Falcon 1, The World's Lowest Cost Rocket to Orbit Options

[ugordan]

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...

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

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."

[GravityWaves]

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:

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.