SpaceX Pausing Launches to Study Falcon 9 Issue on Crew-9 Astronaut Mission (space.com)
- Reference: 0175156149
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/29/1837227/spacex-pausing-launches-to-study-falcon-9-issue-on-crew-9-astronaut-mission
- Source link: https://www.space.com/spacex-pause-launches-crew-9-falcon-9-issue
> [2]Crew-9 lifted off on Saturday (Sept. 28) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aloft aboard the [3]Crew Dragon capsule "Freedom" [for a 5-month stay, returning in February with Starliner's two astronauts]. Everything appeared to go well. The Falcon 9's first stage aced its landing shortly after liftoff, and the rocket's upper stage deployed Freedom into its proper orbit; the capsule is on track to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday afternoon (Sept. 29) as planned. But the upper stage experienced an issue after completing that job, SpaceX announced early Sunday morning.
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> "After today's successful launch of Crew-9, Falcon 9's second stage was disposed in the ocean as planned, but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn. As a result, the second stage safely landed in the ocean, but outside of the targeted area. We will resume launching after we better understand root cause," SpaceX wrote in [4]a post on X .
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> Indeed, a Falcon 9 had been scheduled to launch 20 broadband satellites for the company Eutelsat OneWeb from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday night, but that liftoff [5]has been postponed .
[1] https://www.space.com/spacex-pause-launches-crew-9-falcon-9-issue
[2] https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-9-astronaut-launch-success
[3] https://www.space.com/18852-spacex-dragon.html
[4] https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1840245345118498987
[5] https://x.com/EutelsatGroup/status/1840286468587028979
SpaceX, you're being too picky (Score:2)
Just go with the Chinese approach. Launch your rockets and cross your fingers that none of the rocket parts lands on a city!
Re: (Score:3)
At least SpaceX can land them. So if they accidentally launch one during testing, it can just land to be retested.
Re: (Score:2)
"Just go with the Boeing approach". FTFY
Automation is the answer (Score:1)
Too many variables when humans build things, it's stupid to risk safety. Automate the production, QA, and everything else but have a redundant human inspection at the end. Spread the profits to unemployed aerospace technicians.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Many of the components are automatically built, because the precision requirements are far too stringent for hand-made. Often times, these anomalies come from conditions like excessive heating of the fuel because the weather was too warm during accent, or a sensor failed to read an anomalous condition happening too far away.
Sometimes it is manufacturing defect, but rarely. Space is hard
Re: Automation is the answer (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)d generally disagree with that when it comes to falcon 9 block 5. The one catastrophic failure was a manufacturing defect. Various landing failures have been either design issues or engine reconditioning issues.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Lives lost:
- NASA 14 (Challenger / Columbia)
- SpaceX 0
Pretty high success rate for SpaceX.
Re: (Score:3)
You should probably also count Apollo 1 there.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
> Just wondering where the privates stand compared to NASA on the failure percentages with this tally in a different column.
Let me put it that way. There's no way I'd sit on a rocket riding to space even if you paid me to do it, I hate even flying normal airplanes, but if someone forced me to, I'd sooner go to space three times over on a Falcon 9 than once on anything else, SLS included.
Re: They plus or minus on NASA success percentage (Score:1)
Well said.
Re: They plus or minus on NASA success percentage (Score:2)
STS: 135 flights, 2 catastrophic failures.
Falcon 9 block 5: 322 flights, 1 catastrophic failure.
Falcon 9 has definitely had a few issues of late, though.