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Latest of three articles was last week pre-empting this news. Wire services are never first ;)

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=4887

I frankly don't know how they plan to get that much more thrust and lift capability out of those SRBs and new engines...but if they think they can do it, I'd be inclined to support them whole heartedly.

Glancing around, it appears that 70 tons to orbit is a slight but nice improvement on the Shuttle C. 98 tons is a big improvement.

How about putting a decent sized nuclear reactor in space to provide unlimited power instead of relying on solar panels?

The reason for the NASA ESAS man-rating concerns was due to the 25mT CEV mass requirement, which ESAS maintained could not safely even be met by the massive Atlas V Heavy variant. According to a Lockheed Martin paper unveiled this week at the Space 2006 conference, the basic Atlas V 401 can meet FAA and NASA man-rating requirements with little modification with a much smaller capsule mass of 20,000 lbs.

At 20,000 lbs, there is enough margin in the Atlas V 401's flight envelope to allow the crew to safely abort at any time during launch, closing all unsafe 'black-zones'. Also, at 20,000 lbs structural loads on the vehicle are decreased enough so that a detailed Lockheed analysis indicates that all primary structures meet NASA 1.4 Factor of Safety margins.

It had more to do with the payload than the man-ratability. The design is "perfectly man-ratable" and has been discussed for **years**. Check out this article (which is what I cited) which states that with the reduction in mass full aborts from launch to orbit are attainable: here.

By the way let me be the first to say this is freaking cool. Between the quater billion LM has on the COTS and the design of the CEV they have the potential to drastically reduce the cost of space flight for tourists and eventually private research. The reason the Atlas is so darn expensive is there are only a few launches a year. The bigleow deal increases that five-fold. Increasing launches decreases cost due to limited manufacturing runs. And repeated reliability is a Good Thing for the new emerging commercial space market.

(IAARS)

Go Falcon 1

All the best Falcon 1.

Good luck SpaceX!

God speed Falcon 1.

Auto sequence start....This is it. Good luck falcon 1

In autoseq mode

T-60 seconds....Board is green.

Off we go

Here we go!

Darn, no video.

lost the feed :-(

Oh my, she was spinning out of control before the webcast cut out?? Only got a few glimpes.

I'm about to turn blue holding my breath... is it climbing or is it in bits???

OK, what just happened??? This is going to hit SpaceX very hard.

There's actually a quote from an interview with Elon Musk which answers a related question:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?id=4254

'The analogy I've used before is to imagine creating a huge software program that can only be tested in little pieces on a computer that is slightly different from what it is supposed to run on. However, when you do run it as a whole on the actual computer for the first time, it must run almost flawlessly without a single significant bug. When is the last time you saw a software program do that?'

2.3 MB WMV.

According to the video it seems the first stage thermal blanket added to reduce LOX boil-off, the casue of the first two launch delays, didn't release proberly. In all likleyhood it was this that cause the roll and loss of control.

Live video was shown of the vehicle's ascent from an onboard downward pointing camera. Within a few seconds the feed started to become intermittent. The small amount of imagery available showed a bright yellow glow protruding away from the normal exhaust pattern, as the rocket began to roll violently. The ascent profile also appeared to be more horizontal than what would be expected for that stage of the ascent. The video then cut out completely - with SpaceX confirming the rocket had been lost just moments later. - http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?id=4394

Nope. I had heard about the vertical testings but haven't seen one. It appears to be basically the same thing except, as the previous replier stated, they didn't release the clamps. I'm sure there are still plenty of sensors and it's a full powered burn.

This is the kind that I'm used to. Just the rocket, not the whole assembly.

As the first link mentions, the launch is scheduled for Thursday, 1PM PST (4PM EST). According to RLV News, here's a few good sources for real-time commentary and info about the launch:

* Mission Status Center - Falcon Launch Report - Justin Ray
* Out of the Cradle
* NASASpaceflight.com - LIVE: SpaceX/Falcon 1 - 23rd March: launch coverage thread

Also, it was recently revealed that SpaceX has been secretly developing their SpaceX Dragon orbital capsule, which will be able to carry up to 7 people to and from orbit. A full-size prototype of the capsule has already been constructed, and the capsule is expected to enter service by 2009 (several years before NASA's CEV).

SpaceX is not new, but in a speech at Virginia Tech, Musk talked about the company's troubles and its lawsuit against Boeing and Lockheed as he tries to get a slice of the valuable Air Force contracts."

Unfortunately, it looks like the suit against the merger of Boeing & Lockheed's launch operations (effectively creating a launch monopoly) has been dismissed. Some comments from RLV News (a fantastic space news resource, btw):

A judge has dismissed the lawsuit by SpaceX against the Boeing / Lockheed plan to form the United Launch Alliance to provide most all of the large payload launches for the Air Force for the next several years: SpaceX vs. Boeing and Lockheed Lawsuit Dismissed - NasaSpaceFlight.com - Feb.17.06.

From the description of the decision, it sounds like a Catch-22 situation. The judge is saying that you can't sue to stop the formation of a monopoly until you have built your system and proved that it is capable of competing against the monopoly. However, in a monopoly situation, especially in such a capital intensive area as rockets, it can be extremely difficult to raise the money to build your system if potential investors see that you will be kept out of a primary market. Talk about a barrier to entry!

In this case, Elon Musk has said he will build the Falcon 9 regardless, but it's a shame he has to enter a playing field tilted against him from the start.

An additional comment from the Space Law Probe: The court did not address the merits of SpaceX claims. (Nor, by the way, did the judge make note of whether a successful Falcon launch might have made a difference in the analysis or ruling, as some will no doubt wonder.)

SpaceX is not new, but in a speech at Virginia Tech, Musk talked about the company's troubles and its lawsuit against Boeing and Lockheed as he tries to get a slice of the valuable Air Force contracts."

Unfortunately, it looks like the suit against the merger of Boeing & Lockheed's launch operations (effectively creating a launch monopoly) has been dismissed. Some comments from RLV News (a fantastic space news resource, btw):

A judge has dismissed the lawsuit by SpaceX against the Boeing / Lockheed plan to form the United Launch Alliance to provide most all of the large payload launches for the Air Force for the next several years: SpaceX vs. Boeing and Lockheed Lawsuit Dismissed - NasaSpaceFlight.com - Feb.17.06.

From the description of the decision, it sounds like a Catch-22 situation. The judge is saying that you can't sue to stop the formation of a monopoly until you have built your system and proved that it is capable of competing against the monopoly. However, in a monopoly situation, especially in such a capital intensive area as rockets, it can be extremely difficult to raise the money to build your system if potential investors see that you will be kept out of a primary market. Talk about a barrier to entry!

In this case, Elon Musk has said he will build the Falcon 9 regardless, but it's a shame he has to enter a playing field tilted against him from the start.

An additional comment from the Space Law Probe: The court did not address the merits of SpaceX claims. (Nor, by the way, did the judge make note of whether a successful Falcon launch might have made a difference in the analysis or ruling, as some will no doubt wonder.)

I wish /. would quit promoting physorg, all they do is grab news and press releases from other sites and post them WITHOUT LINKS TO THE SOURCE as if they originated the story.

Another copy of the press release.

Yeah, sorry about the confusion. My argument comment was really meant for the parent to your post. Arg! Hopefully they'll read it. Anyway, as for the remote-piloting idea:

NasaSpaceFlight.com - Orbiters may save themselves

If they can fly unmanned, why not keep them around? Send them to the ISS, dock them remotely with the Kurs system or a variant of it, have a crew board and get the stuff, then send them home. Of course, I don't think they should be retired at all -- there's missions that big unmanned rockets can't do, or that the return capability is still needed for. If you're that worried about ascent and reentry, launch the crew in another ship and have it dock with the orbiter, then have them go home separately.

Makes everybody happy!

Apparenly the delay is due to a sensor failure that occured during tank testing. The delay will assist with getting a few other things sorted too, like cleaning up a hydraulic fluid spill.

NasaSpaceFlight.com has a nice write-up about it.