SpaceX asks the FAA: 'Can we launch our rockets again, please?' SpaceX wants to get back to launching Falcon 9 after one of the rockets experienced an upper stage malfunction last week, which forced it to ditch its satellites in a lower than planned orbit. It has requested a public safety determination from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to allow it to return to flight. A …
"Should they rename Falcon to Pegasus?"
Lazarus would be more appropriate, but Phoenix has fiery aspirations.
With the FAA ticking off Elon as badly as the Governor of California, he might expand his company movement and fly over Texas to set up in French Guiana or the Democratic Republic of Congo. Places where his money will buy the influence he clearly demands.
"With the FAA ticking off Elon as badly as the Governor of California, he might expand his company movement and fly over Texas to set up in French Guiana or the Democratic Republic of Congo."
Due to ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) restrictions, trying a move like that would get the senior executives put in jail pending their trials. It would be a violation that even Mr Teflon himself would have a hard time dodging.
No, passivated is a proper word. For launchers, it means to remove any energetic items that can cause an explosion, eg vent fuel, discharge batteries. That’s not the same as deactivation.
It’s also possible in chemistry to “passivate” a surface, meaning to alter it to make it chemically unreactive such as adding an inert surface layer. I don’t think using “deactivate” would be understood in the same way.
An object in space can be both passivated and dangerous, depending on where you are. It's orbit will change only naturally (e.g. drag), but that could still mean that it's going to hit something else if the orbits intersect. Passivated simply means that one can assume it will more or less stay in one piece, and won't suddenly get up and go off into a different orbit. You have to keep an eye on it, but there won't be any surprises.
MachDiamond,
To be fair to El Reg - they did give an explanation of passivation in their last article on the upper stage engine going boom. Despite that happening, the stage managed to passivate and release the satellites.
It's industry jargon, which presents a problem for reporting to a more a general news audience. But it's jargon becuase it has a specific meaning, so it's hard not to use it when you mean that specific thing. Just sometimes you forget to explain it.
> ‘The upper stage survived the anomaly and was deactivated as usual’
I 'deactivate' a car by turning off the ignition and applying the handbrake. But if I wanted to make the car as inert as is practical, I would also discharge the battery, drain it of fuel and other volatile liquids, disconnect the airbag system, and deflate the tyres... and I might want a word to describe these processes taken as whole. 'Passivate' seems reasonable.
Depends. The views of the insurers are moot until the FAA gives some sort of go ahead.
And, just because the payload being launched is crewless doesn't mean there aren't any safety considerations. If a launch is intended to get a boost up to, say, 500km (e.g. StarLink satellites) but only reaches 420km because of a repeat of whatever the fault is, that's on the ISS's level. That's not an ideal place to dump an expended and possibly disintegrating 2nd stage and a bunch of satellites that were hoping to be let go higher.
If it actually happened there'd had to be a rapid assessment of where everything is going to end up in case there were a danger of any of those objects being on an orbit intersecting with the ISS's own... If there were an actual disintegration of a 2nd stage at or above that level, that would be extremely problematic. Ok, so the ISS itself hasn't got many years left but the orbit is supposed to be kept clear for a replacement.
So, whilst they could keep up the high cadence I don't think they're going to be allowed to do so to useful payload altitudes until the FAA is satisfied with whatever changes are required.
Absolutely the insurers are irrelevant without the FAA permission... but they might impose further restrictions (even if those are cost based).
I suspect that the FAA may well look at the F9 history and decide that the reliability is good enough to return to limited* flight, with a heavy caveat that anything non nominal (irrespective of mission success) in the second stage becomes subject to an investigation with a full grounding.
* Limited - i.e. no humans
Somehow I can't help feeling we're soon going to be going back to the era of "light-touch" self-regulation that brought us the 737-MAX and several financial crises, because it costs American industry far too much (where too much is defined as anything) to pay regulators who know what they're doing…
The thing that ought to be drummed into each and every MBA until they're blue is that, "Regulation brings prosperity. It's the only thing that gives you a willing, trusting mass market. It's the only thing that stops your competitors undercutting you by too much. It's the only thing that lets you trade internationally. Compliance with it is the only thing that lets you sleep at night and avoid jail the next day. Subverting regulation is going to cost you and your customers everything".
Regulation does seem to struggle to stay strong in the US system. For example, the US political system, lobbying from Boeing, and all administrations for decades acted to undermine and diminish the abilities of the FAA, an aspect of the current Boeing crisis that I'm not sure has received adequate political attention in Congress...
Still, the FAA is currenty seemingly doing a good job.
"Compliance with it is the only thing that lets you sleep at night and avoid jail the next day."
Gotta say that's some "now look what you made me do" level shit.
Regulation is responsible for the US housing market. Regulation killed thousands during Covid. Regulation even now stops valuable medications due to a byzantine and bizarre approval process. Regulation has a very real cost - in lives - and it does nobody any good to pretend it doesn't exist.
Some things are overregulated, some things are underregulated. What I'm saying is regulation is not inherently good. It's not the best thing since sliced bread. Good regulation is good, bad regulation is bad - and yes, bad regulation very much exists.
You can't just say "We need to drill it into MBA's heads that regulation is good." No it damn well isn't! It's good or bad - it *does* good or bad - depending on the situation.
It is what I said yes. The point is regulation is useless. You can't just say "we need regulation", because that'll lead you directly into politician's disease: "Something must be done - this is something - thus it must be done." Markets need *good* regulation way more than "strong" regulation. With companies, the requirement of supply and demand guarantees a bare minimum of quality. With politics there is no such limiting factor, so it falls to us to demand regulation that actually does more good than bad. "Regulation good, period" is not how we get there.
I think my english teacher would have insisted on: May we launch our rockets (or might at a pinch), arguing the we were requesting permission to, rather than the feasibility of, or our capability to, launch a rocket.
Although I imagine anything involving Space Karen can might be the correct choice. ;)
As per discussion above, and your old chemistry texts, "passivated" has well(!) known techie usage.
But "demised"? "His demise" for the death of a person (the end of his hold on life), certainly common usage. But with the extra 'd' on the end - have only seen that referring to the transfer of a leasehold (the end of holding by one person).
So, "fully demised" = "passed it on to somebody else, not our problem any more".
These are both Government Regulatory Body terms. There are a lot of ways an object in space can be "dead". The new hotness is to ensure an object that re-enters Earth's atmosphere turns into small particles that are no longer of interest to anyone that matters. Thus "fully demised" meaning not on orbit and not in big enough pieces for government to care about.
> These are both Government Regulatory Body terms.
Ta for that.
> not in big enough pieces for government to care about.
So not only
>> not our problem any more
but even the government agrees about that![1]
[1] although hopefully that means it is now only "problematic" in that it is now merely unexpected brief lights in the sky and not "you can't prove those holes are anything to do with us" -:)
It's just been lifted from the French where it means normal as in "as expected". The English usage of the same word refers to the purpose for which something is intended (named is the etymology), but is usually used in when something is being used for something else: the suppressor-widget was nominally designed to reduce noise, but is usually used for the pretty colours it produces….
The trouble is that this use is a horrible bending of language. Nominal exists in many languages (not just French as noted above) and is derived from Latin meaning 'in name', thus "the Chancellor is the nominal head of the university", "I was only charged a nominal fee for the repair", "an AA cell is 1.5v nominal", etc.
With that derivation, "a nominal landing" means it landed in name only, not in reality. Whereas what they are trying to convey is that it performed in close accordance with nominal engineering values. Which is what they should say, rather than torturing the word 'nominal' to mean almost the exactly the opposite of what in means in every other common usage.
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