
SpaceX's First Official Cargo Resupply Mission to the ISS - Launch Webcast - Reltair
https://new.livestream.com/spacex/CRS1
======
nkoren
One of the best things to happen during this launch is that an engine
exploded. You can see engine 1 eat itself at 1:31 in this video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRTYh71D9P0&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRTYh71D9P0&feature=youtu.be)

[Edit: First the video was public, then it was made private, now it seems to
be "unlisted" but viewable. So no guarantee that it'll still be there in
another minute...]

Why is this a good thing? Because it proves a point: the rocket automatically
adjusted its trajectory, and continued on its course as if nothing had
happened.

The Falcon 9 is the first American rocket since the Saturn 5 with an engine-
out capability. Its multiple symmetrically-arrayed engines allow for it to
compensate for a sudden loss of thrust from one side: the other side reduces
thrust as well to stay balanced, and everything else just burns a little bit
longer. That was the theory, anyways. Today they put it into practice.

For any other rocket that you've seen launched in the last 35 years, that
would have ended the mission catastrophically -- but the Falcon shrugged it
off like nothing had happened. They always said they could do that, and now
they've done it. Congratulations, SpaceX! Creating a fault-tolerant rocket is
_much_ better than creating a faultless one (since that's impossible).

[Edit]: In the absence of the video, the engine anomaly is being widely
reported on Twitter: <https://twitter.com/spaceteam/status/255128401927610368>
<https://twitter.com/visionik/status/255128010653593600>

~~~
SpacemanSpiff
I checked out the video you linked. It's now all of a sudden marked Private
for some reason... Is there any corroboration from SpaceX that there was
indeed an engine failure? It looked to me like it could have been ice breaking
off near max Q or some kind of shockwave interacting with the exhaust plume.
I'm not questioning your observation but it didn't look definitive to me. I
agree that having redundancy is good though.

~~~
nkoren
Yes, the loss of engine 1 was apparently confirmed in a press conference.

[https://twitter.com/i/#!/search/?q=falcon+engine&src=typ...](https://twitter.com/i/#!/search/?q=falcon+engine&src=typd)

~~~
SpacemanSpiff
Nice. Thanks for pointing this out.

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mixmax
I have a favour to ask of HN.

I'm responsible for webcasting Copenhagen Suborbitals launches, and we're
having a lot of great discussions about what works and what doesn't in a live
webcast of a launch. We obviously want our webcasts to be as interesting as
possible, and so I'd like to ask you a question:

What do you think could be done better in this Space X webcast? Is there
something you're missing? Something you think would be cool? Something that's
bothering you? Are the speakers good? Why?

I'm sure we can learn a lot by asking potential viewers what they think, and
implement it for next summers launches.

And good luck to SpaceX!

~~~
kmfrk
Maybe an updating checklist you tick off, as the launch progresses. Normally,
the steps to amateurs just seem to be (1) Launch. (2) Don't crash.

I'm sure there are some steps before, between, and after those two. :)

It would also make it more exciting to watch, since it makes the sense of
progression and success more tangible.

~~~
mixmax
That's an excellent idea!

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derekp7
Serious question -- in the past, when NASA wanted to launch a rocket, they
would contract with a commercial company such as Lockheed, Douglass, or some
similar. Now they contract with companies such as SpaceX. Why is this
considered a commercial / private space launch, but the others in the past
were considered government funded? NASA is paying for the launches in either
case. Or is it the level of involvement and control that NASA has in this
case?

~~~
jlgreco
My _understanding_ (I may be mistaken) is that the level of involvement and
control in the two cases is different. SpaceX runs their own mission control
for their launches, and the amount of NASA involvement in creation of the
vehicles is different (from what I understand). As an example, the Space
Shuttle was built by Boeing, but was operated by NASA. von Braun's crowning
achievement at NASA, the Saturn V rocket (about as pure a "NASA" rocket as you
normally think of) was built by Douglas/Boeing/etc.

Beyond that, the interesting bit I think is the difference in the contracts
that SpaceX has, and the contracts that have traditionally been given to space
contractors. Traditionally overruns would be covered by government funding,
but in the case of SpaceX they eat their own overruns. The result of this
seemingly minor change in funding is that they are far less "quasi-government"
than space contractors traditionally have been.

~~~
mkramlich
the pricing is a big diff. the big prime contractors tend to cost more per
payload mass than SpaceX. plus the primes do pricing based on "cost plus"
which means a general incentive to increase costs in order to increase
profits. SpaceX is doing firm fixed price quotes, and builds their profit
margin into that (at least in long run, after R&D costs recovered), and eats
risk, as you mentioned.

Also, and this is big, frankly SpaceX is operated in a much more nimble and
entrepreneurial fashion. The primes, while having lots of very smart and well-
meaning people working for them, have BDC-itis. Musk wants to dramatically
improve the world and the species, and put a colony on Mars. The leadership of
the primes seem to just want to make money. Musk/SpaceX is more exciting and
compelling for a lot of folks, plus they're more likely to lead to spin-off
missions down the road.

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bfe
I watched this launch live with my children under the giant maple tree in
front of our library. I was surprised when they called me out on my
predictions of the timing for first and second stage separation. They are
learning from this. I love that my daughter, who wants to be a scientist,
could watch Gwynne Shotwell comment on the launch afterward and know that she
is a world-class engineering executive. On the way home, my son spotted a home
with a new rack of solar panels on the roof and a fresh Solar City sign
planted in the yard. And my kids are dreaming of getting Teslas for their
first cars. What an amazing set of accomplishments set into motion by one
great founder.

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tisme
Yay! SpaceX scores again, congratulations to Elon Musk and the whole team
there.

Every time I watch one of these I feel that I'm watching history being made.
And I wished I could stop holding my breath through the last 20 seconds or so.
I also feel like I'm 6 years old again.

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ChuckMcM
Another awesome SpaceX launch, very nice. Instead of hats and t-shirts from
the SpaceX store I'd love to see them offer that 'launch workstation config'
(three monitors, wrap around table) I'd get one of those for my lab in a
heartbeat.

~~~
joezydeco
I just think it's pretty damn cool that space launches have gone from the old
50's mission control room to something that looks like a very boring LAN party
in a student lecture hall.

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vasco
Wow, they're going to land the ignition rockets in future launches! That's
great and sounds like it would be cheaper than the NASA space shuttle. Can't
even begin to imagine the amazing feedback control that'll go on in that
thing.

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ericcumbee
While that sounds great, i wonder what the advantage to that is over using
parachutes and making a water landing like the Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters
did.

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InclinedPlane
This question _always_ comes up.

It's about turnaround time and precision. Parachutes are messy. They use
pyrotechnics to deploy, they have to be packed very carefully and precisely,
etc. They also don't lend themselves to precision landings well. They're fine
for landing in an enormous landing zone in the ocean or in some unpopulated,
featureless desert, but otherwise they're not so good for targeted landings.

Now, compare this to propulsive landings. You "waste" a lot more fuel and cut
into the payload of your vehicle but on the other hand you get to streamline
the turnaround process to just a matter of refueling and inspection, which you
would do regardless of the landing mode. More so, by landing the vehicle in a
designated spot you dramatically lower the cost and time necessary to put the
vehicle back into service. You don't have to drive out to the desert and
retrieve the vehicle (which could take a day at least) you just pick the thing
up with a crane and you move it a few hundred meters to the hangar /
processing facility.

~~~
ericcumbee
thats what i figured. Although to me it seems like a lot of moving parts, and
big hit to fuel and payload. I wonder if development focused on optimizing it
as a one use booster and driving down the cost of each booster might be more
efficient in the long run.

~~~
InclinedPlane
That's a very worthwhile point but there are a few major reasons why it's a
more problematic strategy.

First, reliability. When you engineer a vehicle as large and as complex as an
orbital launcher which only operates once in its entire lifetime you typically
need to _over_ -engineer a lot of key parts of the thing in order to ensure a
high level of overall reliability. This runs counter to the sorts of
optimizations necessary to bring production costs down by orders of magnitude.
More so, when a full up test inevitably results in the destruction of the
vehicle (because it is expendable) and tests cost as much as a launch (tens of
millions of dollars) it makes it very, very difficult to evolve the design of
the vehicle extensively.

That leads to a catch-22, you have to run a lot of launches to make the
vehicle design significantly cheaper to manufacture. Buuuut, now you've vastly
increased the development cost of the vehicle so you've erased all of the cost
gains you've made.

But, if you design for reusability then you can actually increase reliability
because the cost of the vehicle is amortized over multiple flights, so you can
have a more expensive vehicle.

Also, while a lot of aerospace components (like fuel tanks, electronics, etc.)
can be mass produced with the right design, this is a lot more difficult with
rocket engines which have a very high number of precision machined parts made
out of special alloys. This makes the engines the long-pole in the costs of a
rocket, and it's very difficult to reduce those costs. Right now SpaceX is
already the world's largest manufacturer of high-power rocket engines, so if
there was a way to cut costs on them they would already be on top of them.

Now, back to reusability. Another thing that you get from reusability is that
_testing_ can be much cheaper, since you can make incremental changes to a
vehicle design and then re-test it.

With reusability you have the best of all 3 worlds. You have reliability, you
have low per-flight costs, and you have an enhanced ability to prove out
potential vehicle redesigns economically.

Now, if the size of the launch market were much larger and reusability were
more difficult then the equation could change, because it might be easier to
recoup expensive cost-saving efforts over a shorter period of time.

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memset
The condensed gas that we see shooting off perpendicular to the side of the
rocket, in 2 locations near the top - what is that?

~~~
whatshisface
I recall them saying it was liquid oxygen venting.

~~~
jaggederest
Since it's a kerosene-fueled rocket motor (RP-1), there's only one kind of
cryogenic tank per stage, and that's the LO2 tanks. So you're correct, that's
the only possibility.

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mik4el
We have liftoff and in orbit... Nice! I got nervous. Best tech news since
Curiousity =)

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bengl3rt
Is this supposed to work on iPad? It taunts me with the promise of a
QuickTime-looking play button, which unfortunately doesn't actually do
anything when I press it.

~~~
Reltair
There's a Livestream app you can get which I assume would let you watch this.

<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/livestream/id379623629?mt=8>

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DaniFong
it was so unbelievably beautiful, how the rain caught the rocket's glow. what
a beautiful way to leave the earth

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Reltair
Launch webcast begins in T-1 hour!

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RVijay007
This is absolutely fascinating, like being an astronaut without leaving my
desk!

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Reltair
Congrats to SpaceX on a successful launch and a great webcast!

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leeoniya
anyone know what that background tune is?

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Turing_Machine
No, but it is SUPER annoying after the 25th or so repetition.

I'd mute it except that I want to keep the thing open in another browser tab
so I can switch to it when the show starts.

Lesson learned: don't use repetitive audio crap while waiting for a web cast
to start. Just have silence, then start talking when it's actually starting.

~~~
elisee
On the other hand, having no sound until it starts means people might get
startled when you actually start (or have them not realize their speakers are
off).

~~~
Turing_Machine
A _very_ short voice announcement every minute or so would be okay.

~~~
stcredzero
And/or just 1 iteration of the music.

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eranation
Congratulations, exciting

