An excess of confidence?

[unixronin]

Elon Musk's enthusiasm for and confidence in his private space-launch venture seems to exceed the technical mastery of the engineers working on his Falcon 1 launcher.  Musk described the third launch of Falcon 1, carrying three NASA and DoD satellites, as "picture perfect".

That would be "picture perfect" except for the part where the first and second stages failed to separate, with the resulting loss of the entire vehicle and payload.

This puts the Falcon at 0 for 3.  If I were in Musk's position, I think I might seriously consider doing my test launches with dummy payloads until I'd had at least one successful launch, thus avoiding building up an unenviable reputation for destroying my customers' payloads.  Let's face it, just about anyone can throw together a booster that doesn't work.

Comments

[msa.livejournal.com]

I think they need to engage some third party contractors to review both the design and their flight ops procedures.

That, or to become a subcontractor and produce engines for someone who knows how to use them.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It couldn't hurt to let someone else experienced give it the hairy eyeball under NDA, true.

It's not like the big players don't have their failures too — Arianespace had some major problems, for one — but they usually don't start selling payload capacity until they know the booster flies. On the other hand, Musk can probably only afford to test-launch just so many empty boosters.

The gripping hand is, he can probably only afford to have just so many paid launches fail before people stop buying payload space from him. And then, it may not matter whether it ever flies successfully.

I don't remember what SpaceX is using for an engine. I remember Rotary Rocket's engine was very innovative, but it got killed when the investors developed cold feet and forced a switch to a conventional engine which couldn't meet the performance-for-weight requirements, and the entire project predictably died shortly after.

[hrrunka]

Arianespace had some major problems, for one

Yeah. The Cluster fireworks display came to mind...

[msa.livejournal.com]

Their engines are developed in house, this was the first flight involving one of them. Yet, even with their own development, and changing them out before actually having a launch success, the engines appear to work...

Their stage seperation blows.

As for why I think their flight op procedures need review...

During the last attempt they put off and put off the launch, then had a couple of aborts, then called it. (Note, more than one abort after ignition.) They are way too dependent on that last check before the clamps release, so dependant they are willing to go again without fully figuring out why they had the first abort.

Then there was this weekend... where after having a post ignition abort, within 25 minutes they have started another count.

The fact that their launches or attempts never go even close to schedule, and that they're too willing to launch *something* even in the face of adverse indications... just not good signs.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hear you. Those are signs of systemic problems with their process. Wrong priorities, perhaps — their actions say "Better a failed launch than a missed launch", where they should be thinking the opposite. How many times has NASA scrubbed launches because they weren't happy with something from a telemetry reading to the weather?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Their stage seperation blows.

Or perhaps the problem is that it doesn't? ;)

[msa.livejournal.com]

You would think that two rings of explosive bolts and a lot of thrust would make this easy...

[msa.livejournal.com]

Something else occurs to me...

They talk up their proven engine designs by pointing out how much they borrowed fro m the Apollo/Saturn program on their website.

It's possible they aren't even capable of building the engines, but got that part right because the US government did all the hard work for them 40 years ago...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

You have a point there, too. Every time I think of Elon Musk, I can't but help remember that he's the guy who built eBay, and think of some of the horror stories I've heard from inside eBay.

[darthgeek.livejournal.com]

Elon Musk built Paypal and sold it to e-bay. He founded SpaceX with the money from the ebay sale.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my error .... I conflated the two.