SpaceX's Falcon places Dragon in desired orbit Dotcom space cowboy Elon Musk’s SpaceX has successfully launched its Falcon rocket and Dragon orbiter on the first of twelve missions that will deliver cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. The craft soared skywards at around 00:35AM GMT on Monday, October 7. NASA provided the video below. Watch Video var …
'Oh no, the sky is about to fall on my head, I must go and tell the King'.
Idiot says Turkey Lurkey,' it's an out of control Space X capsule full of space turd, duck.....'
'Did someone call my na......." Started Ducky Lucky to Drakey Lakey.
Poor Ducky Lucky he just didn't see it coming.
Oh, I guess that's what a process revolution looks like. Exciting & weird at first, and then later you can't imagine doing it any other way (Insert sex joke here).
Of course, NASA is making a rod for their own backs - next year, people will be asking, "Why didn't you start doing this years ago?"
Still, Go SpaceX! Let's be happy there's a company willing to offer cheap access to orbit.
And it's gonna get cheaper...
Alex,
we got the post-launch launch video up as soon as we could find and process it. FWIW the NASA embed code didn't play nicely with our CMS, so the few minutes it took to get it into YouTube (NASA offered a download link) added to the amount of time required to get you the best possible content after the launch.
When's the next one?
[snark off]
Seriously though, it'd be nice to get an update or new story with all the details. For example, this is the first time they've gotten an F9 away on schedule. No holds, no scrubs, no delays, it launched on schedule.
So what about the manned Dragon capsule, the SuperDraco engines, the work (which has started) on the Grasshopper?
And of course, what about the Antares rocket (from what I've read it seems to cost 180 million per launch, 50% more than SpaceX), the Atlas V with Dream Chaser, the whole private-supply-to-ISS thing?
One bit of info for you - apparently one of the engines shut down early, and debris was seen falling from the craft at T+80s, but since the Falcon 9 has redundant engine capacity, everything still worked ok enough to get to orbit.
Be interesting to know what happened.
Also, Armadillo aerospace launched the STIG-B yesterday, there was a launch anomaly so they don't know how far up it got (intended 100km), but rocket was recovered intact - new flight in 2 weeks.
Yes, I have seen that engine glitch reported elsewhere. The "without incident" bit of the sub-head would appear to be incorrect. Interestingly, SpaceX's own website still reports the launch as an "unqualified success", which would also appear to be spinning the truth a little. Success? Yes. Great success? Yes. Unqualified success? No.
Things like this are to be expected[1]. The important bit is ensuring you have sufficient levels of redundancy in the system to mean that they're incidents rather than accidents. Also important is to learn from them, a process which starts with not trying to brush them under the carpet.
[1] Let's face it, this stuff is bleedin' rocket science.
Depends on your definition of success. If success is getting the dragon in to the correct orbit, it's done exactly what is says on the tin. In an unqualified way.
F9 was designed to work even with major engine outs, redundancy is built in. And since they have said there was an engine problem, the carpet can't be very large.
"Musk, who monitored the launch from SpaceX Mission Control in Hawthorne, Calif., called the capsules Dragon after the magical Puff to get back at critics who, a decade ago, considered his effort a fantasy. The name Falcon comes from the Millennium Falcon starship of "Star Wars" fame." Bay News.
There was an event about 80 secs into the flight and Spacex confirm early shutdown of 1 engine. It looks like debris was released so *may* have been an explosion.
F9 flight computer recalculated trajectory and burn and carried on without skipping a beat.
Slightly more problematical was the Orbcomm sat that was in the Dragon trunk. It's been deployed but it's not clear if it was at full design altitude.
Note Musk *real* achievement is not making a new LOX/Kero rocket. Like Henry Ford its a *vision* and an understanding of the benefits of *highly* integrated manufacture, serial production and configuration management have on *costs*. Dull stuff compared to the drama of *current* space launches but vital in making future ones *cheap* enough to operate on the scale he wants.
It *could* have been done 20 years ago (without the destination) if someone who was not a govt or a govt con-tractor *cared*.
They didn't. He did.
It could've been done, but the NASA space programme's been a pig's trough for decades. And that's been a bone of contention in the WTO cases of Airbus vs Boeing and vice versa for years. Boeing accuses Airbus of getting 'illegal state subsidies', Airbus accuses Boeing of getting the same by stealth through defense and space contracts.
Oh well. So glad to see that SpaceX is giving the big boys the finger and shows that they can do this kind of work better for cheaper. Go Elon Musk and his crew!
Please join the modern world. Can we please have units in official Ref units of measurement, or failing that, SI units.
None of these antiquated pounds, please.
The rocket flew from the US, so we'll use pounds, thank you very much.
How are you supposed to become proficient at math, when all you use is that effete multiply and divide by 100 for measuments? Mutiplication and division with numbers like 12, 16, 36, 5280, etc build character!
;)
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