Over at NBC, where Yours Truly is quoted.
[Sunday-morning update]
Here’s Tariq Malik’s story. Note this (for some in comments):
“With research and development projects, detecting vehicle anomalies during the testing is the purpose of the program,” SpaceX representatives wrote. “Today’s test was particularly complex, pushing the limits of the vehicle further than any previous test.”
Makes sense to me.
**The F9R is part of Musk’s vision to develop a low-cost, reusable rocket that could reduce the cost of spaceflight to one percent of the cost using conventional rockets and possibly open the door for the settlement of Mars. The F9R is supposed to rise off a launch pad and then ease back down to a controlled vertical landing, which is essential for reusability. **
The cost of launch to Earth orbit will not lower to one percent of conventional rockets by reusing the rocket.
The test launch launch vehicle cost in terms of blowing it up, would be a around 1 percent of say a total falcon 9 launch cost.
It seems to me that creating falcon 9 which can recovery it’s first stage with it’s 9 rocket engines, could lower falcon 9 launch cost by as much 75% but probably more likely halving it’s costs or allowing a 60 million launch price to be lowered to say 30 million.
And recovering the first stages of Falcon heavy with it’s 27 rocket engine could allow larger lowering of cost of launching it. But not 1 percent of cost.
Another “equally” lowering of costs is simply having a larger number of rocket launches per year. Or if SpaceX launches 6 times in 2014, this increased launch rate will lower cost per launch. And if SpaceX could instead launch 12 rockets per year, this could lower it’s costs by say, 1/2.
And reusablity is connected to higher launch rates- reusablity without high launch rate- say 1 or less per year, could increase launch cost.
But it depends at the present moment on unknowable details in terms of all that is involved in order to reuse rocket stages, whereas increase launch rate whether reusable or not has more certainty in terms of always significantly lowering costs.
And the price to orbit limit in number of launches per year and reusable rocket [Or any SSTO/TSTO] is about $100 per lb. So with any chemical rockets [unless one using larger rockets than Falcon Heavy, and accordingly a very massive yearly launch rate- in terms of units and total tonnage lifted] one will have this limitation. Or at $100 per lb to orbit, the price of rocket fuel becomes something like 10% or more of the the total launch cost.
My understanding is that long term plans include recovery of the upper stage. Given that a lot of the difficulties they’ll need to solve for that will be encountered for first stage recovery, possibly in lesser form, working out one at a time makes sense.
Good article. I cancelled my cable subscription a couple of years ago, so I don’t follow the MSM much anymore.
At the conservative blogs I read, nobody has even mentioned it. Some of these same sites have published snarky articles and comments in the past about SpaceX launch scrubs. So I guess this is progress. I haven’t seen anybody running around with their hair on fire yelling, “See? SpaceX had a failure!”
Oh, you haven’t? Well, here you go:
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-on-rocket-explosion-2014-8
“It was a scary Friday night for SpaceX as one of its Falcon 9R rockets exploded shortly after launching during a test flight over Texas.”
I recommend http://www.spacetoday.net which compiles space stories into one short list each day, so you can quickly scan for space-related news coverage.
Yikes. The comments are all over the place.
In addition to the term LIV for “Low Information Voters”, I propose LICs for “Low Information Commenters”.
Yeah. I was especially impressed by one anti-SpaceX type who seemed blissfully unaware the failure involved a test article in Texas and not a regular launch in Florida.
Fire. Aim. Ready.
“It was a dark and scary night…”
Thanks Bob. The editors and writers at BusinessInsider.com seem to be no fans of SpaceX based on your link and a couple previous visits I’ve made over there. Still, the commenters are quite varied in viewpoint and there seems to be mo Ministry-of-Truth-style censorship regime in place. Be nice if more venerable pubs like PopSci and Sci Am were comparably tolerant of reader comments opposed to favored editorial hobbyhorses.
I’m going to call partial BS on all this “no big deal” philosophizing about the failure. NOBODY likes losing a flight asset, no matter how much data is gotten out of it. And unless the test objectives explicitly stated that they were pushing beyond the as-analyzed safe flight envelope and consequently significant risk of loss of control existed, then this has something of a whiff of retroactive goalpost moving.
I want SpaceX to succeed as much as the next person; I have no doubt they will recover from this; I strongly suspect there’s significantly more angst today among the engineers working the VL capability than Musk et al are letting on.
No one said they “liked” it. And the lead engineer on entry and landing didn’t express any “angst.”
I think it’s clear from context that I didn’t mean that somebody literally said “we like that we lost a vehicle” (although the Shotwell comments quoted in other articles come close). With due respect, I think that’s a silly reading of my comment. However, I’ll rephrase to remove any possible ambiguity: “EVERYBODY is unhappy on losing a flight asset, no matter how much data is gotten out of it, unless it was a planned test-to-destruction event or the asset was at the end of its useful life.”
And having been in the same kind of position as the “lead engineer on entry and landing”, as well as the engineers in the trenches who are doing the analyses and developing / implementing the design, I know that the opinions expressed by management and leads publicly often has, shall we say, a certain creative tension with what’s going on with those who have to figure out what happened and fix it.
On a technical note, has anybody discussed a possible malfunction in the range safety command/destruct system (including human error)? I’ve seen that particular failure mode show up before, and it is an extremely unpleasant experience.
” I’ve seen that particular failure mode show up before, and it is an extremely unpleasant experience.”
Could you elaborate? Because it is harder to diagnose in the first place? Because it is crucial to get it right and know you’ve gotten it right? Because of something specific to explosives? Probably something else, but I’d be very interested in hearing about it.
I think he means that it’s frustrating when there’s nothing wrong with the rocket but the range safety system blows it up anyway due to an error in that system.
I expect the project budget allows for the loss of a vehicle or 2.
Yesterday I was wondering why the AsiaSat 6 launch was described in some places (e.g. AF weather forecast linked to the flight) as on Weds. morning, while still listed as Tuesday morning at spaceflightnow.com.
A note from SpaceX media relations this morning states that:
“SpaceX has requested a new launch window from the Air Force for next week’s AsiaSat 6 Mission.
“While Friday’s F9R three engine, single stage test article and our launch site in McGregor, Texas are very different from the planned Cape Canaveral, Florida launch of the AsiaSat 6 satellite on the Falcon 9 rocket, we are taking some additional time to review the circumstances that caused the test vehicle to auto terminate to confirm that there is not a risk to orbital flight.
“SpaceX prizes mission assurance above all. This action is consistent with that philosophy.
“Pending final Air Force approval of this request, the AsiaSat 6 mission is now targeted to launch at 12: 50 a.m. EDT, Wednesday, August 27 with a backup launch window on Thursday, August 28. If approved, the new launch window will open at 12:50 a.m. EDT on August 27 and last 3 hours, 15 minutes.”
I remember reading at NASASpaceflight.com that the launch had slipped to Wednesday before the F9R accident.
Due to weather it was very likely, yes.
Don’t miss John Hare’s brilliant post.