The first failure was a secondary payload. The Falcon 9 had less spare fuel than expected because one of the first stage engines failed.[1] The primary (NASA) mission went fine. The secondary mission had a 95% chance of success, but NASA vetoed it.
The second failure was a second stage exploding. Had the payload been a crewed Dragon V2, those inside would have survived. Even without a launch escape system, the Dragon V1 was fine[2]:
> The Dragon CRS-7 capsule was ejected from the exploding launch vehicle and continued transmitting data until impact with the ocean. SpaceX officials stated that it could have been recovered if the parachutes deployed, however the software in the capsule did not include any provisions for parachute deployment in this situation.
Overall, it's a much safer design than the Shuttle. The crew vehicle is on top of the stack instead of along side it. If anything goes wrong, the capsule can GTFO and land with parachutes.
Mercury was flown on Redstone rockets for suborbital flights and Atlas rockets for orbital flights.
Redstone had a success rate of 5/6. [1]
Atlas had a success rate of 13/24. [2]
It was certainly a different time, but spaceflight has always been really risky. There has also always been more attention paid to human rated flights during the manufacturing & testing process. I also imagine SpaceX will not be doing first flights of new Falcon 9 variations with humans aboard.
That's not to say it is low risk, but 23/25 considering these are unmanned and largely R&D flights is not bad.
Saying "two failures" is awfully misleading. There was one catastrophic failure and one minor failure. In a hypothetical manned mission, the minor failure probably wouldn't have even prevented the mission from going forward, let alone endangered the crew.
The catastrophic failure is obviously a problem. However, for a manned mission, there is an abort system which is supposed to save the lives of the crew in an event like this. This is not like the Shuttle where if anything goes wrong on launch, everybody is doomed.
To state it more precisely, out of 25 launches, there has been one problem which wouldn't have been a threat, one catastrophic failure which would be survivable, and zero failures which would have killed anybody if they had been manned.
I dug up the number for Shuttle missions for comparison: Out of 135 total missions, 2 shuttles were destroyed in accidents [0].
While it is certainly great to aim for 100% success, it's helpful to remember that astronauts are willing to take measured risks in order to perform their missions, and that we must select rockets/etc from the options available, not from the options we might wish to have.
As far as I know neither of those failures would have resulted in loss of crew. One was a partial failure where due to a partial engine failure they didn't make their secondary orbital insertion, and the other was a loss of vehicle that would have been covered by either the crew escape system, or the dragon capsule parachuting to safety.
Once they start to recover the first stage, they'll get a lot more information about how their systems really performed, as opposed to how they think they performed from the telemetry. You can do all sorts of testing on all the returned components, figure out how much of the margin of safety was actually used, and look for fatigue cracks that weren't quite bad enough to result in failure this time round. In principle at least, this could greatly increase the safety of future launches, at least as far as the first stage is concerned.
I don't think anyone expects to strapping oneself to a rocket that packs the energy potential of a not-so-small nuke will ever be considered perfectly safe. And remember the failures they had would be survivable with the current launch abort system Dragon has.
There was a time sailing across the Atlantic was dangerous.
With the addition of the crew escape system plus nailing down the causes of their last failure, very much safer than any other manned launcher the US has had in service.
The regulatory and compliance checks for manned missions are considerably more rigorous than for unmanned ones. If you look back, manned missions have historically had much better success records than unmanned ones by the same operators.
The entire company is firmly focused on return to flight. Sometimes failure can be a great motivator and, ultimately, if used as an opportunity to learn and improve, a good thing.
Humans are a dime a billion. We have no problem slaughtering humans daily in contrived conflict but somehow losing a few furthering scientific understanding is unacceptable.
Yay, passed phase 1 readiness review. I am a bit surprised they could pass before they have the inflight abort test but hey this is a huge step forward.
I keep wondering if there will be a program where a group of 5 can hire a pilot/co-pilot and ride in a Dragon Crew into orbit. Spend the day there, and then fly home. If you are re-using the first stage at that point I can't imagine the cost is going to be more than a few million $ for each "astronaut".
When this mission occurs, it will be particularly historic, because we are at a point in history that is similar to the human spaceflight gap that existed between the Apollo program and the Space Shuttle program in that the U.S. does not currently possess this mission capability.
It will also be symbolic for Americans: an American flag was presented to the ISS crew during the STS-135 mission (the final Space Shuttle mission). It is awaiting return by the next mission that is launched from the U.S.
> It will also be symbolic for Americans: an American flag was presented to the ISS crew during the STS-135 mission (the final Space Shuttle mission). It is awaiting return by the next mission that is launched from the U.S.
I find it very interesting how the human sense of belonging to a group carries on as we keep, as a society, moving forward.
Arguing in favor of, or against it is not really what concerns me, but instead just observing how we change as we move closer and closer to the possibility of having to leave those old notions aside. I guess that's why it's common in sci-fi to have people born in other world have no sense of belonging to the Earth.
Probably a lot of the reasons for making it a big deal to return the flag in a US-launched vehicle has to do with PR, but still I can imagine that both engineers and astronauts will be very proud of making that happen nonetheless.
Much more significant than nationalism is the fact that SpaceX is a private enterprise. Private space ventures are our only hope for purposeful success, sustained expansion, and the conquest of space.
This might be seen as the tipping point in commercial space ventures. With SpaceX running LEO operations, NASA/Roscosmos can focus on the planets next.
Good news on that! The Falcon Heavy is tentatively scheduled to have its first flight in April-May 2016. The Dragon v2 capsule is designed for powered landings, which is how the in-flight abort thing works. Combine the two, and fiddle with the configuration a bit, and you can land in a whole lot of desirable parts of the solar system. Want to send a Mars rover? They're calculating that they can deliver 2-4 tons of payload to the surface of Mars. Want to send an unmanned mission to the moon, or Europa? Ditch the parachutes and add extra propellant to make up for the lack of aerobraking. And so on -- it could be an incredible boon for planetary science.
I'm surprised they would do this while the previous launch was still a failure and SpaceX has not shown a series of unmanned flights with a reliability as good as what the Russians offered. That would seem to be the benchmark for manned flights.
As pointed out in the article, this is basically a direct consequence of the commercial crew program:
"The contracts call for orders to take place prior to certification to support the lead time necessary for missions in late 2017, provided the contractors meet readiness conditions."
There is plenty of time for NASA to back out if either of the companies don't meet the milestones.
[+] [-] SCAQTony|10 years ago|reply
They have had two failures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...
Out of 25 launches is that a safe enough success rate?
[+] [-] ggreer|10 years ago|reply
The second failure was a second stage exploding. Had the payload been a crewed Dragon V2, those inside would have survived. Even without a launch escape system, the Dragon V1 was fine[2]:
> The Dragon CRS-7 capsule was ejected from the exploding launch vehicle and continued transmitting data until impact with the ocean. SpaceX officials stated that it could have been recovered if the parachutes deployed, however the software in the capsule did not include any provisions for parachute deployment in this situation.
Overall, it's a much safer design than the Shuttle. The crew vehicle is on top of the stack instead of along side it. If anything goes wrong, the capsule can GTFO and land with parachutes.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_CRS-1
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_CRS-7
[+] [-] krschultz|10 years ago|reply
Redstone had a success rate of 5/6. [1] Atlas had a success rate of 13/24. [2]
It was certainly a different time, but spaceflight has always been really risky. There has also always been more attention paid to human rated flights during the manufacturing & testing process. I also imagine SpaceX will not be doing first flights of new Falcon 9 variations with humans aboard.
That's not to say it is low risk, but 23/25 considering these are unmanned and largely R&D flights is not bad.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone_Launch_Vehicl...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas#Atlas-D_deployment
[+] [-] mikeash|10 years ago|reply
The catastrophic failure is obviously a problem. However, for a manned mission, there is an abort system which is supposed to save the lives of the crew in an event like this. This is not like the Shuttle where if anything goes wrong on launch, everybody is doomed.
To state it more precisely, out of 25 launches, there has been one problem which wouldn't have been a threat, one catastrophic failure which would be survivable, and zero failures which would have killed anybody if they had been manned.
[+] [-] dantillberg|10 years ago|reply
While it is certainly great to aim for 100% success, it's helpful to remember that astronauts are willing to take measured risks in order to perform their missions, and that we must select rockets/etc from the options available, not from the options we might wish to have.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions
[+] [-] avar|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhandley|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mh-|10 years ago|reply
1: http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a6611/us-space-shuttle...
[+] [-] rbanffy|10 years ago|reply
There was a time sailing across the Atlantic was dangerous.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the8472|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jackgavigan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zdean|10 years ago|reply
https://reason.com/archives/2012/01/26/how-much-is-an-astron...
[+] [-] rebootthesystem|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AC__|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quantisan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zensavona|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|10 years ago|reply
I keep wondering if there will be a program where a group of 5 can hire a pilot/co-pilot and ride in a Dragon Crew into orbit. Spend the day there, and then fly home. If you are re-using the first stage at that point I can't imagine the cost is going to be more than a few million $ for each "astronaut".
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|10 years ago|reply
With regards to the second comment, I can find out if you're interested.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8
[+] [-] karmicthreat|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karmicthreat|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Arjuna|10 years ago|reply
It will also be symbolic for Americans: an American flag was presented to the ISS crew during the STS-135 mission (the final Space Shuttle mission). It is awaiting return by the next mission that is launched from the U.S.
[+] [-] saganus|10 years ago|reply
I find it very interesting how the human sense of belonging to a group carries on as we keep, as a society, moving forward.
Arguing in favor of, or against it is not really what concerns me, but instead just observing how we change as we move closer and closer to the possibility of having to leave those old notions aside. I guess that's why it's common in sci-fi to have people born in other world have no sense of belonging to the Earth.
Probably a lot of the reasons for making it a big deal to return the flag in a US-launched vehicle has to do with PR, but still I can imagine that both engineers and astronauts will be very proud of making that happen nonetheless.
[+] [-] mkempe|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soperj|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agildehaus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atroyn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjscott|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lutorm|10 years ago|reply
"The contracts call for orders to take place prior to certification to support the lead time necessary for missions in late 2017, provided the contractors meet readiness conditions."
There is plenty of time for NASA to back out if either of the companies don't meet the milestones.
[+] [-] clockworkelf|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] clockworkelf|10 years ago|reply
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