After failing to make it to orbit, Firefly Aerospace asserts it has 'arrived'

Firefly Aerospace has confirmed that one of its Reaver engines shut down shortly after its Alpha rocket left the pad last week, resulting in the destruction of the vehicle in spectacular fashion just after reaching supersonic velocity. In a sequence of tweets in which Firefly bravely asserted it had "arrived" as a company " …

[Anonymous Coward]

No power in the verse can stop us...

Except gravity and engineering fails lol

They need to hire Kaylee Frye....

[J. Cook]

Re: No power in the verse can stop us...

It was the entry coupling that did it...

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: No power in the verse can stop us...

".....anything with a Capissen 38 Mark II engine - they fall right out of the sky"

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep going

They did better than SpaceX's first Falcon 1 launch whose engines failed at T+33 seconds. Failure is something you learn from.

If you are daunted by failures, rocket development is not for you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Keep going

Exactly.

You may get mocked by people who don't understand (especially if you start listing achievements on a mission that actually ended in a fireball) but those who do understand will appreciate that _all_ the things have to go right. Getting 9 out of 10 right may still end in a fireball but is still an improvement over last time when you only got 7 out of 10 right even if to the observer they both appeared to end in a similar fireball.

To be honest, when this is the first flight, not exploding on and destroying the launch pad should be considered a bit of a win.

In fact, for this and the other recent launch (that failed) from Alaska I think there was some suggestion that they deliberately prolonged the flight as long as they could in order to clear the range and get the debris into the sea. So the fact that they still had control over an ailing rocket (in both cases) is really quite impressive.

[Gene Cash]

Re: Keep going

> To be honest, when this is the first flight, not exploding on and destroying the launch pad should be considered a bit of a win.

That's Musk's main goal of his first Starship flight... the launch pad is VERY expensive and hard to build. Something like 4 or 5 rockets worth.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Keep going

I think he said the same about the Falcon Heavy test flight. Something like "as long as it clears the tower so the explosion minimises the damage to the ground equipment then I'm happy"

[Geoff May (no relation)]

Re: Keep going

I wish I could get 9 out of 10 of my development changes right ...

[AnonEMusk Noel]

Re: Keep going

Rather unanticipated failure than a lucky success. Thus what we don't know becomes what we know.

[Anonymous Coward]

Engine lost electrical power

So apparently the engine lost electrical power, which caused the propellant valves to close.

[John Jennings]

Re: Engine lost electrical power

seems likely - the turbo-pumps etc didnt fail - the engine shut down cleanly.

The fascinating thing was that the control systems were well enough designed and the gimbal system flexible enough to adjust and keep heading up - rather than continuing sidways or just shutting down ah la the Airbus condition in China.

I would count that as a win there. Try balancing a pen on your finger....

[Flywheel]

The Agile Method gets rather expensive...

... when you apply it rocket engines. Move fast and break things cheaply