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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.
Sorry, not trying to be a troll, but I'm no rocket fan...
..but we have a new rocket, guess that's better than nothing.
More Thruster, more lift... great *insert golf clap*
We need new ideas and bold steps in propulsion if we're ever going to graduate from the rocket age into bonafide space travel.
We've been hooked on rockets as the ultimate in propulsion since WWII and though ideas have come forward, some very radical ideas even in the last decade, NASA is hesitant to pursue these ideas due to concerns of cost and even more so, concerns of failure due to high Gov't scrutiny.
It's sad that the US Gov't, being the only body with enough power to really do something for our future in space keeps things on such a short leash. Perhaps they should just kick back and play the "grant-daddy" and let private companies work hand in hand with them to speed things up a bit and share in the risk.
Damn, do something to get capital interests involved... Even if it's just to mine rocks on the moon, I'd volunteer to work there for a lunar year.
A slight correction on the national aerospace plane project...
The engine was a liear aerospike, which the design had being fueled by a Hydrogen slurry tank. The tank was not buildable with current material science, after a number of tries. *THAT*, NOT September 11th, was why it was cancelled (yes, I know they could have used a different fuel tank technology; they didn't).
Personally, I think some non-Berne signatory country should build a DC-X with a linear aerospike, and screw the U.S. patents.
The (unfortunately) winning contractors design called for a runway, which meant building additional hardware, if you ever wanted to go any place interesting. A DC-X ("Delta Clipper") could have, with 3 launced for orbital refueuling on the
way in any out, put us back on the moon very quickly (and once in orbit is halfway to anywhere in the Solar system). You're not going to the moon in something that lands like an airpane, ever... no runways, gas stations, or air to hold the wings up.
-- Terry
Careful investigation proved that a _second_ rocket was blasted into space ever since the traffic control teams got into a fight on who crancked up the Texan airconditioning, freezing the coffee machine.
Apparently one team didn't know of the launch of the previous shift.
On a related note, the publishing of news on the slashdot site seems be become more and more troublesome ever since Moderaters stubbornly refuse to read the news themselves.
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."