Falcon 1, The World's Lowest Cost Rocket to Orbit |
Falcon 1, The World's Lowest Cost Rocket to Orbit |
Nov 19 2005, 06:28 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3652 Joined: 1-October 05 From: Croatia Member No.: 523 |
I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but here goes:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=18353 http://www.spacex.com/ Looking forward to launch videos... -------------------- |
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Mar 26 2006, 04:03 AM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
Guys... I hate to say it... but this shows once again that getting into orbit is *not* easy. It's actually rather difficult. And when you try to do it cheaply, you tend to fail. Spectacularly.
It's all a matter of the amount of energy required to get into orbit -- and the time frame in which you have to release that energy. A fully fueled 747, for example, carries enough energy to place the entire airplane into orbit. But it cannot release that energy quickly enough to achieve the necessary acceleration. You not only have to provide enough energy to accelerate you to orbital velocity, you have to have a motor (or motors) that can release that energy fast enough to actually achieve the acceleration you need. If you try to do that with cheaply built or mass-produced parts, or with assemblies that have not been fault-tested to within an inch of their lives, you tend to get the results we just saw Falcon 1 achieve. And the manufacturing standards and fault testing required to assure success -- they just ain't cheap. -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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Mar 26 2006, 04:25 AM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 544 Joined: 17-November 05 From: Oklahoma Member No.: 557 |
Guys... I hate to say it... but this shows once again that getting into orbit is *not* easy. It's actually rather difficult. And when you try to do it cheaply, you tend to fail. Spectacularly. If you try to do that with cheaply built or mass-produced parts, or with assemblies that have not been fault-tested to within an inch of their lives, you tend to get the results we just saw Falcon 1 achieve. And the manufacturing standards and fault testing required to assure success -- they just ain't cheap. -the other Doug This was only the first launch, and from what I've read most of the systems on the rocket were doing pretty well, and the failure may be due to one single fault. The implication is that if that one failure hadn't occurred, the satellite might well be in orbit now. Granted, they didn't get to staging, second stage ignition, and first stage recovery, so we don't yet know how that will go, but there doesn't seem to be much wrong with the first stage as far as flying. I'm willing to give them another couple of tries, or even three or four, before writing off their approach. |
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