Taken from a handy-cam a few miles away...
Monday, November 24, 2008
And here's the video
Falcon 9 Test-Fire from Saturday night. Three sweet minutes of watching liquid oxygen combine with rocket grade kerosene. I never thought I could feel such bliss.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Falcon 9 to Aliens: You ain't seen nothing yet.
SpaceX test-fired the Falcon 9 last night at its McGregor Test Facility in Texas. It was awesome, and could be seen from miles away. It also went on for almost three minutes and gave the locals the clear perception that they were about to be abducted from Aliens.
Pure awesomeness!
Check out video of the Falcon 9 test-fire posted by NasaWatch. It is seriously hilarious. Whoever saw that from their bedroom window must have crapped their pants a few times over.
Some tasty tidbits from the SpaceX team:
'At full power, the rocket generated 855,000 pounds of force at sea level. In vacuum, the thrust increases to approximately one million pounds or four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft. The test consumed over half a million pounds of propellant. All nine engines fired for 160 seconds, then two engines were shut down to limit the acceleration and the remaining seven engines continued firing for 18 more seconds, as would occur in a typical climb to orbit.
The test firing validated the design of SpaceX's use of nine engines on the first stage, as well as the ability to shut down engines without affecting the functioning of the remaining engines. This demonstrates the ability of Falcon 9 to lose engines in flight and still complete its mission successfully, much as a commercial airliner is designed to be safe in the event of an engine loss. Like an airliner, the Falcon 9 engines are enclosed in a protective sheath that ensures a fire or destructive loss of an engine doesn’t affect the rest of the vehicle.
The Falcon 9 will be the first vehicle since the Saturn V and Saturn 1 to have the ability to lose any engine/motor and still be able to complete its mission without loss of crew or spacecraft. Engine out reliability proved crucial to mission success on two of the Saturn V flights.'
Digg It!Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Perfect launch!
Man what a day. For those that missed the action on Sunday, check out my twitters. The launch went perfectly, taking off exactly on time and delivering a 360 pound aluminum dummy satellite to orbit. Emotions were high and it was cheers and hugs all round when the rocket reached orbit.
Here's an awesome video by one of the folks at SpaceX. Congrats to everyone there. A truly amazing achievement.Digg It!
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Twittering from SpaceX Headquarters
I'm at SpaceX today for the launch of Falcon 1, Vehicle 4. Add me on Twitter to follow along.
http://www.twitter.com/kimbal
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Flight 4 Static Fire
As planned, Flight 4 went through a static fire today.
From Elon:
"The static fire took place on Saturday [20 Sep 2008, CA time], as expected, and no major issues came up. However, after a detailed analysis of data, we decided to replace a component in the 2nd stage engine LOX supply line. There is a good chance we would be ok flying as is, but we are being extremely cautious.
This adds a few extra days to the schedule, so the updated launch window estimate is now Sept 28th through Oct 1st [CA time].
—Elon—"
Here are some awesome shots of the static fire...
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Falcon 1 Vehicle 3 Full Webcast
The full webcast of the entire voyage of Falcon 1 is now available. It's an amazing video and I suggest everyone take the time to check it out. I don't think there's anything out there like this. The idea of being this open to the public in any company is amazing. To do it in the space business, with such a high rate of failures, is especially noteworthy.
If you can't access it on my site (the link is a bit spotty), try this page on SpaceX's site.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Elon speaking at the Mars Society Convention in Boulder
For friends of SpaceX in the Boulder area this week-end, Elon will be speaking at the annual Mars Society Convention this Saturday.
Place: University Memorial Center, University Of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado
Time: August 16th, 1pm.
Their website is down, so not sure how hard it is to get tickets. You can try at www.marssociety.org/portal/
If you're coming, leave a comment and let's say hi at the talk.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Timing is Everything
Official report from SpaceX on the Falcon 1 Vehicle 3 launch:
On August 2 nd, Falcon 1 executed a picture perfect first stage flight, ultimately reaching an altitude of 217 km, but encountered a problem just after stage separation that prevented the second stage from reaching orbit. At this point, we are certain as to the origin of the problem. Four methods of analysis – vehicle inertial measurement, chamber pressure, onboard video and a simple physics free body calculation – all give the same answer.
The problem arose due to the longer thrust decay transient of our new Merlin 1C regeneratively cooled engine, as compared to the prior flight that used our old Merlin 1A ablatively cooled engine. Unlike the ablative engine, the regen engine had unburned fuel in the cooling channels and manifold that combined with a small amount of residual oxygen to produce a small thrust that was just enough to overcome the stage separation pusher impulse.
We were aware of and had allowed for a thrust transient, but did not expect it to last that long. As it turned out, a very small increase in the time between commanding main engine shutdown and stage separation would have been enough to save the mission.
The question then is why didn't we catch this issue? Unfortunately, the engine chamber pressure is so low for this transient thrust -- only about 10 psi -- that it barely registered on our ground test stand in Texas where ambient pressure is 14.5 psi. However, in vacuum that 10 psi chamber pressure produced enough thrust to cause the first stage to recontact the second stage.
It looks like we may have flight four on the launch pad as soon as next month. The long gap between flight two and three was mainly due to the Merlin 1C regen engine development, but there are no technology upgrades between flight three and four.
Good Things About This Flight
- Merlin 1C and overall first stage performance was excellent
- The stage separation system worked properly, in that all bolts fired and the pneumatic pushers delivered the correct impulse
- Second stage ignited and achieved nominal chamber pressure
- Fairing separated correctly
- We discovered this transient problem on Falcon 1 rather than Falcon 9
- Rocket stages were integrated, rolled out and launched in seven days
- Neither the near miss potential failures of flight two nor any new ones were present
- The only untested portion of flight is whether or not we have solved the main problem of flight two, where the control system coupled with the slosh modes of the liquid oxygen tank. Given the addition of slosh baffles and significant improvements to the control logic, I feel confident that this will not be an issue for the upcoming flight four."
Monday, August 04, 2008
Thanks for joining me this week-end
Hey everyone.
Thanks for joining me over the week-end as we watched one of the most exciting Space events of the year. It's sad that it did not make it to orbit, but that's the reality of a Space Exploration. SpaceX is going to change the way mankind reaches space. Turns out, that's not as easy as it sounds. ;)
I'll keep posting as there is new news. In the meantime, click here to use Me.dium to stay up to date on Falcon 1 and SpaceX.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
The Plan Going Forward
From Elon's message to the SpaceX employees:
"It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight [Falcon 1, Flight 3]. On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect. Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation and I will send out a note as soon as we understand exactly what happened.
The most important message I’d like to send right now is that SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward. We have flight four of Falcon 1 almost ready for flight and flight five right behind that. I have also given the go ahead to begin fabrication of flight six. Falcon 9 development will also continue unabated, taking into account the lessons learned with Falcon 1. We have made great progress this past week with the successful nine engine firing.
As a precautionary measure to guard against the possibility of flight 3 not reaching orbit, SpaceX recently accepted a significant investment. Combined with our existing cash reserves, that ensures we will have more than sufficient funding on hand to continue launching Falcon 1 and develop Falcon 9 and Dragon. There should be absolutely zero question that SpaceX will prevail in reaching orbit and demonstrating reliable space transport. For my part, I will never give up and I mean never.
Thanks for your hard work and now on to flight four.
--Elon--"
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Update: Initial post-launch analysis
It has been a tough day. Falcon 1 Vehicle 3 did not reach orbit today.
A problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to hold together. On the plus side, the new Merlin 1C engine in the first stage performed flawlessly. This engine will be used on Falcon 9, the SpaceX rocket that will take cargo to the International Space Station.
Falcon 1 Vehicle 4 is almost ready for flight and Vehicle 5 is right behind it. I'll post expected launch dates as I have them.
Onward and upward!
Anomoly in launch
Waiting for more information.
We have two more Falcon 1's right behind this one, no matter what happened.
Abort analysis
No biggie: 0.5 psi off on turbopump purge pressure. Adjustments are being made. Countdown should resume soon.
(we have about 40min left in the launch window)
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