The New Scientist has a nice little photoessay on the safety features of SpaceX’ Falcon 9.
18 thoughts on “Safety First”
Comments are closed.
The New Scientist has a nice little photoessay on the safety features of SpaceX’ Falcon 9.
Comments are closed.
I’m glad they have the safety features, but other than the pneumatic system for seperation (NSI’s are very reliable), nothing seems new.
The Orbiter can reach orbit with an engine failure, just depends on when it occurs. I’m sure the same is true for Falcon 9. Again though, it is good they have redundancy. The hold down posts have been used since the early lessons learned at the start of the US space program.
I think they have single-engine-out capability from liftoff, with the ability to lose progressively more as they gain velocity and altitude.
Re the level of tension over the Falcon 9 flight: I heard from some credible sources a fear that it could be sabotaged by opponents of commercial at NASA (?!)
Now I would normally dismiss this as _total_ paranoia, but over the last few days I’ve spoken to several sources at the agency who talked about (metaphorical!) “limbs and blood” accumulating on the floor there over commercial participation.
These were _not_ the same sources as for the ‘sabotage’ fears, but it’s enough to make me throw that other item out there for the record…and, I will assume and hope, ultimately just for later laughs.
I would assume that SpaceX is spending a reasonable amount of money for pad security. And I think it would be hard to sabotage it in such a way that they won’t figure out what happened. If it does fail due to sabotage, I think that the blowback in terms of PR would be immense.
Rand, but how hard would it be to change some non-mechanical item and not have it detected? something that wouldn’t require going to the pad, that could hide itself in some software somewhere and be undetectable until so much later (or wipe itself out) so that the “mission” of thwacking use of commercial would already have be done?
Just wondering.
Rand, but how hard would it be to change some non-mechanical item and not have it detected? something that wouldn’t require going to the pad, that could hide itself in some software somewhere and be undetectable until so much later (or wipe itself out) so that the “mission” of thwacking use of commercial would already have be done?
There are security procedures to deal with that, too. And I doubt if any Ares huggers are technically sophisticated enough to do that sort of hacking. Also bear in mid that SpaceX is continuously doing hardware-in-the-loop sims, the control the uploads.
The first F9 will fail, that’s what happens to all new boosters
The shuttle engine-out scenarios are pretty involved, moving from different abort sites through abort to orbit. With a quick search, this is the best summary I could find:
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts127/fdf/127ascent.html
With 9 engines firing (F9), the loss of the center one definitely wouldn’t require the shutdown of the opposite one. Maybe they think they can lose one outboard engine and continue with the remaining 8. I’ll be curious to see how this all develops.
The first F9 will fail, that’s what happens to all new boosters
Except it’s not a ‘new’ booster. That’s the whole point of the F1.
moving from different abort sites through abort to orbit
With the F9 they abort to orbit as alluded by Rand above …with the ability to lose progressively more as they gain velocity and altitude.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if they sabotage the termination system?
leland said referring to the shuttle orbiter , “the orbiter can reach orbit with an engine out, depends on where they lose it.” any one familiar with shuttle tells you, this is something shuttle astronauts DO not want to happen as if it occurs before 4 mins into ascent ,it is a very very dicey proposition to deal with , before srb separation , well it is good the shuttle will retire ,never having had that happen!!!
The first F9 will fail, that’s what happens to all new boosters
Yeah, the catastrophic pad explosions of the first Saturn I-B, Saturn V and STS-1 are seared, seared, in my memory!
Go somewhere else and play with the rest of the dimwitted children please.
Dick
Apollo 1 was a mission Failure. killed 3 crew.
Apollo 6 was effectively a mission failure.
STS-1 had lots of trouble.
Way to move the goalposts, dillweed.
Apollo 1 failed before it was ever launched because the payload caught fire. No booster failure involved.
Hell, Glenn’s Friendship 7 flight and Gemini 8 were both partial mission failures too. Gemini 8 even came within a gnat’s whisker of being a Loss of Crew failure. But – again – the boosters involved had nothing to do with either set of circumstances.
Apollo 6 was a bit of a clusterfuck, to be sure, but, despite multiple failures in all stages, it didn’t blow up and made orbit. It also wasn’t the first test flight of its vehicle type. Most of the failures were traced to sloppy fabrication – something that can afflict any item in serial production at any point in its production run no matter how good the item’s design is. Apollo 4 was a “Wednesday car.” Apollo 6 was a “Monday car.”
STS-1 indeed had problems, including a worrisome degree of thermal protection system tile loss on its belly. Still, it neither blew up on ascent nor burned up on descent and didn’t kill its crew.
To reiterate my original point, new boosters do not invariably fail on their maiden flights.
It’s not like the ULA and DoD/AF *hasn’t* already tried to ‘sabotage’ SpaceX’s Falcon program.
SpaceX spent ~$7 Million of it’s early capital funds to re-furbish, re-fit, and do the Environmental Impact Statement Study for Falcon 1 at SLC-3W and then, after waiting months on end for the last West Coast Titan 4 launch they had to build from scratch their launch pad out at Omelek Island, Kwajalein Atoll and shift the launcher halfway across the Pacific Ocean … and it’s resulting Very Long
The Falcon 1 Flight 01 launch failure was traced back to an aluminum nut that had received a scratch in it’s corrosion resistant anodized surface. But that scratch, and the resulting corrosion stress fracture that let to it’s failure, can be traced back to the shifting from SLC-3W at Vandenberg to Kwajalein and it much more salty environment.
And then to add insult to injury, ULA decided it wanted SLC-3 back to launch Atlases from SLC-3E and SpaceX was told to go. Now admittedly, there are some nosies about letting SpaceX use SLC-4 but then they’d have to repeat the re-furbish, re-fit, and EIS Study all over again.
I *love* finding the typo after hitting the ‘Comment’ button. 😉
“… halfway across the Pacific Ocean … and it’s resulting Very Long Logistics Tail. A tail that resulted in long wait times between engine and launch tests due to, for example; the LO2 generating capacity at Kwajalein was pretty much maxed out supplying the users already there so they had to ship in LO2 at a 1/3 to 1/2 boil-off loss rate by the time it arrived. Plus the added shipping expenses for *every* *single* *thing* used there….”
…already tried to ’sabotage’ SpaceX’s Falcon program.
Yep. Elon just pushed ahead a little wiser. He’s not going to let any of these dunderheads stop him.
I was very impressed by the 2nd of 4 video tours where they discuss quality control.
Don,
I work on the Orbiter, and for starters, I can tell you the SRB’s drop off after 2 minutes, not 4. RTLS is not something anyone wants to try out, but that wasn’t my point. To suggest that Falcon9 is the first vehicle to have the capability to have an engine loss and still reach orbit is a stretch. In fact, I suspect those hold down posts probably won’t let go until each engine is registering in their nominal limits, just like the Shuttle does and other launch systems do.
I think they have implemented smart and reasonable safety options. I do not intend to impune the system. My point is the suggestion that this stuff is “first of its kind” or otherwise is PR hyperbole. Better to suggest it has improved upon similar safety mechanisms that have made other launch systems successful.