[AR] Re: Falcon 9 flight today
- From: Ben Brockert <wikkit@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2013 12:11:40 -0600
On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 11:42 AM, Henry Vanderbilt
<hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> One other new fact there: "During a postlaunch press briefing Sept. 29,
> meanwhile, SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said the company had plenty of
> telemetry data to analyze why the rocket’s on-board computer halted the
> upper-stage reignition sequence." Note however that this says nothing about
> where in that sequence the halt came. You might easily assume the halt came
> on a minor pre-light discrepancy, but it could equally well have been on a
> major post-ignition departure from nominal. The statement carefully doesn't
> specify, but the fact that they didn't try again makes the latter seem more
> likely.
Reading or listening to the post-flight conference might be productive:
http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/spacex-press-conference-september-29-2013-2013-09-29
"Before deciding what the issue was, I think we want to have a bit
more time to read the data, before coming to a conclusion. We
essentially saw the engine initiate ignition get up to about 400 psi
and then it encountered a condition that it didn't like. It may have
been due to an extended spin start, maybe, but this is speculative. So
it initiated an abort of the restart. But we have all of the data from
the restart. So I am confident that we will be able to sort it out and
address it before the next flight. It's nothing fundamental. On the
test stand, we have restarted the Merlin 1-D engine in some cases
dozens of times. We just have to iron out some slight differences of
it operating in vacuum."
> My take: SpaceX will have to satisfy this customer and its insurers before
> this next launch takes place, and the rest of its customers and their
> insurers at some point. Chances are more hard data will become public in
> the process.
I don't share your optimism there at all. They were very effective at
never releasing the incident report or other conclusions from the
review board of CRS-1, and I expect the same will happen here.
Ben
Other related posts:
