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The original plan was to sling huge rockets in the middle, but the rockets are cancelled and so they're only launching the tiny Pegasus rockets now

No, that happened when the US refused to sign up to the “Treaty on Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space and of the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects” ref

Except they did work in 2013 and Japan also did it in 2010 with that technology like the US did even earlier in 2008 . You see, it is and has been easy to produce this result for more than a decade and actually for a much longer time with other weapons. Short, Medium, Intercontinental. All have been hit. But all used tracking to know exactly where they were in flight, and were launched from known locations, and targeted in advance from known positions.

From a conversation among the grownups. Something modeled on the Coast Guard rather than the Air Force since we have regulatory compliance, defense and force projection.

https://spacenews.com/space-fo...

Amazon appears to me to be a poorly-managed company. Every Amazon web page has the distractions of Amazon trying to sell something else besides the product that interests you.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, seems to have a poorly-managed life. He was having sex with a woman besides his wife. Now his wife gets half of his money, more than $65 billion.

Knowing the sloppiness around Jeff Bezos, would you go into sub-orbital space with Blue Origins, risking your life to be a tourist?

How will Jeff Bezos losing half his money affect Amazon? ... this is going to change the ownership in Amazon.

Continuing the new Slashdot's tradition of using crappiest possible links that monetize for the site owner I see. Here is an article that actually has useful coverage of this.

This is proposal for a study yet to be done, which if actually funded and carried out would to some sort of extraction demonstration on the Moon. So we are several steps removed from any actual "mining the Moon" with this.

Nope, most of them will be in an orbit of around 210 miles.

SpaceX has two constellation applications pending FCC approval — one for a 4,425 satellite constellation operating in Ka- and Ku-band from around 1,200 kilometers, and another for 7,518 V-band satellites flying between 335 and 345 kilometers. The company says the latency of its constellation will range from 25 to 35 milliseconds, appreciably faster than that of geosynchronous satellites which usually have at least a half a second of round-trip signal delay from being 36,000 kilometers up.

I wonder how many 'dark satellites' there are in orbit that are technically functional yet have been abandoned because they're no longer able to maintain the desired orbit. I bet enthusiasts could do some interesting things if given access to those.

there are currently 1 980 active satellites in orbit. Whilst this is 13.92% increase over the number of active satellites last year, it still represents only 40% of the satellites orbiting the planet.

This means that there are 2 877 pieces of useless metal hurtling around the Earth at high speed!

Source

It's easy to find inactive satellite numbers. Active but not in use due to a specific cause would take serious research and then only supply a minimum.

Casual check for satellites in the wrong orbit but active: at least 24 satellites. [1] [2] [3] [4]

As of February, there are no plans for the Falcon 9 or the Falcon Heavy to ever be human rated. Elon is pushing that off until BFR, which won't even begin testing for another year. https://spacenews.com/spacex-n...

SpaceX no longer planning crewed missions on Falcon Heavy by Jeff Foust — February 5, 2018 http://spacenews.com/spacex-no...

Correct... but I wonder if they may be useful for in-orbit maneuvering...

It wasn't the drive unit producing the thrust. It was the cable along the torsion arm carrying current. The EmDrive had nothing to do with it.

Yes, it is possible to use current loops with satellites to interact with Earth's magnetic field, but ordinary electrical engineering is what you need to call upon. Not a Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster (QVPT) as this paper chooses to call it (with zero evidence that the effect, if real, is "quantum" or "quantum vacuum" or "plasma" related).

Apwopos, have you met my fwiend, Biggus Dickus?

Out if interest I had a look at the way spaceX is funded or at least seed funded and it's clear that Musk has risked the fortune he earned from paypal (100 million) to get spaceX going. There is no doubt there is risk however he has his own skin in the game so I've never understood why people give him a hard time, just because he is living every kids dream and having a go? It say's a lot about the hater mentality that wants us to sit around doing nothing, not wearing deodorant criticizing people reaching for the stars.

I can't see him doing this without some sort of government funding and the la times seems to thinks so however I don't really see this as grounds for criticism, how could he do it without government funding and contracts?

Should Musk expect government funding to continue to develop rocket systems via spaceX. Why not? If his companies are meeting the specified goals to receive funding then why shouldn't they receive funding. We've been told for years by Boeing and Lockheed Martin that re-usable launch systems were not possible however clearly that is not true.

So while I don't think I fall into the category of being a fanboy, I certainly don't want to see him fail. So if you are going to make up allegations about the companies financial state, let's have a look at what you've got so we can evaluate it.

One thing is for sure, whatever you think of the guy, Musk has generated a lot of interest in space flight. There is nothing boring about a pair of launch boosters making a double sonic boom before they land.

Tesla has gotten over 8 billion dollars in direct subsidies between the USSG and state of California

Add to the list of myths that just won't die.

SpaceX got their space rating when congress told the USAF that it would happen

No, they had to sue the USAF to break ULA's monopoly. USAF was sued because they made endless delays in conducting their engineering analysis, which SpaceX accused of being due to the fact that ULA offers an effective revolving-door policy for former USAF officials involved in approvals. SpaceX had already turned over all of the data that was supposed to qualify them to launch. And you want to talk about the fact that some people in congress have supported SpaceX... far more people in congress have continually and consistently lined up behind ULA, which carefully spreads its jobs around various congressional districts and spends large amounts on lobbying.

I'll never get why you people love crazy-expensive monopolies run by defense giants so much.

Tesla has gotten over 8 billion dollars in direct subsidies between the USSG and state of California

Add to the list of myths that just won't die.

SpaceX got their space rating when congress told the USAF that it would happen

No, they had to sue the USAF to break ULA's monopoly. USAF was sued because they made endless delays in conducting their engineering analysis, which SpaceX accused of being due to the fact that ULA offers an effective revolving-door policy for former USAF officials involved in approvals. SpaceX had already turned over all of the data that was supposed to qualify them to launch. And you want to talk about the fact that some people in congress have supported SpaceX... far more people in congress have continually and consistently lined up behind ULA, which carefully spreads its jobs around various congressional districts and spends large amounts on lobbying.

I'll never get why you people love crazy-expensive monopolies run by defense giants so much.

Tesla has gotten over 8 billion dollars in direct subsidies between the USSG and state of California

Add to the list of myths that just won't die.

SpaceX got their space rating when congress told the USAF that it would happen

No, they had to sue the USAF to break ULA's monopoly. USAF was sued because they made endless delays in conducting their engineering analysis, which SpaceX accused of being due to the fact that ULA offers an effective revolving-door policy for former USAF officials involved in approvals. SpaceX had already turned over all of the data that was supposed to qualify them to launch. And you want to talk about the fact that some people in congress have supported SpaceX... far more people in congress have continually and consistently lined up behind ULA, which carefully spreads its jobs around various congressional districts and spends large amounts on lobbying.

I'll never get why you people love crazy-expensive monopolies run by defense giants so much.

That's exactly what NASA and at least one commercial space company are doing at the moment.

The story is irritatingly vague on this point, but a previous comment by Musk makes it clearer:

Will be starting with a full-scale Ship doing short hops of a few hundred kilometers altitude and lateral distance [...] Those are fairly easy on the vehicle, as no heat shield is needed, we can have a large amount of reserve propellant and don't need the high area ratio, deep space Raptor engines.

He's talking about only the upper stage of the BFR - the spaceship part that actually goes to Mars and back - taking off under its own power and doing a little hop through the atmosphere. That's much less ambitious than even the first step you listed, testing in orbit. But it's something fundamental that should be done first, and it's basic enough that it might just be possible on this sort of timeline (within 21 months). Even if the spaceship could lift a few metres off the pad, hover for a few seconds under control, then land softly, that would be a solid result.

Shotwell is on the record stating that Space-X saw substantial savings on the first reuse which they very exhaustively vetted. Given that they have certainly streamlined the process, they’re certainly seeing even better savings.

Even though there are no indépendant figures on how much they are seeing it’s certainly already safe to say that they are already saving money.

http://spacenews.com/spacex-ga...

Good catch, that link pointed to the earlier failure.

Here's a link to the failure on the pad http://spacenews.com/spacex-narrows-down-cause-of-falcon-9-pad-explosion which was attributed to a helium tank failure http://www.latimes.com/nation/ct-spacex-explosion-20170102-story.html, or http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a23652/spacex-falcon-explosion-cause-helium-loading/.

Sorry I inadverently linked to a different failure that was linked to a different helium tank failure.

No wonder another Indonesian bank BRI bought their owned satellite. This lousy Telkom must be a really shitty telecom.

Next time get your "News for Nerds" from a site other than USA Today:
http://spacenews.com/spacex-la...

See. Metric. Although in your defense the article did originally come from Florida Today which is usually a decent site for space coverage.

Spacenews reports that SpaceX has been working with NASA to identify potential landing sites on Mars for both its Red Dragon spacecraft starting in 2020 and future human missions. SpaceX, working with scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and elsewhere, had identified several potential landing sites, including one that looks particularly promising - Arcadia Planitia.

Those landing sites are of particular interest, he said, for SpaceX’s long-term vision of establishing a human settlement on Mars, but he said the company wouldn’t rule our sending Red Dragon spacecraft elsewhere on the planet to serve other customers. “We’re quite open to making use of this platform to take various payloads to other locations as well,” he said. “We’re really looking to turn this into a steady cadence, where we’re sending Dragons to Mars on basically every opportunity.”

The Red Dragon spacecraft, he said, could carry about one ton of useful payload to Mars, with options for those payloads to remain in the capsule after landing or be deployed on the surface. “SpaceX is a transportation company,” he said. “We transport cargo to the space station, we deliver payloads to orbit, so we’re very happy to deliver payloads to Mars.”

Fans of the book/movie "The Martian" would be happy if SpaceX does select Arcadia Planitia for their first landing site as that was the landing site of the Ares 3.

This article is interesting reading: 1 in 5 Cubesats Violates International Orbit Disposal Guidelines http://spacenews.com/1-in-5-cu...

Yes. http://spacenews.com/vasimr-ho...

I watched the presentation. The most impressive part is the fact there is already functional prototype hardware for this thing. Not only is a Raptor engine being tested in Texas. There is also a full size fuel tank. Progress is being made.

I watched the presentation. The most impressive part is the fact there is already functional prototype hardware for this thing. Not only is a Raptor engine being tested in Texas. There is also a full size fuel tank. Progress is being made.

I'm a really big fan of SpaceX and a lot of the other things that Musk is doing. He's helping solve global warming with Tesla and SolarCity not just with his own companies but by pushing other companies to follow. The Falcon 9 is as of right now the cheapest rocket for medium sized payloads even without reuse (they aren't launching by themselves the very small payloads, and until the Falcon Heavy is setup they won't have the ability to launch the largest satellites). That number will go down even further if/when reuse is successful (and honestly I was very skeptical initially about reuse when they were just starting with the Falcon 1). However, this sort of statement worries me a lot, especially in the context of the recent AMOS-6 disaster where they lost a rocket on the ground and destroyed the satellite in the process http://spacenews.com/analysis-disaster-on-the-launchpad-implications-for-spacex-and-the-industry/. We need to colonize other worlds, simply as a backup plan for serious disasters on Earth, but it would seem a lot better if they focused on systems just for Mars and didn't jump out so far ahead as to aim at other bodies (as cool as that is). I worry that they are proceeding too fast, and that if they fail, it may not be for a very long time until anyone else tries anything similar.

The returned Falcon 9 first stage that SpaceX wants to refly might be experimental, but this was on a brand new Falcon 9. Which have flown 27/29 missions successfully. Spacecom bought $330 million worth of launch insurance (which wasn't used for the static fire explosion because it was separately covered by pre-launch insurance) for $40 million.

So if you figure a 93% chance that the insurance company gets $40 million scot free, and a 7% chance they end up forking over $330 million, the insurance company still comes out way ahead (handwaving liquidity costs, chances the satellite will fail in orbit over 15 years, etc).

"Just a camera..."

"Just an antenna..."

"Little need for this extra fuel..."

Maybe you could learn math and physics one day. Once you get into high school.

Also, 29 is now a small number -- http://spacenews.com/40974dnep...

Expect a first phase consisting of several supply rockets with prefabs, equipment and tools. Expect a degree of heavy duty robotics to help with fabrication. Expect a *lot* of solar panels, plus of course Tesla battery packs...

He's stated publicly that he wants to start a 26 month delivery cycle as soon as 2018.

“The basic game plan is that we’re going to send a mission to Mars with every Mars opportunity from 2018 onwards,” he said. Launch windows for Mars missions open every 26 months, with the next opening in the spring of 2018. “We’re establishing cargo flights to Mars that people can count on,” he said. “I think if things go according to plan, we should be able to launch people probably in 2024, with arrival in 2025.”

Last I heard brett Tobey resigned, there is actually quite a bit of controversy over his last remarks

Last I heard brett Tobey resigned, there is actually quite a bit of controversy over his last remarks

The spy satellites take pictures of objects only a few miles below them in broad daylight.

A few hundred miles below them. I'd be pretty concerned if I saw a spy satellite cruising a mile overhead my house. Of course, it'd probably also be a flaming ball of metal and no longer a "satellite" at that point.

Then there's also the Russian satellite that has no respect for personal space.

the company’s service agreements stipulate a minimum height of at least 50 miles, or 80 kilometers. Whitesides said that has been the case since Virgin Galactic first began selling rides on SpaceShipTwo about nine years ago.

Given their engine troubles, it is not known if it will reach 100km, and they are not required to.

Article and pic here. SpaceX is planning a main landing pad as well as four contingency landing pads at Launch Complex 13 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, according to a June 2014 environmental impact statement.

The U.S. Air Force announced Feb. 10 that SpaceX has signed a five-year lease for Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 13, which was used to launch Atlas rockets and missiles between 1956 and 1978. In its new role, it will serve as a landing pad for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy booster cores launched from Florida, the Air Force said.
“The contingency pads would only be utilized in order to enable the safe landing of a single vehicle should last-second navigation and landing diversion be required. There are no plans to utilize the contingency pads in order to enable landing multiple stages” at once, the assessment said.

They renovated LC13 and it's now a landing pad.

http://spacenews.com/spacex-le...

It would help to read the actual thread where the process of elimination took place rather than the NSF forum thread which was after it was already hashed out. The discussion also took place on IRC, but it also involved evidence that went well beyond just the photos, including automatically eliminating all launches from Vandenberg and then trying to perform some ocean current analysis to try and figure out how long it would take for ocean currents to push rocket debris from between Florida and Bermuda to make its way to the British Isles.

It is explosion debris.

No, it is not necessarily explosion debris. This particular section appears to be from the interstage section between the upper and lower stages of the Falcon 9, which is jettisoned and left to fall on its own to wherever it might land after the two stages separate. The lower stage breaks off first and then this part is an extra shroud used to make the area around the upper stage engine aerodynamically efficient when the lower stage is firing.

Another interstage section has been recovered earlier from yet another flight. The only thing really remarkable here is that it was covered in barnacles... something that even people who run ship across the Atlantic hardly find remarkable either other than it also indicates a bit of the length of time that it spent in the water.... that can also be used to help determine which flight this likely came from.

While it is I suppose possible that it was the CRS-7 flight and the explosion from that like you seem to indicate, there are many reasons to suggest this panel was not from that flight.

President Obama is the one who created this fight and has been using it politically.

In every single year since his 2010 NASA budget proposal advocated killing-off the bi-partisan Constellation program with no planned replacement, the President has fought a money game with congress over NASA. Each year he simultaneously claims he has too much money for the project congress wants to fund (SLS) and he tries all sorts of bureaucratic slight-of-hand to shift money from SLS/Orion to Commercial Crew. In each year he also slowly slips the SLS schedule and blames the slippage on Orion's service module (which he farmed-out to Europe because he said we could not afford to build it in the US) or slow progress on required infrastructure (which he also blames on funding). This REALLY angers a bunch of people in congress. When Obama has been offered the option of fully-funding both programs, which would bust a budget cap, he refuses to do this unless congress lets him bust the caps across the entire budget (something he knows will never happen).

Obama's supporters then use this fight to attack congress and some even claim congress is opposing him on this because he is black. This fight benefits him politically and he is the one who created it (by unilaterally cancelling Constellation and, after many months of congressional anger, producing a non-plan as his NASA plan) and he's the one driving the fight with a seemingly unending list of attempt to shift money congress mandated BY LAW for SLS into Commercial Crew without the legal authority to do it.

Northrop Grumman's planning an interplanetary drone for Venus.

Well, maybe more expensive Russian rockets cost what they do for a reason?

Well, that reason is certainly not reliability-- Russian rockets have been pretty failure prone lately.
http://spacenews.com/proton-fa...
http://spacenews.com/progress-...
http://spacenews.com/russian-s...

Atlas-V and Delta-IV been doing pretty good, though: so far both have had a 100% record for reaching orbit, although each one has had one launch with an underperforming upper stage that put it into lower-than-planned orbits.

Well, maybe more expensive Russian rockets cost what they do for a reason?

Well, that reason is certainly not reliability-- Russian rockets have been pretty failure prone lately.
http://spacenews.com/proton-fa...
http://spacenews.com/progress-...
http://spacenews.com/russian-s...

Atlas-V and Delta-IV been doing pretty good, though: so far both have had a 100% record for reaching orbit, although each one has had one launch with an underperforming upper stage that put it into lower-than-planned orbits.

Well, maybe more expensive Russian rockets cost what they do for a reason?

Well, that reason is certainly not reliability-- Russian rockets have been pretty failure prone lately.
http://spacenews.com/proton-fa...
http://spacenews.com/progress-...
http://spacenews.com/russian-s...

Atlas-V and Delta-IV been doing pretty good, though: so far both have had a 100% record for reaching orbit, although each one has had one launch with an underperforming upper stage that put it into lower-than-planned orbits.

The Orbital failure took out the pad, which was owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia, which had neither insurance nor reserve cash to pay for a new one. That caused a scramble to find the bucks to repair the pad.

This whole thing kinda smacks of hardline negotiating... suddenly everyone and their dog was going to launch another LEO constellation, just when Iridium was about to launch the next generation of their product via SpaceX: http://spacenews.com/iridium-n...

From one side, I can sorta see this posturing as SpaceX trying to negotiate better rates from Iridium by says "hey, if you don't want to pay us more to launch your stuff, we'll just partner with Google / Facebook and launch our own LEO constellation."

Then there was also that guy who got the FCC license that expires in 2019, except the consortium he was working with weren't going to have their launches scheduled in time, so he took his license and ran to Richard Branson's Virgin.

Anyway, it seems like the LEO constellation thing is a mess right now, and I can't really tell who's working together and who's working against each other. But it seems moderately interesting from a cloak-n-dagger story. http://spacenews.com/signs-of-...

There is nothing cloak and dagger going on and no strong arming. Iridium is in the satellite handset business. SpaceX is building a satellite based Internet backbone. Google and Fidelity have invested a billion dollars in SpaceX specifically to develop the LEO constellation and SpaceX has opened an office in Seattle and is hiring people to develop the satellites. Google gets access to a satellite based Internet backbone that will help expand access to the developing world, without having to develop it themselves. SpaceX gets a recurring income source to fund it's R&D. Iridium is irrelevant to the deal.

P.S. Iridium would not delay launches as a threat to SpaceX. Delayed deployment is delayed income. SpaceX doesn't "need" to strong arm Iridium, they have a backlog of over 50 launches.

This whole thing kinda smacks of hardline negotiating... suddenly everyone and their dog was going to launch another LEO constellation, just when Iridium was about to launch the next generation of their product via SpaceX: http://spacenews.com/iridium-n...

From one side, I can sorta see this posturing as SpaceX trying to negotiate better rates from Iridium by says "hey, if you don't want to pay us more to launch your stuff, we'll just partner with Google / Facebook and launch our own LEO constellation."

Then there was also that guy who got the FCC license that expires in 2019, except the consortium he was working with weren't going to have their launches scheduled in time, so he took his license and ran to Richard Branson's Virgin.

Anyway, it seems like the LEO constellation thing is a mess right now, and I can't really tell who's working together and who's working against each other. But it seems moderately interesting from a cloak-n-dagger story. http://spacenews.com/signs-of-...

There is nothing cloak and dagger going on and no strong arming. Iridium is in the satellite handset business. SpaceX is building a satellite based Internet backbone. Google and Fidelity have invested a billion dollars in SpaceX specifically to develop the LEO constellation and SpaceX has opened an office in Seattle and is hiring people to develop the satellites. Google gets access to a satellite based Internet backbone that will help expand access to the developing world, without having to develop it themselves. SpaceX gets a recurring income source to fund it's R&D. Iridium is irrelevant to the deal.

P.S. Iridium would not delay launches as a threat to SpaceX. Delayed deployment is delayed income. SpaceX doesn't "need" to strong arm Iridium, they have a backlog of over 50 launches.

This whole thing kinda smacks of hardline negotiating... suddenly everyone and their dog was going to launch another LEO constellation, just when Iridium was about to launch the next generation of their product via SpaceX:
http://spacenews.com/iridium-n...

From one side, I can sorta see this posturing as SpaceX trying to negotiate better rates from Iridium by says "hey, if you don't want to pay us more to launch your stuff, we'll just partner with Google / Facebook and launch our own LEO constellation."

Then there was also that guy who got the FCC license that expires in 2019, except the consortium he was working with weren't going to have their launches scheduled in time, so he took his license and ran to Richard Branson's Virgin.

Anyway, it seems like the LEO constellation thing is a mess right now, and I can't really tell who's working together and who's working against each other. But it seems moderately interesting from a cloak-n-dagger story.
http://spacenews.com/signs-of-...

This whole thing kinda smacks of hardline negotiating... suddenly everyone and their dog was going to launch another LEO constellation, just when Iridium was about to launch the next generation of their product via SpaceX:
http://spacenews.com/iridium-n...

From one side, I can sorta see this posturing as SpaceX trying to negotiate better rates from Iridium by says "hey, if you don't want to pay us more to launch your stuff, we'll just partner with Google / Facebook and launch our own LEO constellation."

Then there was also that guy who got the FCC license that expires in 2019, except the consortium he was working with weren't going to have their launches scheduled in time, so he took his license and ran to Richard Branson's Virgin.

Anyway, it seems like the LEO constellation thing is a mess right now, and I can't really tell who's working together and who's working against each other. But it seems moderately interesting from a cloak-n-dagger story.
http://spacenews.com/signs-of-...

Something else to passively aggressively show that the US is thinking about separating from Russia and having a possible three way space race, or even giving China some aid.