Atlas V's Maiden Launch a Success

PyroMosh writes "The next generation expendable heavy lifting rocket, the Atlas 5, lifted off today from Cape Canaveral Air Station. The American rocket, built by Lockheed Martin, sporting Russian RD-180 engines carried the Eutelsat Hotbird 6 telecommunications satellite into orbit. This next generation heavy lifter can out-lift any rocket built since the Saturn V 'Moon rocket', including the shuttle." Spaceflightnow has extensive coverage.

Comments

The only good part about living in Orlando...

[drunkmonk]

... is being able to walk about to your backyard and watch launches. It happened on our first not-rainy afternoon in quite a while and was beautiful. Not quite like the Shuttle beautiful, but beautiful nonetheless.

To me, air flight doesn't seem very special anymore because it is so common... but I don't think I'll stop watching the rockets, even if it does become an everyday occurence...

Great, but the economics?

[fruey]

It seems from the article, as well as from many other economic indicators, that the launches will not start becoming more frenetic. Telecommunications is the main use for satellites, and most telcos can't even get their more recent birds into profitability. I had a guy from PanAmSat come to desperately try to sell me satellite bandwidth that I clearly didn't need. 10 minutes into the meeting he knew I didn't need it either, but went on for an hour before I found a polite way to get him to go home and worry by himself about how to sell space on his network.

Sometimes I think we should stop making everything go faster and just get in less of a hurry... bigger, faster, more... why?

The Russians must have built more powerful rockets

[sunspot42]

The statement:

This next generation heavy lifter can out-lift any rocket built since the Saturn V 'Moon rocket', including the shuttle.

can't be true, can it? Surely the Russians have built more powerful rockets than this new Atlas in the years since the Apollo program.

Re:The Russians must have built more powerful rock

[PyroMosh]

First of all, I claimed that it's the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V. It's not more powerful than the Saturn V.

Though those numbers don't match NASA's for the space shuttle, nor do the Atlas V's match what I've read for any varient (highest is 20,050 KG for the Atlas V 552) you are correct about the Shuttle outlifting the new Atlas series. I read one of the press releases wrong. Sorry for any confusion.

An interesting tidbit about the RD-180

[MtViewGuy]

From what I've read, the RD-180 is essentially an uprated version of the RD-170 rocket that was designed for the now-shelved Energia rocket.

Here's an interesting tidbit: the Russians literally fooled everyone about the location of the rocket motor factory and rocket motor test stands! Normally in Western practice, we would put the test stands for rocket motors far away from population centers (Aerojet, Rocketdyne, etc. have their test stands built in these locations due to the loud noise and huge exhaust plumes of rocket motors in general). Well, the Russians carefully built a rocket motor factory and rocket test stand in a Moscow suburb, using an ingenious design that effectively muffled the engine noise and dissipated the exhaust plumes; it was so well-designed that on first inspection visually you'd think it was just another of the many factories that surround Moscow! No wonder why Western intelligence agencies were puzzled about the lack of rocket motor test stands near their launch sites in Baikanour and Pletesk, because we were looking in all the wrong locations. I believe this factory is where the RD-180 rocket is currently being assembled.

Re:The Queen is dead! Long live the Queen!

[little1973]

Fortunately. NASA is involved in some new propulsion techniques. For example, DS1 used ion propulsion. It's engine push was very weak, about as mush as a paper pushes your palm as you hold it. But the experiment was successful.

DS1 was an experimental probe. At the end of the mission NASA landed it on Eros (one of the largest near Earth asteroid). DS1 was also capable of navigating on its own with its build-in software. The reference point for navigation was the second brightest star, Canopus.

A plasma engine is also in the development process. According to calculations, with this engine you can get to Mars in half the time compared to a traditional rocket.

In the long term this kind of propulsion is useless in space. What I mean is that it is quite primitive to shoot out hot gas or ions or hot plasma in a direction just to achive a relativly gentle acceleration in the other direction. Not to mention it is highly unefficient. You can fine tuning this technologie as mush as you want, but you cannot expect wonders from it. It is the same with car engines. They have been fine tuned during a whole century but the physics is the same.

It doesn't even outperform the Ariane 5

[FlemLion]

In out-lifting any rocket built, they must have really taken a subset of available rockets. It doesn't outperform the Ariane 5 either.
The heaviest on the Atlas V list only takes 8,2 tonnes in geosynch transfer, while the Ariane 5 ECS-A that's already flown, is already well over 10 tonnes. And next year it will add quite a bit of extra tonnage capacity to that.

Re:Fuck off you americans

[loopkin]

and this site is not up to date, considering that this version(8 tons for GTO) and this version(10.5 tons to GTO) of Ariane 5 now exists, and that this one will be there soon too, this last one being able of 23 tons max payload into GTO for dual launch.

Not a "Heavy Lifter": Exaggerated payload claims

[tlambert]

The claims about this being the heaviest lift rocket "since the Saturn V" are exaggerated. The Saturn V had over 12 times the payload capacity of the top end Atlas 5 (which hasn't actually flown, yet).

Comparatively, the top end Russian heavy lifter is very nearly the equal of the Saturn V (the Saturn V could lift 2% more weight, assuming we could even build one again).

Here are various payload capacities for all the Atlas 5 series, and a number of other currently in service rockets, as well as the Saturn V, in US pounds:

__8,752 Atlas 5 501
_11,618 Atlas 5 511
_13,117 Atlas 5 411
_13,856 Atlas 5 521
_15,057 Atlas 5 421
_15,873 Atlas 5 531
_16,843 Atlas 5 431
_17,593 Atlas 5 541
_19,114 Atlas 5 551
_28,950 Delta IV
_39,600 Ariane V
_45,320 Proton K
_47,800 Titan IV
_63,500 Space Shuttle
231,000 Energia SL17
236,000 Saturn V

Looks like if you're planning a 1969-style trip to the moon, you better learn Russian... it also explains just what it is the Russians bring to the ISS that the U.S. could not provide on their own (since the U.S. would have a difficult time even building anything close these days).

Sorry: I don't have numbers on the Chinese or Japanese launch vehicles.

-- Terry

Re:Fuck off you americans

[N3WBI3]

Trying to explain that to tree hugging americans is hard enough (they all blame bush for Kyoto though in our system of government treaty ratification is the job of the senate). Much less trying to explain that to a 'I have the US because I am so enlightend' euro.

The have nots always hate the haves, no matter how many WW's we pull them out of.

Payload manuals

[caffiend666]

Space and tech has information on a lot of production and experimental spacecraft. Including payload user manuals in the expendable launch vehical section. The Soyuz payload user manual makes great three AM reading :) According to the documentation there, the Atlas V is in the same category as the Proton and the older Shuttle configurations. IE, roughly 20 tons to LEO, including the Colombia. The Atlas V is just barely more powerful for LEO than the Proton (45238 lbs vers 44035). But, is not as powerful as the current shuttles for LEO, at 65000 lbs. FYI, Columbia has a limited LEO capability. In it's original configuration, it was limited to around 10000 lb payloads. And, granted, GSO is a different ball game.