SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 - Dragon - CRS-5/SpX-5 -Jan. 10, 2015 - DISCUSSION

[majormajor42]

- Something that they are only willing to show partially now but which will make sense when shown returning to port on a barge if that comes to pass.

While the mystery has been solved (grid fin) I would also point that the recovered rocket on sitting on the barge may be a fairly charred mess. May not be able to see any of the decals/paint on the side of the rocket.

I suppose the barge may have some system to hose it down to make it look a little nicer for the photo ops as it comes back in to port although they may not be concerned.

[chuck34]

I'm going to be in Daytona on Friday!  So I'll get to see this go up.  I'm guessing that the landing will be too far "over the horizon" to see from shore, but will the boost back (or whatever we're calling them) burns be visible?

[Hauerg]

- Something that they are only willing to show partially now but which will make sense when shown returning to port on a barge if that comes to pass.

While the mystery has been solved (grid fin) I would also point that the recovered rocket on sitting on the barge may be a fairly charred mess. May not be able to see any of the decals/paint on the side of the rocket.

I suppose the barge may have some system to hose it down to make it look a little nicer for the photo ops as it comes back in to port although they may not be concerned.

On the contrary: the mess might tell them a lot about what happened, will hold information. Just like the yellow-green stuff the put on th F1 cars in free practice when they test new aero parts.
So for at least the first few return floghts I expect them to come back as dirty as they are.
Also those images will communicate how hard it is to reenter a big stage.

[Hauerg]

I'm going to be in Daytona on Friday!  So I'll get to see this go up.  I'm guessing that the landing will be too far "over the horizon" to see from shore, but will the boost back (or whatever we're calling them) burns be visible?

Just guesstimating: you should have the 1st of the 3 return burns in your field of view. Though the flames will be going into the wrong direction to show you the bright end.

[RonM]

- Something that they are only willing to show partially now but which will make sense when shown returning to port on a barge if that comes to pass.

While the mystery has been solved (grid fin) I would also point that the recovered rocket on sitting on the barge may be a fairly charred mess. May not be able to see any of the decals/paint on the side of the rocket.

I suppose the barge may have some system to hose it down to make it look a little nicer for the photo ops as it comes back in to port although they may not be concerned.

On the contrary: the mess might tell them a lot about what happened, will hold information. Just like the yellow-green stuff the put on th F1 cars in free practice when they test new aero parts.
So for at least the first few return floghts I expect them to come back as dirty as they are.
Also those images will communicate how hard it is to reenter a big stage.

Agreed. Not only that, SpaceX would not want to hose it down with salt water and carrying enough fresh water around to clean the rocket would be an extra complication. Keep it simple and clean it wherever it will be refurbished.

[faadaadaa]

I as a "newby" don't "accept" a scrub for this after weeks of checks and almost 2 hot fire tests.
If they want to lower costs of space rocket launches, they have to aim to fewer scrubs.

Patience. Sit back, and admire what they are already achieving, instead of gnashing at the stumbles they discover along the way.

I'll take a scrub over LOV (or in the future LOC) any day and twice on Sunday.

[MarekCyzio]

Just guesstimating: you should have the 1st of the 3 return burns in your field of view. Though the flames will be going into the wrong direction to show you the bright end.

During last night launch of Falcon 9, the boostback burn was clearly visible from Melbourne area. Daytona is a bit closer = it should be also visible.

[Raj2014]

It is disappointing that CRS-5/SpX5 did not launch today. Hopefully they will fix the problem and launch on the 9th. Always better to be safe then sorry.

[meekGee]

I as a "newby" don't "accept" a scrub for this after weeks of checks and almost 2 hot fire tests.
If they want to lower costs of space rocket launches, they have to aim to fewer scrubs.

You know, "accept" was in quotes.

It's a valid question, and bothers me too.

Of course it is rocket science, and of course better a delay than a LOV, but the fact remains that there is a full-up test burn before every launch, and it seems there are as many scrubs on launches as there are aborted hot fires.

If things break between the hot fire and the launch (the infamous light-bulb test) then there is a reliability issue.
If things go uncaught in the hot fire, then it is not really a good facsimile of a launch.

But F9.1 is not a brand new rocket anymore.  For every aborted hot fire, and for every aborted launch, there is no doubt an analysis, and then either a bad component is identified, or a design flaw is uncovered.  And by this time, there should have been enough incremental fixes to get rid of at least most of these issues.

I am fully on-board with the sentiment that you can't rely on "process".  This has been demonstrated before - things always slip by.  Much better to do full-up testing like they do in the hot fires.  But with that done, we should be expecting a lot less issues while actually launching.

---

There's one more explanation, btw, and that is that maybe they tolerances are much much too tight, and in fact most of these issues would not have caused problems.  In that case, they are right in keeping it that way, since they will have returned cores soon, and can then tell with confidence which tolerances can be relaxed.

[Hauerg]

Also F9 1.1 might look  worse than it is because compared to other launchers they are in a quite high launch cadence for the first year(s).

[Pete]

Something else I notice, is that SpaceX is much more willing to put a Falcon on the pad even when they know they are still working on a problem.
They seem willing to use the terminal countdown as a final test of the flightworthyness of the vehicle.
With most other launch companies, and definitely with the government-run stuff, the policy seems to be more one of polishing it in the lab and in simulation until it gleams, before bringing the hardware anywhere *near* a launchpad. This results in less visible-to-public scrubs, but delays the development process enormously!

[laika_fr]

any link to Nasa's full coverage ?

[Brovane]

Something else I notice, is that SpaceX is much more willing to put a Falcon on the pad even when they know they are still working on a problem.
They seem willing to use the terminal countdown as a final test of the flightworthyness of the vehicle.
With most other launch companies, and definitely with the government-run stuff, the policy seems to be more one of polishing it in the lab and in simulation until it gleams, before bringing the hardware anywhere *near* a launchpad. This results in less visible-to-public scrubs, but delays the development process enormously!

Or (ULA) have more mature launch vehicles.  They also have decades of experience in building and flying launch vehicles.   

[Jim]

Something else I notice, is that SpaceX is much more willing to put a Falcon on the pad even when they know they are still working on a problem.
They seem willing to use the terminal countdown as a final test of the flightworthyness of the vehicle.
With most other launch companies, and definitely with the government-run stuff, the policy seems to be more one of polishing it in the lab and in simulation until it gleams, before bringing the hardware anywhere *near* a launchpad. This results in less visible-to-public scrubs, but delays the development process enormously!

That is not true at all and quite the opposite.  What "seems" is not the same as reality. 

Atlas V has eliminated wet dress rehearsals.  So not only that Atlas stages are not static fired, they don't see cryogens until launch day. 

Other vehicles have visible to the public scrubs.  And it does not delay the development process one bit much less enormously.

This is a case of hollow praise.

[MTom]

Would somebody like to start a new thread as a separate place for the repeated discussion about SpaceX scrubs? Since I read 100s of posts (pros and cons) about SpaceX scrubs in general, I dislike to read them after missions again and again.

P.S: My English is not so good, somebody could sure start it with more sophisticated sentences than I would do it. 

[Karloss12]

All that testing before the launch and still anomalies and glitches.  Obviously, if it wasn't for the plethora of sensors all over the rocket, this may have been a mid launch failure.  The Engineers that design the sensors into the rocket are definitely earning their keep.

I can't help but think an anomaly or glitch could slip passed a sensor (or absence of sensor) at any time.  At this rate I expect they need years of iterative continuous improvement before they consider launching passengers.  There is about three years until the Dragon 2 will be ready to launch astronauts.  Is that enough time?

Launching a FH would be triple trouble.  Maybe this is why there is has been no mention of its inaugural launched for some time.

SpaceX engineers are doing amazingly well and proving that Rockets ARE hard.  I look forward to seeing them improve.

[Space Ghost 1962]

Excellent. You get to the heart of the issue with what I see as SpaceX's chief flaw:

If the engine chill-down affects the actuators , this is a design problem, to solve for the next flights. I as a "newby" don't "accept" a scrub for this after weeks of checks and almost 2 hot fire tests.
If they want to lower costs of space rocket launches, they have to aim to fewer scrubs.
It seems too "fragile" as a whole ...

Most likely it falls in the realm of "Quality" - repeatably applying the process (which Elon says he hates) to get things right the first time.  It would be interesting to hear Elon elucidate his method of Quality without being process-oriented.  Such a method would be, in mundane ways that don't make media splashes, as groundbreaking as reusability.

He thinks he doesn't need "Quality" to get to Mars right now. I think he's exactly wrong on that. Predict that SpaceX will delay itself by years in getting to Mars, and losing some advantage, because he does not want to consolidate a provider business, because he thinks he does not have to, he can whip the orcs to get the necessary "quality" in the moment to deny need to "waste" resources on "Quality", where "QUALITY" will be eventually needed for Mars. Not just processes/components, but organization as well.

But then too much acceptance of "Quality" has not motivated others to get a reusable first stage of any stripe, and Musk's impatience means he has. I'm also glad his impatience doesn't mean launch fever.

By the way, NASA (and rival providers and other customers) isn't all that thrilled about this SpaceX characteristic either. Yet across the industry, it has shaken things up that needed this - what we all have anxiety over is that it shakes things apart at some inconvenient point.

To mix metaphors, its as if he's "staging" the company, where the launch services provider "first stage" is "depleting", and the "Mars foothold" next evolution of the company is the "second stage", and he's doing "fire in the hole" staging out of impatience for reaching the end goal in time.

[saliva_sweet]

Also F9 1.1 might look  worse than it is because compared to other launchers they are in a quite high launch cadence for the first year(s).

That's what I thought too. If they wouldn't schedule so aggressively they'd have fewer delays and scrubs. But this launch was not scheduled aggressively. It was the longest gap between F9 1.1 launhces even before this scrub. Still lots of delays.

[punder]

Something else I notice, is that SpaceX is much more willing to put a Falcon on the pad even when they know they are still working on a problem.
They seem willing to use the terminal countdown as a final test of the flightworthyness of the vehicle.
With most other launch companies, and definitely with the government-run stuff, the policy seems to be more one of polishing it in the lab and in simulation until it gleams, before bringing the hardware anywhere *near* a launchpad. This results in less visible-to-public scrubs, but delays the development process enormously!

Or (ULA) have more mature launch vehicles.  They also have decades of experience in building and flying launch vehicles.   

Agree and SpaceX must weigh other issues that ULA doesn't contend with--they are still the new kids on the block, they are perceived as "brash" and every failure, large or small, is magnified.  This launch in particular is high-pressure; failure has an international impact on ISS ops, and it puts a cloud over not just SpaceX but the whole "commercial space" idea in the minds of the public and in the minds of government managers and legislators (justified or not).  There is no reason to rush and every reason to be cautious.

[fast]

Something else I notice, is that SpaceX is much more willing to put a Falcon on the pad even when they know they are still working on a problem.
They seem willing to use the terminal countdown as a final test of the flightworthyness of the vehicle.
With most other launch companies, and definitely with the government-run stuff, the policy seems to be more one of polishing it in the lab and in simulation until it gleams, before bringing the hardware anywhere *near* a launchpad. This results in less visible-to-public scrubs, but delays the development process enormously!

This is very similar to most efficient agile software development method