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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I write this as I am flying at some 36,000 feet over the midwest on my way to Los Angeles and the 25th annual International Space Development Conference (ISDC). I chair the committee which overseas the local conference teams so I will be busy with that and other National Space Society (NSS) management duties. But despite much work ahead, I will try to do an occassional live blog.
This is quite an event we of NSS (along with our major co-sponsor this year, The Planetary Society) have going this week. Pretty much everyone who matters in the space world will be there. If you are interested in space tourism or commercial space, this is the place to be.
I hope to see some of you!
It is now the next afternoon. When I went to file the story I got drafted into making the conference wifi network and router work so that I could use it.
It appears the premature shutdown of the Falcon 1 engine was caused by a pad processing error. A pipe fitting was loosened by an experienced technician while working on the avionics. I would really not want to be in his shoes today.
You can read more details here.
 Engine fire is visible shortly after launch, just above the nozzle. Photo: SpaceXPS: This definitely had more serious consequences than the time my extremely souped up MGB backfired through the carburator and set the air filter on fire…
Israel has a new defensive system for vehicles called ‘Trophy’, now under evaluation by the US military. I first heard of it yesterday when I came across a demo video on Fox News under the category ‘Nation’ (hurry and see it before it goes away!)
I did not uncover anything else about it until this afternoon. It appears the system is a tiny version of an anti-ballistic missile missile. The incoming RPG (or whatever) is tracked by radar and knocked out of action by what looks to me to be a kinetic energy impact kill to the head of the incoming round by a very fast little short range rocket.
What I find interesting in the Fox News video is the way the explosion plume spreads out as if the incoming hit a non-physical wall.
Also see this General Dynamics report.
Many thanks to one of our commentariat for figuring a way to link to the Fox News video!
LOX tanking has just started on SpaceX’s Falcon 1 launch vehicle on the pad at Kwajalein Island. Once you tank up with LOX you are either launching or scrubbing.
Addendum: Now T-18 and all reported good so far…
Addendum: She’s off the pad!!!
Addendum: Video cut out, they may have lost it. Damn! Reports say it was rolling.
Addendum: “Gwynn: I have heard word that we did lose the vehicle. We did have successful liftoff until a minute or two into the flight. As soon as we have information we will post informaiton onto the site. We did lose the feed from Kwajalein; that happens pretty often here. We did have a successful liftoff, but the vehicle did not succeed after that. Clearly this is a setback, but we are here for the long haul.”
Addendum: Here is one of the last photos from the rocket.
This statement was released last night:
Falcon 1 Maiden Flight Update: Posted March 22, 2006
No major issues were discovered following the static fire, but, as a cautionary measure, we are going to take one more day to review data and verify system functionality. Launch is now scheduled for Friday at 1 p.m. California time.
Elon Musk
Ed: While you wait… Watch the engine test video.
According to a statement by Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX:
“We had a great static fire today. Falcon was held down for almost three seconds of thrust (T+0.5s), part of which was under autonomous thrust vector control. All systems were green and no aborts were triggered.
Unless we discover something negative after a detailed data analysis, launch will happen on Thursday at 1p.m. California time.”
I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas Day…
According to Elon Musk:
“Falcon 1 has been removed from its hangar and erected on the launch pad. All systems are currently go for a static fire on March 17 or 18, followed by a launch between March 20 and 25.”
My fingers are crossed as a successful first launch would be a wonderful thing… but then, how often does that happen in rocketry?
PS: You can see Elon at the 25th International Space Development Conference and offer him your congrats or condolences, depending…
I have not the time to go into great details at the moment, but the 25th International Space Development Conference will take place in less than two months. If you are interested in the grand adventure, this conference is the place to be in the first week of May.
The list keeps growing, but here is the speakers list we (the National Space Society (NSS) and the Planetary Society) have lined up so far.
PS: I might try some live-blogging at the event if I get to spend any time outside of committee rooms!
Sometimes there are unexpected side effects of Samizdata posts. My discussion of the Blackstar project last week had that in spades. When Mike Lorrey posted some technical information defending the possibility such a vehicle might be real, I sat up and took notice. Amongst things I knew about he described something I was completely unaware of. There is a safe Boron gel fuel. This led to an exchange of emails and Mike kindly produced a paper on that and several other important technologies and basic concepts of spaceplane design.
NASA got the spaceplane design so badly wrong on the Space Shuttle one hardly knows where to start. Mike shows the science behind some of those truly awful design choices. First off is wing loading. Virtually everyone in the business knows high wing loading on a manned re-entry vehicle is not just a bad idea, it is almost criminally insane. Once you go down that route you are forced into ever more dangerous and ever more marginal design decisions. High wing loading means there is a lot of vehicle weight per square foot of wing. It means more kinetic energy has to be dissipated over a smaller area. It means the re-entry interface happens much deeper into the atmosphere. It means you cannot skip and bleed off heat. It means you need heavy thermal protection systems… and on and on.
The key bit in his paper though is the Boron Gel. I must say this mythical substance was one I knew very little about and what I had heard was it is more closely allied to a chemical weapon in toxicity than a rocket fuel! But according to Mark there is more than one way to gel a boron, and this one is a boron/keresene slurry.
Why does this get me excited? Another factor pretty much everyone knows is liquid hydrogen is a really bad fuel. Yeah, it has a high ISP (a measure of how good a fuel/oxidizer combination is) when used with oxygen, but the problem is density. It is horrible for density. You need gigantic tanks to carry a reasonable amount and the tankage and associated structures weight eats up all the gain from using the stuff in the first place. On top of which, it bleeds off. You can not make hydrogen stay put. It is useless for long voyages or for a long stay in orbit. That is why upper stages use really nasty, evil and deadly fuels that happen to be liquid at room temperatue and are hypergolic (ignite when mixed).
Even if your fuel is not as ‘good’ as hydrogen in absolute terms, it can be better in practical ones. A very dense fuel means smaller structures to hold it and that means less weight to orbit which means less fuel to carry the fuel… you win points in your rocket equation. Dense fuel is a big win. Dense fuel that also has a very good ISP is a very big win. The Boron/Kerosene mix appears to be just what we need.
What I look forward to finding out now is: what is required to handle the stuff safely? Is it truly not in the high danger category of the other Boron Gel technologies?
If you feel yourself called to the label ‘rocket scientist’, go read Mike Lurrey’s paper. I await your comments.
Rand Simberg pointed me to the prototype of a real tricorder which may be on the Christmas gift list for 2010.
SpaceX has been working towards the first launch of its Falcon since late last summer. First they were delayed by a blacksat launch window which caused them to shift operations from Vandenberg to Kwajalein Island. This winter they had the pressurization test accident that caused a fuel tank to crumple.
Everything I have been hearing says this month could finally be it. Best wishes and godspeed to Elon and his crew.
You can download their information pack (just published yesterday) on the upcoming maiden flight from here.
Glenn Reynolds, over at Instapundit, has pointed out this Aviation Week story on the deep black space plane that has been under test at Groom Lake through the last decade.
I have long suspected such a vehicle was flying, partly because of logic. I could not imagine there has been nothing new since the design of the 40 year old SR-71 and the US would retire that fleet of spy planes without someting newer and better. No matter what was said about satellites, they are just not as generally useful and do not have the immediacy of a launch on demand and maneuver on the way aircraft.
I know for a fact that the USAF was studying space planes in the late eighties and early nineties because I knew the guy running the study. It was called Black Horse, an H2O2 fueled aircraft which topped up from a tanker after take off. That officer moved on in to private space but the idea of being able to, as he put it, “put precision holes in the ground anywhere in the world within 90 minutes” was one I assumed had just gone totally black.
Another small piece of information came from a friend with a classified job title back in the early 90’s. A spacer like myself, he told me that his real job would not be public for decades but people would be quite surprised and it was important… and he added that it took him three airplanes, the last of which was a light plane to get to where he worked. I immediately thought of Groom Lake but kept it to myself then and ever since. I have always assumed the Groom Lake sightings were of an at least suborbital SR-71 replacement.
The other item which clued me that something was going on happened last summer. A number of persons I spoke to were pushing a technology called ‘hot structures’ which was about to come out of the black and they were afraid that the technology and all of the money expended on it was about to be lost simply because no one knew it existed. While interesting, it turned out to be far too pricey for anyone I know to employ at this time.
Hot structures have to do with hypersonic airframes of the blended bodies sort. This is stuff you build if you are working on spaceplanes as there is little other use for it. I did not however put the final piece together as AWST did with its far greater resources and contacts. My guess is this technology is about to be lost because the SR-3/XOV is being cancelled.
Does anyone else have any interesting scuttlebutt?
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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