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SpaceX Successful Static Fire
ron_ivi writes "SpaceX's website is announced that they had a "
great static fire today" where their Falcon rocket successfully had 3 seconds of thrust. Nice pictures and video of the test; and if analysis shows all was well, they'll be launching Thursday."
It used to be a guy wouldn't brag if he only had 3 seconds of thrust.
I think we would leave all the Anonymous Cowards behind. There's enough garbage in space. :P
I'd though a static fire would be bad for the ICs?
I think this is great. I love Scaled Composite's X-prize winner, but this company is actually shooting for orbit! If you don't already know; it is a hell of a lot harder to reach orbital speeds as it is to only reach the outer limits of the atmosphere and descend.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Does anyone else find it sad that the founder of Paypal has a better rocket company than the creator of DOOM?
Ah well, at least they are both fellow geeks.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Your username is uniquely well suited to your post.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Doesn't anybody else think it's odd that the picture of this rocket being fired (very cool, BTW) has a couple of tanks in the foreground. Not sure what's in the tanks (probably fuel), but I'm sure they don't want to be next to an firing rocket if the rocket has an unfortunate explosition.
It's hard to tell distances in the picture -- there could be a mile separating the two. But having these in the foreground just struck me a little bit odd.
--Lance
Coming from the petrochem industry, I'm not used to seeing the words great, static and fire all in one sentence
Pfft...I bet they can harness the server heat for fueling the launch!
"It used to be a guy wouldn't brag if he only had 3 seconds of thrust."
Now he breaks out the cigarettes and asks, "was it good for you too"?
Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
Somehow, in some way this proves that Microsoft sucks.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
As the first link mentions, the launch is scheduled for Thursday, 1PM PST (4PM EST). According to RLV News, here's a few good sources for real-time commentary and info about the launch:
* Mission Status Center - Falcon Launch Report - Justin Ray
* Out of the Cradle
* NASASpaceflight.com - LIVE: SpaceX/Falcon 1 - 23rd March: launch coverage thread
Also, it was recently revealed that SpaceX has been secretly developing their SpaceX Dragon orbital capsule, which will be able to carry up to 7 people to and from orbit. A full-size prototype of the capsule has already been constructed, and the capsule is expected to enter service by 2009 (several years before NASA's CEV).
The proposed bigger model, the Falcon 9-S5, is comparable to the modern Atlas V. 6 launches to date, 100% success rate. About 2x the price the new guys claim, but then, the Atlas is a proven product.
But the commercial launch market has collapsed. Iridium is done, and nobody wants to launch that many sats again. The geosync comsat market is saturated; everybody is going fibre optic. There's just not that much going up.
Recently Sam Dinkin of the Space Review had a chance to tour SpaceX's facility, and wrote a 4-part article series about it. It's a pretty neat read, and gives you a good idea of the culture of SpaceX and where it's headed. Also, they're apparently looking for good people to hire. ;)
*Part 1
*Part 2
*Part 3
*Part 4
Also, an interesting bit of recent news: Apparently the President of Sea Launch, which is "arguably the world's most successful commercial launch company," has left Sea Launch to join SpaceX. Anybody care to speculate about why he would leave such a cushy position for a start-up?
I gotta disagree with that statement. They certainly still go boom.
/.)
The recent (October 2002) photon M2 launch failure is a good example (there's a truly spectacular video of it floating around, but I'm not gonna subject the only host I know of to
Or the zenit launch failure in the '90s that left a big smoking hole where the launch pad was. Both these involved the rocket failing shortly after liftoff, basically falling out of the sky fully fueled. When the tanks break up, you get many thousands of pounds of fuel and oxidizer nicely mixed. What happens after that is usually "Boom!"
Most US, European and Japanese launchers have range safety (aka self destruct) systems, which help if the vehicle is actually flying, but they aren't likely to make difference if the failure happens very near the pad.
I suspect the tanks that the OP asked about are actually quite far away, and just look close due to the
foreshortening effect of a long lense.
Some moderator seems to be on drugs.
So they can colonize a new world and the rest of us can die from exposure to unsanitized telephones? No thanks.
On a more practical note, with the number of competing vendors and the number of technologies in play, it's not a question of if but of how. Will the laser drives beat the chemical boosters but lose out to the space elevator?
Unless the dimwits with the guns and bombs manage to foobar our entire world, somebody's getting systems running in the next fifteen years or so. As an old L5 member I say, it's about damn time!
-Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
Thrust is measured in Newtons, Newton seconds is a measure of impulse.
Elon is copying technology that already exists and making a fairly conventional rocket - single engine pintle motors. He's also funding a full-scale production facility.
John is not. He is funding it by selling off his collection of cars. His development team is a group of friends. His idea is a little different - a VTVL with a hovering tail setdown, not a splashdown. He's working on four throttled throatless engines on his stage - a radically different beast. Control law between multiple engines is a pain. Quite frankly it hasn't been done yet - Apollo used 1 single gimbleable engine, and even that was in reduced gravity! Much easier since your closing velocities will be slower. Etc.
Long story short, Elon is repeating history but trying to cut costs and make it manageable. John is trying to do things a new way.