Falcon 1 Ready to Launch

Could Have been called by captjc · 2006-02-02 12:26 · Score: 5, Funny

I guess if it launched 4 years ago, it could have been called the New-Millenium Falcon

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Re:Could Have been called by SquadBoy · 2006-02-02 12:47 · Score: 2, Funny

5, it was 5 years ago.

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Re:Could Have been called by AKAImBatman · 2006-02-02 14:05 · Score: 4, Informative

I'm just glad they're getting it off the ground. The Falcon I is mostly just a technology test. It can't fly payloads of any real interest as it simply doesn't have enough cargo capacity. The Falcon V, OTOH, could outright replace the Delta II for a fraction of the price. And if the proposed Falcon 9 ever happens (don't hold your breath), we could be looking at Space Shuttle sized cargos for only $78m! That's about as much as you pay for a Delta II once ground support, insurance, and payload integration costs are figured in. (SpaceX claims their prices include all these costs.)

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Re:Could Have been called by Teancum · 2006-02-02 14:25 · Score: 2, Interesting

More important about the Falcon 9 is that it is being designed from the ground up as a manned lanuch platform. Sure, the primary market is still going to be for satellite launches, but for less than $200 m you can put a manned spacecraft platform into orbit is going to be a neat thing to see. With multiple passengers as well.

If you are ambitious enough and have the money burning a hole in your pocket, you can even start designing the spacecraft, but you are right that I would like to see if SpaceX can even get the Falcon 1 going first.

No more satellite jockeys by garrett714 · 2006-02-02 12:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

It is good to see the cost of deploying satellites dropping. Maybe this will free the astronauts to do what they were meant to do, explore space.

Re:No more satellite jockeys by susano_otter · 2006-02-02 12:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

I thought astronauts were meant to gather valuable research data about humans living and working in space.

Space exploration is a job for probots, not people.

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Re:No more satellite jockeys by susano_otter · 2006-02-02 13:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually, I'm of the opinion that, to the extent that humans were "meant" to do anything, we're certainly meant to fly in space. You and I share the same dream.

But I differentiate between "exploration"--something best done by probots--and "adventure"--something best done by humans.

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Re:The Sea Launch Consortium by pe1rxq · 2006-02-02 12:32 · Score: 2, Informative

There must have been some heavy editing going on at wikipedia if it said that.....

Sea Launch are using russian Zenit rockets and launch from a ship. (hence the name)

SpaceX have there own rocket and launch from land (a small island or an airforce base)

They don't have much in common besides going up.

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Re:The Sea Launch Consortium by rufey · 2006-02-02 12:32 · Score: 3, Informative

Falcon-1 was built by SpaceX, which is not a part of the Sea Launch consortiun. See this wikipedia entry.

Other Alternatives by cyclone96 · 2006-02-02 12:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

It appears NASA & the shuttle are not the only ways for the government to launch satellites anymore

Ever hear of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, or Orbital Sciences? The government hasn't launched any major satellite besides ISS on the Shuttle for a decade. Satellite launches are contracted out.

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Re:Other Alternatives by Gunfighter · 2006-02-02 13:33 · Score: 2, Funny

Dang! Good points... and here I was thinking that they had disguised them as chairs and given them all to Ballmer to throw into orbit.

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Re:Other Alternatives by cbcanb · 2006-02-02 14:34 · Score: 2, Informative

The government hasn't launched any major satellite besides ISS on the Shuttle for a decade.
Yes it has. The Chandra X-ray Observatory (99) comes to mind, and there are probably others.
Re:Other Alternatives by gigs94 · 2006-02-03 01:59 · Score: 2, Informative

The overwhelming majority of satellites are put up by traditional launch vehicles. The shuttle is 10x more expensive to operate than a rocket. Check out: http://ask.yahoo.com/20010116.html

Re:The Sea Launch Consortium by slightlyspacey · 2006-02-02 12:42 · Score: 5, Informative

Uhm no. Nowhere in the Wikipedia entries for either SpaceX or Falcon 1 is there an association with the Sea Launch consortium. SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk and he is fronting all of the costs associated with the development and launch from his own personal fortune.

Also given the nature of his lawsuit against Boeing and Lockheed, I doubt that he would want to be part of an organization that is run by Boeing. Secondly, the launch is from a facility in the Kwajalein Atoll on solid ground, not from a SeaLaunch platform.

Military by ZachPruckowski · 2006-02-02 12:44 · Score: 2, Interesting

Anyone else worried about militaries getting even more involved in space?

Re:Military by susano_otter · 2006-02-02 12:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

Anyone else worried about militaries getting even more involved in space?

No more worried than I am about the military getting involved in any other area of human endeavor.

Might as well ask if I'm worried about people getting involved in space.

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Re:Military by Brett+Buck · 2006-02-02 15:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

>Anyone else worried about militaries getting even more involved in space?

Wow. Clearly, you don't understand the space business - at all. Military and other related agencies are *the primary users* of space resources, and have been from the beginning. NASA, commercial, and other civilian users are very minor players in aerospace. Only during the mid-60's with Apollo was it even comparable in any terms.

Point being, military/related users ARE the space business. Cadets tossing together a satellite is "in the noise" of the existing military uses.

Brett
Re:Military by stlhawkeye · 2006-02-02 16:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

Anyone else worried about militaries getting even more involved in space?
No, not really. I'd rather have our military involved than somebody else's.

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Space plasma? by Caspian · 2006-02-02 12:58 · Score: 2, Funny

Christ, they even have those new TVs on the ISS? I still have an old CRT model...

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Re:Space Plasma? by Ghost_3k · 2006-02-02 13:36 · Score: 2, Informative

Wikipedia has a clearer description:
"used to sample plasma in the upper atmosphere. The data will be used to correlate the effect of ionospheric plasma on trans-ionospheric radio communications."
Re:Space Plasma? by Markus+Registrada · 2006-02-02 15:31 · Score: 5, Informative

Surely you're joking. Profound effects of space plasma on satellites have been well-known (by engineers) for decades.
There's practically nothing up there but plasma. The only places in the universe that aren't practically all plasma are planets and bits of space junk, a negligible fraction of the universe's (observable) mass. Maybe you're confused because you think plasma is some sort of exotic substance. Compositionally, the only difference between a gas and a plasma is that some fraction of the atoms in a plasma are ionized. That just means one or more of the electrons that, at lower temperatures, would be bound closely in orbit around the nucleus are instead banging around loose.
That seems like a small difference, but oh! what a difference. In a familiar gas, the atoms only interact when they collide, so at very low pressures nothing much happens. In a plasma, particularly at very low pressure, the particles interact with immediate neighbors, via the electric force, at distances of centimeters, and with large masses, via magnetic forces, at distances up to light years.
Plasma dynamics, the description of how masses of plasma behave, is fiendishly complex, largely because the positive particles (nuclei) are all at least 2000 times more massive than the negative particles (electrons). As a result, anything that accelerates a nucleus at X cm/s/s blasts any electrons at more than 2000X cm/s/s the other way. Furthermore, plasmas can be neutral, or biased positive, or biased negative. When a biased plasma moves, it produces a magnetic field, and any magnetic fields it moves in affect the its motion.
Even an ionization of one in 10 000 particles is enough to make celestial stuff behave by plasma-dynamical rather than ordinary gas laws. Under rather weak electric fields, the ions accelerate enough to ionize and re-ionize the neutral atoms, a process called "entraining". Motion of biased plasma amounts to an electric current, which self-generates a magnetic field that, in turn, concentrates the current (and particles of the conductive medium) into flux tubes, called "Birkeland currents", that span solar systems (e.g. producing the Aurora) and galaxies.
The equations that describe real plasma dynamics are fiendishly complicated, and the observed behavior exhibits so many fundamental instabilities, that nobody can solve typical problems mathematically. Serious researchers fall back on computer simulations and extrapolation from vacuum-lab observations. Most fall back, instead, on a (usually) distinctly unphysical approximation known as "MHD".
Typical astronomers and astrophysicists have had a semester of MHD, where they were misled about how little it resembles any phenomenon they will ever observe. As a result, most astronomers are ill-equipped to evaluate such observations. They tend to ignore them, instead, and to discount explanations that depend on awareness of actual plasma-dynamical phenomena. This causes them two problems: they have to explain what they see using only gravitation, stellar-core fusion, and shock waves; and they have to explain why plasma dynamics has no effect on the system. Their colleagues generally give them a pass on the latter. Such common plasma-dynamical phenomena as ultraviolet and x-ray emission have traditionally been easy to ignore.
Most of the working plasma dynamicists are not involved in astrophysics, and their contribution isn't generally welcome in astrophysical journals. Of course the most vocal of the ones interested in astronomy, and thus most easily found in web searches, are highly-motivated and ... interestingly quirky. Nonetheless, there's a lot to learn even from those of the catastrophism cultists who are also working physicists.
Re:Space Plasma? by Bad+D.N.A. · 2006-02-02 15:42 · Score: 2, Informative

As another reply pointed out there have been many space plasma instruments launched over the last decades. Think of the Voyager spacecraft. Voyager 1 passed the termination shock last year and has a plasma instrument (unfortunately not functional). Voyager 2 which is approaching the termination shock has a fully functional plasma instrument and the results are at worst astounding.

It would be silly to try to name all of the spacecraft that have flown plasma instruments during the space age as many would be left out (Helios-xx, IMP-xxxx, Ulysses, Galileo, Cassini, Wind, ACE, etc...insert many more here.......)

Of course I did not RTFA but plasma instruments are difficult to build, calibrate, etc... You can't just slap one together on a bench and launch it. We would all love to see significant scientific advancement coming from a new launch, this just seems like a waste of funds ... well perhaps I'm too entrenched ... good luck to those guys and I'll keep my eyes on the scientific literature ... time will tell.

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Wrong again. by DerekLyons · 2006-02-02 13:07 · Score: 2, Informative

It appears NASA & the shuttle are not the only ways for the government to launch satellites anymore.

"NASA & the Shuttle" were the only way to launch goverment birds for only a very brief period of time in the 80's. Other than that, NASA is the launch provider for the goverment - with the exception of military birds.

Space Plasma? by d474 · 2006-02-02 13:08 · Score: 3, Interesting

"The satellite is going to be studying the effects of space plasma."

I find this aspect of the article a lot more interesting than who is launching it and from where. WTF is "space plasma"? From the sun or intergalactic space? I've heard of plasma, but I thought it was only near the surface of stars and other bright burning objects, not hanging out or going past earth.

Secondly, we've had satellites, space stations, and an assortment of space probes out in space for over 40 years, so why are they only sending one up now? Wouldn't the "effects" of this space plasma already have made itself obvious with it's impact on military satellites already in existence? So what are they really testing, hmm?

Obviously I have a lot of questions, but something seems out of place with this mission. Shouldn't they have done this before they sent up human beings to the moon? I'm obviously totally uninformed or totally paranoid. Maybe both!

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Re:Wrong again. again by Rocket_Sci · 2006-02-02 13:32 · Score: 3, Informative

I think you are also wrong again.

The only satellites that NASA has launched recently are the Chandra Space Telescope and the ISS itself.

The most recent US Government non-NASA, non-Military satellite was NOAA-18, launched May 20, 2005 on a Boeing Delta Rocket.

If you don't believe me, check the Launch Log.

There is no requirement that NASA must launch all US government payloads. The parts of the ISS, unfortunately, were designed to fit exactly in the Shuttle Cargo Bay. There is no law stating that they must be launched by the shuttle, however, it will be expensive to modify them to take launch loads from another launcher.

There are many launch providers in the world, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Orbital, China, Russia, India, Ariane, Japan... and others I can't think of right now. Elon Musk thinks he can do it much cheaper than the competition. Let's see how it goes first. Personally, I think he is going to run into a lot of unexpected costs and techinical problems as the Falcon 1 evolves into the Falcon 5 and 9. I'd be happy to see him pull it off, but I have my doubts.

Re:The Sea Launch Consortium by DoubleD · 2006-02-02 13:51 · Score: 3, Informative

If by recycled oil rig you meant "self-propelled, semi-submersible drilling rig" then yes ;).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Odyssey

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The way things used to be by Teancum · 2006-02-02 13:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

Prior to the Reagan administration, NASA was the only game in town for just about everything that went into space, incuding private payloads as well. Or you had to renouce your American citizenship (if you were American) and try the Russians. Sure, there were private contractors who did the actual construction of the vehicles and even largely ran the lanuch operations, but there was a NASA official at just about every other step along the way.

As an example of private payloads launched through NASA, the Telstar Satellite, while owned and technically operated by AT&T, was built and launched through a government procurement contract. The original process was so complicated that AT&T bought a couple of congress critters to reform the process, which led to the development of Intelsat for major long distance communication. BTW, the Wikipedia articles really whitewash the whole episode of how ugly the politics got for launching private space vehicles.

This is still used as an example of how the government should not operate in space, and that the bureaucracy for getting things into space has always been there. Only now are totally private launch systems even being developed, and even in the case of SpaceX there is still government money involved. Just not as directly and SpaceX decided to take matters into their own hands in regards to the launch. It was originally scheduled to be at Vandenburg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara, but got tied down in bureaucratic B.S. to force them to either delay the lanuch for a considerable length of time or find another place to launch.

Re:Not really. by Rei · 2006-02-02 16:10 · Score: 3, Informative

And Zenit, and Proton, and Soyuz, and Long March, and Pegasus, and Shavit, and Ariane... (need I keep going?) Even if you're only going to count US launch systems, there are half a dozen *families* of launch vehicles that we can use.

Seriously, Slashdot: quit adding ignorant taglines to your articles.

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Re:What? by JourneyExpertApe · 2006-02-02 17:34 · Score: 2, Funny

you : making sense ::
eggplant : carnival

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Pre-launch comments from SpaceX's Elon Musk by FleaPlus · 2006-02-02 17:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm a big fan of Elon Musk, who started SpaceX with the money he got from selling PayPal to eBay. He's a pretty good example of someone who grew up with dreams about space who's trying to make those dreams a reality. I think his efforts with towards dramatically decreasing the cost of space launch are quite important, and crucial for his (and my) long-term goal of making humanity a multi-planet species.

This set of notes by Michael Belfiore from their pre-launch press conference for their launch attempt last year is a pretty interesting read and gives great insight into what Musk wants to do with SpaceX. Some excerpts:

SpaceX's second Gen rocket engine will be the biggest rocket engine in the world, though not the biggest in history. The F1 engine that sent people to the moon is no longer in production, so Musk doesn't count that. ...

Q: What customers will you put on Falcon 9?
A: We haven't thought a lot about it because it's speculative, but big customers would be NASA, Bigelow Aerospace, which is launching its first subscale space station module next year, and potentially people who just want to go to orbit and just spend some time on orbit. Also we could do a loop around the moon, which actually wouldn't require a huge rocket. [Space Adventures recently cut a deal with the Russian Space Agency to do just that, so that may be what inspired Musk to say that.] ...

Q: When will you go to space?
A: I'm not doing this to go into space myself, per se. I want to help build a space faring civilization. It would have been very easy for me to pay to go to the International Space Station myself. I want to help other people get to space. ...

Musk: The expansion of life on earth to other places is arguably the most important thing to happen to life on earth, if it happens. Life has the duty to expand. And we're the representatives of life with the ability to do so. ...

Q: When will you fly cargo missions to the space station?
A: I hope in the next 3 to 4 years. ...

Another question from me: Are you developing a manned vehicle right now, or have you thought that far ahead yet?
A: I can't comment on that right now. ...

Q: What's next in the entreprenurial space field?
A: Lots of people doing things--Paul Allen [who funded SpaceShipOne], Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, John Carmack with Armadillo Aerospace...Musk thinks we're heading toward a Netscape moment, when someone turns a profit, and hopefully it'll be SpaceX, and then investment capital will start to flow in.

Re:Linux? by FleaPlus · 2006-02-02 17:44 · Score: 2, Informative

Does it run Linux....

I don't know if the rocket itself runs Linux, but Dell's website cites SpaceX as an example of a company which uses Linux for high-performance computing. From Dell's site:

SpaceX uses an eight-node cluster of Dell PowerEdge 1855 blade servers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Infiniband switches to further the company's mission to dramatically reduce the cost and increase the reliability of access to space. With this cluster, SpaceX should be able to reduce the time needed to run computational aerodynamics simulations, structural analyses and trajectory optimizations. More information on SpaceX is available at www.spacex.com;

Millenium Falcon by GNUThomson · 2006-02-02 21:47 · Score: 2, Informative

This rocket (the whole family) was named Falcon after Millenium Falcon. See http://www.spacex.com/media21.php That's what happens when geeks go into space business. Go, Falcon, go!

Never were the only ways to launch by gatkinso · 2006-02-03 01:46 · Score: 2, Informative

There are a plethora of other launch vehicles out there.

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