Commercial Spaceflight Industry Drifts Back to Earth

By John Matson | March 6, 2013

... space exploration is hard, no matter who you are, what your business model is, or what engineering innovations you bring to the table. (There’s a reason people use “rocket science” as shorthand for something difficult.) And the first two official SpaceX deliveries to the ISS, while successful, have each served as a reality check—a valuable reminder of the enormous complexity and high stakes of spaceflight.

During the first commercial resupply mission, in October 2012, one of the nine engines on the Falcon 9 rocket lost pressure and shut down about 80 seconds into flight. The rocket still delivered its primary payload to orbit, and SpaceX touted in a statement that “Falcon 9 did exactly what it was designed to do.” The statement went on to boast that “Falcon 9 is designed to handle an engine out situation and still complete its mission. No other rocket currently flying has this ability.” But the engine failure caused the Falcon to deposit a secondary payload—a small satellite—in an unstable orbit, lower than had been planned, and the satellite quickly fell back toward Earth and burned up in the atmosphere.

The second resupply trip, which began March 1 with a clean liftoff of a Falcon 9, quickly took a turn for the worse when three of the four thruster pods on the Dragon cargo capsule failed to fire up. For a time, it looked as if the Dragon might not be able to reach its intended orbit to rendezvous with the station. By the time the problem had been corrected, six hours into flight, NASA and SpaceX had postponed by a day the Dragon’s planned arrival at the ISS. Eventually the Dragon docked successfully on March 3 ...

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/03/06/commercial-spaceflight-industry-drifts-back-to-earth/