Is it me, or does it seem that after the 1:10 mark the rocket starts oscillating, and the oscillation increases in amplitude? I see the rocket rotating left-right-left along its axis, which is similar to the behavior of the second stage of the second launch.

I wonder if the fuel slosh problem rears its head again?

Joe

Then there's the all too famous cheer around L+1:50 that probably coincides with MECO / Stage Sep due to the delay in video vs. the audio webcast from California (approx. 30 seconds based on other cheers / mission events). The happy cheers go suddenly silent, followed by the video stream 30 seconds later at ~2:20 as we already know. Funny coincidence if you ask me.

The oscillation you are talking about seems like a normal roll control maneuver. The problems occurred much later in the flight and have been reported as dealing with stage separation.

Re: Roll Control

I agree it appears to be some roll control maneuver, however, it is atypical. Look at the shuttle, Delta IV, Delta II, Titan IV, Transtage, Atlas, etc... and when they roll, its a smooth transition. This looks like, IMO, that the roll control was trying to compensate for something. Right before the feed is cut, there is significant amount of roll control or left-right-left movement along the axis of the vehicle. This may have been due to the stages not separating, and the RCE's trying to align the vehicle with the first stage still attached. Again, just IMO....

Joe

Sad day for the aerospace world again, but it also shows us that we can't take this space business lightly. It is risky and it is hard!

Perhaps Elon you need a bit of Independent Validation and Verification before you fly 004. I wouldn't recommend circle A ... isn't that where most of your engineers came from to start with?

Remember Falcon 002 flight had stage sep issue that caused the 1st stage to hit the 2nd stage engine. My guess is that they put some corrective actions for the staging and those didn't go as planned. Hopefully we see the last 30 seconds of flight as some point.

Oh, that is most unfortunate. All that enthusiasm I hear. Musk was really on a roll with the Tesla car too. Shoot.

I'm by no means a rocket scientist. But its interesting to think about.

I notice that oscillation too in the video. It appears the frequency is getting slightly faster. I wonder if this is due to the fuel being consumed? If the first stage has used all its fuel it will no longer have the momentum from the sloshing fuel. So, it separates. But the top stage which has fuel is going to have the slosh momentum. I wonder when the stage separates its like a step function in the mass of the system which might cause more ringing. At that instant of separation, it somehow pushed those poles into the right hand plane and to system instability! I think they need a little better damping in that feedback loop. Try to have no oscillation at all, if possible?

Better luck next time. When they do get the rocket to work it will be that much sweeter.

Perhaps with this, another failure, we are seeing exactly why launch services cost so much? Reliability and design-for-flight critical success is not easy, and it is certainly not cheap. Mr. Musk is to be commended for jumping-in and trying to stimulate the space access development paradigm. But he really needs a success with #4, now more than ever. If it is a stage separation problem, this may indicate that he has a serious testability issue with the design. A failure mode not accounted for? Or an accounted-for failure mode that was not designed for? Or a designed-for failure mode that could not have its design hardware adequately tested? I'll say it again: Good systems engineering is NOT CHEAP. But it is worth paying for, as when practiced properly it is devastatingly effective.

>> I'll say it again: Good systems engineering is NOT CHEAP. But it is worth paying for, as when practiced properly it is devastatingly effective.

In as much as the business world has been working towards turning engineering into a compartmentalized production line activity it is possible that good systems engineers don't really exist any more except in the retired engineering population. I consider myself to be an average systems engineer but had made a decision early in my career to become that during the 1980s. Alas, my college professors and advisors became down right angry with me for not specializing. Have also run into problems when interviewing since at many companies the interview is geared towards specialist.

I could go on and on about the experiences I have had both good and bad in regards to being a systems engineer. Suffice it to say, the chances of a project being successful are greatly enhanced if at least a couple of engineers on the project are looking at the situation in its totality and then able to communicate there findings and assessments to management and the engineering specialist involved. I have seen many projects were each specialist will say there part is done and good-to-go and yet the machine in its entirety does not function as expected. Are there any systems engineers today of the caliber of say a Kelly Johnson or a Warner Von Braun?

If not - Why not ?

If the model of a rich guy spending all his money developing new technologies worked, 3rd world countries would be more advanced than the US. The problem with rich guys is they think because they're rich they're better than everyone else and thus they tend to promote those who feed the self image they try so desparately to cling to.

Seems to me like new space still needs to learn some old space lessons, like the value of reliability engineering, a discipline whose roots are firmly planted in the development of the Apollo program. Clearly such mundane work is not worthy of one of these glorious tributes to the obscenely wealthy.

"The problem with rich guys is they think because they're rich they're better than everyone else and thus they tend to promote those who feed the self image they try so desparately to cling to."

Hey, NASA is not doing so well. We put 3 guys in low earth orbit in the early 1970s with Skylab. John Glenn went in low earth orbit in the 1960s. The new program to replace the shuttle with a capsule that lands in the water and requires a Navy Task Force to recover is not a step forward. The real science is not even budgeted to go up to the ISS. It seems to me that rich guys trying unorthodox solutions and international cooperation in space development is a hell of a lot better than just trusting that NASA will progress sometime in the distant future. I've been listening to that tune since I was a teenager and we landed on the moon.

Lemme see if I understand... On the one hand, we've got a rich guy spending his own money to build a rocket, and screwing it up. On the other hand, we have a government agency spending my money to build a rocket, and screwing it up. Hmmmm... I guess you have to be a rocket scientist to figure out which one is the better option.

[i]"On the one hand, we've got a rich guy spending his own money to build a rocket, and screwing it up. On the other hand, we have a government agency spending my money to build a rocket, and screwing it up."[/i]

One has a decidedly superior (demonstrated) reliability percentage than the other (not to mention has carried people into space and back). The engineer should not be concerned about the "color of money" (although all too often the finance folks want an engineer to be concerned about precisely this), but rather if enough money has been spent to achieve the objectives with the required reliability.

You must be a rocket scientist. I won't give anyone credit for more or less successfully flying a spacecraft designed a built by engineers who lived and worked in the 1970s. It's not that different from buying a rocket from the Russians and launching it from a platform in the ocean. If Ares I and Orion reach orbit eight years and fifteen billion dollars from now, then you can start counting up the statistics of their "success." Musk is only wasting his own money.

You must be a rocket scientist.

Nope. Actually, I am an aircraft flight controls engineer. Only worked space for brief periods of my career. Don't get me wrong, I believe NASA should be getting out of the space biz and let commercial take it over. What I am pointing out is that accepted aerospace techniques have a high degree of success. Elon Musk thinks he can do it just as good but cheaper. He is learning the hard way that this is likely not possible. Each new Falcon 1 failure will drive up the flyaway cost of the final, working product. And all commercial enterprises can only withstand so many failures to produce before they cease to exist.