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Nine months have passed since the first launch of Firefly’s Alpha rocket, which lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Unfortunately, one of the rocket’s 4 main engines failed about 15 seconds after the flight started and the rocket shut down about two minutes later.
The era that followed was complicated for the company and its founder, Tom Markusic. In addition to dissecting the cause of Alpha’s failure, Firefly also violated regulations set by the U. S. Committee on Foreign Investment, CFIUS.
In December, the Air Force blocked Firefly from showing up at the Vandenberg launch site because of CFIUS’ headaches with the company’s main investor, Ukrainian Max Polyakov. to the launch site. But it’s a messy and distracting scenario at a time when Firefly had to focus on reaching orbit.
Now, better times seem to be ahead of the company. Firefly came out of this crisis with an instant boost that could go through a summer launch. To put all of this in perspective, Markusic spoke with Ars about Alpha’s initial failure, plans to launch the company for the rest of this year, and looking for a new investor to upgrade Polyakov.
On Alpha’s first flight last September, one of the rocket’s 4 Reaver engines stopped working after an electrical connector, the last of the engine’s main propeller valves, failed. This sent a signal to the Reaver engine to stop.
After the flight, Firefly engineers discovered that the electrical conductor’s internal pins had been subjected to higher vibrations than expected and had been cut. “Because it’s a unique vibration environment, it’s likely to be a phenomenon we can only see in flight. “Markusic said.
He explained that Alpha’s engines were among the first Reavers the company had built, and that they “painted a little more brutally” than the recent engines the company built. Since the new flight engines run on less vibration, he doesn’t think the electric spindle shear challenge will do it again.
However, the company has been careful to move the electrical conductor to the top of the vehicle, where there is less vibration, and has also provided it with a compromised mounting bracket to isolate it further. Said.
Firefly noticed some other factor in Alpha’s first flight that he hadn’t expected. As the engines moved and rumbled on the ascent, the rocket frame began to oscillate in phase with the movement of the engines. This is called the phenomenon of “the tail wags the dog”.
Engineers observed that the rocket oscillated at the same frequency as the engines on the test bench, because the dynamometer itself absorbed this movement. Markusic said that because the engineering team now understands this phenomenon with Alpha, it can be solved with some modest modifications to the rocket’s steering and navigation software.
There are other reasons to be confident before the next orbital release attempt. This is the current edition of Alpha, so the hardware is more mature. Many parts and sections of the reinforcement have better compatibility, Markusic said, allowing for a more powerful overall construction. . There is also less wear and tear. Before the launch of the first Alpha, it was tested 18 times. The moment when Rocket was tested once.
“We feel ready for the mission right now,” he said. “I’m completely waiting for the flight of the moment to pass into orbit, but we’re passing to see minor anomalies. “it was not tested on the first release.
The flight of the aircraft is already underway in Vandenberg. Markusic said the company is still waiting for final availability of the model and approval of the launch from the Federal Aviation Administration, but a tentative launch date was set for July 17.
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