SpaceX Launch - Official Webcast

http://www.spacex.com/webcast/#

by nkoren • 13 years ago

248 160 13 years ago

Interesting post from the spacex subreddit. It looks like we might get to see a recording of the first stage return (if it works).

http://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/1nd0qc/american_isla...

trothamel3• 13 years ago

Musk's private jet is also in the area.

http://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/N887XF

jpgvm3• 13 years ago

It is worth mentioning that the first stage successfully was successfully relit. I would expect footage in the coming days of the first stage soft-landing.

trothamel3• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, it looks like American Islander now has a destination of San Diego, which would seem to make it unlikely that the stage will be recovered intact.

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?mmsi=367035570...

It'll be interesting to find out what happened, if SpaceX tells us. It could be anything from a breakup at hypersonic velocities to the stage sinking after dropping from three feet over the water. (Or maybe they were just there to observe that a destruct charge went off?)

MaggieL• 13 years ago

American Islander is indeed returning to San Diego. But sister ship American Spirit is steaming purposefully SSW... I wonder why... :-)

option_greek• 13 years ago

All these launches seem to be so noisy (with chatter from a thousand people). Wonder how the engineers focus on their work.

rtkwe• 13 years ago

There's a separation between the viewing areas and the mission areas so it's not an issue.

abcd_f• 13 years ago

I wish they were showing more of the rocket and the launchpad than just some heads talking about "pushing the boundaries" and some such. Let them talk, but in the background.

mikeash9• 13 years ago

Since nothing was happening with the rocket or the pad, what purpose would that serve?

cryptoz• 13 years ago

There's a lot riding on this launch. Pretty much every component is brand new. This is the first flight of this rocket, which has new engines, a new engine configuration, the payload fairing, and a much bigger body than their previous F9. Most exciting of course is the attempt to test the re-entry part of the re-usability program to connect with all the grasshopper tests.

If this works, they're going to be much closer to building completely and rapidly re-usable spacecraft. I think their end goal is to have about a 1-hour turnaround time. Spaceships will become like airplanes, and we'll have the new frontier on our hands. This type of re-usability is what makes SpaceX's Mars plans so possible in the short term and why everyone else seems to think humans on Mars won't be until the 2030s or 2040s. With this type of technology, shipping supplies and people to Mars will be so much cheaper than anyone has ever really envisioned. I can't wait to move there!

I'm quite certain that Elon plans to have a massive ramp-up in trips to Mars over the next 5 years. The software team that did their AMA on reddit a while ago was very clear that we should expect to buy tickets to Mars inside a decade - this certainly means that SpaceX will start ferrying supplies, fuel reactors and everything else necessary to Mars (via Red Dragons?) in about 5 years.

Here's hoping.

w1ntermute3• 13 years ago

From the video stream, it looks like it reached orbit (?) without any problems.

jpgvm3• 13 years ago

Yes. The mission component reached orbit in a very un-eventful fashion. :)

What we are really holding out for is tidbits about the actually fully new component of the rocket.. it's stage 1 recovery system.. if it's as mature as the grasshopper tech looks it probably was 100% successful but it's probably going to be a little bit before they let people in on how it went.

icarian• 13 years ago

I could not find the link to their AMA can you please link that. Thank you.

skore• 13 years ago

"could not find the link"?

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1853ap/we_are_spacex_s...

Sorry to say, but that was literally a matter of googling "reddit spacex ama". Come on.

avar• 13 years ago

    > With this type of technology, shipping supplies and people to
    > Mars will be so much cheaper than anyone has ever really
    > envisioned. I can't wait to move there!

I used to be very personally excited about this too, but realistically I can't see habitation on Mars becoming anything more than the equivalent of a glorified trailer park in Antarctica within my lifetime, except with little chance of return, and I'm not even 30 yet.

Exciting for humanity, yes! A nice place to go live? Probably not for another 100 years or so. I'm interested in why you'd be so keen to move there.

baq2• 13 years ago

I'm interested in why you'd be so keen to move there.

tripadvisor badge. 'you visited 2 worlds!'

jlgreco2• 13 years ago

I'm interested in why you'd be so keen to move there.

I don't think it is something that can be explained. Either it is something that you get, or it just isn't.

el_zorro6• 13 years ago

I'm interested in why you'd be so keen to move there.

I am not the OP, but I'm very interested in moving to Mars at the first chance I get. Why? It certainly isn't about comfort, as you've pointed out. However, to many people, life is about a lot more than creature comforts. The chance to be among the first group of humans to leave our planet and live elsewhere is a unique opportunity that literally only comes once in the history of Earth. It is the first step to securing the universal survival of our species and genesis. It's about meeting new challenges, pushing limits, and proving that we are more than above-average apes beating each other with sticks and sharp objects.

This is very much a philosophical journey as well as a physical one. It's about bringing terrestrial life into the greater universe. It's about realizing the best aspects of humanity, while hoping to discard many of our flaws. It's a new beginning, a new chance. Plus, being a founder of a new society is a chance few people will ever have.

If having all of this means that I will have to live without as many baths, I am all for it.

troymc• 13 years ago

I can't speak for cryptoz, but here are some reasons why people might want to move to Mars:

1. It sure does sound like a lot of fun! And dangerous! And thrilling!

2. Fame and glory

3. The chance to explore and directly experience a place no other human has ever been.

4. The opportunity to stake a claim on some new land (and find out what that means). Maybe form a new government! Make new laws... I can see this being quite attractive for groups that feel stifled by Earth (e.g. religious groups, the far left, the far right).

5. The chance to spread humanity to a self-sustained place beyond Earth, as a backup (albeit a fragile one at first).

You're right that Mars would not be a nice place to live, especially in the early days, but that's not why people would go!

XorNot4• 13 years ago

This was America, or my home country - Australia - about 200 years ago.

Its not Antarctica because Antarctica is very heavily claimed at this point. But Mars? You'd be amongst the first colonists of a new planet. You'd be helping build something which may outlast Earthbound habitation, and moves us out of the current resource paradigm (exactly 1 planet).

And unlike LEO you'd have the possibility of the local resources to set up something permanent.

But I mean hey, its not perfect - I'd move to the Asteroid belt or Jupiter system if I could. Though my real enthusiasm would be diverting comets to add water to Venus - since get the atmosphere well, out of the atmosphere and you're looking at Earth 2.

InclinedPlane4• 13 years ago

Mars colonization will take off extremely rapidly, most likely.

Making propellant on Mars is easy, all you need is Hydrogen and power and you can make 16x as much mass in propellant as the Hydrogen you bring along. And this is with mere kilograms of equipment to process the martian atmosphere. Make no mistake, this is a big deal in a lot of different ways.

So that bootstraps you into being able to effectively explore Mars at all, because now you don't have to ship out all the propellant for the return trip, which is an exponential savings.

Now add to that the fact that Mars has a day similar to Earth and substantial quantities of subsurface ice (and small amounts of water in the surface soil). That means you can use fairly modest capital equipment (stuff you can transport using the same vehicles you send people, and capable of being powered fairly easily) to start mining water ice within the first handful of trips to the planet. Which means that you can have local supplies of: potable water, propellant, fuel for equipment that runs on internal combustion engines, breathable oxygen, and carbon monoxide (which I'll explain the significance of later).

With oxygen, abundant CO2, water, and inflatable structures you can start growing plants on Mars due to the light levels and day lengths. A colony could start supplying some of its own food within less than a decade.

But wait, there's more. Given the low Martian gravity it would be almost trivially easy to create an SSTO RLV that could travel back and forth between the martian surface and orbit, refueling on the surface with locally produced propellant. You could build these on Earth and send them over without crews and just enough propellant to make a powered, parachute assisted landing before being put into service. They could visit a station in Mars orbit which would make it easier to make trips back and forth to Earth.

Additionally, by using a cycler (a spacecraft which is on a permanent trajectory looping between Earth and Mars) you could significantly increase the amount of useful payload you could deliver to Mars and increase the comfort and safety of passengers. Although for bulk cargo you could use electric propulsion to push the cargo out of low Earth orbit over to Mars and then use aerocapture / aerobraking to bring the payloads within reach of an orbital tug at Mars that could bring it to a station where it could be ferried down to the surface.

Back to Martian resources. With carbon monoxide available all you need is energy in order to be able to effectively smelt metals such as iron, copper, or aluminum. Some of the rocks and regolith on Mars are effectively high grade ores, especially of iron. It would not take much equipment to be able to start producing builk amounts of steel. This could be used for all sorts of purposes in expanding a base into a full fledged settlement.

From there things accelerate quickly. It gets easier and easier to send things to Mars, to come back from Mars, and to build things on Mars. Capital investments on Mars start to make a huge amount of sense. A substantial power source on Mars (even just in the single megawatt range) is not merely a lifeline for a base it becomes the seed of a growing industrial base. With power and water you can process the atmosphere and bootstrap the chemical industry with all the products listed above. And with that you can smelt bulk metals, and make glass. You can also start making concrete and other building materials. You can start making buildings and farming structures where only a small fraction of the structure is composed of supplies shipped from Earth.

And that's really just square 1. From there you can move on to more advanced industry, more robust farming, more advanced technology, and so on. The very first visitors to Mars will likely be scientists, but the second wave will be dominated by engineers. Imagine what will be built with the thousands of tonnes of steel, concrete, aluminum, copper, and so forth that will be produced within only the first decade of this primitive industrial capacity coming online. Certainly more than a trailer park in the skies, far more.

hrvbr• 13 years ago

Let's not forget the high risk of cancer from the solar radiations. Also an almost one-year travel can't be done in a ship that's like a crowded airplane. We'd go crazy without some more space and intimacy (and work to do).

Not that it's impossible but escaping the Earth's gravity cheaply isn't the only challenge.

verytrivial• 13 years ago

I recall a comparison being made about how very tenuous the atmosphere really is on Mars. The comparison was something like this:

Consider how hostile the peak of Everest is to life. It has been climbed without oxygen masks only a handful of times. Then consider that to achieve an air pressure on Earth equivalent to the Martian surface, you would need to stand on a mountain around FIVE TIMES as high.

"Living" on Mars will be akin to be parking the International Space Station in a frigid, red desert and cowering inside for 99% of the time. Not really living in my book.

Shivetya• 13 years ago

by that token living in earth orbit is not much different. The only question I have is, other than proving we can do it; living on Mars; what are our goals for being there? Do we truly expect people to establish a autonomous existence?

codex3• 13 years ago

For those who are keen to travel to Mars: may I suggest a stint in the Peace Corps first, or on a nuclear submarine, or a tour in Antarctica. If that's not ambitious enough, please try attempting to terraform a desert, or establishing a colony under the ocean or on top of K2, or constructing a city that's mostly buried underground. All of these are cakewalks compared to Mars, and may give you a taste for what the best of times will be like there after the excitement has worn off after the first month or so.

Personally, I think Mars is a destination for robots and tourists, not permanent colonies, as it's basically a hostile shithole. Of all the hostile shitholes in the solar system, there are others I'd rather visit, like Europa or Io. But to each their own.

InclinedPlane4• 13 years ago

New launch pad. New rocket with new engines. New customers for SpaceX (Canada). New flight profile (test of a simulated first stage return and powered landing over the open ocean, to validate the same flight profile for use on the Falcon 9-R with retractable landing gear).

Pretty exciting.

visakanv2• 13 years ago

I got goosebumps hearing all the people saying "X, go". So many people working so hard, coming together to achieve something. Wow. Edge of my seat.

twinge• 13 years ago

OT but you should watch http://www.firstmenonthemoon.com/ -- several times all the flight controllers do their checks, concluding with "stay/no stay".

jdiez17• 13 years ago

Yeah, the final poll. That is one of my favourite parts of a launch as well, second only to the engine ignition. Both of these things are very powerful - dozens of incredibly bright minds working together to lift thousands of kilograms into the sky.

blackdogie• 13 years ago

Five minutes and counting. Edge of the seat stuff. Wishing them all the success !

pgrote• 13 years ago

lift off. still get excited as I did as a kid when watching something like this.

baq2• 13 years ago

slightly OT: for anybody interested in rockets i greatly recommend ignition!: http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf - a story of liquid rocket propellants. foreword by asimov, should i say more?

shocks• 13 years ago

Awesome! Thanks for this.

eksith3• 13 years ago

What a fantastic resource! Thank you for sharing this.

A bit of an FYI for anyone else downloading: It's 223 pages, so if your Adobe reader croaks or feels glitchy while scrolling, try Sumatra PDF instead. It will be almost like opening a plain text document. Plus you can easily highlight text.

  Millions of words have been written about rocketry and space travel,
  and almost as many about the history and development of the rocket.
  But if anyone is curious about the parallel history and development
  of rocket propellants — the fuels and the oxidizers that make them
  go —he will find that there is no book which will tell him what he
  wants to know. There are a few texts which describe the propellants
  currently in use, but nowhere can he learn why these and not some-
  thing else fuel Saturn V or Titan II, or SS-9. In this book I have tried
  to make that information available, and to tell the story of the de-
  velopment of liquid rocket propellants: the who, and when, and where
  and how and why of their development. The story of solid propellants
  will have to be told by somebody else.

ericcumbee4• 13 years ago

"Awaiting Vehicle Downlink" is that a cute way of saying buffering? Because the flight control audio and mission clock disappear when that pops up.

eksith3• 13 years ago

Nope. That just means, they totally lost video down. I'm guessing they're dedicating a more robust connection for actual telemetry. To be fair, the video is mostly eyecandy. The actual meat is sensor data.

ericcumbee4• 13 years ago

Well aware of that. But given the fact that the Mission Clock and Flight Control audio were disappearing as well.

jlgreco2• 13 years ago

It seems that sometimes flight control audio cuts when that happens, sometimes it doesn't.

ericcumbee4• 13 years ago

It only did that the first couple times.

yogipatel• 13 years ago

Are they not going to cover the first stage re-entry/landing? Or am I mistaken about what this flight was actually testing?

prawks• 13 years ago

That's a minor part of the event from a press standpoint, the focus is the launch. The recovery is only given a ~10% chance of being successful.

syncerr• 13 years ago

I missed take off by a few minutes. Is there a recording up yet?

InclinedPlane4• 13 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf-T3KeLbuM

Sunlis• 13 years ago

Much longer version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFefasS6bhc

jpgvm3• 13 years ago

That was a surprisingly smooth ride up.

Congratulations to the SpaceX team on another massive milestone. Looking forward to more from the Falcon 9 and Merlin 1D.

toomuchtodo• 13 years ago

"Picture perfect launch". Congratulations Spacex!

emp_zealoth2• 13 years ago

I've got a technical question: Does anybody have any idea what a ring that comes off second stage nozzle right before the engine fires is? You can see it at 1:21:27 on the SpaceX webcast

ericcumbee4• 13 years ago

Probably just a protective cover they put over the engine. my guess is a glorified garbage bag.

rrmm• 13 years ago

Didn't see the exact place in the video, but perhaps you are talking about the nozzle stiffening ring? http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/02/09/falcon-9-flight-1-pict... has a still of it happening on a previous flight towards the end of the page.

trothamel3• 13 years ago

According to http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/02/09/falcon-9-flight-1-pict... , it's the nozzle stiffening ring.

I'm guessing that it's there to help with handling the incredibly thin nozzle extension in gravity, and that once the craft is in freefall (or under exhaust pressure) it's no longer necessary.

emp_zealoth2• 13 years ago

Thank you so much, I'm nearly sure this is what I was asking about

ZoFreX• 13 years ago

As a software engineer currently learning test-driven development, it's fascinating to see all the parallels in SpaceX's approach to aerospace. It's well worth jumping back to around T-40 in the stream to hear and see lots of what they're doing.

christiangenco• 13 years ago

Yeah! I've thought the same thing.

Really makes you appreciate that you can re-run a failing test a hundred times before it passes at negligible cost, while applying the same ideology to spaceflight means tens of millions a pop at minimum.

robomartin• 13 years ago

Anyone know ETA for splash-down? Will that be streamed?

cmod• 13 years ago

If you want some extra context for the awesomeness that's happening here (especially around the power of reusable components), try watching When We Left Earth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_We_Left_Earth:_The_NASA_M...

It runs through the making of Gemini, Apollo, Shuttle, Hubble, and the ISS.

velodrome• 13 years ago

The launch will included a number of Falcon 9 v1.1 "firsts", including:

- First use of the upgraded Merlin 1D engines, generating approximately 56 percent more sea-level thrust than the Merlin 1C engines used on all previous Falcon 9 vehicles.

- First use of the significantly longer first stage, which holds the additional propellant for the more powerful engines.

- The nine Merlin 1D engines on the first stage are arranged in an octagonal pattern with eight engines in a circle and the ninth in the center.

- First launch from SpaceX's new launch facility, Space Launch Complex 4, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, and will be the first launch over the Pacific ocean using the facilities of the Pacific test range.

- First Falcon 9 launch to carry a satellite payload for a commercial customer, and also the first non-CRS mission. Each prior Falcon 9 launch was of a Dragon capsule or a Dragon-shaped test article, although SpaceX has previously successfully launched and deployed a satellite on the Falcon 1, Flight 5 mission.

- First Falcon 9 launch to have a jettisonable payload fairing, which introduces the risk of an additional separation event.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

pbreit2• 13 years ago

It's amazing that there is so much variance from launch to launch. I realize they are in a very progressive stage of the company but you'd still might think there would be more commonality from launch to launch for such a error-prone exercise.

kiba• 13 years ago

Why would you believe that? One of the big point about Falcon 9 is how simple it can be and how easy it is to manufacture the product.

Gravityloss2• 13 years ago

I think that's one of the big things that's different with SpaceX. They move quite quickly.

tsotha• 13 years ago

I can see the advantages with the new engine pattern but I never understood the thinking behind the grid arrangement.

quentusrex• 13 years ago

(T-20 Min To Webcast End) SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 Makes Its First Launch From Vandenberg, AFB

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj4C9bydkX8

turing• 13 years ago

Update from Musk: "Launch was good. All satellites deployed at the targeted orbit insertion vectors."

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/384392608350367744/photo...

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Video of it (for those who missed it ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFefasS6bhc

I'm looking for video of the first stage landing, you can hear them call it out on the audio but its not in this video.

rst2• 13 years ago

Per SpaceX post-launch press conference: all payloads delivered safely into orbit.

First stage did not land intact. The first burn went OK. The second (single-engine burn braking to the surface) cut off early: the stage spun, and the roll was centrifuging fuel in the tanks. Pieces of the stage have been recovered. (FWIW, this was with the tanks nearly drained. This may be different from Grasshopper, which has ballast to get its weight up and make it easier to control, possibly in the form of extra fuel.)

Next recovery attempt will be on the fourth Falcon 9 v1.1 launch (for space station resupply, after two communication satellite launches).

There was also a problem relighting the second stage after payloads were deployed; they've identified the issue, and will correct. (This would have been an issue for the comsat launches, as delivering them into their desired orbits requires relighting the engine.)

trafficlight• 13 years ago

First stage did not land intact.

Intact as in it broke up during descent?

rst2• 13 years ago

Not during descent --- it got to the point of doing the second burn, but that sputtered out early because the stage was spinning too fast, and the spin was centrifuging fuel to the edges of the tanks. They haven't actually said that it hit the water too hard to stay in one piece, but that's the (fairly clear) implication.

The spin was due to "aerodynamic torque" (i.e., it was spun up by the atmosphere going down), per Elon's twitter stream.

Gravityloss2• 13 years ago

Interesting how the rocket is so skinny with a huge "hammerhead" payload fairing. The upgrades to the Merlin 1 engine series seem to have worked out so well that they have stretched Falcon 9 quite a lot. The loads in the center of the rocket must be huge. To increase diameter, they would probably need to invest so much more in either risk analysis, flight control, manufacturing or transport that it wasn't deemed necessary.

(Resistance to buckling is roughly relative to rotational inertia of the cross section, which for a circle grows with the square of radius assuming a constant shell thickness, and the thickness would actually increase with increasing radius because it is a pressure vessel. Also the actual bending loads increase supralinearly with length.)

tonyarkles• 13 years ago

I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for this launch. I worked on the Cassiope payload about 5 years ago, and it's so awesome to know that it's finally made it to orbit.

And it got to ride on a Falcon 9! Originally, it was meant to be strapped to an old Soviet rocket in Kazakstan. This is so much cooler!

SpaceX Launch - Official Webcast

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