Wed, Jun 04, 2008
Engines Generated Nearly Half A Million Pounds Of Force
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) conducted the
first five-engine firing of its Falcon 9 medium to heavy lift
rocket at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on Thursday, May
29. At full power the engines generated almost half a million
pounds of force, and consumed 1,750 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen
per second.
The five engine test set the record as the most powerful test
yet on the towering 235-foot tall test stand.
The test of the five Merlin 1C engines, arranged in a cross
pattern like the Saturn V moon rocket, is the last step before
firing the full complement of nine engines, scheduled for this
summer. With all engines operating, the Falcon 9 generates over one
million pounds of thrust in vacuum - four times the maximum thrust
of a 747 aircraft.
"This is the first time that we’ve added more than one
engine at a time, and all phases of integration and testing went
smoothly," said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for
SpaceX. "As with previous tests, we saw no unexpected interactions
between the engines, and are on schedule for adding four more
engines."
The first Falcon 9 will arrive at the SpaceX launch site at Cape
Canaveral by the end of 2008. The next flight of SpaceX’s
smaller Falcon 1 rocket is scheduled for late June or July of
2008.
SpaceX is developing a family of launch vehicles intended to
reduce the cost and increase the reliability of both manned and
unmanned space transportation ultimately by a factor of ten. With
its Falcon line of launch vehicles, powered by the internally
developed Merlin engine, SpaceX is able to offer light, medium and
heavy lift capabilities to deliver spacecraft into any inclination
and altitude, from low-Earth orbit to geosynchronous orbit to
planetary missions.
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