The initial stories about the launch of the Space X Dragon cargo capsule were flush with excitement and success. But it soon became apparent that the launch was not quite "picture perfect," as Space X founder and chairman Elon Musk called it.
How did the press handle this pivot from success to, let's say, qualified success? Or, as some called it, failure?
Brendan McGarry at Bloomberg Businessweek described the launch and reported the glee of Space X's executives before reporting, about halfway through his story, that "one of the rocket’s nine engines had an 'anomaly.'" The failure of one of the engines didn't disrupt the cargo mission, but it's important to note it, as McGarry did.
Joe Pappalardo at Popular Mechanics took a much more critical approach, writing, in an updated blog post, that "the 'picture perfect' launch of Space Exploration Technologies' (Space X) Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station on Sunday was not so perfect after all." The headline was "Space X Engine Failure: The Good, Bad, and Ugly."
The good, he writes, was that the mission succeeded. The bad? Space X is under a lot of scrutiny, and a rocket failure is not so different from a mission-destroying rocket explosion. And the ugly: Reliability is key in rockets. Maybe this cheaper rocket will not be nearly as reliable as the NASA rockets it's aiming to replace.
Other stories were mixed in how they reported the "anomaly," but as the week went on, reports began to focus on another problem. Irene Klotz of Reuters and many others reported that, as Klotz wrote in her lede, "An experimental communications satellite flying piggyback aboard a Space Exploration Technologies' Falcon 9 rocket fell out of orbit and burned up in the atmosphere following a problem during liftoff, satellite operator Orbcomm said on Friday."
Amy Svitak of Aviation Week wrote a highly critical piece under this lede:
The success of Space Exploration Technologies' first cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) may mask the fact that the rocket's first commercial satcom mission, launched Oct. 7, must be judged a failure.
While the engine failure "did not disturb the ISS mission, it led to the total loss of the OG2 satellite, a predecessor to a constellation of 18 second-generation spacecraft to be launched on Falcon 9 vehicles in the next two years," she wrote. It's a thorough, detailed story.
Some reporters might have been a little too enthusiastic about the initial, apparent success of the launch, and the successful delivery of the cargo to the space station; space reporters tend to be an enthusiastic bunch. But most seemed to catch up with the problems.
It's now clear that the "anomaly" was a failure, and that's worth remembering. Except in quotes, "anomaly" is a techno-euphemism we can probably do without.
-Paul Raeburn
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