Comments on: Don't forget the Space X launch!

By: Space; the final frontier, now where have i heard that before « Fuzzypictures's Weblog

Wed, 23 May 2012 17:15:28 +0000

[...] the closer you are to winning Art Takes Times Square. « The closest supernova candidate? Don’t forget the Space X launch! [...]

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Sun, 20 May 2012 06:00:35 +0000

Well, they have to start somewhere and it could’ve much worse – like this :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k-evZZXws0&feature=related

and this :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqlgUuYQU30&feature=related

and these :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rwi_0DEd_0

for instance.

Rocket science is hard. It doesn’t always work perfectly each time. It’s worth doing.

By: Nick L

Nick L — Sat, 19 May 2012 16:59:17 +0000

lqd Said: “Congress is teeming with critters who would like nothing more than to see SpaceX fail, and a major accident on the maiden flight would have been exactly what they wanted to see. ”

On the other hand, it’s also teeming with people who want NASA to pick a winner now so that they can “speed things up” with resuming manned launches out of Florida. So a glitch like this may ultimately be the best outcome for all in the long run since it shows that even the company in the lead still has a way to go before winning the private sector space race.

By: Bibliophylum

Bibliophylum — Sat, 19 May 2012 16:58:06 +0000

I see it as a successful test of the emergency automatic shutdown procedures under real-world conditions.

By: lqd

lqd — Sat, 19 May 2012 16:20:11 +0000

What’s with all the sad emoticons? I’m happy that they caught the error on time, it would have been disasterous for the company and commercial space exploration if something had gone wrong after liftoff. Congress is teeming with critters who would like nothing more than to see SpaceX fail, and a major accident on the maiden flight would have been exactly what they wanted to see.

Still, a little disappointed that we’ll have to wait until Tuesday for history to be made. Good Luck SpaceX and Dragon.

By: TTS

TTS — Sat, 19 May 2012 15:27:37 +0000

@23/24

I think the line was: “We aborted with purpose. It would have been a failure if we had lifted off with an engine trending in this direction.”

By: david

david — Sat, 19 May 2012 14:48:17 +0000

@23 During the post-abort press conference, Gwynne Shotwell indicated that the trend of the pressure was such that it didn’t appear to be just a badly set limit. There was a comment something like “we can’t blame this one on the software people”. She indicated that the #5 engine would be inspected and they hoped to have some further data later today.

By: Mike Saunders

Mike Saunders — Sat, 19 May 2012 14:10:30 +0000

I don’t understand why people are saying “Better safe than sorry” or “Better than an explosion” when all they are doing to fix the problem is changing the auto shutdown limits for the next launch. That means, if this amount of pressure happens again, it will launch anyway. Seems like someone messed up and threw a bunch of money away.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 19 May 2012 12:25:45 +0000

By: EricJuve

EricJuve — Sat, 19 May 2012 12:23:24 +0000

@Messier, Heat of the moment reaction, I was just pleased that they didn’t lose the vehicle. I realized after I posted that if there had been SRBs they wouldn’t have lit them till the much more complex liquid engines were nominal.