Falcon 9R destroyed during failed test flight
In a test flight today of SpaceX’s Falcon 9R vertical take off and landing rocket the rocket was destroyed when ground controllers detected an “anomaly.”
Falcon 9R is a three engine version of the Falcon 9 first stage, designed to test designs for making that first stage capable of landing vertically. It has flown successfully a number of previous times, but this time it appears something was not quite right during the flight and ground controllers had to destroy it for safety reasons.
Is this a set back? Of course. Is it a failure? Not really, as it was a test flight of very cutting edge technology and even failures will teach you something to improve the engineering.
Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.
All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. The ebook can also be purchased direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.
Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from me (hardback $24.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $5.00). Just email me at zimmerman @ nasw dot org.
In a test flight today of SpaceX’s Falcon 9R vertical take off and landing rocket the rocket was destroyed when ground controllers detected an “anomaly.”
Falcon 9R is a three engine version of the Falcon 9 first stage, designed to test designs for making that first stage capable of landing vertically. It has flown successfully a number of previous times, but this time it appears something was not quite right during the flight and ground controllers had to destroy it for safety reasons.
Is this a set back? Of course. Is it a failure? Not really, as it was a test flight of very cutting edge technology and even failures will teach you something to improve the engineering.
Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.
All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. The ebook can also be purchased direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.
Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from me (hardback $24.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $5.00). Just email me at zimmerman @ nasw dot org.
Explosives terminated the flight. Put there for that purpose. The SpaceX bashers will overlook that, no doubt.
Better to find out what can go wrong with the 9R now than with a real Falcon when all the world is watching. Just a glitch along the way to what a appears will soon be a stunning achievement.
It really looks like they were testing how far they could turn the vehicle, and they lost control, so flight termination system kicked in.
That sounds like a normal edge case found, which was the purpose of the program.
Looks very unrelated to launch ops.
I feel sorry for the cows.
But it sort of looks like the engines cut off for a second or so and then refired but the rocket was way off vertical.
Not being close to vertical is a major problem with this design. It makes any recovery very hard and more than likely would take up a lot of airspace. It would loose a lot of altitude before regaining full control.
Should any NASA apologists want to give Space X a hard time, here is a compilation of some of their efforts from the movie Right Stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rwi_0DEd_0
Steve,
That is a favorite scene of mine. However, they had to tell a story in only a couple of minutes. The following is half an hour of the same story from the 1940s to the 2010s (Goddard’s failures in the 1920s are not included).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McbCwSW2moo
To continue with the point that you were making: getting into space is difficult and dangerous. There is a reason that rocket science is considered difficult. The scientists and engineers have a relatively small engine that burns fuel and oxidizer at a rate of tens of Megawatts to tens of thousands of Megawatts. That lightweight, high temperature, high pressure, vibrating, high thrust engine is located only a few feet away from a thin, lightweight fuel tank. If something goes just a little wrong, such as the vibrations increase, catastrophically bad things can happen very fast.
Sometimes problems occur because of control problems. A rocket can get into an attitude in which it structurally breaks up due to atmospheric forces, or it may deviate from the planned course and head toward populated areas. A Long March actually crashed into the nearby town (24:15 mark in the above video).
The “Big Boys” didn’t have problems only in the 1950s and early 1960s. They continue to have problems to this day.
It’s rocket science.