SpaceX Readies First Dragon Spacecraft

[mborgia]

Of even greater concern is that this same variant of the Taurus rocket suffered what seems to have been an identical failure on its last launch two years ago...an underperformance caused by failure of the payload fairing to separate.  You would think they would have figured that part out by now.

[Steven]

Of even greater concern is that this same variant of the Taurus rocket suffered what seems to have been an identical failure on its last launch two years ago...an underperformance caused by failure of the payload fairing to separate.  You would think they would have figured that part out by now.

They switched systems after the OCO failure to a cold-gas piston release mechanism, tested it, and it worked.  There's a failure investigation team that's being (or has been) formed and will look into the data as to why it did not separate.

[Pocci]

Obviously the problem was not in the Piston Pusher System but somewhere else.
Maybe the two halves did not separate, so the  pusher pushed against the still closed fairing.
Maybe the two halves did separate and were pushed aside but the base stayed at the stage like in Gemini 9.
But this time the system was equipped with more telemetry, so hopefully they find the real cause this time.

/Armin

[bjbeard]

On the SpaceX vehicle, I would be worried about the risk analysis on using 9 engines on the Booster. 9 engines mean 9 sets of things to go boom.

[christra]

On the SpaceX vehicle, I would be worried about the risk analysis on using 9 engines on the Booster. 9 engines mean 9 sets of things to go boom.

Count those from Sojus and tell me what you think...

[Spacewalker]

On the SpaceX vehicle, I would be worried about the risk analysis on using 9 engines on the Booster. 9 engines mean 9 sets of things to go boom.

Count those from Sojus and tell me what you think...

Soyuz has only 5 engines in the first stages (i.e core stage + boosters). So, what is your point?

[bjbeard]

I don't like that idea either! Why 4 chambers for one engine?

[Spacewalker]

I don't like that idea either! Why 4 chambers for one engine?

As you may know, the heritage of the Soyuz family of launch vehicles goes way back to the R-7 ICBM, developed in the 1950s.
Back then, the Russians had problems with combustion instability in engines with large chambers. So, to avoid these problems they built engines with a single turbopump feeding four smaller chambers, instead of a big single one.

[Forrest White]

How it is to know that for 2020  Dragon is the only cargo spacecraft in the world that returns cargo from the ISS to Earth. Since 2010, the ship has been launched 22 times; In total, Dragon ships delivered about 43 tons of payload to the station and returned about 33 tons to Earth. So the supplies of ISS totally depends on SpaceX company, not even NASA.