LIVE: Falcon 9 Flight 1 Maiden Flight - June 4, 2010

[gospacex]

So where are my kudos for predicting a June launch last January

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=18936.msg521188#msg521188

Jim, you are one of the best on this site.

[Antares]

You know I have to tell you all that I have watched the launch probably 50-60 times now, from all different angles and I still get a lump in my throat every time. I have goose bumps on my arm even now, a day and a half later, as I write this. That was just a totally awesome launch. As partial as I am to seeing the Shuttle launch, there is just NOTHING like the throaty roar of a LOX/RP-1 engine splitting the sky on the way up - nothing! I loved that launch! It's been said over and over again on this forum in several different threads, but I just have to say it again; congratulations to Elon Musk, to SpaceX, to the entire team that worked so hard to set this bird free into the air, and to all the people who believed in SpaceX that this day would come.

+1.  Nice post, Chuck.

PS: I can't stop thinking of how many naysayers were doing their Marvin the MSFC'er Martian impression.
http://www.gargaro.com/MaRvInWaVs/boom.wav

[Antares]

There's no abort mode on unmanned rockets, so no need to disable redlines.  All of the off-nominal conditions that are survivable should be thought of beforehand and designed for in flight software.  There's precious little chance that something is going to develop in flight, a solution thought of, a solution designed, and uploaded all in the amount of possible reaction time.  It's the same reason the Germans and many modern rocketeers do not want to give hand controls to the crew capsule.

[Jim]

FWIW, I still think that they deliberately overrode the vehicle's attempt to compensate to get as much data as possible on the problem.

Why are you repeating this?

There is no such thing as over riding anything.  All Launch vehicles are autonomous.  They don't have the capability to receive commands, except for destruct.

Well, and except for Shuttle, of course (through the radio).

I call the shuttle a spacecraft

[Jim]

Remote control (mission control radioing instructions) was certainly used a lot during Apollo and Shuttle to help deal with the unexpected.

For Apollo, it was just abort modes and mostly for the shuttle too.

[edkyle99]

Sorry for posting this link, but I wanted to point out that a white gas is visible, in the closeup SpaceX photos, venting possibly from the interstage at liftoff.  This venting is not from the LOX vent valve, where gaseous oxygen was visible venting during the countdown. 

http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/001/remotes/

 - Ed Kyle

[ugordan]

Sorry for posting this link, but I wanted to point out that a white gas is visible, in the closeup SpaceX photos, venting possibly from the interstage at liftoff.

It's not coming from the 2nd stage umbilical and it's too high for the 1st stage LOX relief vent. Could it be MVac LOX chill being vented outside? I've seen slight venting in previous dress rehearsals coming from roughly this area.

[corrodedNut]

I saw that too, I believe it's coming from the umbilical plate. You can see it in the bottom left corner in the video when it switches to the on board camera. It stops (or is no longer visible) at about T+12.  I don't know if this type of venting is normal or not. I don't recall any thing like it on F1 launches, but the F1 camera may not have a view of its umbilical connections.

[mr. mark]

It seems this "venting" is only in one photo every other photo shows no venting,especially after clearing the launch structure. The picture shows that Falcon had just cleared the mobile launcher so, it cound be some form of venting or residual after launch. This is all speculation and I don't like to speculate. What is important is that the TEST vehicle achieved all it's major objectives. Parachute recovery was not one of them. It achieved orbit and went above and beyond what the engineers from Spacex's hope was. They'll review the data make changes such as to fix the roll of the second stage similar to what they did with falcon 4 and 5 and everything will be fine.   

[edkyle99]

It seems this "venting" is only in one photo every other photo shows no venting,especially after clearing the launch structure.

It is visible in at least four photos, including those taken after Falcon 9 had risen above the height of the lightning towers. 

 - Ed Kyle

[corrodedNut]

It seems this "venting" is only in one photo every other photo shows no venting,especially after clearing the launch structure. The picture shows that Falcon had just cleared the mobile launcher so, it cound be some form of venting or residual after launch. This is all speculation and I don't like to speculate. What is important is that the TEST vehicle achieved all it's major objectives. Parachute recovery was not one of them. It achieved orbit and went above and beyond what the engineers from Spacex's hope was. They'll review the data make changes such as to fix the roll of the second stage similar to what they did with falcon 4 and 5 and everything will be fine.   

Hey man, no disrespect, but you don't need to defend SpaceX to me...as I watched the Falcon 9 reach orbit, it felt like my team just won the Superbowl (or World Cup, take your pick).  Understandably, this whole site has gotten rather political lately, but that's not why I'm here.  I'm also not here to take anything away from SpaceX's great flight by looking for flaws or conspiracies. I'm here solely and purely out of technical curiosity, and this is the best site on the internet to get my questions answered by experienced and knowledgeable people.

There's no doubt in my mind that SpaceX will get the '9s minor bugs ironed out. They've always been forthcoming about their problems and solutions, now that they've had their greatest success I don't see why they'd change that.

SpaceX deserves a celebratory weekend off from making updates and PR releases for the likes of guys like me...but in the meantime, I'm still curious, sorry about that.


PS. I thought that was their best webcast ever, loved the side-by-side shot of the '9 pulling out of the Cape.

[ugordan]

Sorry for posting this link, but I wanted to point out that a white gas is visible, in the closeup SpaceX photos, venting possibly from the interstage at liftoff.

It's not coming from the 2nd stage umbilical and it's too high for the 1st stage LOX relief vent. Could it be MVac LOX chill being vented outside? I've seen slight venting in previous dress rehearsals coming from roughly this area.

Here's an image from March 9 showing the suspect venting location. I think it's just a MVac pump chill vent. There's a vent on Falcon 1s at the similar location in the interstage as well.

[ugordan]

PS. I thought that was their best webcast ever, loved the side-by-side shot of the '9 pulling out of the Cape.

The feed quality was apalling, both audio and video. It was unexcusable to have news networks trying to cover the launch only to show the "buffering stream" and "reconnecting to stream" message overlaid on live TV. A company that deals with "rocket science" can do better, all the more since they went extra steps to ensure that was the only live video available.

[edkyle99]

Sorry for posting this link, but I wanted to point out that a white gas is visible, in the closeup SpaceX photos, venting possibly from the interstage at liftoff.

It's not coming from the 2nd stage umbilical and it's too high for the 1st stage LOX relief vent. Could it be MVac LOX chill being vented outside? I've seen slight venting in previous dress rehearsals coming from roughly this area.

Here's an image from March 9 showing the suspect venting location. I think it's just a MVac pump chill vent. There's a vent on Falcon 1s at the similar location in the interstage as well.

Good find!  Now the questions are 1) what is used to chill the Merlin and 2) is the chilling/venting supposed to begin this soon?  RL10 chill-down, for example, doesn't start until several minutes into flight.

 - Ed Kyle

[mr. mark]

Excellent job ugordan finding the cause of the venting. As a big Spacex and commercial fan as well as being a NASA fan, I thought the coverage was also slightly lacking but that's because I've worked in AV for over a decade. The best shots came from Fox News and I also loved Spacex's internet coverage as far as shots but it was WAY to herky jerky. I was pulling my hair out worried my laptop feed would freeze just before launch. I actually scanned the TV news channels just before launch. I had 2 laptops running with feed and my TV on Fox news as well, my wife thought i was going crazy. You should have seen me jumping up and down like a kid as the rocket was going downrange.

[corrodedNut]

Here's an image from March 9 showing the suspect venting location. I think it's just a MVac pump chill vent. There's a vent on Falcon 1s at the similar location in the interstage as well.

That's not where the venting is coming from after launch, in the launch photos, the vehicle has already rotated 90 deg. At launch the umbilical plate and camera are on the erector/south side, after it rotates they are roughly atlantic/east side, and so is the vent plume.  If it was coming from your location, it would be on the north side after launch and rotate.

[ugordan]

Here's an image from March 9 showing the suspect venting location. I think it's just a MVac pump chill vent. There's a vent on Falcon 1s at the similar location in the interstage as well.

That's not where the venting is coming from after launch, in the photos, the vehicle has already rotated 90 deg.

The wind was blowing in the direction carrying it in front of the onboard camera and then the exhaust curved around the stage in front of it. It's consistent, look at the high resolution shots from the other thread or this one: http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/001/remotes/06.jpg

BTW, the post-flight telecon is recorded here: http://www.spacevidcast.com/2010/06/06/spacex-falcon-9-flight-1-post-flight-press-conference/

First 75 seconds are messed up, the rest is ok.

[mmeijeri]

There's no doubt in my mind that SpaceX will get the '9s minor bugs ironed out.

Heh, the 9, that has a nice Tolkienesque ring to it:

the Nine [Sauron] has gathered to himself; the Seven also, or else they are destroyed.

[corrodedNut]

Here's an image from March 9 showing the suspect venting location. I think it's just a MVac pump chill vent. There's a vent on Falcon 1s at the similar location in the interstage as well.

That's not where the venting is coming from after launch, in the photos, the vehicle has already rotated 90 deg.

The wind was blowing in the direction carrying it in front of the onboard camera and then the exhaust curved around the stage in front of it. It's consistent, look at the high resolution shots from the other thread or this one: http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/001/remotes/06.jpg

BTW, the post-flight telecon is recorded here: http://www.spacevidcast.com/2010/06/06/spacex-falcon-9-flight-1-post-flight-press-conference/

First 75 seconds are messed up, the rest is ok.

Yes, in this photo, the camera is roughly South of the pad, pointed North, you can see the top of the erector in the bottom foreground. The  vehicle has rotated, the SpaceX logo is facing south-ish, and the source of the venting is on the now-east side and the plume is wrapping around like you say. That's why  the venting would have been on the South/erector side at T-0.

[Garrett]

PS. I thought that was their best webcast ever, loved the side-by-side shot of the '9 pulling out of the Cape.

The feed quality was apalling, both audio and video. It was unexcusable to have news networks trying to cover the launch only to show the "buffering stream" and "reconnecting to stream" message overlaid on live TV. A company that deals with "rocket science" can do better, all the more since they went extra steps to ensure that was the only live video available.

Don't know how it was for everybody else, but when they switched to the dual view I could no longer see the clock running, so I didn't know how long was left till MECO, stage seperation and SECO. Next time I'll use a stopwatch just in case.

Edit: @Ugordon: I think they made a conscious decision to have only a basic web feed. Of course they can do better, but they're probably just setting the standard low to keep people's expectations of their coverage low also. Frustrating for all of us, but we're not in SpaceX/Musk's shoes.