CAPE CANAVERAL, AFS - All eyes will be on Cape Canaveral tomorrow for the first launch of a rocket that could herald a new era for the commercial space industry and NASA. If Florida's fickle weather co-operates, sometime between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. EDT, the inaugural flight of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation's Falcon 9 rocket will take to the skies, carrying with it the hopes and ambitions of a gutsy upstart space company and the commercial space movement as a whole.
FALCON 9, FLIGHT 1 PHOTO GALLERY DOCUMENTS LAUNCH HAZARD AREA • READ (PDF) LAUNCH RESTRICTED AIRSPACE MAP • READ (PDF) FALCON 9 FLIGHT 1 PRESS KIT • READ (PDF) FALCON 9 USER'S GUIDE • READ (PDF) SPACEX BROCHURE • READ (PDF) (Photo Above: Falcon 9 Flight 1 mission logo. Credit: SpaceX) The first launch of a new rocket is always a tricky affair, and Falcon 9's maiden flight will be no different. Historically, a new launch vehicle will fail more often than succeed on its first launch, although the odds are much better for rocket's developed in the last 30 years. Still, it is rocket science and a bit of a gamble. Indeed, the company's smaller Falcon 1 rocket failed to achieve orbit on its first three flights. "I think my personal assessment of the likelihood of success is probably 70 to 80 percent. However, as has been pointed out, that's less than the probability of success in Russian roulette," SpaceX founder Elon Musk said during a prelaunch teleconference with the media. "So if anybody remembers that scene from 'The Deer Hunter', that's tomorrow." In reality, the goal of the launch is to test the rocket systems in an actual flight environment, see if and where things go wrong and collect data that will be used to improve future vehicles. Getting all the way to orbit will be icing on the cake. "This is very much a test flight of the Falcon 9," Musk said. "It's analogous to the beta testing of some new technology. The payload in this case is the structural test article of our Dragon spacecraft." "You can break that down into first stage propulsion, structures, thermal, avionics, the guidance. Then you move to the upper stage. Do the two stages separate correctly, does the upper stage start, does it acquire its target vector, does the guidance, navigation software and electronics work? How does it perform in vacuum? How does it perform in the radiative environment of space?" The payload for the rocket's maiden voyage is a qualification mockup of the Dragon spacecraft SpaceX is developing to carry cargo, and perhaps in the future people, to the International Space Station. Outfitted with sensors, the mockup will gather important aerodynamic and performance data that will be folded into the development process in preparation for the first demonstration flight to the space station next year. The Dragon on this demonstration flight is structurally and aerodynamically equivalent to a fully operational Dragon spacecraft. However, it lacks some elements such as heat shield, thrusters and a recovery system, so it is on a one-way mission and will not be recovered. Beginning next year, Dragon will make the first of a dozen launches to the International Space Station under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) and Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contracts that SpaceX has with NASA. In December 2008, NASA announced the selection of SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) when the Space Shuttle retires. The $1.6 billion contract represents a minimum of 12 flights, with an option to order additional missions for a cumulative total contract value of up to $3.1 billion. The Dragon spacecraft is comprised of 3 main elements: the Nosecone, which protects the vessel and the docking adaptor during ascent; the Spacecraft, which houses the crew and/or pressurized cargo as well as the service section containing avionics, the RCS system, parachutes, and other support infrastructure; and the Trunk, which provides for the stowage of unpressurized cargo and will support Dragon's solar arrays and thermal radiators. Dragon will be able to carry 13,228 pounds of cargo to the space station and, also important, will be able to return 6,614 pounds of payload to Earth. The cargo may be comprised of both pressurized payload in the 245 cubic feet of the spacecraft's pressurized volume or unpressurized cargo in up to 490 cubic feet of volume. While many pundits and observers will measure the mission's success or failure in purely black-and-white terms - did the Dragon capsule make it all the way to its intended orbit, Musk is adamant that success can come even without reaching orbit and that, since this is a test flight, he will consider it a success as long as engineers are able to glean valuable telemetry data from the flight. "Given this is a test flight, whatever percentage of getting to orbit we achieve would still be considered a good day," Musk said. "It would be a great day if we reach orbital velocity, but still a good day if the first stage functions correctly, even if the second stage malfunctions. It would be a bad day if something happens on the launch pads itself and we're not able to gain any flight data." The launch window for the test flight opens at 11 a.m. EDT and extends for four hours. SpaceX may find the long window a blessing given that the official weather forecast calls for a 40% chance that the usual summer weather pattern on the East coast of Florida, thunderstorms and lightning, may postpone the launch. 
(Photo Above: SpaceX's first Falcon 9 rocket stands ready for liftoff from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Credit: Chris Thompson / SpaceX) Tomorrow's test will begin several seconds before liftoff when the start command is sent to the rocket's nine regeneratively-cooled Merlin 1C engines. Powered by RP-1 and liquid oxygen, the first stage engines are derivatives of the single main engine used on the smaller Falcon 1 rocket. The vehicle will be held down by hydraulic clamps while the engines ramp up to full power and computers verify that everything is operating correctly. Then, at T-0, the clamps will retract and Falcon will be committed to flight. Falcon 9 will climb away from its launch mount at Space Launch Complex 40 and, after rising vertically and clearing the four tall lightning towers, will initiate a gravity turn and begin to head east over the Atlantic Ocean. According to a baseline flight profile provided by SpaceX, two of the engines will be shut off at approximately 2 minutes, 35 seconds into flight. This event is called MECO-1, or main engine cutoff #1. This is done to limit the acceleration on the vehicle as it races higher and faster on its way to space. Nineteen seconds later, the remaining 7 engines will cutoff, MECO-2, which will be followed two seconds later by first stage separation. The first stage carries a parachute recovery system and is designed to be reused, although that is not a formal requirement or measure of success for Falcon 9's first launch. One of NASA's space shuttle solid rocket booster recovery ships, the Freedom Star, will be positioned offshore near the booster's predicted splashdown point. If the stage succeeds in splashing down intact, Freedom Star will be there to pick it up and tow it back to Cape Canaveral. Three seconds after stage separation, the rocket's upper stage, powered by a single Merlin engine, will ignite to complete the ride to orbit. The upper stage engine is another derivative of Merlin but features a large niobium nozzle specially designed for operating in the vacuum of space. About six and a half minutes later, at T+9:38, the upper stage will shutdown, leaving the Dragon capsule, still attached, in a circular orbit reportedly about 250 km. high with an inclination of 34.5 degrees. For this test flight, the Dragon mockup will remain attached to the Falcon second stage. Falcon 9's next mission will test the payload separation system. This is an example of the incremental development approach that SpaceX has followed since the company's founding in 2002. While Musk's test-as-you-go philosophy might appear to be a departure from standard practice in the aerospace industry, it was actually quite normal in the early days of the Cold War missile race and space exploration. In the absence of supercomputer modeling, the only way to gain meaningful data was through test flights. So the aerospace contractors designing the different missile systems - Thor, Jupiter, Atlas, etc. - built many rockets and flew them often during the development process. In fact, the first 13 Atlas rockets failed before the missile finally achieved 100% success. This is in contrast to what is done now. Today, a rocket vehicle and launch costs can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and it's simply too cost-prohibitive to plan for more than one or two "test" flights - which usually carry "live" payloads anyway at a discount for the customer. So, in a sense, SpaceX is going back to the way rocket development used to be conducted, which is not entirely different from the way software is developed today. It can be summarized by the phrase "build a little, test a little" and is characterized by an incremental process to build up to the final product. Tomorrow's launch is intended primarily to test the Falcon 9's two stages, separation mechanism and avionics. On its next flight, Falcon will carry a live Dragon capsule and will test its ability to deliver the satellite to the correct orbit and successfully release it to fly on its own. "This launch is about testing the rocket," Musk said. "Flight 2 is about testing the Dragon spacecraft we're developing." However, for many outsiders, especially those critical of President Obama's plan to hand over NASA's low Earth orbit space transportation requirements to the commercial sector, Falcon 9's debut is really a test of SpaceX. SpaceX finds itself smack in the middle of a debate currently raging thousands of miles from its Hawthorne, CA. headquarters. At issue is Obama's plan to scrap the Constellation program and the Ares I and V rockets and instead direct NASA to procure astronaut transportation services from private companies like SpaceX or United Launch Alliance. The plan has attracted support from the commercial space sector and its community of followers. However, it has been panned viciously by a number of powerful lawmakers whose districts cover the various NASA centers, in particular Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, AL and Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Those areas face staggering jobs losses from the coming retirement of the space shuttle fleet. For example, Kennedy Space Center and the surrounding community will see anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000 direct and indirect job losses during the next year. The problem is bad enough even without considering the fact that Brevard County, home to KSC, currently has an unemployment rate hovering around 12%. Critics of Obama's plan are actively, and loudly, lobbying for continuation of Constellation, even if it's restructured, in order to mitigate the shuttle job losses among their constituents, i.e. the voters. Some are also pressing for an extension to the shuttle program until such time as a follow-on crew transport capability is available. Without that, NASA will be forced to rely on purchasing rides aboard the Russian Soyuz rocket - something that angers more than a few lawmakers. So, in a very real sense, while the viability of SpaceX hinges on the eventual success of Falcon 9, a successful launch tomorrow is important for public relations and political reasons. That's something that Musk bristles at. "Tomorrow's launch, or the next day's launch, should not be a verdict on the viability of commercial space," he said. "Commercial space is the only way forward. If we go with super expensive government developments, in the absence of some massive increase in the space budget, we will never do anything interesting in space." (The Spacearium / SpaceflightNews.net) 
(Photo Above: SpaceX's first Falcon 9 rocket is rolled to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Credit: Chris Thompson / SpaceX)
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