
SpaceX looks to relaunch Tuesday after reviewing fail data. - cr4zy
https://plus.google.com/104512038508075599339/posts/UgbkLhERNeu?hl=en
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cletus
I happened to be up late last night and saw they were webcasting the launch,
which I watched. I was surprised at how excited I was by the whole thing TBH.
In a world where everyone seems to be trying to create the next social network
for cats it's truly exciting to see something as revolutionary and innovative
as what SpaceX is doing (to the economics of launching into orbit).

I was disappointed to see the launch aborted but also impressed to see that
they could abort the launch after ignition and not lose the vehicle ("safe'ing
the vehicle" as they said a number of times).

Oh they made one factual error in the Webcast too (or one is on their site). A
pre-launch question came up about what they look for in hiring. A
representative said they must be US citizens. According to the site, you can
be a US citizen or permanent resident.

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redwood
Yes very impressive to see computerized sensors advanced enough to shit down
last second, hopefully avoiding a disaster

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_delirium
It's impressive, but a fairly standard technology for launchers to have. The
Space Shuttle did the same thing five times: main engines would ignite at
T-6.6 seconds, and there was a brief window until the solid rockets ignited at
T-0 when sensors could safely shut down the main engines. Four times it was
done at T-3, the remaining time at T-1.9:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes#Space...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes#Space_Shuttle_Abort_History.5B15.5D)

~~~
JshWright
But once those SRBs were lit, it was going up, or blowing up...

While it's not a capability unique to Falcon, it's still neat that they're
able to be sure every engine providing thrust is operating normally before
they let it go.

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hkmurakami
I was talking with some friends who are Aerospace Phds at Stanford last night.
They told me how the last few decades were sort of a "dark ages" in the Space
field, that there is now a glimmer at the end of the dark tunnel.

It seems that in many ways, this launch is a make or break point in the
private Space sector. For the sake of shifting our attention to truly great,
ambitious endeavors, and for the sake of many great engineers who have chosen
to devote their lives to a now-unsexy craft (and the many who may follow in
their footsteps in the future as a result of these projects), I truly hope
that this mission ends in a resounding success.

I personally haven't been this excited about a technological milestone in
_years_.

~~~
nkoren
I've been watching the private space movement for almost 20 years now -- since
shortly after the Delta Clipper[1] and Clementine[2] proved to many people
that low-cost innovation was genuinely possible in the fields of rocketry and
space exploration.

But when I went to my first Space Access conference[3] in 1996, I can't say
that I found it very encouraging. The Delta Clipper and Clementine vetrans
that I met were also frequently Apollo vetrans. Brilliant, passionate
engineers, but almost totally devoid of financial resources, and obviously
nearing the end of their careers, if not their lives. At 19 years old I was
the youngest person in the room by several decades. WIRED was regularly
featuring "rockets" and "space exploration" in it's monthly "TIRED" column. I
began to fear that the old dream of space -- long fostered by the likes of
O'Neil, Von Braun, Oberth, and Tsiolkovsky -- would die with the previous
generation, and I was arriving just in time to see its last, heroic gasp.

We have turned _so_ many corners since then. The actual rockets are merely the
most tangible results of that. What I find even more hopeful is the cultural
change. Politicians as disparate as Barack Obama and Dana Rohrabacher are
willing to put principles ahead of pork and advocate for the development of a
robust commercial space industry. It's now possible to seriously talk about
"space tourism" without people sniggering derisively and making Marvin the
Martian jokes. Investors are no longer cowed by that old saw about how the
best way to make a small fortune in space is to start with a large fortune.
Some of the largest companies on earth are investing in _asteroid mining_ ,
for goodness' sake. And most critically, _young people_ are getting truly
excited and passionate about this. (It's also extremely gratifying to see
women staking out a place in the industry; the old Apollo fraternity was
exclusively male.)

All in all, I have to say that the progress I've seen in the last two decades
of space development is one of the things which most gives me hope for the
future. And this is only the beginning.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clementine_(spacecraft)>

[3] <http://www.space-access.org/>

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jlgreco
Apparently the valve in question was a turbopump valve. I don't know how the
turbopumps work in the Falcon 9, but they are a fairly interesting topic in
general. For example, in the German V-2 rockets the turbopumps were steam
driven. The steam for this was created with hydrogen peroxide and a catalyst;
almost like a little miniature rocket engine inside of a larger one. I think
this highlights just how much complexity we can forget liquid fuel rockets
have.

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stcredzero
The turbo pumps for the Space Shuttle Main Engines generate about the same
horsepower as the engines of a Supercarrier -- all in the volume of a trash
bin.

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bigiain
Have you got any references there?

A quick google suggest at least one supercarrier has 280,000hp split across 4
engines. I'd love to read up on something that makes 70,000hp in the volume of
a trash bin.

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bigiain
Actually, WikiPedia comes through:

"The HPFTP is a three-stage centrifugal pump driven by a two-stage hot-gas
turbine. It boosts the pressure of the liquid hydrogen from 1.9 to 45 MPa (276
to 6,515 psia), and operates at approximately 35,360 rpm with a power of
71,140 hp. "

I'll keep hunting for dimensions. Thanks for the tip-off to another
interesting Sunday nights trawl through the internet…

~~~
Gravityloss
The main difference to air breathing engines is that both your fuel and
oxidizer are dense liquids so their volume is a thousand times less than
comparable ambient air (never mind the nitrogen). Still, if you think that's a
lot of power, only a few percent of the propellant is burned to run the pumps.
Something like 20x burns in the main chamber, the aim being to accelerate the
exhaust gases. The power of that jet can be gigawatts, though it's relatively
meaningless.

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FrojoS
This is the cooles rocket since the Saturn 5, maybe even cooler!

Video from the aborted start: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI31ibLRCm8>

Detect an anomaly in your system? Just shut down the engine after ignition and
abort the launch. Fuck yeah!

Good luck on the next attempt! You guys are heroes!

