Firefly Alpha Flight 2: To the Black : VSFB SLC-2W : 1 October 2022 07:01 UTC

[edzieba]

Even if it said best effort orbit I would surprised if the customers consider it a success to be deployed into a non-useful orbit.

If you're putting your payload on a demonstration flight of a new launch vehicle, "success" is your payload departing the upper stage in as many pieces as it was installed.

[mn]

Even if it said best effort orbit I would surprised if the customers consider it a success to be deployed into a non-useful orbit.

If you're putting your payload on a demonstration flight of a new launch vehicle, "success" is your payload departing the upper stage in as many pieces as it was installed.

It just means you were ready to accept failure, doesn't have to redefine success.

[PM3]

No matter how we define "success": A rocket that cannot bring some cubesats into a 300 km orbit is useless. This launch did NOT "kick-start its [Firefly's] launch business" as claimed by the CEO on Monday, but is just another step to get there. Given the company's headcount and cashburn, much additional money needs to be spent until Alpha is a useful 1-ton launcher.

[mn]

No matter how we define "success": A rocket that cannot bring some cubesats into a 300 km orbit is useless. This launch did NOT "kick-start its [Firefly's] launch business" as claimed by the CEO on Monday, but is just another step to get there. Given the company's headcount and cashburn, much additional money needs to be spent until Alpha is a useful 1-ton launcher.

I think that is overly harsh.

They did very well, and the odds of success on their next attempt should be very high.

(I have no idea about their cash situation)

[edzieba]

No matter how we define "success": A rocket that cannot bring some cubesats into a 300 km orbit is useless.

If the next Alpha launch is a brand new redesigned vehicle, then we can put the current vehicle in the "cannot launch to 300x300km" category. However, it is more likely that minor changes (propellant utilisation, coast timings, TVC tuning, etc). are all that are necessary.  e.g. the Delta IV Heavy demo flight issue was not fixed by a rocket redesign, but by a procedural change (tank pressure increase).
Concluding Alpha cannot achieve a specific orbit based solely on the demo flight targeted to any orbit (or rather, to any trajectory that accomplishes an initial burn and then a post-coast relight) is not a conclusion supported by the available data.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1578004861005594624

Since Alpha's second launch was a test flight rather than an operational mission, I'm not sure about classifying it as a failure give[n] the first stage performance and ultimate deployment of the satellites. I'll follow up with Firefly.

Will be interesting to see what, if anything, Firefly says. As noted up thread, they were very vocal about claiming mission success.

[PM3]

Concluding Alpha cannot achieve a specific orbit based solely on the demo flight targeted to any orbit (or rather, to any trajectory that accomplishes an initial burn and then a post-coast relight) is not a conclusion supported by the available data.

It is not true that this flight was targeted to any orbit. Both the ODAR - see post #8 of this thread - and the pre-launch presser mention a 300 km target and no "any" target (though the ODAR cautions that the target may be missed).

Referring to the Bridenstine quote below, I am disappointed about so much fear of the truth - that this beloved rocket just underperformed. But at least Firefly has two more demo / experimental launches to come - NASA VCLS and SSC TacRS, both without any valuable payload. Let the money be with Firefly, so they are able to use these additional experiments to complete the Alpha rocket development. Building and selling Antares 330 first stages may help.

[TrevorMonty]

Still made orbit even if they have some work to do on 2nd stage.

[JEF_300]

Concluding Alpha cannot achieve a specific orbit based solely on the demo flight targeted to any orbit (or rather, to any trajectory that accomplishes an initial burn and then a post-coast relight) is not a conclusion supported by the available data.

It is not true that this flight was targeted to any orbit. Both the ODAR - see post #8 of this thread - and the pre-launch presser mention a 300 km target and no "any" target (though the ODAR cautions that the target may be missed).

When I was first learning to shoot a bow, I was targeting the bullseye, but I considered the shot a success if I hit the target at all.

Referring to the Bridenstine quote below, I am disappointed about so much fear of the truth - that this beloved rocket just underperformed.

Totally agree that the Firefly Alpha underperformed. I have no fear of saying so. But I find it inaccurate to say it failed. That is the only thing being argued here.

Even if it said best effort orbit I would surprised if the customers consider it a success to be deployed into a non-useful orbit.

Looking at the actual payloads more closely, I think all the payloads should be able to complete several of their objectives despite the low orbit. Firefly did a good job picking payloads for this flight which didn't necessarily need the full orbit. The NASA payload, for example, was primarily a reentry test experiment. And while reentering from a much lower altitude is far from ideal, it's also far from making the collected data useless. So I think even by that basis you would have to call it at least a partial success. Or at least that's how I think it would show up on Wikipedia if this were a operational launch.

Of course, we will see what the customers say in the days ahead.

[ParabolicSnark]

I think we should leave the definition of success on an early flight to the customer and the launch provider. We are not privy to the details of their launch service contract. There's a sliding scale of success on test flights like these and while getting the target orbit is obviously the goal, the customer may be content with much less. They're buying a (likely deeply discounted) ride on an a brand new launch vehicle - they understand the risk and plan and negotiate accordingly.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/firefly_space/status/1578154649474846720

🚀 Mission update: 5 days in & we're really pleased with the data we've received so far. Our primary objective for Alpha FLTA002 was to achieve a pre-defined elliptical orbit following the second stage burn. This was 100% successful. (1/3)

twitter.com/firefly_space/status/1578154650653446144

As a secondary objective, we performed a 2nd stage re-light test and successfully deployed the demonstration payloads. The re-light beat our expectations for the mission, primarily serving as an opportunity to collect data for our next flight. (2/3)

https://twitter.com/firefly_space/status/1578154651878273024

Preliminary reviews show we will only require minor tweaks for our next mission, all while providing valuable scientific and technical data to our demonstration customers. (3/3)

[novak]

I think we should leave the definition of success on an early flight to the customer and the launch provider. We are not privy to the details of their launch service contract. There's a sliding scale of success on test flights like these and while getting the target orbit is obviously the goal, the customer may be content with much less. They're buying a (likely deeply discounted) ride on an a brand new launch vehicle - they understand the risk and plan and negotiate accordingly.

I agree with this.  As an engineer, my goal is not to figure out which weasel words make us look best but how to fly to orbit reliably.  I think if the customers consider it a success, that's all that matters.  I certainly do not have the full story or speak for customers but posts like this indicate they were pleasantly surprised.

https://twitter.com/NASAAmes/status/1576959814881665026/photo/1

Regardless, I think it was pretty impressive that firefly took the two burn to orbit path on only FLTA002, and that whether history judges it failure or success, I think they got the data to make flight 3 better.

[john smith 19]

I think we should leave the definition of success on an early flight to the customer and the launch provider. We are not privy to the details of their launch service contract. There's a sliding scale of success on test flights like these and while getting the target orbit is obviously the goal, the customer may be content with much less. They're buying a (likely deeply discounted) ride on an a brand new launch vehicle - they understand the risk and plan and negotiate accordingly.

And if they didn't, they bloody well should have. 

If the customers were satisified (and they seem to be fairly satsified) it's a success.

They've had a full end-to-end checkout right up to (and beyond) payload separation. While it doesn't seem to have gone perfectly it's gone an awful lot better than some 2nd launches that come to mind, including by organisations that have gone on to achieve great success in the market.

Ultimately competition is going to be the only way that launch prices start to make serious progress toward coming down.

So I guess they need to round up a new customer ASAP to keep the cashflow toward themselves.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1578385416163627009

Checked Space Track this morning, and three of the five objects they tracked from the launch decayed on Oct. 5. The Alpha upper stage and “Object A” remain in orbit. (Object A was previously identified as the TIS Serenity cubesat.) twitter.com/Firefly_Space/…

[gongora]

https://twitter.com/FOSSA_AdAstra/status/1578281557407637504

All constituents were concious of the short orbital life, initial estimates showed 2 weeks in orbit vs the obtained 1 week. The experiments were all succesfuly demonstrated either way and the lower orbita has not significantly impacted the mission. PQs at 500km last years.

[matthewkantar]

If they couldn’t put a suitcase worth of cube sats in a very low orbit, how are they going to manage more than a ton to any useful orbit. Blaming it all on the.second stage is silly. 

Firefly should admit failure, describe corrective actions, and do better. Spewing transparent bs is a bad look.

[Jrcraft]

They told you how.
https://twitter.com/Firefly_Space/status/1578154651878273024

[JEF_300]

It's worth remembering that we're nearing the solar maximum, so things are deorbiting faster than normal. That doesn't really change anything in the ridiculous debate going on in this thread, it's just worth keeping in mind.

[mlindner]

I think we should leave the definition of success on an early flight to the customer and the launch provider. We are not privy to the details of their launch service contract. There's a sliding scale of success on test flights like these and while getting the target orbit is obviously the goal, the customer may be content with much less. They're buying a (likely deeply discounted) ride on an a brand new launch vehicle - they understand the risk and plan and negotiate accordingly.

I don't really agree. The definition of success is based on what you say before the mission. If you say you're going to release X payloads into Y orbit, and you instead release those X payloads into some other orbit, you haven't had "100% success" as Firefly is flaunting around with. If they instead said something like "we're aiming for a 300km circular orbit but don't expect to reach it and we'll consider it a success if we get any orbit at all" then that's quite different.

Let's not forget how SpaceX's CRS-1 mission was treated.

[edzieba]

If they instead said something like "we're aiming for a 300km circular orbit but don't expect to reach it and we'll consider it a success if we get any orbit at all" then that's quite different.

Since the post-coast circularisation burn was explicitly an optional objective rather than a requirement, it should have been very clear to all that the 300x300km orbit was a target in the "well, we need to put a number in the flight software, we can't just leave the fields blank" sense, rather than a contractually required final orbit.

Firefly are happy with vehicle performance, the range is happy with vehicle performance, and the customers are happy with vehicle performance.