Space-X Launching Resupply Mission Shortly

Cool! DISH has it on the NASA channel 286, or download the NASA TV app for the iPad for free.
 
Very exciting stuff. Proves that if NASA won't do it, someone will, and probably better and more efficiently.

Was a great launch!
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Picture perfect launch....
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Not picture perfect at all. There was an unusually large number of anomalies even by SpaceX standards (remember the gigantic fireball due to unclean detach of umbilicals and the funny gyrations in earlier missions). This time the engine #1 blew up at about a minute in, and a part of the 1st stage experienced an inward structural deformation. Also, Gwinne Shotwell shared that one of the strings of flight control computers went into safe mode. All of the anomalies were 1st time offs, not encountered before. Personally I also think that there was a slight bias roll at liftoff, although much smaller than in the maiden flight of F9. It is heartening that the redundancy on the vehicle was sufficient to complete a successful launch, which is of course the main thing. However, things like pressurization failures should not happen.
 
zaitcev said:
Not picture perfect at all. There was an unusually large number of anomalies even by SpaceX standards (remember the gigantic fireball due to unclean detach of umbilicals and the funny gyrations in earlier missions). This time the engine #1 blew up at about a minute in, and a part of the 1st stage experienced an inward structural deformation. Also, Gwinne Shotwell shared that one of the strings of flight control computers went into safe mode. All of the anomalies were 1st time offs, not encountered before. Personally I also think that there was a slight bias roll at liftoff, although much smaller than in the maiden flight of F9. It is heartening that the redundancy on the vehicle was sufficient to complete a successful launch, which is of course the main thing. However, things like pressurization failures should not happen.
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To me, it shows that while they are having problems, they've still got their act together. It's almost more impressive that they had a major failure of an engine on the 1st stage and still managed to get the vehicle to orbit.
 
zaitcev said:
Not picture perfect at all. There was an unusually large number of anomalies even by SpaceX standards (remember the gigantic fireball due to unclean detach of umbilicals and the funny gyrations in earlier missions). This time the engine #1 blew up at about a minute in, and a part of the 1st stage experienced an inward structural deformation. Also, Gwinne Shotwell shared that one of the strings of flight control computers went into safe mode. All of the anomalies were 1st time offs, not encountered before. Personally I also think that there was a slight bias roll at liftoff, although much smaller than in the maiden flight of F9. It is heartening that the redundancy on the vehicle was sufficient to complete a successful launch, which is of course the main thing. However, things like pressurization failures should not happen.
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I said it was PICTURE perfect... the view looked good, and the launch commentators said there were no issues.

This other data has come in since... thanks for sharing it!
 
zaitcev said:
Not picture perfect at all. There was an unusually large number of anomalies even by SpaceX standards (remember the gigantic fireball due to unclean detach of umbilicals and the funny gyrations in earlier missions). This time the engine #1 blew up at about a minute in, and a part of the 1st stage experienced an inward structural deformation. Also, Gwinne Shotwell shared that one of the strings of flight control computers went into safe mode. All of the anomalies were 1st time offs, not encountered before. Personally I also think that there was a slight bias roll at liftoff, although much smaller than in the maiden flight of F9. It is heartening that the redundancy on the vehicle was sufficient to complete a successful launch, which is of course the main thing. However, things like pressurization failures should not happen.
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Yeah they have a steep improvement curve to get it man-rated...but they are absolutely the leading private concern in the US. Huge plus for them.
 
zaitcev said:
Not picture perfect at all. There was an unusually large number of anomalies even by SpaceX standards (remember the gigantic fireball due to unclean detach of umbilicals and the funny gyrations in earlier missions). This time the engine #1 blew up at about a minute in, and a part of the 1st stage experienced an inward structural deformation. Also, Gwinne Shotwell shared that one of the strings of flight control computers went into safe mode. All of the anomalies were 1st time offs, not encountered before. Personally I also think that there was a slight bias roll at liftoff, although much smaller than in the maiden flight of F9. It is heartening that the redundancy on the vehicle was sufficient to complete a successful launch, which is of course the main thing. However, things like pressurization failures should not happen.
Click to expand...

SpaceX now says the engine didn't "explode," but instead shut off due to a loss of pressure. The blast seen in the launch video was a shroud separating from the engine due to the shutdown. Still not optimal, but I'd imagine such a failure won't set back the company's efforts to man-rate the Falcon 9 too badly, so long as a fix is found soon.

Unfortunately for ORBCOMM, which had a prototype satellite riding along as secondary payload, the longer burn required to compensate for the engine loss placed its package into the wrong orbit.
 
flightwriter said:
Unfortunately for ORBCOMM, which had a prototype satellite riding along as secondary payload, the longer burn required to compensate for the engine loss placed its package into the wrong orbit.
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Their presser said that the longer burn placed the stack outside of ISS safety gate, so the circularization burn was cancelled. I was afraid of something like that. They should not have agreed on hitching the ride and went the way of Avanti instead on the day SpaceX killed F1E (only to Dnepr or Kosmos, not Ariane obviously). And people who knew NASA would've told them with foresight, not hindsight I'm using now. But apparently the greed for cut-rate price that SpaceX was offering made ORBCOMM deaf to naysayers.
 
zaitcev said:
Their presser said that the longer burn placed the stack outside of ISS safety gate, so the circularization burn was cancelled. I was afraid of something like that. They should not have agreed on hitching the ride and went the way of Avanti instead on the day SpaceX killed F1E (only to Dnepr or Kosmos, not Ariane obviously). And people who knew NASA would've told them with foresight, not hindsight I'm using now. But apparently the greed for cut-rate price that SpaceX was offering made ORBCOMM deaf to naysayers.
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So... as it stands now, the OG2 is lower than the ISS orbit, and thanks to the longer ascent burns there wasn't enough propellant remaining to do the circularization burn to place the stack higher than the ISS?

Looks like an acceptable risk/reward situation to me, even with the screw-up. The satellite's a prototype, and Sierra Nevada seems to think there's a chance there might be enough propellant onboard the satellite to reposition it anyway. Mistakes still happen with even the most 'reliable' systems, with a much higher pricetag.
 
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flightwriter said:
SpaceX now says the engine didn't "explode," but instead shut off due to a loss of pressure. The blast seen in the launch video was a shroud separating from the engine due to the shutdown. Still not optimal, but I'd imagine such a failure won't set back the company's efforts to man-rate the Falcon 9 too badly, so long as a fix is found soon.

Unfortunately for ORBCOMM, which had a prototype satellite riding along as secondary payload, the longer burn required to compensate for the engine loss placed its package into the wrong orbit.
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There's some pretty good sized chunks coming off in that video.

 
Yep, sure looked like an explosion.
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Actually it didn't look like that. An uncontained explosion would have likely destroyed engines next to it which would have cascaded to the rest of them and possibly the firewall they're attached to which would have taken the entire vehicle out.

What caused the loss of pressure indication? High volume pump failure? Or breach of the propellant line thus dumping the propellants into the engine compartment?

Those were big panel looking pieces that came off. Maybe it was jettisoning engine compartment outer panels to vent pressure and propellants thus keeping the vehicle from going kablooey.
 
fgcason said:
Those were big panel looking pieces that came off. Maybe it was jettisoning engine compartment outer panels to vent pressure and propellants thus keeping the vehicle from going kablooey.
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According to SpaceX, that's exactly what happened.
 
When you watch the original video, the engine failure occurred just after the vehicle reached the speed of sound. Coincidence, or factor?
 
It was coincidentially close to Max-Q, but according to data leaked on L2, the root cause was a blowout of the fuel dome over the pintle. The resultant gases blew out relief panels as designed, but also took away the corner fairing that's bent exactly like the nozzle and is seen in video. You can see panels too, they are about 1/3 to 1/4 size of the fairing.
 
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