SpaceX Update - ORBIT (with Video)

Godspeed! Space X and the Falcon I Team

May you achieve your Goal!

If the 4th flight of the Falcon 1 reaches orbit, that will be quite an achievement. Also, since this payload is inert, it would also be a validation of one of the corollaries of Murphy's law, only the dummy payload gets to orbit. It will also mean a 25% success rate, which will take a while to get up to Delta II levels.

Good luck to SpaceX,

Steve

if we see anything that requires investigation, the launch will be postponed, but we'll let you know as soon as we know.

Under SpaceX standards it's never an investigation of why a component fails, just which component failed.

I wouldn't be too happy with 5200 m/s.

Missed the launch but saw second stage cutoff. Anybody got a link for the whole first 10 minutes???

CONGRATULATIONS SPACEX!

This is the first step in bringing low cost space flight to America. Falcon 9 next!

"T+0:08:21 Falcon 1 reached orbital velocity, 5200 m/s

engine cutoff was a minute later..they got around 7500 m/s

well done spacex..
lets hope falcon 9 has a successful first flight

jb

You can see the entire launch on wired.com.

On behalf of the whole SEDS family, congrats to Elon and the SpaceX team!

In response to the question of where you can find the launch video, someone's thrown it up on youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To-XOPgaGsQ

Way to go!

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Wow! History! Commercial space access, meet the human race. Human race, meet commercial space access. You'll be having a long, and hopefully fruitful, relationship, evolving into profitable and enlightening activities to the betterment of humankind.

Congratulations, SpaceEx!

Well done to all the team at SpaceX. The next step is to do it again, first another test flight and then to start flying with actual commercial and research payloads. And then? Then we move onto Falcon-9 and Dragon. Could we see the first PRIVATE crewed orbital vehicle fly before Orion gets off the ground? Stranger things have happened.

I noticed the upper stage waggled around a bit during the burn. I don't know how much of that was real and how much of that was gimballing of the Kestrel engine. The exhaust from the upper stage was a bit uneven too with flashes of yellow, presumably contaminants getting into the combustion chamber and burning off. Again, I'm not anywhere near knowledgable enough to say how normal a behaviour that is for a bi-propellent cryo-liquid engine.

I do hope the team at NASA were watching this. Constellation is now in a four horse race with China, Russia and SpaceX... and is currently placed last. The time has come to focus, guys.

Sorry but the Delta III was the first successful privately developed launcher to achieve orbit - don't believe the hype!!

If successful, SpaceX will become just another corporation like LM or Boeing, which also put a lot of their own money into their EELVs, and we'll all be complaining about Elon's company as just another one of the 'establishment' in a few years, and rooting for another startup. So I don't really see the point of this adulation. As a rocket, Falcon 1 is nothing exciting.

Sorry, Artful. While Delta-III did get a [dummy] payload to orbit on its 3rd flight (beating Falcon 1 in that respect), Boeing never followed though with customer-paying flights afterwards (I'm rather sorry they didn't). Boeing focused instead with Delta-IV, saying that the D-III was more of an interim vehicle that also served as a test bed for D-IV components. I understood that they did have a couple D-III vehicles gathering dust in storage, waiting for use; but after a few years, I later heard rumors that they were cannibalized and/or broken up.
We'll have to see how long SpaceX will keep flying the Falcon 1, until & after Falcon 9 grabs the spotlight. At least SpaceX can make the claim that they had launched the first fully liquid (no solids) privately developed launch vehicle into orbit.

There's also the Pegasus which everyone seems to have forgotten even - even though it still flies.

It was a privately developed and operated small LV that started around 6 million dollars a launch. It was a huge event. President Bush gave the team a medal.

The first President Bush.

Yada yada yada, it didn't work out that well IRL and now it costs around 30 million. All the hype about commercial access opening up the new frontier fizzled out.

And history repeats itself again..? Hopefully not.

The Pegasus still flies, actually NASA has used it's first stage for scramjet experiments IIRC. Also, I'm pretty sure the company that built the Pegasus (and other LVs!) was a competitor in the COTS program.

There's also the Pegasus which everyone seems to have forgotten even - even though it still flies.

It was a privately developed and operated small LV that started around 6 million dollars a launch. It was a huge event. President Bush gave the team a medal.

The first President Bush.

Yada yada yada, it didn't work out that well IRL and now it costs around 30 million. All the hype about commercial access opening up the new frontier fizzled out.

And history repeats itself again..? Hopefully not.

The Pegasus still flies, actually NASA has used it's first stage for scramjet experiments IIRC. Also, I'm pretty sure the company that built the Pegasus (and other LVs!) was a competitor in the COTS program.

The Delta III had the kerosene/oxygen first stage of a Delta II-- Wikipedia. The Delta II was developed with government money. Nearly EVERYTHING that Boeing and LockMart does with regards to space launch development is paid for by the government in some capacity.

"Sorry but the Delta III was the first successful privately developed launcher to achieve orbit - don't believe the hype!!"

Incorrect, Pegasus was.

>Sorry but the Delta III was the first successful privately developed launcher to

> achieve orbit - don't believe the hype!!

The bottom stage of Delta-III was identical to Delta-II, except for a new fuel tank (but not oxidizer tank).

ALRIGHT, SPACE X! Best of luck on future launches, and hope you'll get on to Falcon 9 soon thereafter. We need you!

Ad LEO! Ad Luna! Ad Ares! Ad Astra!

I believe they said that spacex was the first privately owned (all liquid propelant) rocket to achieve orbit. The Delta 3 uses strap on solid rocket motors.

I admit not to know enough about the history of non-governmental spaceflight to be sure who is right on the 'first' debate.

I'm aware of Pegasus, but isn't that one launched from a NASA-operated XB-52? Also, IIRC, SeaLaunch are just SLBMs with the MIRVs replaced with a satellite payload. Wouldn't Falcon-1 be the first of its type not in any way designed either with government money or to get a government contract?

With reguards to the Pegasus: The actual statement SpaceX used was: "The first privately developed liquid-feuled rocket to reach orbit from the ground." It seems people are forgetting that the Pegasus is air launched, or convientiely leaving out the "from the ground" part of the claim by SpaceX inorder to try to rain on SpaceX's parade.

Great JOB SpaceX you made it to earth orbit, but did you hit your target?

Ah yes,...Capitolism at work...don't let congress know...they will screw it up...."Hey I know, lets tax it to the hilt!"

> Sorry but the Delta III was the first successful privately
> developed launcher to achieve orbit - don't believe
> the hype!!

Oh please. I had a good laugh at that one. It's true that the Pegasus was the first one, but Delta III???

Nothing can take away from Oribital's great achievments, including their proof the air launch paradigm could be made to work jus fine. But those achievements don't take any shine off what SpaceX just did either. When was the last time a private company built a liquid fuel rocket engine from scratch, stuck it on a rocket and put soemething into orbit?

Sealaunch is not a SLBM. It is a land base launch vehicle and not a former weapon system.

As for Pegasus, the aircraft is the "0" stage and therefore launched from the ground. So what that it was a gov't operated B-52, OSC still paid for it. And anyways, they have been using an L-1011 long before spacex came around

Sealaunch is a Zenit rocket! Not a weapon but certainly NOT developed with private funds (very non-private funds indeed, USSR). Not to be confused with the company that *purchases* the Zenit, which is private. Jeez. How did Sealaunch came about in this thread??

Alright. I'm totally a SpaceX hugger, but credit where credit is due, and A. Elias, D. Thompson and all the great people at Orbital deserve it for being first at the private launch thing... I wish I could say SpaceX was first but it wasn't.

That said, developing a rocket AND two great liquid rocket engines from the ground up is a huge accomplishment that you could go match against the Pegasus, but that's an entirely different argument.

Let us not forget amongst all the claims and counter-claims (ad nauseum) that all of these so-called privately developed boosters got some money from the government - usually DARPA. SpaceX was going to fly regardless, but the original Falcon Task 1 contract certainly helped.

I didn't wanna try to take the shine off SpaceX. This is a very exciting thing!

Regarding government funding, though, the government finds their way into lots of things. Case in point, NASA's COTS program has awarded SpaceX over 270 million.

That seems like a small number compared to how much is spent on government operated projects. But they're chewing through their workload at a respectable pace and don't seem to be hurt for cash at all.

Pegasus used solid fuel, and the COTS money goes to Falcon 9 development, I believe.

This is great, congrats to Space-X. I had my doubts after the last few flights.

I am still very bothered by those huge attitude excursions during staging. All other launchers I know of go into attitude hold during staging to prevent recontact between the stages. On an earlier Falcon flight the second stage nozzle actually hit the inside of the first stage interstage adapter. Very unprofessional.

I also noticed those attitude oscillations during the second stage burn. Upper stage cameras on Deltas show rock solid attitude. On one of the earlier Falcon flights the oscillations got very large right before TV was lost. Why? Are their attitude control thrusters too small? Is the engine gimbal actuator too slow? Is there something wrong with their guidance equations? Or is it just designed that way to save money?

The price I've seen quoted for payloads launched by Falcon-9 into LEO is $10,000/kg. Last I checked, that's about the going rate, so how is this supposed to be substantially cheaper?

Analogies:

Orbital bought car parts from Ford, Toyota, and BMW, and assembed them into their own unique car design.

SpaceX bought a car parts factory in which to build their cars.

SeaLaunch ordered up customized Mercedeses for their dealership.

This is great news whomever was first, a real milestone. Congratulations.

The astonishing thing about the success of Falcon isn't that they got the thing into orbit (eventually) but that they restarted the second stage to circularise their orbit. They *could* have made any old orbit on any of their flights, with luck - but having an orbital restart capability is hard, hard, hard. That is the element of all this which will have the OldSpace companies itching to buy Elon Musk out...

Bob Shaw

In the end, Musk's most singular achievement here may be the assembly of a "rocket team," which can design, assemble, and launch a complete vehicle from scratch, engines and all. When was the last time that happened? I don't know for sure, but it may be the last such team spoke German. SpaceX is its people. And those people have a space program.