SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon CRS SpX-1 MISSION GENERAL DISCUSSION

[Maciej Olesinski]

So it is ok to smuggle trinkets onboard and sell them after the fact, even though it doesn't affect the mission?

I am sure that this one will go to SpaceX office or factory and will boost employees to work harder. But hey! It is ok to hate SpaceX

[Jason1701]

So it is ok to smuggle trinkets onboard and sell them after the fact, even though it doesn't affect the mission?

Ask Dave Scott.

[Robotbeat]

Probably not okay to sell trinkets. But space X is totally free (ITAR blah) to sell Dragon herself and any parts of her.

[Garrett]

And then soon somebody starts smuggling trinkets on board.   Where do you draw the line?

Resorting to slippery slope rhetoric? Really?

Why not?  It happens.

It's a very weak form of argument, usually considerd a logical fallacy. Often used as a last resort.

[dunderwood]

I think everyone agrees that smuggling trinkets solely for future sale ala Apollo 15 is over the line.

I also think you're in the minority as far as objecting to the posters mentioned above, Jim.  Small lightweight stowaways that are a present from one person to another have a pretty long history as far as manned space flight goes.  If both parties are happy with it, I don't think it's our place to condemn it.

[Chris Bergin]

This is getting incredibly boring.

1) No more on this bloody photo. And I mean no more. Don't waste your time and mine posting "But!" They WILL be deleted.

2) If you want to talk about Jim, use the Jim Discussion thread. Remember not to use the Jim Update thread, which I'll start when I know the window for his dinner time. Can someone do screenshots?

3) Yes, I totally agree, so what if they put a photo on there. But guess what, Jim's done spacecraft stowage as a frakking JOB, and half of you embarrassing yourselves with posts akin to "I've never done that, but I have to post cause SpaceX are so amazing and Jim's upset me as he didn't say please or thank you or Go SpaceX in his response. How rude!"

Carry on with CRS-1. Thanking you

[aameise9]

May I respectfully suggest that the engine malfunction may be another worthy concern (in addition to the illicit poster)?

To me, the SpaceX statement leaves open whether or not engine parts (fuel dome, combustion chamber, nozzle) detached from the vehicle.

In the movie that was posted, several large fragments are visible in the exhaust.  One of these has the silhouette of a nozzle, but may also be a fairing.

But perhaps the unspoken consensus to maintain a pregnant silence on this issue simply means that the nature of this incident (malfunction or disassembly) should be made known only to those who need to know it?

[john smith 19]

All sensor and telemetry data aside, it would be interesting if they could salvage the engines and have a look at what occurred directly…

Good idea.

IIRC they've done this in the past. Does anyone know if Spacex would know where the stage will re-enter well enough to do it? I doubt it was a *planned* task for this mission but sounds like a good use of their resources.

When did they recover Merlin engine(s) in the past? Can you provide a reference?

I think trying to recover the engine in question from this flight would be very difficult, expensive and not a good use of their resources. They should be able to establish the cause from telemetry and possibly from ground testing.

I'd agree recovering it is a long shot as I presume it's expecting to be destroyed in re-entry and AFAIK the stage cannot be commanded for it to be brought down more intact.

Having dug in further I see I did not recall correctly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

and Spacex has never successfully recovered a stage.
[edit   *however* an article in the house newsletter for ATI Wah Chang, who make the Nb alloy the nozzles are made out of  ( Outlook_v32n1_2011.pdf) say (page 5 along with a nice phot of the nozzle build team) Draco thrusters have been recovered and test fired. This may have been where I got the impression from.]
Although it would be interesting to know if the parachute storage areas were packed for this mission.

[Juggernaut]

Orbcomm confirmed re-entry of satellite...

http://www.orbcomm.com/Collateral/Documents/English-US/OG2%20Prototype.pdf

press release however sounds very strange and controversial... basically in two days they managed to test and verify most of on-board systems and instruments.. very quick.. and as result the OG2 satellite technology was fully validated.
however they have filed an insurance claim as they had total loss of satellite.

Concerning the reason for wrong deployment they confirm that a specific safety check was pre-imposed by NASA and state that in case they would have been as primary mission, satellite would have probably deployed in correct orbit.
the message i have got here is: our mission failed because we were secondary payload and NASA was primary one.
well, with this respect i do not think SpaceX can demonstate they are fault-tolerant unless they disclose details on the nature of safety check.

Also i found a bit disappointing that SpaceX until now did not make any mention of Orbcomm OG2 and details of its release.

[kevin-rf]

But perhaps the unspoken consensus to maintain a pregnant silence on this issue simply means that the nature of this incident (malfunction or disassembly) should be made known only to those who need to know it?

I doubt that, an engine malfunction of that nature is serious. I suspect they are silent because they first need to fully understand the problem. I suspect they will have (and will be surprised if they do not) review boards, meetings, and go through a full review process. That includes involvement of the customers. At the end of it they will release a report (sans proprietary and ITAR) that describes the failure and the corrective actions they will be taking. They will either clear the 1D or beef something up in it.

What should scare all rabid SpaceX fans is this can take months... If you ask me, 2013 is no longer looking so rosy.

[peter-b]

well, with this respect i do not think SpaceX can demonstate they are fault-tolerant unless they disclose details on the nature of safety check.

They have. There's some discussion in at least one of the updates threads.

[dcporter]

well, with this respect i do not think SpaceX can demonstate they are fault-tolerant unless they disclose details on the nature of safety check.

They demonstrated exactly how fault-tolerant they are. With an engine out at 76 seconds, F9v1.0 can get X kg to Y orbit, with enough margin left to be 95% certain of being able to do Z. And the safety check was very clearly described in their presser.

Also i found a bit disappointing that SpaceX until now did not make any mention of Orbcomm OG2 and details of its release.

Pure speculation here, but Orbcomm may not want SpaceX talking out of class; I wouldn't be surprised to see a clause in the contract to that effect.

[peter-b]

At the end of it they will release a report (sans proprietary and ITAR) that describes the failure and the corrective actions they will be taking. They will either clear the 1D or beef something up in it.

I expect that the "report" will be, at most, a press release or brief blog post, unless you are an customer important enough to get insight (e.g. NASA). Furthermore, the fact is that SpaceX actually have a good track record of quickly carrying out post-incident reviews of this kind. I see no reason to expect that the January launch will be significantly delayed at this stage, especially since the incident did not threaten LOM.

[Robotbeat]

But perhaps the unspoken consensus to maintain a pregnant silence on this issue simply means that the nature of this incident (malfunction or disassembly) should be made known only to those who need to know it?

I doubt that, an engine malfunction of that nature is serious. I suspect they are silent because they first need to fully understand the problem. I suspect they will have (and will be surprised if they do not) review boards, meetings, and go through a full review process. That includes involvement of the customers. At the end of it they will release a report (sans proprietary and ITAR) that describes the failure and the corrective actions they will be taking. They will either clear the 1D or beef something up in it.

What should scare all rabid SpaceX fans is this can take months... If you ask me, 2013 is no longer looking so rosy.

Merlin 1C is a very very different engine from Merlin 1D. they have only one falcon nine rocket which uses Merlin 1C left to launch. I sincerely doubt this will be all very long standdown if only because they made it to orbit successfully and aren't likely to take a super long time to rectify the problem. How long did ULA standdown Atlas five when there was early shutdown of the RL 10? How long does Russia wait when there's a failure? How long after the shuttle ATO did the next mission fly? (next month!)

[jaufgang]

Some good reading:  http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2012/10/satellite-ride-sharers-spacex.html

key quote:

"While there was sufficient fuel on board to [lift the satellite], the liquid oxygen on board was only enough to achieve a roughly 95 per cent likelihood of completing the second burn, so Falcon 9 did not attempt a restart," says SpaceX spokesperson Katherine Nelson.

The event highlights the fact that redundancy measures are no guarantee that firms hitching future rides won't find their equipment lost in space - at least when crewed spacecraft are involved.

"The priority here was to protect the space station," says Nelson of this week's event. "Very few secondary missions will be space station missions.

Update (19:20 BST): Since posting, Nelson of SpaceX has elaborated on the conditions presented to Orbcomm to fly as a secondary payload during this week's ISS mission:

While you rightfully point out that the second stage burn did not happen because of pre-planned NASA safety gate designed to protect the space station, it is also important to note that Orbcomm understood and accepted from the beginning that there was a high risk of their satellite remaining at the Dragon insertion orbit. Orbcomm requested that SpaceX carry one of their small satellites (weighing a few hundred pounds vs Dragon at over 12000 pounds) on this flight so that they could gather test data before we launch their full constellation next year. The higher the orbit, the more test data they can gather, so they requested that we attempt to restart and raise altitude. NASA agreed to allow that, but only on condition that there be substantial propellant reserves, since the orbit would be close to the Space Station. SpaceX would not have agreed to fly their satellite otherwise, since this was not part of the core mission and there was a known, material risk of no altitude raise.

[Oberon_Command]

How long after the shuttle ATO did the next mission fly? (next month!)

But that ATO was found to be caused by a bad sensor, was it not? So there wasn't really anything to fix except the sensor, and therefore no reason for a stand-down longer than it took to find out what the problem was.

[yg1968]

Orbcomm confirmed re-entry of satellite...

http://www.orbcomm.com/Collateral/Documents/English-US/OG2%20Prototype.pdf

press release however sounds very strange and controversial... basically in two days they managed to test and verify most of on-board systems and instruments.. very quick.. and as result the OG2 satellite technology was fully validated.
however they have filed an insurance claim as they had total loss of satellite.

Concerning the reason for wrong deployment they confirm that a specific safety check was pre-imposed by NASA and state that in case they would have been as primary mission, satellite would have probably deployed in correct orbit.
the message i have got here is: our mission failed because we were secondary payload and NASA was primary one.
well, with this respect i do not think SpaceX can demonstate they are fault-tolerant unless they disclose details on the nature of safety check.

Also i found a bit disappointing that SpaceX until now did not make any mention of Orbcomm OG2 and details of its release.

It's a good thing that Orbcomm had insurance. The press release says that the $10 million insurance money will offset the cost of the prototype and of the launch. It doesn't seem like SpaceX got a lot of money from Orbcomm for launching this secondary payload.

The Company has filed a notice of claim under its launch insurance policy for a total loss of the OG2 prototype. The maximum amount covered by the policy is $10 million, which would largely offset the expected cost of the OG2 prototype and associated launch services and launch insurance.

[Remes]

Orbcomm confirmed re-entry of satellite...

http://www.orbcomm.com/Collateral/Documents/English-US/OG2%20Prototype.pdf

Somehow it is always sad when a lot of engineering effort doesn't reach its destination. It's only nuts and bolt flying up there, but there were many people involved getting these nuts and bolts exactly into this constellation, endless discussions, endless design work, test, ...

And also it is amazing to me to learn a situation, where you have only a couple of hours to test your masterpiece. I wonder if they have plans exactly for scenarios like this, where time is very limited, or if they just make adhoc decisions what to test. (Reading the word adhoc in this context I actually can't believe, that there no plans).

[awatral]

Some good reading:  http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2012/10/satellite-ride-sharers-spacex.html

"While there was sufficient fuel on board to [lift the satellite], the liquid oxygen on board was only enough to achieve a roughly 95 per cent likelihood of completing the second burn, so Falcon 9 did not attempt a restart," says SpaceX spokesperson Katherine Nelson.

Having useless (excess) fuel on board sounds wasteful.

Does anybody know what is the usual (or allowable) mismatch between quantities of fuel and oxidizer?
If the fuel mix ratio is preset and fixed during the full duration of the flight, that one would expect that perfect match is possible?

[bob the martian]

well, with this respect i do not think SpaceX can demonstate they are fault-tolerant unless they disclose details on the nature of safety check.

They demonstrated exactly how fault-tolerant they are. With an engine out at 76 seconds, F9v1.0 can get X kg to Y orbit, with enough margin left to be 95% certain of being able to do Z. And the safety check was very clearly described in their presser.

Also i found a bit disappointing that SpaceX until now did not make any mention of Orbcomm OG2 and details of its release.

Pure speculation here, but Orbcomm may not want SpaceX talking out of class; I wouldn't be surprised to see a clause in the contract to that effect.

Ding ding ding ding ding.

There are legal as well as engineering issues at play here, and until those are ironed out I don't expect to hear that much from either company.   Transparent doesn't necessarily mean timely.

As for fault tolerance, I think SpaceX lived up to their end of the bargain as best they could; they got the primary payload into the right orbit, and from what I can tell the stage itself was still healthy, and under any other circumstances (i.e., not pointing towards the ISS) would have been able to restart.   

As for the failure itself, I fully expect it will take several weeks of analysis before SpaceX is willing to say anything definitive as to the why and the how.  Too bad they couldn't launch in daylight (for clearer/more definitive video), and too bad they don't have 1st stage recovery yet.  Imagine being able to inspect the damaged hardware first hand.  That's as much an impetus for getting the flyback stages working as anything else (not that it will help if it's the center engine that fails, but...). 

I still think that, on balance, this was a positive; the rocket not only survived an engine shredding itself, it was still able to carry out its primary mission.  That's huge in my book (although I'll admit that's a small book).  Sucks for Orbcomm, but it's not like misdeployments don't happen with other boosters.