Also, woohoo! Go SpaceX!

Keep in mind that it’s empty in that picture. According to Wikipedia, the launch weight of the Falcon 9 is about 330-340 tons. As with these rockets, fuel represents about 90% of the rocket’s launch weight, it suggests the dry rocket weighs perhaps 30-40 tons.

I’m also reminded of a picture of a Soviet rocket from the 1960s being hoisted horizontally by cranes at each end, and with a man standing on the middle of the rocket.

Officials declared the launch a success, despite an engine blow out. About a minute and a half into launch, one of Falcon 9’s nine engines suffered some sort failure. However, the remaining rockets were not damaged and were able to recover for the loss of thrust. SpaceX’s president, Gwynne Shatwell, said that’s exactly what the rocket was supposed to do.

…and the on-board computers handled it all without intervention from the ground. Very nice! I’ll be interested to see if any COTS skeptics attempt to make any hay out of this minor glitch, as they were very inclined to do during Falcon’s teething period.

I also noticed during the countdown there was a mention of orbital debris that the ISS fortunately did not have to dodge, thus avoiding any re-computation of Dragon’s flight path. It was a reminder that the debris problem is serious, but I’m afraid it won’t get fixed until it gets a good deal worse. There haven’t been any major events since the Iridium/Kosmos collision since 2009, so naturally people think that the problem’s gone away (if they’re paying any attention to the issue at all).

Looks to me like the combustion chamber completely let go, but it’s hard to tell. Impressive as has been said that it otherwise held together. SpaceX have mentioned at some stage that each engine has ‘armor’ around it to prevent such an event wrecking the rest..

I wonder if this will have any impact on the development of the Merlin 1D. Hopefully they will have sufficient telemetry or other information to know what happened and why.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kGaKsSFS6E&feature=player_detailpage#t=316s

Amazing redundancy by Space X. My hat’s off to them.

@Robin
I believe two Apollo missions suffered engine failure, but only one of them manned (13).

@ellindsey (#18):

At least one Apollo launch lost an engine on ascent. Having so many engines provides a nice margin of error for an engine out scenario. It certainly did look like the Falcon 9 lost an engine nozzle.