Live blogging the launch

0023. LOX tanking is in progress; there has been some audio coming across now on the live feed.

0025: Note that they are in an ‘unplanned hold’ at the moment. Second tank LOX fill is happening and I believe I heard them discussing Helium pressurization.

0027: On the video you can see the LOX venting on the second stage.

0031: If you think the video quality s… is less than optimal, you are not alone!

0045: http://www.spacex.com/webcast.php in case you don’t know where to go. There is an Aussie presenter at SpaceX you will notice.

0058: I am having diffs due to the bandwidth the video is sucking up, so my posting may be more erratic than I would have liked. When you see the public affairs team again, the thing behind them marked Dragon is the mockup of the manned capsule they will be flying to ISS in the 2012 time frame.

0129: You may have noticed they lost video for awhile until someone rebooted their Mac streaming application. We are down into the t-30 range and all is looking good so far. Other than my Virgin Media cable connection which keeps seems to go off line entirely every now and again…

0133: This rock is so highly automated that there are a lot fewer people acting as controllers than in old fashioned 20th century artillery rockets. Things will not get really interesting until we get into the last few minutes. Also, remember that they have on board cameras so we will get live feeds from the rocket during ascent. Last time we had a really good view of the 2nd stage engine bell glowing red hot as it fired.

0246: My link was down for about 45 minutes… I am hoping it will stay up long enough for me to watch the launch! Looks like they are still in a hold so I have not missed anything big.

0251: The detanking is something they did last time as well. If things take too long, the fuel starts getting cold and this caused a shutdown on flight 2 because the thrust is below nominal if the temps are wrong.

0310: Since I have to sit and wait like everyone else, perhaps I can give a bit more explanation. They have a Helium tank there for pressurization I presume, at least from the size of it. Helium is a super cryogen. It makes LOX look like burning petrol by comparison. If they sit too long, the Helium starts chilling the fuel, which is Kerosene. You want your fuel and oxidizer to be warm and volatile when you
inject them; otherwise some of the energy is taken from thrust to heat them up. That lowers the efficiency of the engine, something usually measured as ISP. The computer controls know the expected profile from initial injection to when the igniter fires and as the burn starts and stabilizes. If it is outside of the expected band, the engine is shutdown.

0319: The have restarted the count and launch is now scheduled for about 0300 UTC, which would be about 0400 here since we are on BDT. Weather at Kwajalein is crystal clear by the way, at least from the weather map!

0325:They are back on the air doing the recycle. Incidentally, you may have noticed that the webcast appears to be done by a video camera focused on a computer screen at the Hawthorne facility. My guess is they have a single circuit from Kwaj and for security reasons wanted to totally isolate the public net from the operations net. I would do the same, but perhaps a little differently. It may simply come down to them having too little time to do anything more than this work around. This is all pure speculation on my part, but it is based on doing a paper system level design for an LCC for someone else.

0338: It looks like along with the rewind of the count we are also getting a replay of the video clips we saw earlier… I’d rather listen to the control loop myself!

0344: Their Mac video application just fell over again… and a few minutes later the talking heads are repeating the same description of the Falcon 1 that they did a couple hours ago. Meanwhile, while they jabber on, from other sources on Kwaj I read that everything is in the green. We should be about 15 minutes or less from launch now.

0352: While they are showing silly repeats, terminal count is about to start, or probably has. Everything is go for launch at the moment.

0403: A terminal abort, But there could still be a launch tonight. Er this morning. I think this is a good time for me to put the kettle on…

0415: If you have been reading the announcements, they think they may recycle the count to t-10, which means they have had a minor issue. The automatic check out that happens at ignition is extraordinary fascist and they want it that way: you can’t bring it back to the pad once you’ve launched!

0426: Wow. They have recycled to t-10 terminal count start in almost no time!

0440: They called it an anomaly. I wish they had not killed the video so quickly… the plume from the first stage was looking rather strange just before that, with streaks and instabilities that didn’t look right to me, also I was seeing a greyish color that did not seem quite right. But I could be totally wrong. We will just have to wait for more information. Not what I was hoping for tonight, but this is rocket science… The most likely response to an ‘anomaly’ is flight termination.

0530: Well, I am calling it quits as there is unlikely to be any real news for quite some time. The vehicle either blew itself up or was commanded to do so; I have the impression it performed its own self disassembly but have nothing to back that up. My own eyeballs are on the new regen engine bell but I will with hold judgement until I have had a chance to watch the video again and more importantly have some expert feedback. But tonight, with my bed calling, I will place my bets on the new engine, perhaps the regen cooling channels. It is a wild stab in the dark and I will probably disagree with myself by the time I have some sleep. But there you go.

Good night all.

0552: Elon issued a statement, and here is an excerpt on the problem:

It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight. On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect. Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation and I will send out a note as soon as we understand exactly what happened.