Falcon 1 shortly after launch, revealing the engine fire that led to the loss of the rocket
Friday’s launch [of the Space-X first flight] turned into a brutal failure.
After…countdown clocks entered the final 75 minutes…the rocket was loaded with a highly-refined kerosene propellant and supercold liquid oxygen to feed the engines on both stages. To keep the liquid oxygen from warming up and naturally boiling away while the rocket sat on its tropical launch pad before liftoff, a “thermal coat” had been wrapped around the first stage. Problems running out of liquid oxygen on the remote island have bedeviled SpaceX over the past few months.
What we did was put a blanket scheme together to cover the first stage LOX tank,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX vice president of business development, told reporters during Friday’s countdown.
“It is held to the rocket by Velcro and we’ve got lanyards that hold it down to the ground. So basically the lanyards will pull a zipper as the vehicle lifts up, a Velcro zipper, and that LOX tank insulation will stay on the ground as the vehicle flies through it.”
As the vehicle climbed…a white blanket presumably the cover Shotwell had mentioned could be seen flapping wildly in the onboard video. Large pieces appeared to rip away at T+plus 20 seconds due to the rocket’s increasing speed.
At T+plus 26 seconds [the rocket] rapidly pitched over when its fiery engine plume became greatly distorted.
Just moments later the rocket impacted the ocean, apparently on its side, at about T+plus 41 seconds.
I wonder if Elon Musk’s pockets are deep enough to weather a setback like this?
Update: A new photo heads this post. Please note the first 13 or so commenters hadn’t seen this photo or caption.
It’s funny the the US military must have surplus parts and manufacturing equipment for nuclear missles coming out their butts. It seems to me that these huge firecrackers are pretty fool-proof launch vehicles. Why is anyone dicking around with design-your-own liquid fueled rockets when you could license 20-year old defense tech that is 100% reliable.
The thermal blanket is a good idea to keep the LOX from boiling off, just needs some refinement. Rocket research can be very expensive when you learn from mistakes.
because the boob shots have everything to do with what the story is talking about.
I don’t know about you, but I have noticed that the picture often insites a laugh.
I am not a prude or anything but “cheap-ass”? Come on guys you can do better than that. When you say things like that you sound like a Cracker.
Uh, Paul — the photo illustrates > an aquatic “BOOOM!”. I presumed any DU regular would know that downrange space doesn’t include convenient viewing from shore though the photo includes a peanut gallery
Space-X and interested parties haven’t yet released any images of the splashdown. While babedom analogies sometimes work, none occurred to me when I was posting this.
You’ll have to use your imagination.
The use of imagination is some peoples problem, they seem to have none.
it’s a cool picture….and they are cheap ass rockets……
Actually, the thermal blanket is a pretty stupid idea. You are deliberately introducing an unknown vector to the launch from the resistance of “unzipping” the blanket.
The problem is an inadequate supply of LOX at the site. How are they going to launch even larger rockets without solving this bottleneck? They tried a band-aid when stitches were called for, and now a satellite is lost and their credibility takes a serious hit.
Building a rocket is not the same as writing computer code — if they don’t get that analogy out of their heads, then Mr. Musk is going to go broke.
Could they please dumb this down for me and make a movie wih the exploding rocket, the island, the zipper that doesn’t work, some great looking women, and Austin Powers?
I’m a little too young to remember the original space-race but I read “The Right Stuff” and that book spends quite a bit of time on the fact that the early NASA rockets failed and even blew-up at an alarming rate.
So this failure deosn’t lessen my support of “cheap ass” rockets. I think it’s a great idea.
They were originally going to launch from Vandenburg (where LOX supply isn’t an issue). SpaceX spent a bunch of money and time refurbishing a pad there for their own use. Until the Airforce comes up and says, “Oops! You gotta move! One of our Multibillion dollar Contractors needs this pad back! Sorry! See ya at Kwaj!” At least thats the read I got on the announcement of SPaceX moving to the atoll.
Before Sputnik, the early rockets had an extremely bad failure rate. The current rate is much better. Any improvement is going to be expensive.