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

[edkyle99]

Pardon my ignorance. I thought in order to achieve a circular orbit there must be an engine firing at apogee? The shuttle does this.

Direct ascent to circular LEO is possible, and for low orbits such as this one I would say preferred, without an apogee burn.  An apogee burn buys extra performance when the orbit altitude increases.     

 - Ed Kyle

[butters]

Also, FOX News seems to be pretty enamored with the idea of commercial spaceflight, so Congressional Republicans might want to take that into consideration when communicating to their base about space policy.  Don't want to be seen as "out-of-touch" with anti-government conservatives.

[corrodedNut]

SpaceX update:

http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

Get it while its hot!

[savuporo]

Also, FOX News seems to be pretty enamored with the idea of commercial spaceflight...

What, the same news network that had "NASA launches a private rocket" for this launch as a headline ?

[gladiator1332]

SpaceX update:

http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

Get it while its hot!

Can't wait for the hires images to be uploaded.

[ugordan]

Also, FOX News seems to be pretty enamored with the idea of commercial spaceflight...

What, the same news network that had "NASA launches a private rocket" for this launch as a headline ?

Wasn't that CNN?

[gladiator1332]

Also, FOX News seems to be pretty enamored with the idea of commercial spaceflight...

What, the same news network that had "NASA launches a private rocket" for this launch as a headline ?

Wasn't that CNN?

Yes, that was CNN that had that, not Fox News.

But Fox News was also equally cringe worthy at times.

[corrodedNut]

From you-know-who:

"SpaceX says they accomplished a second stage restart "burp" to slightly change the Falcon's orbit. That could explain the slightly elliptical orbit being reported by independent tracking data."

What's that about?

[corrodedNut]

"We did a test burp of the second stage after orbit insertion, so the current orbit will be a little different than the insertion orbit," (says) Elon Musk

[Nomadd]

I may have missed it but did the second stage refire to raise perigee?

No. There wasn't supposed to be a second firing on this flight.

Pardon my ignorance. I thought in order to achieve a circular orbit there must be an engine firing at apogee? The shuttle does this.

 I think you're sort of right. It just doesn't have to separate firing. It can be a continuation of the one firing. No need to shut the engine off and coast to apogee before you circularize unless you want to check your initial orbit and use the 2nd burn to get it perfect.
 Or one of a dozen other reasons that I'm sure I'm missing.
 I'm guessing that now that Elon knows how small a percentage of the total cost manufacturing the vehicle is, reusability won't be as big a factor as he thought, so he's probably not too broken up about the first stage.

[alexw]

CNN reported that NASA in conjuction with SpaceX launched the first private jet Falcon 9 on Friday, June 4. I'm going with CNN, since NASA does have contracts in place with SpaceX. I also used Wikipedia Falcon 9 as an information resource and previous interviews I personally observed with Elon Musk.

CNN reported it, so it HAS to be true.

    Someone should probably let Dassault know about their new product line!
                             -Alex

[butters]

"We did a test burp of the second stage after orbit insertion, so the current orbit will be a little different than the insertion orbit," (says) Elon Musk

Excellent, so that verifies the Merlin Vac restart capability.  All in all, who could ask for a more successful shakedown of the Falcon 9?

[Robotbeat]

I may have missed it but did the second stage refire to raise perigee?

No. There wasn't supposed to be a second firing on this flight.

Pardon my ignorance. I thought in order to achieve a circular orbit there must be an engine firing at apogee? The shuttle does this.

I was wrong.

The second burn was not necessary to achieve orbit, though, same as for Falcon 1 flight 4, I think (whose second burn primarily changed inclination, I think, not altitude... aimed "sideways").

[ugordan]

"We did a test burp of the second stage after orbit insertion, so the current orbit will be a little different than the insertion orbit," (says) Elon Musk

Excellent, so that verifies the Merlin Vac restart capability.  All in all, who could ask for a more successful shakedown of the Falcon 9?

Well, depends on whether or not they wanted the engine to do more than just "burp". 

[butters]

I was also impressed by the plume convergence on the first stage.  From the long-range tracking cameras one could hardly tell there were multiple engines firing.

[vt_hokie]

Musk says the long-term plan is to use the integrated abort engine system on Dragon Crew for propulsive soft landings on dry ground.

That'd almost be as good as wings!    Seriously, that'll be pretty cool if it proves feasible!  I assume it has to help with reusability.  (Soyuz does this now in order to enable its land touchdowns, right?  I'm surprised there has been no effort to make Soyuz reusable after all these years.  Then again, I guess the Soyuz descent module only makes up a third or so of the spacecraft anyway.) 

[gladiator1332]

I just hope there are no further questions for Elon from the media tonight, I would hate to hear what he would have to say to the "SpaceX Haters" after a few margaritas!

[Herb Schaltegger]

I love this line. Classic composition at its finest:

This first successful test flight of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is a belated sign that efforts to develop modest commercial space cargo capabilities are showing some promising signs.

That would get me a B- (at best) for grammer if that were a paper for school. 

You misspelled "grammar."  THAT would get you an automatic F from any of my English teachers and professors.

[Bubbinski]

Thanks for the coverage!  And congratulations to Space X! 

Looking forward to seeing the Dragon flying next on its test mission.  And I'm wondering when that 27 engine F9 heavy will be flying.

[Chris Bergin]

What we'll do is leave this thread open until tomorrow, close it and move to post flight reaction (as much as there's some of those threads already open on the post flight section). I'll tidy back the thread as even I got carried away with the Falcon Jet blog