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]

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? ;)