LIVE: SpaceX - Falcon I (Mk.II) NET March 20 (Attempt 2)

[meiza]

I wonder what is the mechanism that induces pitch/yaw at engine shutdown? Is it the off-axis turbopump exhaust burping? The nozzle flow attaching to wall?

[JonSBerndt]

meiza - 26/3/2007  12:40 PM

I wonder what is the mechanism that induces pitch/yaw at engine shutdown? Is it the off-axis turbopump exhaust burping?

Hmm. This sounds interesting. And logical. Any turbopump experts around here?

Jon

[Tony T. Harris]

JonSBerndt - 26/3/2007  1:23 PM

meiza - 26/3/2007  12:40 PM

I wonder what is the mechanism that induces pitch/yaw at engine shutdown? Is it the off-axis turbopump exhaust burping?

Hmm. This sounds interesting. And logical. Any turbopump experts around here?

Jon

Possible, but they would have had data?

[Eragon]

There's a reason why many industry insiders on this site are a bit put off by Space-X's hyperbole and spin - and it comes down simply to the fact Elon and Space-X have made very bold claims that his company will do space launch better and cheaper than is currently available.  Such bold claims need to be backed up with solid performance, which has been missing to date in my opinion.  Claims such as:

1.  Falcon is the most reliable rocket in industry.
2.  Falcon will be a factor of 10 cheaper than other industry rockets.

Have either of these bold claims been demonstrated?  One could say that progress has been made, but if the end goal is to safely, reliably, and cheaply put a payload into orbit, I'm not sure exactly how close Space-X is to the ultimate end state.  More reliable?  Looks like they have a serious S1/S2 staging issue that must be resolved.  Was Demo-2 a worst case condition or best case?  Does Space-X know, and if not do they have the determination and skill to find out?  Falcon is not the first rocket to have to deal with tip-off rates and loading at staging - this is a complicated area to design, and others have solved it in various ways including incremental separating joints, guides/rails to prevent high impact, hot-fire staging (like the Ukrainians do it), etc.  All these take time and effort to trade off, analyze, and test, not to mention are more expensive to build - judging from the video, and I have no specific information on this, I speculate that Space-X had no guide structures or other method to accommodate tip-off rates (didn't see any in the video).  I suspect that like any commercial entity trying to contain costs they cut corners here and there and took the risk that they would have a good enough separation system - some will say this was vindicated by surviving the event (but perhaps causing the ultimate demise?), some would say this is an open-ended problem that must be solved - how else to quantify payload loads, for example?  What other corners have been cut - Demo-1 failure showed that they haven't looked at galvanic corrosion or parts selection in any real sense, do they have any other bad parts waiting to bite them (by the way this is the fear of every rocket in industry)?  Do they have processes in place to really ensure flyout reliability - or did they simply commission a design reliability study that assumed everything was perfect?

Those who have been through a lot of flights with both success and failure know that this is an unforgiving industry - any little problem that is brushed under the carpet will come back to bite you - if not right away, then later.  A smart man once said: "Flight Proven does not equal Flight Qualified."  In my opinion Elon is not respectful enough of the difficulty of launching rockets - statements such as "It will be relatively easy to fix" reveal how little experience he has - I'm sure his engineers working on the anomalies were cringing when they heard things like that - it just makes their job that much more difficult and prejudices the outcome of the investigation as now the fix had better be "easy" or else the boss will be contradicted.

Compare the Space-X rhetoric to Scaled Composites' development of Space Ship One - no brash claims, just a whole lot of demonstrated, careful, incremental flight testing, letting the results speak for themselves.

Many of the posters here say those who are critical of Space-X are too negative - that we should applaud their accomplishments - but what are the accomplishments?  What exactly should we applaud - building a rocket and launching it?  I agree it's very cool and a lot of fun and very exciting - but it's been done before many times.  Is there something innovative and new about Falcon that will allow it to be more reliable and more cost-effective than other rockets?  Can the brash claims be supported?  What is the innovation that DARPA is funding - or do they just want another player in the market?

As for definition of success, when your mission is to place a satellite into orbit, and it ends up in the ocean instead, that cannot be a success.  If I were one of the payload customers on the Space-X manifest, I'd be pretty depressed to hear how little Elon values the payload judging from his comments - the rocket is the important thing to him, not the payload.  No more test flights needed - pretty brash at L+1 day.  Launching satellites is a service industry - what user is going to want to place a $50M satellite (or $20M) on a rocket that is not reliable?  Or for which there are not well-defined loads and environments to ensure the s/c will survive the ride?  Reputation, past performance, and customer service are everything when selling launch services.  

Overall I'm glad to see more investment in the industry from the likes of Mr. Musk but want to see a lot less hype and a lot more demonstrated performance from Space-X - and hope that the US Gov't will demand the same.

[Flightstar]

Eragon - 26/3/2007  8:42 PM

There's a reason why many industry insiders on this site are a bit put off by Space-X's hyperbole and spin -

I wouldn't say many. You could say many Orbital people here, however.

[Rob in KC]

I've never understood the problem with Orbital and SpaceX, apart from some of the sparing between each other here. I say I don't understand as SpaceX is aiming at the Falcon 9 and beyond launchers, which aren't in Orbitals range, and ironically orbital satellites might actually find a buyer when a company decides SpaceX is a cheap way to get it launched. Or am I being totally naive?

[JonSBerndt]

Eragon - 26/3/2007  8:42 PM
There's a reason why many industry insiders on this site are a bit put off by Space-X's hyperbole and spin - and it comes down simply to the fact Elon and Space-X have made very bold claims that his company will do space launch better and cheaper than is currently available.  Such bold claims need to be backed up with solid performance, which has been missing to date in my opinion.  Claims such as:

1.  Falcon is the most reliable rocket in industry.

Yours is actually the first strongly sour post I've seen on SpaceX. Can you give a reference to the above #1 attributed claim? I've only been able to find references stating that the goal SpaceX is aiming for is a low-cost, reliable, launcher.

Eragon - 26/3/2007  8:42 PM
2.  Falcon will be a factor of 10 cheaper than other industry rockets.

Again, the quotes I see are along the lines of:

"Our long-term goal is to improve launch (costs) by a factor of 10"

... which is certainly a worthy goal.

Eragon - 26/3/2007  8:42 PM
Have either of these bold claims been demonstrated?  One could say that progress has been made, but if the end goal is to safely, reliably, and cheaply put a payload into orbit, I'm not sure exactly how close Space-X is to the ultimate end state.

Obvious questions, but to be fair I think these are premature - even impatient-sounding.

Eragon - 26/3/2007  8:42 PM
Compare the Space-X rhetoric to Scaled Composites' development of Space Ship One - no brash claims, just a whole lot of demonstrated, careful, incremental flight testing, letting the results speak for themselves.

Many of the posters here say those who are critical of Space-X are too negative - that we should applaud their accomplishments - but what are the accomplishments?  What exactly should we applaud - building a rocket and launching it?  I agree it's very cool and a lot of fun and very exciting - but it's been done before many times.

How many times has it been done almost entirely with private money, and from the ground up?

SS1: after several test flights, 100 km, mach 5 (?); secretive development program (it was a contest, after all).
Falcon: On the second flight, 300 km (??), mach 15-20 (??) fairly open development program.

This isn't knocking Scaled - they've done some excellent work. But even that's been done before (manned flight to the edge of space). Forty+ years ago, and Scaled did it for far less money.

An important distinction has been stated by Henry Vanderbilt (Space Access Society) on developing new, low-cost launchers: "You can test subsystems, but ultimately you have to test it all at once." With SS1, the option of incrementally more challenging flights was possible.

Also, if you think Rutan didn't hype, you weren't paying attention. I think when a team of people (such as Scaled or SpaceX) makes strong progress towards a difficult goal, they can be forgiven for a little hype and celebration.

Eragon - 26/3/2007  8:42 PM
As for definition of success, when your mission is to place a satellite into orbit, and it ends up in the ocean instead, that cannot be a success.  If I were one of the payload customers on the Space-X manifest, I'd be pretty depressed to hear how little Elon values the payload judging from his comments - the rocket is the important thing to him, not the payload.

According to reports, future customers were congratulating SpaceX and expressing support for their efforts.

Eragon - 26/3/2007  8:42 PM
No more test flights needed - pretty brash at L+1 day.  Launching satellites is a service industry - what user is going to want to place a $50M satellite (or $20M) on a rocket that is not reliable?  Or for which there are not well-defined loads and environments to ensure the s/c will survive the ride?  Reputation, past performance, and customer service are everything when selling launch services.  

Overall I'm glad to see more investment in the industry from the likes of Mr. Musk but want to see a lot less hype and a lot more demonstrated performance from Space-X - and hope that the US Gov't will demand the same.

Falcon is not unreliable. Nor, is it reliable. There is no record of its operational use, yet. The first two flights have been test flights - and I can't recall them being referred to as otherwise.

I'm puzzled by your apparent impatience.

Jon

[Danderman]

Folks, they don't give out style points for rocket launches. Either Elon's work or they don't. If they work, Elon's comments will be forgotten. If they don't work, Elon's comments will be forgotten. They don't matter. Success matters.

[JonSBerndt]

Danderman - 26/3/2007  11:16 PM
Folks, they don't give out style points for rocket launches. Either Elon's work or they don't. If they work, Elon's comments will be forgotten. If they don't work, Elon's comments will be forgotten. They don't matter. Success matters.

Well ... sure. Another obvious statement.  I'm trying to find some good historical data, but at this late hour this is the best I can find, http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=16657:

"...Vanderbilt stressed: "If you look at the statistics of new launch vehicles, about 45 percent have had a catastrophic failure on the first flight," he said. And that includes workhorses like Russia's Soyuz, which has one of the best overall success rates to date in more than 30 years of flight, despite having had 12 failures in its first 21 flights."

There seems to be two fairly distinct points of view here:

1) SpaceX is making good progress during their development and test of Falcon 1, expanding the operating envelope and gaining experience.
2) That first one blowed up real good, and the second one didn't reach orbit, either. So, every single one of their launches from the first to the last (and all of the ones in-between) have been plain and simple failures. They're going nowhere fast.

So, which one is the more accurate statement?

Seriously, how is a new rocket supposed to be tested? What is the expected outcome? How many failures are to be tolerated during test? What constitutes a failure? What is "success"?

Jon

[Analyst]

Eragon - 27/3/2007  3:42 AM

There's a reason why many industry insiders on this site are a bit put off by Space-X's hyperbole and spin - and it comes down simply to the fact Elon and Space-X have made very bold claims that his company will do space launch better and cheaper than is currently available.  Such bold claims need to be backed up with solid performance, which has been missing to date in my opinion.  Claims such as:

1.  Falcon is the most reliable rocket in industry.
2.  Falcon will be a factor of 10 cheaper than other industry rockets.

Have either of these bold claims been demonstrated?  One could say that progress has been made, but if the end goal is to safely, reliably, and cheaply put a payload into orbit, I'm not sure exactly how close Space-X is to the ultimate end state.  More reliable?  Looks like they have a serious S1/S2 staging issue that must be resolved.  Was Demo-2 a worst case condition or best case?  Does Space-X know, and if not do they have the determination and skill to find out?  Falcon is not the first rocket to have to deal with tip-off rates and loading at staging - this is a complicated area to design, and others have solved it in various ways including incremental separating joints, guides/rails to prevent high impact, hot-fire staging (like the Ukrainians do it), etc.  All these take time and effort to trade off, analyze, and test, not to mention are more expensive to build - judging from the video, and I have no specific information on this, I speculate that Space-X had no guide structures or other method to accommodate tip-off rates (didn't see any in the video).  I suspect that like any commercial entity trying to contain costs they cut corners here and there and took the risk that they would have a good enough separation system - some will say this was vindicated by surviving the event (but perhaps causing the ultimate demise?), some would say this is an open-ended problem that must be solved - how else to quantify payload loads, for example?  What other corners have been cut - Demo-1 failure showed that they haven't looked at galvanic corrosion or parts selection in any real sense, do they have any other bad parts waiting to bite them (by the way this is the fear of every rocket in industry)?  Do they have processes in place to really ensure flyout reliability - or did they simply commission a design reliability study that assumed everything was perfect?

Those who have been through a lot of flights with both success and failure know that this is an unforgiving industry - any little problem that is brushed under the carpet will come back to bite you - if not right away, then later.  A smart man once said: "Flight Proven does not equal Flight Qualified."  In my opinion Elon is not respectful enough of the difficulty of launching rockets - statements such as "It will be relatively easy to fix" reveal how little experience he has - I'm sure his engineers working on the anomalies were cringing when they heard things like that - it just makes their job that much more difficult and prejudices the outcome of the investigation as now the fix had better be "easy" or else the boss will be contradicted.

Compare the Space-X rhetoric to Scaled Composites' development of Space Ship One - no brash claims, just a whole lot of demonstrated, careful, incremental flight testing, letting the results speak for themselves.

Many of the posters here say those who are critical of Space-X are too negative - that we should applaud their accomplishments - but what are the accomplishments?  What exactly should we applaud - building a rocket and launching it?  I agree it's very cool and a lot of fun and very exciting - but it's been done before many times.  Is there something innovative and new about Falcon that will allow it to be more reliable and more cost-effective than other rockets?  Can the brash claims be supported?  What is the innovation that DARPA is funding - or do they just want another player in the market?

As for definition of success, when your mission is to place a satellite into orbit, and it ends up in the ocean instead, that cannot be a success.  If I were one of the payload customers on the Space-X manifest, I'd be pretty depressed to hear how little Elon values the payload judging from his comments - the rocket is the important thing to him, not the payload.  No more test flights needed - pretty brash at L+1 day.  Launching satellites is a service industry - what user is going to want to place a $50M satellite (or $20M) on a rocket that is not reliable?  Or for which there are not well-defined loads and environments to ensure the s/c will survive the ride?  Reputation, past performance, and customer service are everything when selling launch services.  

Overall I'm glad to see more investment in the industry from the likes of Mr. Musk but want to see a lot less hype and a lot more demonstrated performance from Space-X - and hope that the US Gov't will demand the same.

Very good post! Interesting and sad to watch how some here are still trying to turn two failures into great successes. Musk is making some progress, that's all. I have nothing to do with Orbital.

Two questions about the article on this page:

(1) Did the second stage burn one minute short of the 7.5 minutes it was planned to burn, e.g. about 4 minutes longer than the video shows? It had very serious attitude problems at T+5.10. While it is not impossible for a stage to burn under these conditions, it is not very likely for a liquid fueled stage. In any way, I suppose the stage was spinning widely during this burntime.

(2) Has there been any range safety? They should know where both stages finally impacted. To go half arround the world you need almost orbital velocity. No way the second stage reached it.

Analyst

[pippin]

Analyst - 26/3/2007  9:48 AM

(2) Has there been any range safety? They should know where both stages finally impacted. To go half arround the world you need almost orbital velocity. No way the second stage reached it.

Analyst

The statement was "not more than half around the world". That is probably correct since it would include falling back to the pad, right?

[vda]

Eragon - 26/3/2007  3:42 AM
Many of the posters here say those who are critical of Space-X are too negative - that we should applaud their accomplishments - but what are the accomplishments?  What exactly should we applaud - building a rocket and launching it?

It's too early to applaud. I'd say "we should support SpaceX in what they do". Okay, you ask "what exactly they do?". They are trying to build a launcher which would not cost tons of money to operate and thus will not depend heavily on government funding. This is the stated goal, if I understand it right. I don't care that much what Musk says (is he brash or not), I only care whether he will ultimately succeed to achieve that goal or not. I wish he will, because I think that govenment-funded space development is stagnating - exactly because it is govenment-funded.

I also don't care whether _initial development_ is partially funded by government. If government can help Musk by spending what? ~$20 million? then it's a good use of such a small sum (small by gov't standards).

Reputation, past performance, and customer service are everything when selling launch services.

What exactly do you propose? The one thing which I get is "stop being brash". I agree. What else?
Regarding past performance - second flight was much better that first one, so I am relatively happy here.

[Jim]

Flightstar - 26/3/2007  10:32 PM

Eragon - 26/3/2007  8:42 PM

There's a reason why many industry insiders on this site are a bit put off by Space-X's hyperbole and spin -

I wouldn't say many. You could say many Orbital people here, however.

I would agree than many non Orbital are put off

[CentEur]

Analyst - 27/3/2007  9:48 AM

Eragon - 27/3/2007  3:42 AM

As for definition of success, when your mission is to place a satellite into orbit, and it ends up in the ocean instead, that cannot be a success.

Very good post! Interesting and sad to watch how some here are still trying to turn two failures into great successes.

Gosh, is the term test flight completly fresh to you, guys? Ain't that the best flight to uncover launcher's issues, critical or not? What's the use of uneventful test flight? What do you learn from it? Don't you agree that We need more failures, the earlier the better?

Or maybe you simply overlooked the real goals of Falcon 2nd test flight just like another person on this forum mocked Scaled  because SS1 performance doesn't match that of X-15?

[clongton]

Eragon - 26/3/2007  9:42 PM

As for definition of success, when your mission is to place a satellite into orbit, and it ends up in the ocean instead, that cannot be a success.

The goal of this launch was not to orbit a satellite, it was to (greatly simplified) burn stage 1 to completion, execute the staging event, jettison the payload fairing and reach space altitude. Orbital velocity wasn't on the critical path. It was a test of the rocket itself. IF (big if) everything went perfectly, THEN a satellite would reach orbit. But the satellite was not the goal - the rocket itself was. So yes, this flight was a success because it accomplished it's goals. It would have been nice to also have the satellite, but that was understood from the beginning to be an extra. It was not a requirement of this specific flight.

[JonSBerndt]

Jim - 27/3/2007  6:00 AM

Flightstar - 26/3/2007  10:32 PM

Eragon - 26/3/2007  8:42 PM

There's a reason why many industry insiders on this site are a bit put off by Space-X's hyperbole and spin -

I wouldn't say many. You could say many Orbital people here, however.

I would agree than many non Orbital are put off

This discussion about whether SpaceX is giving a spun assessment of its test flights seems to be getting more petty by the hour. SpaceX made good progress. Some people are very excited about that. So what. There has got to be a ton of other things more worthwhile to discuss.

For instance: how much thrust would the off axis turbine exhaust be expected to supply during first stage flight, and how fast would that thrust decay to zero once the engine shutdown command has been given? How deeply can the Merlin be throttled? Could (or should?) the first stage be adapted so that stage 1/2 separation occurs at the nozzle exit plane first, and then - once the engine is running and the vehicle is stable - jettisoning the remainder of the "interstage adapter" (thus reducing the potential for nozzle recontact)?

Jon

[Analyst]

Musk has been bashing OldSpace for years: He can do better, e.g. within a shorter time, for much less money and much more reliable. He has not delivered yet. He is working on Falcon 1 for about the same time it took the EELVs to develop. His reliability is low and won't be better than the one of OldSpace for years, even if every future flight will be successful. I can't say anything about the costs or prices.

After the almost total failure of the first flight the goals of the second one are drasticly lowered. They are also not met. If you think every new launch vehicle has to crash because this is the way it was 50 years ago, fine. But we are beyond this. Other can do better, and they did.

In short: Musk is not living up to his self-set goals.

Analyst

PS: Again, stage sep has not been clean, this primary goal has not been met.

[Jim]

From the Demo-2 Press kit:

1.  On this mission, dubbed the Demo-2 mission, the vehicle will carry ~50 kg of
experiments and associated hardware from the launch site at Omelek into a 685
km circular orbit with 9° inclination.

2.  The AFSS and LCT2 payloads are
not deployed, but there will be a separation demonstration of an inert payload
immediately after second stage 1st burn main engine shutdown.

3. The primary DARPA objective for this mission is to gather flight data on the
Falcon 1 launch vehicle and supporting systems.

4  A secondary objective is to separate a payload into LEO,

5. to place the second stage into the planned final
orbit,

6. and demonstratiing AFSS using the LCT2 for telemetering data back to
Kwajalein and to Wallops Flight Facility.

A.  It says "685 km circular orbit with 9° inclination.", not into space.  One unfulfilled objective
B.  Sep ring did deploy.  one satisfied objective
C.  Data was received. Another satisfied objective
D.  Repeat objective
E.  Repeat objective
F.  Since the proper integration wasn't performed on LCT2 and it wasn't turned on for flight, which also meant no data for AFSS.  Unfulfilled objective.

So basically, only objectives met were lighting the fuse and see what happens and popping off a ring

[JonSBerndt]

Just for comparison purposes, how much did the EELV program cost in developing Delta IV and Atlas V? How about Ariane V? How much of the money was public and how much was private? How many test flights were there until those vehicles were declared operational? Were those test flights successful? Were they totally clean sheet designs? Did they use new facilities and machinery to manufacture the launch vehicles?

Jon

[Jim]

Just for comparison purposes, how much did the EELV program cost in developing Delta IV and Atlas V?

How much of the money was public and how much was private?  they got 500 million from the gov't and supplied 2-3 billion of their own

How many test flights were there until those vehicles were declared operational? zero, excluding the Delta-IV Heavy

Were those test flights successful? All flights excluding the Delta-IV Heavy have had paying customers.  Commercial ones at that.  

Were they totally clean sheet designs? yes, but not Centaur

Did they use new facilities and machinery to manufacture the launch vehicles?  yes