August 2003 update: turbo-pump at full power, TVC complete

From:: Elon Musk
Date:: August 2003 ('Update for August' 2003; HobbySpace says it arrived by email on Friday 12 September 2003, before it was posted on spacex.com.)
To:: SpaceX update mailing list

Excerpt. Only this much of the email has been made public.

flying colors [...] Merlin to be the best performing engine of its class (LOX/Kerosene, GG cycle turbo-pump) [...] Development and testing of the thrust vector control (TVC) system that steers the main engine is now complete. [...] integrating those three subsystems together and attaching Merlin to the Falcon stage 1 primary flight structure [...] first stage hold-down flight simulation firing in late October or early November [...] as close to an actual launch as the vehicle will get before the real thing.

About this email

Quoted fragments from the August 2003 newsletter: the Merlin turbo-pump passed a full 180-second duty cycle, thrust vector control development is complete, and the next milestone is integrating the engine with the first stage for a hold-down firing in late October or early November.

Notes

Excerpt only: these are the passages that HobbySpace's RLV News quoted verbatim from the newsletter when it came out; HobbySpace's own paraphrased highlights are not included. The complete newsletter was posted on spacex.com (Updates section), which is no longer online, and no full-text reprint was found. The quotes are short fragments embedded in HobbySpace's 13 September 2003 summary, given here in the order HobbySpace printed them.

Where it came from

Published by Musk; attribution single-source.

HobbySpace RLV News (Clark S. Lindsey)

SpaceX, newsletter. Tags: spacex-update, falcon-1, merlin, turbopump, thrust-vector-control

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