SpaceX rocket reaches orbit but Dragon fails to spit fire Upstart startup rocket biz SpaceX has had a seemingly successful launch on its second resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS), but as the Dragon capsule reached orbit the company announced there was an "unspecified problem" and cut its webcast of the mission. The announcement was made about 12 minutes into …
The ISS crew will find a card in the airlock which says, 'we tried to make your delivery, but you were out. Please ring this number to arrange re-delivery or pick up from your local centre.'
Under normal circumstances the card basically means the driver walked up to your door, then made a run for it. In this case, who knows? But the local delivery centre will probably be a bit more of a trek than usual, and even phoning the call centre will cost a packet.
Space is big. Really hugely, mind-bogglingly big. I mean, you may think it's a long way round the corner to the chemists, but that's just peanuts to space.
Good luck to them fixing the bugger though. The problem with all this mucking about in orbit, is you just can't easily get an engineer to bang the thing with a hammer and make it go again.
>The ISS crew will find a card in the airlock which says, 'we tried to make your delivery, but you were out. Please ring this number to arrange re-delivery or pick up from your local centre.'
Imagine how the crew member who had to take the day off to make sure he was there when the delivery arrived, because they 'can't give a more specific delivery time other than morning or afternoon', and he happened to be in the zero-gravity lavatory at the time. And we all know how time consuming that exercise can be, don't we?
There wouldn't be a problem if there were men in it. They'd just get out and push. Problem solved.
But seriously, even with spacecraft designed from the ground up for manned flight, you tend to stick them in orbit empty (and on auto) a few times first, just to see what happens. I guess one of the big problems with space craft is there's no test-track just by the factory. So you can't do all your practising while hiding. Tests cots orders of magnitude more, due to that nasty gravity stuff, and everyone can watch them - and if they're so inclined point and laugh.
Hopefully they'll solve the problem, as they do have lots of redundant systems. I seem to recall that the reason the last one failed to launch those satellites was because by the time they'd fixed the problem the trajectory would have been too close to the ISS, and so they weren't allowed to risk it. And had to leave the things to re-enter.
(Speaking strictly on my own behalf only.)
We need a vibrant commercial space industry. SpaceX is (was?) a front-runner, and this is a pretty significant set-back for them. Elon Musk's attitude towards media (specifically, to bad reviews of Tesla cars) is likely to result in a retributive backlash against SpaceX in editorials. This is not good.
"SpaceX is (was?) a front-runner,"
Is, given OSC is months away from their first launch, despite them being the "safe pair of hands." They are the only player that have launched, are launching and have a manifest of stuff to launch.
"and this is a pretty significant set-back for them."
No it's not. The vehicle is in orbit. They are working the problem as any supplier would and they have backups in place to over ride the problem to continue the mission. Significant would be a failed launch.
It is an issue that this is the 2nd launch to ISS that has had problems. However it could be argued that finding bugs during this and the remaining 10 resupply missions is a very much better way to find them than when they are in a position to carry (or begin to carry) crew.
This failure justifies the cautious approach NASA has taken with COTS providers. It never is about lack of confidence in any one company. It IS about controlling risk. None of these providers will be perfect. Not SpaceX or other NASA providers.
There is a different feel from NASA-internal when a private company shuts off the webcast, though.
Ah well, so far as Ariane is concerned, very few have failed. Their success rate for Ariane 5 is currently 63 out of 67, and they've not had a problem since 2002. That is the current gold standard. Ariane 4 was phenomenally reliable too. They got so good at building those they ended up not bothering to test fire the upper stage engines prior to launch, and they weren't failing.
That's the success rate Space X have to aim at, and so far they're a long way from that. Being cheap isn't good enough if the failure rate is poor; customers and their insurers don't like losing expensive satellites at launch. As for manned space flight? I wouldn't....
Musk's strategy is bold, but it does depend on working group out the problems. So far they seem to be having different problems every time they launch; inconsistency is not very encouraging. This failure is a new one, it didn't happen last time. That means they've not built this one to the same standard as the last one. Unless they can cure that weakness in their manufacturing they'll never get it right.
That's because you could use it to kill germans.
"Ask a Russian engineer to design you a shoe, and he'll give you something that looks like the box the shoe came in. Ask him to design something that will slaughter Germans, and he turns into Thomas fucking Edison."
But seriously, a great drink to The Chief Designer. No vodka here? Fracking UK.
@Voland's right hand,
Re: Soyuz - it is indeed very good. As good an example of "if it ain't broke..." as you could hope to find.
It doesn't really compete with Ariane 5 (Low earth orbit: A5 21,000 kg, Soyuz R7 5,500 kg. Geo transfer orbit 9,600 kg vs 2,400 kg), but it's still mighty impressive.
NASA TV covers missions from before launch up to the boring cruising phase, with all glitches and troubleshooting, re-rolls a few launch videos and finishes with a press conference.
SpaceX cuts the webcast because of failed thrusters on an unmanned capsule and the only information source are a few tweets? Seriously? It probably wouldn't have hurt shareholders' confidence if they had stayed live and shown how they fixed it.
That's hardly comparable. They were lighting up something barely more advanced than a V2. SpaceX is working with 50 years of advances in materials science and the other associated technologies.
That's not meant to denigrate either the Corona team or the SpaceX team, but SpaceX do have a couple of extra levels of giants shoulders to stand on. They are innovators, not inventors. I expect them to far exceed the success rate of 50 year old technology and experience.
After all, this is rocket science and it's still exciting!
Keep up El Reg. SpaceX have already said "After Dragon separated from Falcon 9’s second stage approximately nine minutes after launch, a minor issue with some of Dragon’s oxidation tanks was detected. Within a few hours, SpaceX engineers had identified and corrected the issue, normalizing the oxidation pressure and returning operations to normal. Dragon recomputed its ascent profile as it was designed to and is now on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) with possible arrival on Sunday, just one day past the original timeline." http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20130301
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