SpaceX Falcon

Forced to attempt its Falcon 9 first-stage recoveries at sea, primarily for safety reasons, SpaceX now plans to beef up the seaworthiness of its autonomous spaceport drone ship to handle more extreme weather and sea states.
A large northwest swell generated by a storm off the northeastern U.S. seaboard meant the sea was too rough on Feb. 11 for Space X to attempt a landing of the Falcon 9 stage on the drone ship, a converted ocean-going platform. The vessel, which measures just 300 X 100 ft., with wings that extend the width to 170 ft., is not anchored and maintains position with station-keeping thrusters. One of these thrusters was out of action in the run-up to the delayed launch of the Falcon, which was carrying the Dscovr U.S. space weather satellite.

In the coming months, the SpaceX team will put the Crew Dragon through an in-flight abort test that will again put the SuperDraco engines and the spacecraft through a simulated emergency. That test will take place on the opposite coast of the United States from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California

Admin a écrit:1er échec pour Falcon 9

Juste après Max Q et avant l'arrêt du premier étage
Pb qui semble au niveau des réservoirs d'oxygène tout en haut du premier étage

The mishap probably will push the next Falcon 9 launch back until September at the earliest, and the first flight of the Falcon 9 Heavy originally planned for this year will be pushed back until not earlier than April 2016. Musk said it remains unclear who the customer will be on the return to flight.

The launch failure, which occurred seconds after liftoff on the CRS-7 Dragon mission, was the first Falcon 9 loss in 19 launches. The preliminary investigation pointed to the failure of a support strut in the second-stage liquid oxygen tank as the principal cause. The strut broke, releasing a helium pressurization bottle, which then triggered an overpressure of the stage.

Shotwell acknowledges the extensive fault tree analysis process used to weed through the accident investigation and its broader probe into the supply chain “is taking longer than expected.” She adds, however, that customers are “patient” and approve of the company’s careful approach to improving future launch assurance. “We’re taking more time than we originally envisioned, but I don’t think any one of our customers wants us to race to the cliff and fail again,” she says. The process “has been pretty thorough. Everyone at the campus has a buddy checking their work as well as the top-down review of suppliers.”

The Falcon 9 Upgrade involves changes throughout the rocket with the exception of the payload fairing and is not just a slightly modified Octaweb first-stage motor configuration and the increased thrust of the Merlin 1D engines.

The first stage landing legs have been upgraded and the first stage structure enhanced. The grid fins, to help guide the first stage to landing, sport a new design. The interstage structure is longer, the second stage Merlin Vacuum engine’s thrust is increased, its nozzle lengthened and the overall length of the second stage is increased.

Minor touchups for the same basic vehicle? Hardly, and Halliwell conceded that some insurance underwriters have asked questions about it. SES typically insures its launches to cover the cost of the rocket and the satellite.