Posted June 16, 2010 5:58 PM
By David Todd
SPACE EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES (SPACEX) FALCON 9 'BEATS THE ODDS' & MAKES IT INTO ORBIT
While many space experts and pundits (including the Ascend space team) noted the high risk of failure that maiden flights usually have to face (in excess of 50%), and while even Space X’s CEO Elon Musk, equated the first launch of the Falcon 9 to ‘Russian Roulette’, in the end, the launch vehicle’s first flight successfully achieved orbit on 4th June.
After delays caused by weaker than expected destruction telemetry signals, a last minute stay after an internal rocket alarm, and by a sail boat straying onto the range, the launch from Cape Canaveral took place at 1835 GMT. The payload carried was an instrumented dummy payload designed to mimic the Dragon cargo craft that is planned to fly to the International Space Station.
The nine-Merlin engine first stage appeared to work perfectly. The single Merlin engine upper stage also managed to inject the payload into more or less its planned orbit but the stage was seen to suffer an untoward spinning/corkscrewing motion at the end of the burn of the second stage. This is now being investigated. Nevertheless, the launch marked a considerable achievement and put SpaceX in the driving seat of the NASA COTS contract to supply commercial space launches to the International Space Station, and more importantly for the firm’s immediate cash flow, for commercial satellite launches.
The plan to recover the first stage of the rocket failed after it broke apart during re-entry.
Comment: This was a great achievement and a vindication for SpaceX and for Elon Musk who has had to both face down his critics and cope with his firm’s own cash flow problems (they have delayed the next flight due to this issue). It was also a credit to Mr. Musk who risked his own money to design and develop this launch vehicle and its highly efficient liquid fuel Merlin engines. In doing so Musk turned himself from an internet entrepreneur into a talented rocket scientist. Even more impressive was just how relatively little money it has taken to get this vehicle from design concept to nearly operational status.
After the flight had taken place, Elon Musk declared it to have achieved “a near-bull’s-eye” as he noted that it was “about 99.8 percent on perigee and 101 percent on apogee." The target orbit was later revealed to have been a 250-kilometer circular orbit at an inclination of 34.5 degrees. Despite this minor inaccuracy and the fact that details of the target orbit were not readily released until after the flight, Ascend now classes this flight on its Ascend SpaceTrak online database reliability queries as a ‘success’ (SpaceTrak is available to the public domain via subscription).
With respect to whether SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launched Dragon craft could be turned into a manned spacecraft, it may well become a backup to whatever Boeing and Lockheed Martin can create. It surely would make an ideal International Space Station lifeboat capsule as well and at a much cheaper price that modifying the Orion spacecraft. Don’t get us wrong - Orion should definitely be built but as a proper exploration vehicle and not just as a life raft.
Falcon 9 lifts off. Courtesy: SpaceX
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