Spaceflight

914 readers

25 users here now

Your one-stop shop for spaceflight news and discussion.

All serious posts related to spaceflight are welcome! JAXA, ISRO, CNSA, Roscosmos, ULA, RocketLab, Firefly, Relativity, Blue Origin, etc. (Arca and Pythom, if you must).

Other related space communities:

Related meme community:

!spaceflightmemes@sh.itjust.works

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works

llamacoffee@lemmy.world

The first flight of Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket lasted just 40 seconds (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 days ago by threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works to c/spaceflight@sh.itjust.works

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Markie84@feddit.org 21 points 5 days ago (2 children)

The headline is a bit misleading, as if this is a failure or there was an expectation that the rocket would NOT crash. On the contrary. NO space programme in the world has ever managed to ensure that the first test rocket did not crash. The flight time of 18 seconds is also significantly longer than the first SpaceX rocket, for example. The spokesperson from the company "Isar Aerospace" therefore also - rightly - described the launch as a "great success".

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 14 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Yeah, it lifted off and didn't destroy the pad. For a first launch, I'd say that's pretty good!

Edit:

The flight time of 18 seconds is also significantly longer than the first SpaceX rocket, for example

Spectrum's first flight is actually pretty similar to the first Falcon 1 flight, and even exhibited a similar failure mode:

The vehicle had a noticeable rolling motion after liftoff, as shown on the launch video, rocking back and forth a bit, and then at T+26 seconds rapidly pitched over.

[–] burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Agreed. They achieved some milestones. Filling, ignition, launch, clearing the pad. But Max Q, MECO, stage separation, anything related to the 2nd stage...

[–] gazter@aussie.zone 4 points 4 days ago

Baby steps... We didn't shoot for the moon on our first launch.