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Boeing Successfully Launches Mammoth Delta-4 Heavy
nick-bts writes "CNN, the BBC and Space.com are reporting the first successful launch of the new Boeing Delta-4 Heavy, capable of lifting 23 tonnes into a low-Earth orbit (similar to the space shuttle). Personally I think the Ariane 5 and 'Satan' are way sexier..."
Seriously though, it appears the Delta 4 Heavy will primarily service military--rather than commercial or scientific--interests.
Sigs cause cancer.
It was not completely successful. The two dummy satellites did not make it to orbit due to a problem with the first stage. You can read about it here: Boeing Rocket Launch
A blog like any other.
Personally I think the Ariane 5 and 'Satan' are way sexier...
Man, you have a wierd phallic fetish going on there.
Yeah, well the Delta-Burke beats 'em all.
Trolls: The high-tech version of those morons that scrawl obscenities in public bathrooms.
Delta-9 as in "Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol." Might have been a little to drug geeky for this crowd.
To answer the obvious predictable question, no, the Delta IV Heavy doesn't even come close to the Saturn V. The Sat5 could heave 118,000kg into LEO, while the 3 booster D4H can only lift 22,000kg. There is talk of strapping on even more big candles to the D4, going up to as many as 7 main engines (the core and then 6 around it), but rough extrapolation would take that only to 51,333kg, far better than the shuttle but still a far cry from the awesome power of the Saturn V.
Calling an RS-18 missile "Satan" was a (basically US) military thing-- sorry to burst the "cool name" bubble. They (then Soviets) referred to the RS-18 as the "Voyevoda," a noun that refers to a leader-- a leader whose power is achieved by being the toughest kid on the block. It's like the west calling a tank "Patton," etc. The US/NATO used "SS" instead of "RS" to refer to Soviet missiles, so the RS-18 becomes the SS-18 in NATOspeak. Here's where the fun starts.
OK, say it with me: s-s-eighteen... ss-eighteen... s-eighteen... s-eight-en... satan. In an era when you refer to the other side as the evil empire, cool names that emphasize the whole evil thing tend to stick.
Just thought you might want to know...
Well then, it must all be related to your point of view. From here on the beach this one was extremely sexy.
Absolutely gorgeous day with crystal clear weather and a light breeze coming in off the Atlantic.
Pad 37 is way back up north past the end of ICBM Row and the tip of the cape, so the bottom half of the vehicle was obscured by intervening vegatation as it sat on the pad, but as soon as they ignited the engines, the flash of orange light and the discharge of smoke from the flame deflector made things abundantly obvious as to what was going on.
This particular bird rose at an excruciatingly lethargic pace, and even well after it had cleared the tower, it was still taking its sweet old time. Probably the slowest liftoff I've ever watched, and I've watched a bunch going all the way back to the 50's.
The alignment of the CBC's placed them 'face on' from my point of view, and all three of them looked quite spectacular, front lit by a late afternoon sun, each core producing a beautiful orange pillar of flame.
Finally, it really got going and started to move out like you would expect. As it did so, it reached an altitude where the LH2/Lox exhaust produced a pure white contrail that stood out in stark relief against the deep blue sky. At about the same time, the rumble arrived and it was a fine, deep-throated one that bespoke of the power being released quite well.
For those of us used to things like The Shuttle or any of the large Titan's, outboard CBC separation seemed to take forever to finally occur. The vehicle was well downrange when this happened, but with optical aid the sudden plume as they separated was easily visible, as well as the CBC's themselves, slowly tumbling end over end as the core continued to accelerate on away from them.
All in all, quite the sexy launch, if you ask me.
Is it fascism yet?