Mid-Year Global Launch Report: China & USA Continue to Battle for Lead
A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV rocket carrying the NROL-47 mission lifts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base. (Credit: ULA)
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
The world’s launch providers were extremely busy in the first half of 2018, with China and the United States battling for the lead.
There with 55 orbital launches through the end of June, which amounted to a launch every 3.29 days or 79 hours. The total is more than half the 90 launches attempted in 2017. With approximately 42 missions scheduled for the last six months of the year, the total could reach 97.
| ORBITAL LAUNCHES | ||||
| NATION | SUCCESSES |
FAILURES |
PARTIAL FAILURES |
TOTAL |
| China | 18 | 0 | 0 | 18 |
| United States | 17 | 1 | 0 | 18 |
| Russia* | 9 | 0 | 0 | 9 |
| Japan | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| India | 3 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Europe | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| New Zealand | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| TOTALS: | 53 | 1 | 1 | 55 |
| *Russian total includes one Soyuz launch from French Guiana. | ||||
China and the United States battled for the lead with 18 launches apiece through June. China equaled its total number of launches in 2017 with a better success rate. Last year, the nation suffered one failure and one partial failure. Both China and the United States are likely to launch more than 30 times this year.
Russia, traditionally the world leader in launches, lags behind with nine successful launches. It is followed by Japan with four, India with three, Europe with two and New Zealand with one.
Launches by Booster
SpaceX launches its Dragon cargo craft on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 5:42 a.m. EDT June 29, 2018. The early-morning launch is the company’s 15th resupply mission to the International Space Station under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract. (Credit: NASA TV)
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 continued to lead the world with 11 launches during the first half of the year. Add in the Falcon Heavy launch in February, and Elon Musk’s rocket company accounts for two-thirds of the American total of 18 flights.
| LAUNCHES BY BOOSTER | |||||
| LAUNCH VEHICLE |
NATION |
SUCCESSES |
FAILURES | PARTIAL FAILURES |
TOTALS |
| Falcon 9 | USA | 10 | 1 | 0 | 11 |
| Long March 2 (C,D) | China | 7 | 0 | 0 | 7 |
| Soyuz | Russia | 6 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| Long March 3 (A,B) | China | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Atlas V | USA | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Long March 4C | China | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| H-IIA | Japan | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Long March 11 | China | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| PSLV | India | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Ariane 5 | Europe | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Antares | USA | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Delta IV | USA | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Electron | New Zealand | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Epsilon | Japan | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Falcon Heavy | USA | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GSLV Mk II | India | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Proton | Russia | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Rockot | Russia | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Soyuz-2.1v | Russia | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| SS-520 | Japan | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| TOTALS: | 53 | 1 | 1 | 55 | |
The Falcon Heavy flight was the highlight of SpaceX’s launch campaign. With three Falcon 9 cores as the first stage, the heavy-lift booster roared off Pad 39A and soared into the blue Florida sky. Two of the three cores made spectacular landings back at Cape Canaveral whe narrowly missed touching down on an offshore drone ship.
The cargo for the maiden flight was Musk’s red Tesla Roadster with a mannequin driver dressed in white spacesuit named Starman. SpaceX treated to world to spectacular images of the vehicle and driver orbiting the Earth before they were launched into deep space.
Starman in Elon Musk’s red Tesla in orbit around the Earth. (Credit: SpaceX)
On May 11, SpaceX launched the first of its Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters, which placed Bangladesh’s first communications satellite, Bangabandhu-1, into orbit. The Block 5, which is the final upgrade Falcon 9 booster, includes significant modifications that will allow the first stage to be launched up to 10 times with minimal refurbishment. Previous first stages have only been launched twice.
As with most things SpaceX, the Block 5 rocket flown in May was not actually the final version. The booster lacked upgraded helium tanks in the second stage designed to prevent a recurrence of the explosion that destroyed a Falcon 9 on the launch pad as it was being fueled for a pre-launch engine test in September 2016. SpaceX officials have also said that additional changes to the Block 5 are likely.
NASA has stipulated that it needs seven successful flights of the final Falcon 9 Block 5 design before it will put astronauts aboard the booster for Crew Dragon missions to the International Space Station (ISS). The flight in May did not qualify as one of the seven due to the absence of the new tanks.
Another highlight of SpaceX’s year was the launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in April. The spacecraft will use four cameras to monitor more than 200,000 stars to search for planets ranging from Earth sized to gas giants.
The nadir of SpaceX’s launch campaign came in January. Reports indicate that the U.S. military’s secret Zuma payload failed to separate properly from the second stage of its Falcon 9 launch vehicle. The payload burned up in the atmosphere.
A subsequent investigation found that Falcon 9 performed as planned, so there was no reason to ground the booster. The fault appeared to lie with the payload adapter provided with North Grumman, which built the secret payload.
Parabolic Arc has categorized the flight as a launch failure. We define a successful launch as occurring only after a satellite is released from the booster in its intended orbit. In this case, that didn’t happen even though the Falcon 9 performed as planned.
ULA Launches Key Payloads
United Launch Alliance (ULA) launched only five times through June, but two of the flights carried high-profile payloads. In March, an Atlas V blasted off from Cape Canaveral with America’s newest weather satellite, GOES S.
Mars InSight lander (Credit: NASA)
In May, an Atlas V successfully launched NASA’s InSight spacecraft to Mars in the first planetary mission ever conducted from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The lander will probe the interior of the Red Planet.
The launch included two CubeSats, MarCO A and MarCO B, that will relay entry, descent and landing data from the InSight spacecraft to controllers back on Earth. They are the first CubeSats launched on a deep-space mission.
The Atlas V launched a total of four times. ULA also launched a Delta IV booster in January with the U.S. Air Force’s NROL-47 reconnaissance satellite aboard.
The other American launch was an Antares booster that sent a Cygnus resupply ship to ISS from Wallops Island in Virginia. That flight was conducted by Orbital ATK, which has since been renamed Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems.
China Ups Its Game
China launched on a record-setting pace during the first six months of 2018 with 18 flights. The Chinese Long March 2 family (C&D) launched seven times, followed by the Long March 3 (A&B) with five flights. There were four flights of Long March 4 and two flights of Long March 11.
In May, a Long March 4C lofted the Chang’e-4 relay satellite to the moon. The spacecraft will relay communications from the Chang’e-4 lander and rover, which will become the first vehicles to explore the far side of the moon after they are launched late this year.
The launch also included two microsats — the first launched to the moon — that were designed to conduct radio astronomy. One of the satellites failed in flight, but the other remains healthy.
Russia & the Rest
Soyuz rocket takes off from French Guiana on March 9, 2018. (Credit: Arianespace)
Russia’s nine launches included six flights of Soyuz-2 variants that placed satellites in orbit and sent cargo and crews to the space station. Russia also launched Proton, Rockot and Soyuz-2.1v one time each. The Rockot launch of Europe’s Sentinel B satellite marked the final commercial flight of the converted ballistic missile.
Europe’s Ariane 5 booster suffered a rare partial failure in January after a computer programming error resulted in two communications satellites being placed in wrong orbits. The spacecraft were able to reach their intended destinations using onboard propulsion.
The anomaly ended a streak of 82 successful Ariane 5 launches stretching back to 2003. The booster was grounded during the investigation into the anomaly.
Japan successfully launched the SS-520-4 rocket for the first time with a CubeSat aboard in February. The maiden flight of the small booster failed in 2017. The rocket, which orbited a single CubeSat, is intended to be an operational booster. Japanese engineers are using it to learn how to develop low-cost small launch vehicles.
Japan also launched the H-IIA booster twice and the Epsilon rocket once. The H-IIA flights orbited reconnaissance satellites for the Japanese military. The Epsilon launch flew an Earth observation spacecraft for Vietnam.
India launched three times with two PSLV flights and one GSLV Mk. II mission. The first PSLV launch in January was a return to flight for the normally reliable booster, which suffered a rare failure in August 2017 when the payload fairing failed to separate. The IRNSS-1H satellite, which is part of India’s regional navigation system, was lost.
Although the GSLV Mk. II launch was successful, controllers later lost contact with the GSAT-6A satellite after separation as the spacecraft was maneuvering to its final orbit using onboard propulsion. Efforts to resume communications with the satellite have been unsuccessful.
The GSAT-6A failure caused ISRO to recall the GSAT-11 spacecraft that was in French Guiana being prepared for launch in May aboard an Ariane 5 booster. The resulting delay was a factor in lowering Europe’s launch rate during the first half of the year.
Electron launch (Credit: Rocket Lab)
A highlight of the first half of the year was Rocket Lab’s first successful launch of its Electron booster for in January from Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. The inaugural launch of the small-satellite rocket failed in June 2017.
Launches by Spaceport
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida was the world’s busiest spaceport during the first half of the year with a total of 10 launches. When you add in two launches from the adjoining Kennedy Space Center, there have been a dozen missions conducted on the U.S. Air Force’s Eastern Range.
| ORBITAL LAUNCHES BY LOCATION | |||||
| LAUNCH SITE | NATION |
SUCCESSES |
FAILURES | PARTIAL FAILURES |
TOTALS |
| Cape Canaveral Air Force Station | USA |
9 | 1 | 0 | 10 |
| Xichang | China | 8 | 0 | 0 | 8 |
| Jiuquan | China | 7 | 0 | 0 | 7 |
| Vandenberg | USA | 5 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| Baikonur | Kazakhstan (Russian Leased) |
4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Plesetsk | Russia | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Satish Dhawan | India | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Taiyuan | China | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Kourou* | French Guiana (Europe) | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Kennedy Space Center | USA | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Tanegashima | Japan | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Uchinoura | Japan | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Mahia Peninsula | New Zealand | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Vostochny | Russia | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Wallops Island | USA | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| TOTALS: | 53 | 1 | 1 | 55 | |
| * Kourou total includes one Russian Soyuz launch. | |||||
The American total of 18 launches is filled out by five flights from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and one ISS resupply mission flown from Wallops Island in Virginia.
The majority of China’s 18 launches were conducted at two of the nation’s five spaceports. Xichang hosted eight launches followed by Jiuquan with seven. The remaining three flights were conducted from Taiyuan.
Long the leader in launches, the Baikonur Cosmodrome hosted only four launches in the first half of 2018. Russia also launched three times from Plesetsk and one time each from Vostochny and Kourou in French Guiana.
Ariane 5 launches with SES-14 and Al Yah 3 satellites. (Credit: Arianespace)
There were only three launches from Kourou during the first six months of 2018, which is an unusually low number for the spaceport. The partial failure of an Ariane 5 booster and the recall of an India’s GSAT 11 spacecraft for additional checks contributed to the low number.
India’s spaceport at Satish Dhawan also saw only three launch through June. Japan’s four launches were split between Tanegashima and Uchinoura. And Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand hosted one launch of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.
Space Station Support Flights
Dragon on the end of Candarm2. (Credit: NASA)
There have been six missions to the space station during the first half of the year, with three each by Russia and the United States. There were two crew flights aboard Russian spacecraft, two Dragon resupply missions, and one resupply mission apiece by the American Cygnus and Russian Progress freighters.
| ISS SUPPORT MISSIONS |
|||||
| DATE | NATION |
LAUNCH VEHICLE/ SPACECRAFT |
MISSION |
MISSION TYPE |
OUTCOME |
| 2/13/18 | Russia | Soyuz/Progress | Progress 69P | Resupply | Success |
| 3/21/18 | Russia | Soyuz/Soyuz | ISS 54S | Crew | Success |
| 04/02/18 | USA | Falcon 9/Dragon | CRS-14 | Resupply | Success |
| 05/21/18 | USA | Antares/Cygnus | OA-9 | Resupply | Success |
| 06/06/18 | Russia | Soyuz/Soyuz | ISS-55S | Crew | Success |
| 06/29/18 | Russia | Falcon 9/Dragon | CRS-15 | Resupply | Success |
Suborbital Launches
There were 17 suborbital launches in the first half of the year, including 10 from U.S.-based facilities. Poker Flats hosted four followed by Wallops Island with three, White Sands with two and Blue Origin’s Corn Ranch with one. Two additional launches took place at an U.S.-leased military facility on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
| SUBORBITAL LAUNCHES | ||||
| DATE | LAUNCH VEHICLE |
PAYLOAD(S) |
LAUNCH SITE | RESULT |
| 1/19/18 | Black Brant IX | DXL-3 (Astronomy) | Poker Flats (Alaska) | Success |
| 1/26/18 | Terrier-Improved Orion | Super Soaker (Atmospheric research) | Poker Flats (Alaska) | Success |
| 1/26/18 | Terrier-Improved Orion | Super Soaker (Atmospheric research) | Poker Flats (Alaska) | Success |
| 1/26/18 | Terrier-Improved Orion | Super Soaker (Atmospheric research) | Poker Flats (Alaska) | Success |
| 3/25/18 | Terrier-Improved Malemute | USIP (Student payloads) | Wallops Island (Virginia) | Success |
| 3/31/18 | Black Brant IX | ASPIRE (Mars 2020 supersonic parachute) | Wallops Island (Virginia) | Success |
| 04/04/18 | Black Brant IX | DXL-3 (X-ray astronomy) | Kwajalein Atoll (Marshall Islands) | Success |
| 04/06/18 | RH-300 Mk-II | Ionospheric research | TERLS (India) | Success |
| 04/16/18 | Black Brant IX | CHESS-4 (UV astronomy) | Kwajalein Atoll (Marshall Islands) | Success |
| 04/29/18 | New Shepard | Microgravity experiments | Corn Ranch (Texas) | Success |
| 05/13/18 | VSB-30 | TEXUS-54 (Microgravity experiments) | Esrange (Sweden) | Success |
| 05/17/18 | OS-X | Booster test launch | Undisclosed (China) | Success |
| 05/29/18 | Black Brant IX | Hi-C 2-1 (Solar research) | White Sands (New Mexio) | Success |
| 05/31/18 | VSB-30 | TEXUS-55 (Microgravity experiments) | Esrange (Sweden) | Success |
| 06/18/18 | Black Brant IX | EVE (Solar Dynamics Observatory calibration) | White Sands (New Mexico) | Success |
| 06/21/18 | Terrier -Improved Orion | RockOn (Student payloads) | Wallops Island (Virginia) | Success |
| 06/28/18 | Momo-2 | Booster test launch | Taiki (Japan) | Failure |
Blue Origin’s New Shepard flight at the end of April was the most followed of the suborbital launches. The vehicle carried a variety of experiments and an instrumented test dummy named Mannequin Skywalker.
On March 31, NASA tested a supersonic parachute for its Mars 2020 mission. The payload was launched aboard a Black Brant IX rocket from Wallops Island in Virginia.
The OS-X launch on May 17 involved a successful test of the first stage of a new launch vehicle being privately developed by the Chinese startup company One Space. The booster reached an altitude of 40 km (24.85 miles).
Momo-2, a privately-developed booster built by Interstellar Technologies of Japan, fell back on its launch paid seconds after liftoff from the Taiki Aerospace Research Field on June 28. Momo-2 is designed to orbit satellite, but it was making a suborbital test flight on this occasion.
52 responses to “Mid-Year Global Launch Report: China & USA Continue to Battle for Lead”
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Zuma wasn’t a Launch failure, this is by launches, so it is just like the GSLV II if that isn’t considered a failure neither should Zuma
The Indian satellite separated from the booster as planned. The satellite was preparing for its third orbit raising burn using its own propulsion when it lose contact with Earth. The satellite failed after a successful launch.
ZUMA payload adapter was part of the space craft not the LV
My understanding is Falcon 9 couldn’t give the payload a sufficiently smooth ride, necessitating the need for a different adapter than is normally used.
Launch isn’t complete til payload separates. It didn’t do that as planned, and burned up in atmosphere.
Your understanding is wrong if it was because of a rough ride F9 would be grounded, that was the first thing they checked, turns out the payload adapter was poorly designed and ended up not working in microgravity
It’s still a launch failure Michael. Burned up in atmosphere. It’s not in orbit. It may have been a poorly designed adapter, but why was it needed?
I’m not going another 15 rounds on this. Is there ANYTHING else in this entire report you find interesting?
The launch was a success, if you go by vehicle, as the payload adapter came with the spacecraft it’s failure makes it more equivalent to a DOA-fault-of-spacecraft F9 did its job exactly as it was supposed to. Basically if you want to count it as a failure it would be a MISSION failure, but not a Launch failure, the same way you would a probe that fails to make a soft landing or bounces off the target.
Launch isn’t complete til payload separates, IF the LV is responsible for separation. That was not the case here.
When the payload is responsible for separation, then launch is over once the launch vehicle sends the sep command. Which it did. What the payload does after that is not part of the launch.
That the payload was still connected to the LV and was deorbited with it is irrelevant, since that was due entirely to a payload failure.
According to all the evidence we have, Zuma was a payload failure on orbit, not launch failure.
An observation:
This is a good example of what people mean by your bias against SpaceX. Because it is such a weird response.
You say the launch failed, someone points out that it was the client’s hardware that failed, you immediately try to turn that back onto SpaceX. Somehow it’s SpaceX’s fault that the client had to use a custom adaptor.
Why? No-one required the client (Northrop) to use F9 if quieter rides were available elsewhere. (And Falcon 9 isn’t inherently rougher than other launchers.) No-one required them to build a satellite that was too fragile to be launched on a conventional payload adaptor. Other people seem to manage. That is all Northrop’s incompetence. But you really want it to be SpaceX’s.
Actually the payload adapter was made for it assuming that it would fly on a vehicle that uses SRBs, a fully liquid LV has no need for an extra shock absorbant PA,
The fragility comes from trying to minimize structure mass to cram more sensors and such into the satellite
hold on.
When have you seen doug make things up?
He is well connected, so I doubt that he is making it up.
Note that it is possible, if not probable, that the person that told doug, was simply trying to blame SX rather than Northrup.
But, the answer is that we will not know for another 25-50 years.
A couple months ago the official, from the USAF story was fault on Northrop, i didn’t save the link but it was on multiple sites
interesting.
insider information, or blame?
It’s rather odd to count a payload-provided adapter failure as a launch failure. Ed Kyle doesn’t and he counts almost everything as a failure..
http://www.spacelaunchrepor…
The launch vehicle inserted to the proper orbit and send the sep command to the payload-provided adapter. In this case the adapter was not part of the launch but part of the spacecraft, so I would class it as a spacecraft failure after orbit insertion, not a launch failure.
Ed is free to describe the flight any way he wants. Nobody’s blaming SpaceX here. But, the separation didn’t occur as planned and a billion dollar spacecraft burned up. Not a successful launch.
I’ve already gone about 15 rounds debating this point during the quarterly launch report. We’re going to have to agree to disagree here.
This isn’t that hard. It’s a failed launch attributed to the spacecraft rather than the launcher. Ed focuses on the launcher, so he’s right. You focus on the total mission, so you’re also right. You would get the same result if the payload exploded during launch.
A payload exploding would probably render the launch vehicle unable to complete it’s mission, and thus would be a launch failure even if not the fault of the launch vehicle.
In Zuma’s case, the launch vehicle completed it’s mission flawlessly. The LV’s mission ended successfully in the proper orbit with sending the separation command to the payload. The payload then failed to separate.
The only plausible definition is a launch success with a payload failure on orbit.
Of course if you focus on the whole mission you have to count every DOA spacecraft, and every spacecraft that doesn’t reach it’s design life as a mission failure. which isn’t feasible for a current year statistic
I don’t agree.
[edit: Poe’s law. That was meant to be funny.]
Once again, I’ve spend a substantial amount of time looking at the launch record as I did with the quarterly report. And it seems the only thing people are interested in is how to categorize the Zuma launch.
We’ve been through this. Isn’t there anything else in these stats and figures that are interesting?
Because while it is undoubtedly a mission failure from virtually every other source it is not categorized as a launch failure. If it wasn’t being put as a statistic, it would just be semantics. But having said that while some put AMOS-6 as a failure (it depends on who you ask) on basis of vehicle reliability, they don’t put Zuma as one because it was an issue not related to the vehicle. Basically it comes down to the purpose of the statistics, if the purpose is just to look at launches, neither AMOS-6 or Zuma would be counted, though Amos-6 would likely be annotated, if you are looking at missions, you would have to count every failed small sat and total spacecraft lifted, and if you want to get real accurate, you have to wait to see how many reach or exceed their design life.
It is more evidence of how Russia is fading as a space power, with China replacing it. It is also evidence that the Russian economy, and not just its space program is entering a Dark Age.
https://arstechnica.com/sci…
Russian editor: Our space program is entering the “Dark Ages”
“There is no place for modernization, there is only the mission of survival.”
Eric Berger – 7/9/2018, 10:45 AM
Well China certainly has a lot of domestic payloads, question is how much their gov space will keep up making new payloads and if they slow down if other sectors will keep up the cadence
almost all of China is either pure military, or obvious dual purpose.
I suspect that CHina will continue for a LONG LONG TIME.
Still their cadence will likely be stable or shrink a little as they simply don’t need as many new satellites, or at least as many deployments, managing so many satellites costs money, and when they get to the point where additional satellites don’t provide as much tactical gains, they will likely slow down, maintaining around the same number or equivalent value in smaller satellites just as no army or navy can grow indefinitely during peacetime
As a matter of fact, yes. RocketLab is a US-based company that builds much of their vehicle in the US and conducts their launches under US licensing. Why are they counted under New Zealand? Especially if you’re counting Euro Soyuz as Russian?
Not sure why people like to get so hung-up on this. Rocketlab existed as a NZ company long before it also became a US company. And Electron was designed and launched in NZ. Seems fair enough to me!
Not hung up on it, but in a compilation of statistics it seems relevant to ask why they are compiled a certain way.
Where it’s launched from doesn’t matter, see Euro Soyuz. And anyway, RocketLab is also planning to launch from US locations soon, including Kodiak, Canaveral, and/or Wallops. Will those be counted as US launches?
Soyuz, of course, is definitely and wholly a Russian design, but Electron uses a lot of US designed parts and technology, and its Rutherford engines are built at the company headquarters in Los Angeles.
ETA: RocketLab is not “also” a US company. They ARE a US company, with a wholly owned NZ subsidiary.
Taiyuan is not in Russia
No, It is located in North China
https://www.globalsecurity….
I know, thanks.
Does SpaceX categorize the Zuma mission as a launch vehicle failure? If they do, then, I side with Doug. If they don’t,, then I hope posters on other threads don’t start referencing Doug’s stats to discredit SpaceX’s F9. Just my opinion. Propaganda was a major tool during the Cold War. Anyway, the world’s launch providers seem to be upping their game. Will rocketlab pick up their launch rate? Will China launch the LM -5B by December? Interesting stats.
They do not classify Zuma as a launch failure, neither do most sources I have seen.
Another outsourced parts failure.
In this case Northrop Grumman insisted on using that payload adapter
Apparently the payload was extremely sensitive and needed an adapter that would give it a very smooth ride. Falcon 9 didn’t have anything that would work.
It came with the payload so it’s a payload failure, plain and simple. F9 is the smoothest ride to orbit right now for medium lift
That’s irrelevant to the classification of the failure unless the vibration levels were out of spec and contributed to the failure. But there is no evidence suggesting that. Anything including vibrations outside the EELV specs would prompt the USAF to look at the certification again, but they have said they are not doing that.
So was the payload adapter designed as if for the upper stage of a ULA rocket, which only puts out about 25k lbs of thrust? A higher thrust engine, like the F9 stage 2, which has 8 times the thrust of ULA’s second stage, would generate more vibrations, seems to me. Is this what you are referring to?
Except this is wrong, it has to do with combustion stability, SRMs are by far more shaky than lrms, having so many causes the vibrations to destructively interfere witg each other (think noise cancelling headphones) and so on, its the first stage where you would have problems
upper stage of Atlas 5 is 2 centairs, so 46 kLbs.
falcon 9 is 210 KLbs.
so ~5x.
Still, being full liquid, vs solid rocket, should make the atlas shake more.
No. Very different situation.
If the customer wants to supply the payload adapter, SpaceX has no control over the quality of that adapter. SpaceX was not responsible for that part at all.
This is in stark contrast to the CRS-7 strut, where SpaceX had final control over the parts that they accepted from a vendor. SpaceX had full responsibility for that part, and made the mistake of trusting the vendor instead of doing their own quality control on the part.
NASA’s internal investigation showed SpaceX designed the strut assembly design was poor.
It was both a design and quality control error. The design did not account for the part manufacturer’s recommended 5x safety factor but instead used a lower safety factor, and the lack of quality control checks meant that the occasional parts that fell below the design safety factor were not caught.
Real, pretty consistent with his past behavior. Sees problem, tries to engineer solution, another recent example is Hurricane Maria, and helping to rebuild the grid,
Musk’s concern about 13 people stuck in a cave half a world away is commendable enough. It’s also bound to infuriate anyone concerned about conditions at the Tesla factory in Fremont. He’s accused of putting production over worker safety. Instead of making the factory safer, the company merely reclassified injuries to keep them off the reports sent into government regulators.
https://www.revealnews.org/…
What makes you think that Musk has not devoted FAR more time, money, and effort to employee safety at Tesla?
I think the Musk worship has gone too far with some. That he has done a lot to advance several industries should be beyond dispute, that he is infallible is disputable. I think your reaction to excessive Musk favoritism colors your reactions. That is an opinion that could change either way if it were worth discussion.
Reading the linked article, I would need a lot more information to reach the same conclusions you have. A relatively new factory working out the bugs with a relatively new work force building a new class vehicle will have difficulty matching the safety records of decades old factories producing a standard product with a seasoned work force. New processes are inherently more likely to have bugs in safety and reliability similar to rockets in needing a track record.
Having run a business for a few decades myself, I am well aware that new workers average more careless than seasoned ones, and are far more likely to fake or exaggerate injuries in order to exploit workmans comp, which some see as free money. There will be avoidable injuries anywhere that will be horrible to the victims. Many of those actual accidents will be mixed in the statistics with minor things to make it look worse in any biased article. If the new factory can match the year over year safety records of old established factories, it would be an indictment of the older factories.
in this case, everybody that has had injuries, are ppl pushing for UAW to come in.
Correlation?
If they do, Tesla is dead.
Which adapter to use… SpaceX’s or Northrup’s adapter… for me .. it is always .. follow the money… which adapter put more money into the usual suspect’s pocket?
uh…..
Falcon 9 did what it was supposed to.
As such, falcon 9 should be 100% successful, not 1 failure.