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

[ljk4-1]

ROCKET SCIENCE

- Falcon Images Show Fatal Engine Fire

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Falcon_I...ngine_Fire.html

El Segundo CA (SPX) Mar 27, 2006 - New images released by Space Exploration
Technologies Inc. of the launch of the Falcon 1 last Friday clearly show the
beginning of an engine fire that ultimately caused mission controllers to
destroy the rocket less than a minute into its historic flight.

- Musk Vows To Launch Falcon 1 Again Within Six Months

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Musk_Vow...Six_Months.html

- Falcon 1 Lost In First Launch Attempt

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Falcon_1...ch_Attempt.html

- Vinci Cyrogenic Motor Shines In CNES Tests

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Vinci_Cy...CNES_Tests.html

[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.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

I'm assuming the earlier Ariane family was a derivative of the Diamant family.
Doug

There is something like that. Likely by the same teams. In between there was the Europa rocket project, but as far as I remember there was only one or few disastrous tests.


Note that the emeraude launcher never made to orbit. It was rather a development model, or used for studying high atmosphere, or testing entry head (for nuclear missiles).


That the falcon team tries to reach orbit from the first launch is just bypassing what took twenty years to develop for France. I f they success to the second test, or even the third, it would be a pretty nice achievement. Thanks to engineers, but thanks too to many technical progress such as computer which allow to put on a laptop what took a large control room thirty years ago.

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.

SpaceX has to start with a small rocket, to develop their flight capacity first. A failure with a small rocket costs much less, but learns as much.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Eventually this fire seems to have no relation with the problem of the blanket.

[Bob Shaw]

There is something like that. Likely by the same teams. In between there was the Europa rocket project, but as far as I remember there was only one or few disastrous tests.

Don't start me on the Europa rocket, what went wrong, and the way it destroyed what remained of the UK launcher industry, but, in summary - integration between nations just didn't seem to work. The UK Blue Streak booster was the first stage, and it worked every time - but the upper stages always failed, and finally ELDO gave it all up as a bad job. And Lo! ESA was born...

Think 'Canadian Arrow'...

Bob Shaw

[crabbsaline]

Short videos of first launch now up with March 31 update. None, so far, showing Falcon's demise.

How great of a problem can that cloud of dust/sand/vegetation cause? How much of a priority should it be to make a pad with a greater diameter, thus reducing dust?

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Regarding ELDO: There were four test flights. The French "Coralie" second stage gave them fits during ground tests (the ground crew took to referring to it as "de Gaulle's Force de Fart") -- but during all four actual flights, it worked, while the previously reliable West German third stage always failed.

[ljk4-1]

First flight success isn't the whole story
---

Last month's failed first launch of the Falcon 1 raised the question
of just how successful the first launches of new rockets are. Tom
Hill points out that those rockets that have successful first flights
often have a great deal of flight heritage.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/590/1

[crabbsaline]

Maybe it's time to start a Falcon 9 thread, with both 1 and 9 as subtopics of SpaceX, under Private missions. Check out the last half of this article from space.com:

22nd National Space Symposium Begins Today

Will further Falcon 1 tests be done prior to the Falcon 9 1st stage static fire?

[Guest_Analyst_*]

Contrary to popular belief, the Falcon 9 is now even more in the future. You don't built a Delta IV class vehicle AND all the infrastructure in two years.

[Bob Shaw]

Here's the picture the SpaceX team didn't *quite* catch!

Bob Shaw

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[abalone]

Maybe we should combine this thread with the "blowed Up Real Good!", A Place for Spectacular Failures" thread until further notice or should I say "awaiting further developments"....
Bit harsh?..

[AndyG]

If the loss of Falcon 1 is down to human error as reported by space.com then that's not such a bad place to be. I wouldn't be writing these people and this craft off quite yet.

[RNeuhaus]

I have the impression that the mistake was due mainly of the sensation of anxiety of the first launch that is very common. That state of anxiety of the personnel to get the thing working will lead many blind mistakes. Hope that the next time, all personnel will be calmer due to the more experience and confidence.

Rodolfo

[Comga]

Bad, Good, and Great

First the bad: Newsweek finally noticed SpaceX. In twenty words they made at least three errors, not the least of which was putting the Falcon 1 launch under the heading of "Space Tourism". They want to cancel "their" seet on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip 2, not that they have one, even though that's an air-launched, hybrid rocket, winged...... you get the picture.

Then the good: The April 3 edition of Aviation Week has a full two page article on the launch, titled "First 30 Sec. Good..." It is a good article in classic Av Week fashion (Blackstar TSTO not withstanding ). There is even an enlargement of one of the very early photos with more clarity than I have seen showing the fire before the rocke is half way past the transport cradle. It appears that the fire is inside some blankets attached to the tubular (blue painted titanium?) thrust frame. They have a great image of the engine from a few years back for context. There are no pictures of the wreckage, but I don't blame SpaceX for not being THAT forthcoming. Lots of quotes that I have not read to date.

Then the great: The top half of the Av Week back page is an editorial titled "Two cheers for the new rocketeers". It sums up what many of us "fans" have felt for years: this was never going to be easy, it is harder than many thought even when being "realistic", but there is a lot riding on the success of SpaceX, and we have good reason to believe that they will succeed to a good degree, at least technically.

We just have to wait for the official report to see which wild guess was closest to the true failure mechanism.