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: 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 23 2007, 09:26 AM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE4HkniM3Vc...ted&search=
This video on youtube goes a bit longer than the live webcast and the video posted on the SpaceX site. The last frame shows a time of +5 min, 14 sec, compared with the 5:01 "official version" The sequence shows the slow roll that is visible in the last few "official" seconds of video rapidly increases in speed, together with the probable start of a tumbling motion. When the video cuts off, the total roll is somewhere around 3/4 of a turn and the speed is rapidly increasing. The last oscillation of the nozzle seems to be almost violent (the oscillation amplitude steadily increases with time) and rather out of step with the previous oscillations. In addition, something nobody's noted here or on the Nasaspaceflight.com forum (that I can see) http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/forum-view.asp?fid=6 is that at T+4:44, there is a long recangular, square-ended piece of white debris (like a segment of a window blind) falls past the camera and is visible for a few frames. The oscillations of the engine and vehicle get stronger rapidly starting maybe 3 seconds after this event, and more debris, most looking perhaps like shredded insolation or irregular shed ice pieces fall past the camera, the overall abundance of visible debris generally increases in the last 30 seconds. Other pieces are not clearly identifiable as discrete objects like the "slat" at 4:44, but it's clear things are being shaken nearly to bits. I would not be surprised if at or just after the end of the youtube video, the vehicle had a major structural failure, as suggested by the extra-violent irregular motion in the last 1/2 second of video. Beyond all this post-mortem analysis, the fact remains that they had a test flight that was a mission failure, but achieved some 90% of "detailed test objectives". In that, it resembles the flights of Saturn 502 (Apollo 6, which made orbit but had multiple problems and failed S-IVB restart) or the Delta IV Heavy (which didn't make the proper orbit and dropped secondary payloads into atmosphere-intercepting orbits.) They have made a major step toward orbit with a totally new vehicle and should be congratulated. |
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Mar 23 2007, 03:25 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1281 Joined: 18-December 04 From: San Diego, CA Member No.: 124 |
They have made a major step toward orbit with a totally new vehicle and should be congratulated. And it strikes me that they have done their testing in front of a live studio audience - basically the whole world watching them succeed or fail! How often do we get access to onboard camera footage on other "test" flights in real time? I also might add that this was also a test flight of SpaceX as an organization - how they are able to learn from past mistakes, mission ops, etc. I, for one, welcome our new PayPal space masters! -------------------- Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!" Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test |
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