FAILURE: SpaceX Falcon I Launch III - August 2

[clongton]

Sorry for the basic/stupid question, but does SpaceX use active explosive devices on their LVs or do they just let it run out of fuel and crash.

Thrust termination on F1.  In other words, shut down and fall to your doom.  No explosive termination systems in the F1.

Thanks for clarifying that for me.

Doesn't range safety at the Cape require an active destruct system?

[Chris Bergin]

Commercial company. Why the hell should they sit there and try and tell you things they've got NO way of knowing, surrounded by replays of the vehicle failing.

Come on people. We should be wishing SpaceX the best for their next flight, not jumping up and down on their webcast PR.

[guru]

Solar sails seem to have bad luck with LVs... Wasn't there a solar sail spacecraft that was supposed to be launched on a Russian rocket, but that failed as well?

Off topic, but wouldn't it be nice if they could fit that solar sail spacecraft, or anything other payload, with an escape rocket, like they do with manned capsules, so it doesn't get lost as often as the rocket does?  (Shroud serves as heat shield, add parachute.  I know there a lot of issues like reduced payload capacity and increased vehicle complexity, but it's just a thought.)

[clongton]

Commercial company. Why the hell should they sit there and try and tell you things they've got NO way of knowing, surrounded by replays of the vehicle failing.

Come on people. We should be wishing SpaceX the best for their next flight, not jumping up and down on their webcast PR.

Just like this time, I will be here next time cheering them on. And the next, and the next, however many it takes. This guy is doing what all of us wish we could do, so cut him some slack. Quit being jealous.

[Aviator]

More for the huge grain of salt

Found a reference to a twitter feed coming from inside SpaceX California

There was an issue in the separation stage. A glitch that resulted in the engine exploding      Italics Mine

Looking for a giant salt shaker for this little tidbit.  More If I find it

Larry

[amon]

Did anyone else have some misgivings about the plume just before the video cut out? Not the expansion, but the appearance of lines that moved counter clockwise. I was also wondering if the exhaust was looking a bit 'smoky'. Could we be seeing problems with the  regen channels around the bell failing?

[EE Scott]

Commercial company. Why the hell should they sit there and try and tell you things they've got NO way of knowing, surrounded by replays of the vehicle failing.

Come on people. We should be wishing SpaceX the best for their next flight, not jumping up and down on their webcast PR.

Just like this time, I will be here next time cheering them on. And the next, and the next, however many it takes. This guy is doing what all of us wish we could do, so cut him some slack. Quit being jealous.

I think we will all be here cheering them on next time.  It feels kind of like getting punched in the stomach to see them fail on this 3rd try. I look forward to the official explanation.  Bring on the next rocket and let's execute lessons learned.

[pbreed]

Rocket Science is really hard.
Cut them some slack.

[punkboi]

Solar sails seem to have bad luck with LVs... Wasn't there a solar sail spacecraft that was supposed to be launched on a Russian rocket, but that failed as well?

Is it possible that they only lost telemetry and that the vehicle is still going?

Yes.  The solar sail was built by The Planetary Society of Pasadena, CA.  They're planning to build a second one

[Wolverine]

Commercial company. Why the hell should they sit there and try and tell you things they've got NO way of knowing, surrounded by replays of the vehicle failing.

Come on people. We should be wishing SpaceX the best for their next flight, not jumping up and down on their webcast PR.

Well said!  The thread is moving so fast that it would be much easier to follow without the unnecessary melodrama.  Some people act as if Space X just dumped their own property into the ocean.  It's a new frontier for private rocketry, and exact science is not an exact science.  They'll get it right eventually.

[braddock]

All their PR guys needed to do when they cut away was issue a pre-prepared statement - something along the lines of:

Remember, the webcast hosts were NOT PR guys.  Max is an engineer and program manager - I don't know who the other host was, but she was obviously not a professional broadcaster.  Despite that I thought they were doing a fantastic job - and we got a tour of the SpaceX factory to boot.

SpaceX was trying to tell it to you straight and homegrown, but it bit them because they weren't prepared for a graceful failure.

Gwynne Shotwell from sales hosted the Press Calls on prior attempts, and she always handled the anomalies gracefully - staying on the line until some sort of statement or information could be extracted from the very busy team on the island, or even getting Elon on the phone.

But I wouldn't hold the abrupt cut-to-credits against the whole enterprise just because they got a little over their head in the amateur broadcasting department.

[Ford Mustang]

SpaceX Falcon I Flight 3 Failure video now available, located in the FREE video section: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=13944.0

EDIT:  The thread also includes the first attempt scrub engine firing, nothing more.  No sound, but it was the best that my video acquirer could grab at the time.

[ppnl]

She looked like she was about to cry. These announcers were not really qualified to handle a failure. Maybe not good PR but in its way they were far more honest than some talking head PR type. I'm glad they cut the feed.

I'm not an investor so all I can say is better luck next time. I would really like to see this work.

[Oberon_Command]

Just watched the replay, looks like the oscillations started at around T+30s, in small scale, T+57 in large scale. That "flare" I mentioned was at  T+43 seconds.

[James Lowe1]

I'm going to trim back the thread to make it flow better. The PR argument is not related to the failure, so it's not personal. Opinions are fine, but we can have a separate thread for that tomorrow. This is about the launch itself.

[sawtooth]

I feel sorry for SpaceX and I still wish them all the best in the future.   Flying rockets is hard work.

I think the biggest issue here is that fact that the second test flight made it much longer than the first.  This one, however, didn't get to check out the new updates to the 2nd stage.  Of course, they will still have the data to look over to see what can be done to improve the rocket and try again.

It will be interesting to see what will happen to the future launch manifest and payloads though.

[jimvela]

The most disappointing thing about this entire event is the negative and outright absurd posts by some members on this list that obviously have personal agendas.

I totally agree. I'm disgusted by some of the comments, and we'll have a long hard think about trimming this thread back, as I see some comments as distruptive, which is not the style of this site's forum.

The best part about NSF is the exceedingly high signal-to-noise ratio. 

Here are some positives to think about:

+  This appears to be the 2nd straight time that SpaceX has flown a 1st stage at least very close to the 1/2 staging event. 

+  SpaceX just had a substantially different 1st stage engine get the vehicle at least close to staging.  There's got to be at least some working processes over there.

+  The ability to abort a launch without destruction of the vehicle is fairly well demonstrated.  Yes, the big boys all do this.  Yes, we don't know if whatever killed this launch is related.  At least the fundamentals of getting off the pad seem to be working.

+  They just had a 9 engine firing succeed.

+  They have 2 more F1s in the pipeline, they can get more learning in. 

+  Even with all the crazy webcast technical issues, they had good sense to say that they had a problem and then sign out.  All those glitches expose more things that can be improved.  Let's assume that they will fix them.

Here's hoping they fix more things with these expensive lessons, and come back to put launch 4 into a flawless orbit.

[Aviator]

Found the link to the Twitter feed here

https://twitter.com/tikitosca

Last Post to it

Sitting in the Space X hanger as Elon writes his update of the launch. Mood is pretty somber   Italics mine again

Larry

[Chris Bergin]

Elon's sent an e-mail:

It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight.  On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect.  Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together.  This is under investigation and I will send out a note as soon as we understand exactly what happened. 

The most important message I’d like to send right now is that SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward.  We have flight four of Falcon 1 almost ready for flight and flight five right behind that.  I have also given the go ahead to begin fabrication of flight six.  Falcon 9 development will also continue unabated, taking into account the lessons learned with Falcon 1.  We have made great progress this past week with the successful nine engine firing.


As a precautionary measure to guard against the possibility of flight 3 not reaching orbit, SpaceX recently accepted a significant investment.  Combined with our existing cash reserves, that ensures we will have more than sufficient funding on hand to continue launching Falcon 1 and develop Falcon 9 and Dragon.  There should be absolutely zero question that SpaceX will prevail in reaching orbit and demonstrating reliable space transport.  For my part, I will never give up and I mean never. 

Thanks for your hard work and now on to flight four.


Elon

[Jim]

\but the appearance of lines that moved counter clockwise. I was also wondering if the exhaust was looking a bit 'smoky'. ]

All are standard for this type of engine.  It can be seen in Delta II engine