I didn't realise they'd done...   Oct 22 2009, 11:30 AM
- - nprev   Hopefully not OT, but the second F9 flight is on t...   Oct 22 2009, 10:26 PM
- - Greg Hullender   No worries. The idea was to create a single thread...   Oct 23 2009, 04:11 AM
|- - ugordan   Not too surprisingly, the launch is now NET Februa...   Oct 29 2009, 08:50 PM
- - Greg Hullender   New Update: http://spacex.com/updates.php Second ...   Jan 5 2010, 05:29 PM
- - climber   New Update: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.ht...   Feb 12 2010, 11:35 AM
|- - ugordan   Higher resolution images are available at the Busi...   Feb 12 2010, 11:38 AM
|- - Greg Hullender   QUOTE (climber @ Feb 12 2010, 03:35 AM) T...   Feb 12 2010, 10:50 PM
- - stevesliva   So is it me looking at something else, or does the...   Feb 12 2010, 11:34 PM
|- - ugordan   Yes and yes. Trying to squeeze every bit of vacuum...   Feb 12 2010, 11:42 PM
- - djellison   Ever seen the nozzle for the upper stage of a Delt...   Feb 13 2010, 12:18 AM
|- - ugordan   Here's an image of the (uncoated ?) 2nd stage ...   Feb 13 2010, 05:20 PM
|- - lyford   QUOTE (ugordan @ Feb 13 2010, 09:20 AM) H...   Feb 13 2010, 09:09 PM
|- - Adzel   *   Feb 14 2010, 04:44 PM
|- - djellison   QUOTE (Adzel @ Feb 14 2010, 04:44 PM) Doe...   Feb 14 2010, 06:09 PM
- - Adzel   *   Feb 13 2010, 12:37 AM
- - djellison   OCO is a long term monitoring spacecraft (for whic...   Feb 13 2010, 12:45 AM
- - nprev   IIRC, an OCO 2 is specifically called out in the F...   Feb 13 2010, 01:04 AM
- - nprev   Well, if they're lucky the (postulated) recove...   Feb 13 2010, 06:28 PM
|- - ugordan   They have undoubtedly learned some hard lessons wi...   Feb 13 2010, 06:52 PM
- - nprev   We're clearly in violent agreement, G. Gonna ...   Feb 13 2010, 07:10 PM
- - Greg Hullender   Iin 2004 Musk told the US Senate he thought ...   Feb 14 2010, 05:48 PM
|- - Adzel   Greg: Thank you for the information. I was just cu...   Feb 14 2010, 08:15 PM
- - nprev   It's all reasonable. You gotta recoup developm...   Feb 14 2010, 07:50 PM
- - ugordan   It's on the pad now: http://www.spaceflightnow...   Feb 21 2010, 06:56 PM
- - Greg Hullender   Key info from the article is that the launch will ...   Feb 21 2010, 07:17 PM
|- - ugordan   QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Feb 21 2010, 08:1...   Feb 21 2010, 07:31 PM
|- - Littlebit   QUOTE (ugordan @ Feb 21 2010, 12:31 PM) B...   Feb 21 2010, 09:30 PM
|- - Den   Full inline quote removed. - ADMIN I sure hope Mu...   Feb 22 2010, 09:45 AM
|- - Jim from NSF.com   QUOTE (Littlebit @ Feb 21 2010, 04:30 PM)...   Feb 22 2010, 08:48 PM
|- - ElkGroveDan   QUOTE (Jim from NSF.com @ Feb 22 2010, 12...   Feb 23 2010, 01:48 AM
- - Greg Hullender   Well, the wet dress rehersal did in fact happen on...   Feb 28 2010, 03:17 PM
|- - ugordan   More details on the countdown dress rehearsal: htt...   Feb 28 2010, 06:34 PM
|- - Greg Hullender   QUOTE (ugordan @ Feb 28 2010, 10:34 AM) ....   Mar 2 2010, 12:17 PM
- - Greg Hullender   Firing test was rescheduled for Monday. http://ww...   Mar 6 2010, 05:38 PM
- - Greg Hullender   Make that Tuesday. http://www.spaceflightnow.com/...   Mar 8 2010, 06:54 PM
- - Greg Hullender   According to Spaceflight Now, the test-fire is sch...   Mar 9 2010, 03:05 PM
- - ElkGroveDan   Thanks Greg. Almost missed it.   Mar 9 2010, 05:51 PM
|- - ugordan   Abort post ignition, looked pretty scary. Scrub fo...   Mar 9 2010, 07:15 PM
- - Greg Hullender   Here's some info taken from Spaceflight now. E...   Mar 10 2010, 02:25 AM
|- - ugordan   QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Mar 10 2010, 03:2...   Mar 10 2010, 10:57 AM
|- - Greg Hullender   QUOTE (ugordan @ Mar 10 2010, 02:57 AM) H...   Mar 10 2010, 06:06 PM
|- - ugordan   Got it, thanks. I thought maybe it's one of th...   Mar 10 2010, 08:32 PM
- - nprev   Don't think so, G. Anomaly is the only correct...   Mar 10 2010, 12:53 PM
- - nprev   Yes, spelling in English is a constant joy for us ...   Mar 10 2010, 11:51 PM
- - Greg Hullender   Those sneaky SpaceX guys! After implying they ...   Mar 11 2010, 10:40 PM
- - Greg Hullender   We should be about one hour from the live fire at ...   Mar 13 2010, 04:32 PM
|- - ugordan   Ignition happened on time at 12:30 PM local, waiti...   Mar 13 2010, 05:40 PM
- - Hungry4info   Successful. QUOTE Today, SpaceX successfully compl...   Mar 13 2010, 10:04 PM
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