First images of Falcon 9 revealed

[jamie_young]

http://www.flightglobal.com/Articles/2006/10/20/Navigation/177/210047/First+picture+of+Spacex+Falcon+9+emerges.html<br /><br />Space Exploration Technologies' (Spacex) first Falcon 9 booster is shown here under construction at the company's El Segundo facility in California.

 

[PistolPete]

Rock on...<br /><br />I like SpaceX, they actually get things built, unlike 99% of the other space launch startups. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><em>So, again we are defeated. This victory belongs to the farmers, not us.</em></p><p><strong>-Kambei Shimada from the movie Seven Samurai</strong></p> </div>

 

[nyarlathotep]

What do you mean? Plenty of companies build mockups.

 

[bpfeifer]

"What do you mean? Plenty of companies build mockups."<br /><br />This is no mock-up. He was talking about flight hardware. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Brian J. Pfeifer http://sabletower.wordpress.com<br /> The Dogsoldier Codex http://www.lulu.com/sabletower<br /> </div>

 

[barrykirk]

This is good to see. Of course everyone is still waiting for more info as to a launch schedule for the next Falcon 1. It would be really good for SpaceX to get a successful launch under their belt.

 

[spacefire]

<font color="yellow">This is good to see. Of course everyone is still waiting for more info as to a launch schedule for the next Falcon 1. It would be really good for SpaceX to get a successful launch under their belt.</font><br /><br />or even in space. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>http://asteroid-invasion.blogspot.com</p><p>http://www.solvengineer.com/asteroid-invasion.html </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[comga]

It is very good to get get some news. The 44 days since the Sept update seems like a very long time. <br /><br />The Falcon 9 (like the Falcon 5) always seems to be 16 months from launch. Let's hope this is a sign that the countdown clock is making some progress.

 

[nyarlathotep]

>"This is no mock-up. He was talking about flight hardware."<br /><br />I'm aware of the party line. Frankly, with Musk saying that Falcon will be ready 'very soon now' for a lot longer than even the most liberal definition of 'very soon', I don't believe a word of it. <br /><br />There's zero evidence from this tiny photo that it isn't a mockup. All I see are very grainy tank sections and a dome which very well could have been made in a high school metalwork shop.

 

[j05h]

I met a guy on the flight back from the XPrize, he actually saw the F9 in the shop during a recent tour. He said it's real flight hardware for the first unit. Believe it or not. At least SpaceX has launched something.<br /><br />I'm back and trying to figure out what to talk about for XPrize related stuff.<br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[josh_simonson]

Looks to me like they're producing barrel sections, however since they haven't been assembled into a full tank yet they haven't had a chance to pressure and stress test them yet. They've probably more or less perfected the technology for the tanks on the falcon 1, but I still wouldn't be surprised if they popped a weld on the one of the early tests on the big tanks. As an engineer, I'd like to test a couple to destruction before attempting to fly with them. So those ones likely won't fly, but I expect the machines that built them probably will build the flight units at a later date - and the photo shows that the line is operational.<br /><br />A mockup would be built with industrial pipe and paper mache, not friction stir-welded aluminum bands.

 

[j05h]

I'm not sure if the pics are test models or the production vehicle. The dude I met said he saw the first flight unit, so I'm assuming SpaceX already did the testing you describe.<br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[jamie_young]

I thought they had done a mock-up already, so this would be a real vehicle?

 

[halman]

josh_simpson,<br /><br />So, what was the final word on the first Falcon flight? I seem to remember that the rocket was detonated by the range safety officer, but I have not been able to understand why. Why don't they have 2 or 3 of the Falcon 1 on the assembly line, so that they could change out the faulty components, but still launch again in a few weeks? At this point, fabrication costs should be a fraction of the engineering and testing costs, so having one or two units in production should not be that expensive. If every unit is going to be built one at a time, we are not likely to see any massive reduction in launch costs. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[henryhallam]

Which was in turn due to a corroded Al nut, apparently a very unlikely occurence. But they have now changed all nuts to a different metal, SS I think, and also added a bunch more abort modes.<br /><br />December will be interesting.

 

[barrykirk]

Well, until they've figured out what happened to the first one and taken corrective steps to fix the problem. It doesn't make sense to launch again.<br /><br />Apparently, once they started looking for failure paths, they must have come up with a lot of improvements which they then needed to time to implement.

 

[nacnud]

They have figured out what happened to the first one, and implemented a fix.

 

[josh_simonson]

>josh_simpson<br /><br />There's no P in my last name. Unfortunately I have to curse Matt Groening quite often because of that. 8^(<br /><br />They've tested smaller tanks, and probably did quite a bit of testing on their basic welds, but it would be foolhardy to fly a large tank without at least hydrotesting it and load testing it. The larger tanks may well be a bit thicker than the Falcon 1 tanks too since pressure carrying ability decreases with diameter for tanks with the same wall thickness, and the F9 tank has to support alot more payload and second stage weight than the F1 does.

 

[spacester]

Does anyone know what pressure the tanks operate at, IOW what is the maximum design pressure?<br /><br />It may be the case that structural loads greatly exceed pressure loads.<br /><br />I can sure see why one would assume hydrostatic testing, BUT I'm not so sure that will be the case. <br /><br />For starters, this is NOT a gummint operation, so they can do as they please on a decision such as this.<br /><br />Hoop stress is very well known and certainly we have reached the point where Finite Element Methods can be trusted to reflect reality at some level.<br /><br />I'm just saying that if in fact the goal is to lower the cost to LEO, and the prime strategy to accomplish that goal is to eliminate unnecessary costs, hydrostatic testing is in my mind a good candidate. Especially if the factor of safety is based on structural loads and pressure loads are small in comparison.<br /><br />No doubt the old school type is going to call this crazy thinking, but that's kinda the point behind SpaceX in the first place: what are the assumptions that are taken for granted by mainstream industry (mega-corp gummint contractors) that can be discarded, resulting in significant programmatical savings?<br /><br />Certainly, there are areas where analysis cannot be trusted to stand on its own merits and testing is required. CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) is not yet ready to skip testing, especially in the flight regimes a rocket experiences. But hoop stress that is known to be a fraction of structural stress (as I speculate) is pretty safe ground to skip a test that a gummint program would of course insist on.<br /><br />Weld integrity can be a well known property given tight SPC (Statistical Process Control), which I have every reason to believe is employed by SpaceX in some form.<br /><br />So I tend to believe that we are in fact looking at flight hardware. <img src="/images/icons/cool.gif" /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[publiusr]

I am quite impressed.