Poll - 2nd F9 Flight / 1st Operational Dragon

Second Flight of F9 together with 1st operational Dragon.

Since I think we're only a couple of months or so away from a launch, it's time for a poll on the outcome. There's probably as much riding on this launch as the previous one (no perhaps not quite as much) as Congress still hasn't agreed on funding either NASA or Commercial so the outcome could still perhaps influence Congress to some extent.

I've split out the launch vehicle from Dragon since a failure of the lv would not necessarily mean that the Dragon vehicle failed, only that it couldn't be tested.
This also allows for those of us who believe the first lv success was a fluke

PS This is the first poll I've tried to construct so be gentle please

I've voted for a full success of both F9 and Dragon because I don't believe that either will "fail", although I do believe (and actually hope) that they will uncover some problems with Dragon on Orbit, so it won't be a flawless picturebook flight.

Tests are done to learn something new after all.

i'm not going to make a prediction...

there's always a chance the LV will fail... there's absolutely no way they're gonna get through all of COTS without a failure unless by some miracle elon is clairvoyant about all the failure modes.

i think there's no "good" reason why dragon should have any problems. the big if to me is re-entry simply since it's the most demanding thing with something like that. also, docking is a tricky problem but they're not doing anything with it this flight. so, there's no reason dragon should have any problems unless there's a failure mode somehow associated to the launch vehicle.

They had a few problems with their initial test flight. That said, they're obviously a smart bunch of cookies to get this far so I've voted for success all round. Can't see any logic or evidence for suggesting the LV will fail. They have quite an engine flight history together with redundant avionics, and so forth. Stage sep' could possibly fail but again seems well tested system.

EDL is pretty well known situation and SpaceX will have leveraged off NASA experience in this so shouldn't be a problem.

I voted full success. Hope I'm not disappointed.

Full success with some minor unexpected problems/difficulties/defects (something akin to unexpectedly high roll rate on 1st launch of F9)

COTS-C Demo1 flight now slated for NET 23rd October 2010

Bit late but latest update on the SpaceX page:

http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

Good to see they're one up again on 'old' space re: Orion parachute first test.

All the hardware's at the Cape and being integrated.

Cheers.

New updates on the 2nd flight:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/002/100916wdr/


Inside SpaceX article:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1438

Cheers.

Thanks for the heads up!

New launch date NET 8th/9th November 2010.

Elon himself is giving Dragon "a 50% chance of returning to Earth intact":

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1447

I voted full success though, because I'm an optimist.

New update on the SpaceX website

http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

I have voted for 100% success purely as it is my hope it works, the sooner LEO & Near Earth man flight becomes commercial & everyday the sooner manned deep space exploration starts.

Dave

NET 18th November 2010 now.

Bean Counter;

I lost the link to the launch calendar site.

Do you see any changes in SpaceX launch date after this latest Shuttle delay?