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The Last Atlas 2 Rocket Launch
Fiz Ocelot writes "Reuters reports that the last Atlas 2 rocket was launched on Tuesday. The rocket was the last to launch the old-fashioned way. For this launch, the 120-member team was inside a blockhouse 1,400 feet from the launch pad. It was also the end of an era dating back to the 1950s, when most rockets, including early manned flights, were launched from concrete blockhouses adjacent to the pads."
Anyone know what is going to replace the Atlas II?
Or why they aren't building anymore? 63 launches with no failures is pretty good.
"The rocket's secret payload belonged to the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates the U.S. network of orbiting spy satellites."
umm...
Does it run Linux?
"national security satellite." Here's hoping this is the replacement for the one(s) that were used to "discover" Saddam's WMD...
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
They mention that it was the end of an era dating to the 1950's, what exactly are they referering too? Are they referering to the fact that the blockhouses are no longer near the rocket? Launching on land?
More info on atlas V can be found here .
Check out the launch video here
fifteen jugglers, five believers
...and there is peace ...and there is love ...and there is ecstacy
I don't know about launching rockets, but I know a lot of people that lay cables in concete bunkers adjacent to their house
If it's 50s, then I suppose it runs on vacummes...
Eat My Bad Karma...
Yes, because there's no possible way they could have upgraded anything about it right?
They're monitoring your activities!
Karma whorin' since 1999
The rocket was the last to launch the old-fashioned way. What, with boosters, and rockets and things? What's the new fashioned way? There is nothing ol fashioned about this rockets integral functions, just the location of the operators.
This launch signals more than simply the end of that particular series of rocket.
It also signals the end of NASA's two-decade old "Shuttle + Small Rocket" schema. Hooray.
To put it another way, about *$#&#*$ time!
The "Shuttle + Small Rocket" paradigm has kept us firmly in Earth orbit for a generation, and is actually (always was) a step back from the 100-useful-tonnes-to-L.E.O. capabilites of the Apollo-era Saturn V.
This move is a move back to heavy boosters, and can't come soon enough for those of us who are keen on "seeing what's out there".
In weight terms, with 60's technology (ie the Saturn V) we could have lifted the whole ISS in two shots. With the Shuttle (ie the Winnebago of Space exploration) that has had to be stretched out over a decade, cost far more than it had to, and prevented any other human space-flight programs from going ahead.
Sending up 100 tonnes, and bringing 90 tonnes back (the Shuttle model) was always a dumb idea. If you go to the trouble of sending 100 tonnes to orbit, you should get more bang for your buck than a measley 10%.
End of an era, well overdue.
Oh, so it runs the latest version of SCO, then?
Good articles from Spaceflight Now:
Atlas 2 rocket retires with remarkable record
AC-167 launch timeline
Launch ground track
Atlas 2AS vehicle data
Well, I beleive they use the Debian/FreeBSD strategy. I think even the space shuttle still uses 70s era tape drives.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Great, an article that has NOTHING to do with M$, and someone has to go and spoil it - what have they ever done to you?
Hang on, ah yes.
Yes, you can live in an abandoned missile silo. Can anyone say nuclear rave?
yay, my first trolled post!
I think there should be two types of shuttle. First, a personnel shuttle to bring people up and down. Second, for those rare occasions when we need it, a cargo shuttle to bring hardware down (not up, but down). These shuttles, wouldn't be the fixed wing flying brickyards we have now, but a craft with a replaceable ablative heat shield, and parasail/parawing. Cargo would be sent up the way it used to be, as simple rocket payload.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
They will replace the Atlas rocket with the Estes rocket.
Looks about the same as long as you don't look close and lack depth perception.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
A launcher based on an American ICBM (which was derived from a German SLBM) and equipped with Russian engines launches french satellites...
s es /rec197/
http://www.ilslaunch.com/newsarchives/newsrelea
A throw-weight of 10% would be fantaastic... (yes, I know you're refering to what's left up there - but it was that line which set me looking for info on payloads vs launchweight).
- The Saturn V had a take off weight of 3,038,500 kg and could deliver 118,000 kg to LEO - or put differently, a whopping 3.88% of the weight would be payload.
- The shuttlesystem weights in at 2,029,633 kg (or about 2/3rds of the Saturn V) and can deliver 27,850 kg to 24,400 kg to LEO (used to be more, but was redisgned after the Challenger accident). This puts the shuttle at a measly 1.37% to 1.20% payload left in orbit.
- The Atlas IIAS had a typical take off weight of 234,000 kg and was capabel of putting 8,610 kg in LEO. A respecable 3.68%, but still below the Saturn V.
- The Atlas V, which will replace the Atlass IIAS, weights 546,700 kg at lift off, manages 12,500 kg to LEO, which in turns means that just 2.29% of the mass is payload.
- The Titan II, well known for launching the Gemini spacecraft into orbit, weighted in at 154,000 kg and lifted 3,100 kg to LEO - or 2.01%.
- The Titan 4, designed to lift 'shuttle sized payloads', weights in at a respectable 886,420 kg, but manages 'only' 17,700 kg to LEO, or about 1.99%.
- Going tothe russian side, the Soyuz 11A511U2 (for many a year the mainstay of the manned spaceprogram in the Soviet Union), weighted in at 297,800 kg and lifted 7,050 kg to LEO. This places it, with 2.36%, in the same league as american boosters.
- ESA uses the large, 777,000 kg Ariane 5 EC-A, capabel of placing 16,000 kg in LEO. At a ratio of 2.06% this is no better or worse than most other launchers.
In short, the Saturn V was a vastly superior rocket - simply because of the economics of scale.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Mod me offtopic, please.
-Dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
The difference is that we typically have about a 20 man crew, everything from range support to NASA TM to PI and his crew. Check out my lab's photo gallery for some pictures.
IMHO the name "Atlas" has been kept going as a marketing ploy. The current "Atlas" is as much an "Atlas" as twisted pair Ethernet is the original "garden hose coax" Ethernet. The Atlas has been re-giggered over the years until the only part in common is the concept of using very flimsy pressurized tanks as structural elements. Everything else, engines, boosters, upper stages have all been radically changed several times over. And the reason the success rate was mentioned may be to counteract the Atlas's poor early reliability... Something like 30 big kabooms in the first 35 launches.
I guess they need to maintain at least some ground staff near the launch pad, if not the entire launch control center. Or, will the shuttle crew have to employ public transport to get to Florida by themselves? "Don't forget the shuttle keys, boys, or the delay will be visible on your next paycheck! By the way, can you deliver these drawings to an address in Miami before you take off?"
If they had gradually moved the blockhouse further and further away from the pad, rather than switched from 1,400 feet to 1,400 miles between two successive launches, nobody would be able to call that "the end of an era".
anti-slash could be the most lame site I've ever seen. the worst "injustice" on file is that Michael likes to consistently post links to a particular blog, like it's an injustice to consistently drink from the same well...and what well do the anti-slash readers drink from? Slashdot, apparently...but that's not an injustice...no way. Pathetic hypocrite wankers.
What's interesting about the Atlas V is that it uses the Russian-built RD-180 main engine, an engine derived from the RD-173 used on Russian rockets.
By the way, an interesting tidbit: the Russians developed the rocket engines in an extremely ingenious fashion. Instead of building the rocket test stand out an an open area per US practice, they built a number of special buildings that looked like a regular factory but with extensive exhaust dissipation and noise-dampening systems just right outside Moscow to test the rocket engines. That way, the rocket engine test activities wouldn't attract the attention of US spy satellites.
Will this also be the end of the Mystery Clouds? I hope not. I use them as an opportunity to alarm my neighbors. "HURRY! QUICK! It must be a radioactive puffy thing from the nucular plant!"
I seem to remember SkyLab being two Saturn-V shots in the Apollo Applications program. In the 1970s.
Now THAT's progress, boys!
(btw, I'm agreeing with you, if you aren't seeing through the thick layer of cynicism.)
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Um, you want to go back a step or two. Because of course, the relationship between Saddam and Reagan's foreign policy dated back before that, and the U.S. was instrumental in bringing about Iraq's possession of those same weapons.
Here's Donny Rumsfeld, as Reagan's Special Envoy, shaking Saddam's hand.
The "Saddam was a changed man" argument is what you'd call a "straw man." You're doing an excellent job refuting a sham argument nobody's making against you. Keep it up and your arguments will gradually lose any bearing on reality.
Yes, the question is where are the WMD, and it's a question that scares the hell out of me, because he had them and they're not there now, and that means they are somewhere else, and that somewhere else may be the lovely utopian paradise called Syria.
All of which proves the resounding success of Mr. Bush's elective war against Iraq how, exactly? I've run into this many times -- backers of the policy who claim those WMDs must be elsewhere and say how very scary it is. Bizarre: you've just completely dished the very foreign policy you're trying to advocate, and "if you actually had a single brain cell" you'd be seeing that. The war was supposed to be about preventing the proliferation of WMDs, and about preventing their use by terrorists. Now you don't know where the WMDs are, and you say how scary it is. Golly, they could be in the hands of terrorists!
"Scary" doesn't start to describe the level of your post, there.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
In the Doctor Who episode Seeds of Death, Earth stops using rockets..
This news brought to my mind that episode with the second doctor (Patrick Troughton), who gets to the moon in an old rocket (perhaps it was an Atlas!).
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...will use Russian engines? Are they doing **anything** in Hooterville any more?
Clearly you need less weight to allow something to slow down with friction than you need to boost it up (against both gravity and friction). Why are a car's breaks so much smaller than its engine?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
+5 Insightful
If that's too much typing for you,(without any spaces put there by Slashdot) yields: http://www.ilslaunch.com/newsarchives/newsrelease
the war was to shut down Iraq as a haven for terrorists, and to remove the growing, but not yet imminent threat Saddam was posing to America.
The threat was growing, but not imminent, you say -- but in your previous post you've claimed he had the WMDs, and that they must be somewhere, and that it really scares you. How baldly, and badly, have you just contradicted yourself? Um, utterly?
And again, even on your own terms: "the war was to shut down Iraq as a haven for terrorists"?? Gee, uh... Sure has worked great. Oops, time to resort to "We made Iraq a honey pot for terrorists so as to fight them there rather than at home, that's the 'front line' now." You seem incapable of tracking just how mutually contradictory your own statements are, so I'm sure you can trot that one out and not see how completely it vitiates everything else you've said. (I guess there's no need to mention how the war was fought in ways that didn't seem to keep Ansar al-Islam in Iraq anyway. Yeah, they sure were worried about those terrorists. So worried that the terrorists seem to have neatly skipped the country while we were conducting an armored assault on Baghdad.)
Definition:"The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position." You, friend, substituted a ridiculous version of the parent's post, claiming that he was saying Saddam had changed his ways. This wasn't the claim being made. That's what's called a straw man. Maybe you think it was ironic, but golly, you sure seem to have promptly argued against the caricature, so how were you using it again? As a straw man. You might have wanted to look that up.
Just for good measure, you explain how thoughtfully Reagan undertook a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" forgeign policy -- the results of which we are currently dealing with. You do a truly execrable job of defending these policies. Now, think hard... Think about Pakistan: nuclear power, huge radicalized muslim population, repeated assassination attempts against Musharraf, Bush in 2000 saying that he thought the coup that brought Musharraf to power was "good for stability in the region" despite its having overthrown an elected regime. Longtime supporters of the Taliban. Does this remind you of any whose names have four letters and start with "Ira"? Oh, well -- the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I guess.
Try looking at my sig. Eisenhower's among my favorite Presidents, and you're accusing me of being a Democratic propagandist. Unreal.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.