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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#1
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3648 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 21 2007, 08:44 PM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3648 Joined: 1-October 05 From: Croatia Member No.: 523 |
Looks to me their biggest problem was attitude control. Engines performed well, which is great news. The staging sequence introduced some big attitude disturbance that was probably the culprint causing recontact with the first stage.
A big part of the second stage burn also exhibited wobbly attitude and the engine nozzle was jittering noticeably the whole time. Things started to get very rough at T+04:42 and obviously soon after the thrust vector control reached its maximum authority with the nozzle making rough circles. It managed to keep the heading pretty well, though. It's even possible the oscillations would have died down after a peak, but we'll never know. At T+04:55 the vehicle started to roll and that's probably what lead to LOS and automatic engine shutdown. Whether the attitude drift and roll problems were linked is the big question, I understand roll control is maintained via cold helium gas jets and it was speculated there could have been a leak somewhere. That still leaves the question why engine pitch/yaw gimbal was having such a hard time keeping the vehicle steady. -------------------- |
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