

Indian space program hit by another launch mishap - japaget
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1012/25gslv/

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demallien
This really puts into perspective the successful launch of a SpaceX Falcon9
with Dragon capsule earlier this month. Although the Falcon 9 can only do LEO
launches for substantial payloads, they still managed to do it without having
a single catastrophic launch failure.

Here's a link to video of the explosion - eerily reminiscent of Challenger :(
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYLO-
XoDkBM&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYLO-
XoDkBM&feature=player_embedded#)!

~~~
cd34
Everyone has a perfect launch record until they experience their first
catastrophic failure.

Falcon9 has had how many launches? and none were heavylift, they were all
medium lift. (The answer here is two.)

GSLV has had a 4 for 7 success ratio.

Challenger was the 25th mission, Columbia was the 107th.

Apollo 1 (which wasn't named Apollo 1 until later) was the only catastrophic
failure, Apollo 13 being a successful failure. Apollo 6 experienced problems,
missed its intended orbit, failed the original mission, but not
catastrophically. Ariannespace has launched 200 missions, I believe 1
catastrophic failure, 2 non-catastrophic failures.

In 2008, SpaceX had a failure two minutes into launch on their Falcon 1
platform. In 2006 and 2007, they lost two, with the latter making it to orbit,
but being lost after five minutes.

When SpaceX has more than two launches under their belt with the Falcon 9,
then I think we can champion the success over other designs.

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shareme
Its not the design..its the effing process!

SpaceX uses a vertical process, everything is done in-house..India outsources
the rocket motors from Russia, etc..

SpaceX founder's thesis is that using a vertical process you have the
opportunity to reduce both costs and failures..

In fact SpaceX's percentage of failures to successes has decrease which was
one of the founder's predicts of the thesis being correct.

~~~
cd34
The first two of four Falcon 1 launches ended in catastrophic failure -- Fuel
leak and booster hitting second stage during staging. Both Falcon 9 launches
have been a success.

India uses the same engines that the Russians have used for their Progress
supply ships and Soyuz Rockets. Tried and true, numerous launches and
successes behind them - a design that has been mostly unchanged in the last 30
years.

There are two parts to Elon Musk's thesis. 1) vertical process is more
reliable - so far, 66% launch success rate. 2) Space cargo would be one tenth
the price of existing solutions. One needs only review the Iridium contract to
realize that $452 million is not one tenth of Arienespace's bid - it is about
105%. So, that cost savings is not being passed through to the US taxpayer,
or, his estimate of 10% of the cost of conventional heavy lift systems was a
bit overzealous. In addition, their bid for the ISS resupply contract exceeds
the Progress supply flight costs.

In order for any solution to be 10% the cost of an existing solution, you have
to get a rocket to escape velocity with less fuel, a more efficient engine
using 10% of the fuel or, fuel that is 10% the cost of existing fuel, or some
combination thereof. I don't believe rocket technology can become efficient
enough to meet those claims.

Even the Delta IV which is the Dragon's direct competitor, had 18 launches,
with one partial failure where the satellite didn't make orbit. One might
contend that the Falcon project would need 36 more successful launches before
he could say his process is more reliable than the Delta IV platform. If he
compares it to Ariennespace, he's got another 400 launches to go.

~~~
randallsquared
_In order for any solution to be 10% the cost of an existing solution, you
have to get a rocket to escape velocity with less fuel, a more efficient
engine using 10% of the fuel or, fuel that is 10% the cost of existing fuel,
or some combination thereof. I don't believe rocket technology can become
efficient enough to meet those claims._

I think it's clear that fuel costs are not the major part of the cost of a
launch to orbit. Development, support, and manufacture of the vehicle itself
are much more important, and those are areas that seem ripe for innovation,
which is why SpaceX can hope to achieve major reductions in cost as they ramp
up flight frequency.

~~~
cd34
You are correct. I distilled his process which gave me the conclusion that the
only place he could really see any efficiency gains were in fuel efficiency or
cost.

He's using a 40+ year old design for his engine (with modern equipment). His
engine doesn't consist of fewer parts, it has a large R&D/Engineering budget,
and carries with it the same launch pad staffing/rental fees that any other
launch must have. The only place he can really optimize his solution is more
efficient engines, cheaper fuel or, a much more reusable system. At this
point, only the first booster stage is reusable and recovered which is
possibly the least expensive part of his system. As his avionics gear must
continue with the launch vehicle, it becomes unrecoverable.

While I'm only an observer from afar, I believe his heavy lift capabilities
will result in more fuel being required to make escape velocity. There is a
reason that most heavy-lift rockets use solid rocket boosters.

I really hope that they can bring down the cost of putting cargo into space.
From what I see now, I don't see him doing anything significantly different
from Ariennespace's approach which can recover/reuse the booster stage....
which brings us back to the only real thing he can do to reduce cost is
improve fuel efficiency/fuel cost.

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joe24pack
just proves that going to orbit is still rocket science ...

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Charuru
>we found the control command did not reach the actuators (of the strap-on
boosters),

Gotta write more unit tests. I'm completely serious, I wonder what their
process was.

~~~
train_robber
Local media reports that the physical connections got severed due to
unexpected pressure on the vehicle. How could that have been covered in a unit
test?

