Falcon 9 GEO Transfer Mission | Hacker News Reader

Falcon 9 GEO Transfer Mission

spacex.com

109 pointsrevelation67 comments

Aborted second time -0:48; engines didn't start this time and someone on the live stream called "abort"

listened back to the stream

"abort abort abort - props con(?) abort"

at about 1h:58m in the stream

EDIT : announcer did say that engineering stopped it because they hadn't done their review. Maybe the "abort abort abort" wasn't as dramatic as it sounded

"We called manual abort. Better to be paranoid and wrong. Bringing rocket down to borescope engines ... Elon Musk (@elonmusk) "

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/statuses/406209289494462464

I believe they call it the "net", not the live stream. What is to us a "live stream" is to them their real life!

They held because they didn't manage to finish the review of the previous abort before the new launch attempt.

Scrubbed for the evening. Another day.

10 mins before trying to launch again, Elon tweeted:

   "Increasing helium spin start pressure. Probably <50%
   chance of passing all aborts, but worth a try. Countdown 
   resuming "
   https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/406205240040771584

So it was unlikely they would go when they restarted the countdown.

Abort $%&#!. Aborted on time T+2 seconds. At least it is safe. Shutdown was made after ignition.

Update: Problem was the slow ramp up of the thrust of the rockets. Engineers are looking at the data. Rocket is on stand-by to launch today, but the commentator sounded skeptical.

Update: Clock was restarted with T-00:25:10, still some problems to resolve.

Update: Aborted on time T-48 seconds. Done for today. The rocket will be inspected and another launch attempt will be in a few days.

Thanks for submitting this now rather than 15 minutes from now! Moments like these are historic, and it's wonderful to experience this in realtime rather than watching a replay.

T minus 10min. Go SpaceX!

EDIT: It's impressive they were able to abort safely after ignition. That's historically rare, isn't it?

Now that's an awesome feature.

Looks like they'll make a second attempt. He just said "resetting to t-13 minutes"

The operations team are getting ready in case the engineering team give the green light

Musk seems to think they're going forward.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/406194506011525120

Aborting after ignition is only possible with liquid engines. The F9 in particular is designed to light and stabilize all nine engines before removing the restraints holding the rocket down - this gives them very robust abort capabilities. And since the engines are designed for multiple lights, they can even retry it without needing refurbishment.

An interesting case is Mercury-Redstone 1 which aborted right after takeoff. This wasn't on purpose of course.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O4V7JfeTSU

The wiki page is a pretty interesting read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone_1#Test_backgro...

> EDIT: It's impressive they were able to abort safely after ignition. That's historically rare, isn't it?

I'm not sure how rare it is with liquid fueled rockets, but I know it's not even possible on solid fueled rockets (like the Shuttle's two boosters).

Space Shuttles ignited the liquid-fueled engines several seconds before liftoff, and I believe there were several launch aborts after ignition:

http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/abort.html

I don't recall that happening with the Saturn V or other early rockets, apart from the accident Crito mentioned.

Gemini 6A also aborted after engine ignition. The astronauts climbed out, the engineers found the problem, and they launched successfully three days later.

Liquid-fueled engines are inherently restartable. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to test an engine without throwing it away afterwards.

Sometimes manual intervention is required, though. For example, the starter cartridge on the Titan was a consumable part, and had to be replaced before restarting the engine.

Elon Musk just tweeted: "Launch aborted by autosequence due to slower than expected thrust ramp. Seems ok on closer inspection. Cycling countdown."

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/406194506011525120

Countdown just started up for a 6:44 launch time.

Maybe a knowledgeable person can answer this question: What is the white stuff fluttering down from the rocket?

Ice, frozen from water vapor in the air. The rocket is very cold, since it has a bunch of liquid oxygen in it.

Ice that had formed on the oxygen tanks?

If you watch some of the video footage from Saturn V launches you see some fairly large sheets of ice. Quite impressive scale compared to this!

The super slow motion footage is fantastic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HcnmthntUo

This version has an interesting commentary instead of silly music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPW7ZqtW5U4

The footage is indeed amazing though.

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/rocketry/home/what...

> The Saturn V rocket was 111 meters (363 feet) tall, about the height of a 36-story-tall building, and 18 meters (60 feet) taller than the Statue of Liberty. Fully fueled for liftoff, the Saturn V weighed 2.8 million kilograms (6.2 million pounds), the weight of about 400 elephants. The rocket generated 34.5 million newtons (7.6 million pounds) of thrust at launch, creating more power than 85 Hoover Dams. A car that gets 48 kilometers (30 miles) to the gallon could drive around the world around 800 times with the amount of fuel the Saturn V used for a lunar landing mission. It could launch about 118,000 kilograms (130 tons) into Earth orbit. That's about as much weight as 10 school buses. The Saturn V could launch about 43,500 kilograms (50 tons) to the moon. That's about the same as four school buses.

To get some rough idea of scale, this blueprint shows a person near the engine / nozzle / thing.

http://jleslie48.com/0206pr/saturn5allclean2.jpg

Just said that they're putting a bit more fuel on in the hopes of trying again if the engineers can figure out what went wrong, their window is about an hour.

Also said that if not today, they have more or less the same window tomorrow

EDIT: someone just said starting the clock momentarily ... looks like they might be going again

> Increasing helium spin start pressure. Probably <50% chance of passing all aborts, but worth a try. Countdown resuming ...

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/406205240040771584

Can anyone explain what happened?

commentator said that the flight computer canceled launch because the readings from the 9 merlin engines were "not nominal"

At T+0, the flight computer ignites the engines, but the vehicle doesn't liftoff yet. Instead, it is held down for two seconds while the flight computer verifies that all engines are working correctly (to prevent blowing up both the vehicle and everything in its surroundings).

It seems that the checks failed here and the flight computer aborted launch at T+00:01.

  if enginesOperational {
          // TODO(rocketman): Remove this before the actual launch
          panic("bail out for testing")
  }

I imagined this in William Shatner's voice.

Then you will probably enjoy this exchange:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/406211326282055681

Brilliant!

Somone must have had their finger on F8 when it was starting. Now in safe mode.

Countdown clock reset! T minus 25min!

>If launch aborts, we will bring the rocket down for engine inspection, so probably a few days before next attempt

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/statuses/406205904141697024

Just aborted.

A Great Education Here! Space the beginning of an infinite destination. Some day we will move beyond a geosynchronous transfer orbit because no one have measured the equator of the universe :) as of yet :)

Elon Musk: "If launch aborts, we will bring the rocket down for engine inspection, so probably a few days before next attempt"

Just love to see things like this. Makes me wonder what it was like to look at those huge rockets for the apollo missions...

I was eight, and it was awesome. And I don't mean the kind of "awesome" people use these days when they find out the fries don't cost extra; I mean the "inspiring actual jaw-dropping awe" kind we used back then. Scale made no sense; it was huge in ways that rockets (who hasn't fired a rocket of some kind as a kid?) shouldn't be, and your brain told you that it wasn't up to walking speed yet when it cleared the tower, so it was definitely coming back down any second now. Unfortunately, the best I could come up with at the time was "ho... ly... cow!!!"

I'm about your age and, yeah ... at this remove I'd use the word majestic, how the huge Saturn V stack would slowly start climbing and accelerating.

Compared to later programs, there's also a "wow" in that NASA was "going to put some men on the moon", vs. the "space truck" paradigm of the Shuttle and other launches which at best send probes to far off planets and such. A different scale in every way.

We're past T-3:40 where the previous attempt failed.

Edit: Flight computer has aborted after engine fireup.

They say that after every failure. It's part of the abort sequence that they confirm - not necessarily the cause of the abort.

Sure, but in this case it was the actual flight computer that aborted the launch. No human had a part in it :)

Oh I see what you're saying. That's cool!

Clearly this is rocket science.

I don't think the launch window has closed yet though, has it?

Launch window until 6:30EST

Caster said they have about 65 minute window today. Another attempt tomorrow if today won't succeed.

Looks like it failed :(

Edit: Failed was the wrong word, aborted is the correct term.

An on pad abort is very very different from a failed launch. They'll try again later.

By failed you mean successfully aborted.

Let's not exaggerate. It's impressive that their self-test could abort successfully, yes. Though it's not certain yet whether there was anything wrong and it should have aborted.

nothing, another abort.

Abort abort abort

Another abort at about T-00:00:50 by prop.

Hopefully it's a go this time!

stream repeatedly stops for me :(

I had a similar problem with Firefox on Linux. Chrome worked better. Possibly the version of Flash they bundle...

calling `ABORT ABORT ABORT`

Aborted at +00:02

Aborted. Bummer.

aborted at 0

Who is that announcer guy they keep using? He just drones on and on while a hot chick sits opposite him looking mortified.

His title was Falcon 9 Program Manager, but I don't remember his name.

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