SpaceX's Falcon 1 Destroyed During Maiden Voyage

legolas writes "SpaceX's Falcon 1 is the world's first privately funded satellite launch vehicle. After a successful static engine test on Wednesday, it was launched today. Unfortunately, the rocket was destroyed shortly after launch."

I had wondered...

[Shadow Wrought]

I thought it a bit odd that the static test was for only three seconds and took place the day before the launch. I would not be surpised if the accident was a by-product of them pushing their schedule.

Guidance?

[TopSpin]

Watching the webcast it looked to me like the vehicle had a guidance problem; the on-board view seemed to be spinning. The feed didn't really provide enough to tell, however.

It definitely cleared the pad and I think it got to a few thousand feet.

Anyone have a link to capture of webcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to capture it but the stream was messed up right before launch.

Re:Impact or RSO destroyed?

[wronkiew]

It crashed. The rocket had a thrust termination system, not a self-destruct system.

Re:Impact or RSO destroyed?

[nacnud75]

I think the RSO terminated the thrust due to excessive rolling (there is no 'self destruct' on the faclon 1, then engin just awitches off)

More info on the failure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like engine failure or some kind of catastrophic tank or plumbing failure.

Quoting Spaceflight Now (a real space news site!)

http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon/f1/status.html [spaceflightnow.com]

326 GMT (6:26 p.m. EST)
Here is the official statement from Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX:

"We had a successful liftoff and Falcon made it well clear of the launch pad, but unfortunately the vehicle was lost later in the first stage burn. More information will be posted once we have had time to analyze the problem."


2250 GMT (5:50 p.m. EST)
A further look at the imagery seen from the onboard camera mounted to the Falcon 1 shows a noticeable change in the color and shape of the flame coming from the Merlin first stage main engine as the vehicle seemed to roll. It was at that point the webcast provided to reporters covering the launch immediately stopped. Repeated efforts to reconnect to the feed were unsuccessful.

More details of the flight

[nacnud75]

Live video was shown of the vehicle's ascent from an onboard downward pointing camera. Within a few seconds the feed started to become intermittent. The small amount of imagery available showed a bright yellow glow protruding away from the normal exhaust pattern, as the rocket began to roll violently. The ascent profile also appeared to be more horizontal than what would be expected for that stage of the ascent. The video then cut out completely - with SpaceX confirming the rocket had been lost just moments later. - http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?id=4394 [nasaspaceflight.com]

Re:I had wondered...

[david.given]

Just as bizarre was that they had a payload on their first launch attempt.

The payload massed 20kg (the Falcon could have lifted about 700kg) and was built by Air Force Academy cadets. I suspect it was being launched, er, would have been launched for free. After all, you have to test rockets with something, and you may as well launch something useful rather than a dumb telemetry package.

Re:Early days

[Illbay]

Good point. I was a bit too young to witness the actual event, but the explosion of the Vanguard satellite on its launch pad [wikipedia.org] was ahuge blow to the fledgling U.S. space effort, coming right on the heels of the successful Soviet launch of Sputnik [wikipedia.org].

Yet ten years later, the U.S. astronauts walked on the moon.

Often great things arise from the ashes of early failure.

Darn

[FleaPlus]

I'm pretty bummed out about this, but hopefully they'll figure things out and the next flight will go better. My sentiments are pretty much the same as this commentary from Clark Lindsay: [hobbyspace.com]

Well, this is fairly typical for the first launch of a new vehicle. I hope they will figure out the problem soon and be ready for a second attempt not long after. Elon Musk has said he can afford up to three straight failures before he will decide if they should give up or not.

Also, an interesting comment from that page:

According to Astronautix, the Ariane 1 had failures on the 2nd and 5th launches and Aerospatiale spent a lot more than SpaceX.

Both SpaceflightNow and the forum on NasaSpaceFlight are speculating it was an ablative engine failure. If so, I would imagine they'll hold off on any more launches until the regen Merlin 1B is ready. According to an SpaceX update in mid-2005, they should already have a dozen 1Bs by the end of the 2005. Or it could be the turbopump which according to SpaceX engine page is also responsible for roll control. That might explain why it started to roll after launch.

Plume

[everphilski]

There was a plume coming out the side of the rocket in the last few frames of the SpaceX feed, normal to the body of the rocket - not the direction of flight. Most likely due to an engine/turbopump failure. This could possibly cause adverse roll/pitching. It looks like a physical problem; I doubt it was a guidance problem.

Video URL

[antdude]

2.3 MB WMV [nasaspaceflight.com].

Re:I had wondered...

[DerekLyons]

I thought it a bit odd that the static test was for only three seconds and took place the day before the launch. I would not be surpised if the accident was a by-product of them pushing their schedule.

Pushing the schedule? This launch is eighteen months behind schedule.

Re:Plume

[georgewilliamherbert]

He meant normal as in at right angles to.

Flames are supposed to come out the bottom, sometimes downwards out of side nozzles, but not out of the side of the rocket.

Re:This isn't...

[georgewilliamherbert]

Do you have any idea how many orbiter specific safety problems remain with the Shuttle system?

The main engines are still cranky, though probably an order of magnitude better than the early Shuttle launches.

The hydrazine APUs are an issue.

Aging of the reinforced carbon-carbon leading edge panels is still not as well understood as we thought a few years ago, and may leave them much more vulnerable than we would like.

These are just the ones at the top of my head; last rundown I saw including all the age-related stuff they would need to recertify for flight past 2010 had several hundred crit-1 items.

Ariane 5

[JonBuck]

Consider for a moment the failure of Ariane 5's maiden flight in 1996. [cnn.com]

Aboard Ariane 5 was Cluster -- a $500 million set of four identical scientific satellites that were designed to to establish precisely how the Earth's magnetic field interacts with solar winds.

The unmanned rocket was on its first voyage after years of intense development by some of Europe's leading scientists. The explosion was a setback for Arianespace, whose previous models of the Ariane rocket had been some of the most reliable vehicles for satellite launches.

The European Space Agency estimated that total development of Ariane 5 cost more than $8 billion.

Maiden flights are perilous things. They got a full minute of flight data that they didn't have before. I'm sure the next one will be a success.

A launch a day keeps the high costs away

[Baldrson]

One of the things that John Carmack does correctly is lots of small flights with the possibility to scale upon success. John Walker wrote a paper about this approach (restricted to expendables) called "A Rocket a Day Keeps the High Costs Away [fourmilab.ch]". It's good advice. It's too bad more people (to be fair, such as John Walker himself) don't take it to heart.

Re:Duh!

[dnixon112]

Do you really think they only tested the engine for 3 seconds? They've been testing the engine for 3 years now. From all accounts the engine was not the problem either.

Re:here's a hint

[TroyM]

The original plan for sending a man to the moon assumed that one ship would lift off from earth, land on the moon, then take off and return to earth. The required size for the rocket at liftoff from earth was staggering - many times larger than the Saturn V. The paper you're talking about was probably assuming the same thing. Then someone at NASA came up with the concept of having a small lander that would seperate from the main craft, then later dock with the craft in lunar orbit. At the time, the idea of getting two spacecraft to dock in orbit seemed way too difficult. But they finally decided that was the only way it could be done. One of the main reasons for the Gemini program was to learn how to get spacecraft to dock in orbit

Re:here's a hint

[Drunken Priest]

Wow, I never imaged engineering people for space travel.

But when you put it that way, why would anyone want to go?

Suppose you find another Earth... but your body isn't capable of living and being happy on it.

Or you float around in interstellar blackness for a lifetime? That would get depressing. So you engineer the hybrids never to get depressed so they don't kill themselves. The cynical governments in charge of such efforts might as well engineer people not to think critically while they're at it.

So I always wonder... why do people want to leave Earth? There is no other place than this. What are we trying to accomplish? Really... the only thing anyone can do is live and love... that's done just fine from here.

(And BTW, I'm not a curmudgeon... I just hate Star Trek :)