In article ,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote:


From what I read today, this is looking more and more like a
complete failure for the secondary payload.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/...review-falcon-
9-ascent-issues/

From above, it looks like the plan was to have the second stage do a
burn after Dragon separation. However, the second stage didn't pass
a propellant mass check required by NASA to insure that the
satellite would be inserted into an orbit that would guarantee no
risk of collision with ISS. The backup plan to release the
satellite in the second stage's parking orbit was executed. Because
of this, none of the remaining second stage propellant could be used
to help move the satellite into a more favorable orbit.

I wonder what the final orbit for the secondary payload would have
been if Falcon 9's second stage would have been allowed to perform a
final burn to fuel/oxidizer depletion.

How long can the second stage "wait" before performing a second (and I
presume final?) burn?

Speculation on ARocket is that the burn was canceled more because of the
NASA imposed rules to prevent anything from hitting ISS. Supposedly
this off-nominal situation was so far off nominal that it wasn't covered
by the analyses done for this reason. Because of this, they had to go
to the backup plan.

In the future, SpaceX (and NASA) might want to expand their analyses to
cover an off-nominal situation like this on the next flight. Ditching
an otherwise good satellite into a useless orbit is a bit of a shame
(for the paying customer).

Also, I'm still trying to come to grips with what apart from an
"according to common usage among the peanut gallery" "explosion" would
have caused those pressure relieving panels to blow. "Engine pressure
release" sounds a bit like describing a fire as an "exothermal event
with external charring." I think it was a great demonstration of the
Falcon9's resiliance but euphamisms (assuming they are indeed getting
used here) don't speak well towards organizational resiliance. Or
perhaps it is just my peanut-gallery understanding of terminology.

Speculation on ARocket (based on analysis of the video) is that the
combustion chamber must have been breached. This would qualify as
"engine pressure release", even though non-technical people would say
the combustion chamber "exploded".

Since the same non-technical people often (wrongly) say that Challenger
was destroyed by an "explosion", naturally SpaceX would not want to
encourage them to use that term. It's not correct and it's potentially
bad for their image.

The good news is that the first stage continued even with the failed
engine and Dragon made it into orbit successfully. The bad news is that
the secondary payload did not make it into the right orbit and SpaceX
has some failure analyses to do on the failed engine before the next
flight.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer