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On Fourth Launch Attempt, SpaceX Falcon 1 Reaches Orbit
xp65 writes with the just-announced success of Elon Musk's SpaceX's long efforts to reach orbit with a privately-developed launching craft: "T+0:08:21 Falcon 1 reached orbital velocity, 5200 m/s Nominal Second stage cut off (SECO) — Falcon 1 has made history as the first privately developed liquid fueled launch vehicle to achieve earth orbit!"
dbullard adds "This was a completely new vehicle — it's not using any previously developed hardware. All developed from scratch. No government supplied hardware, Russian engines, or old ICBM motors. My hat's off to the employees of Space X — all 550 of them. (Note — no 'cast of thousands,' just 550).
They've got video of the entire launch."
we can't use a telescope and a microscope simultaneously.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
I got too close to my cock's Schwarzchild radius (which all hypermassive objects have) and time got really dilated.
May SpaceX be there to participate as man finally reaches for the stars.
Let's bring some women too.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Almost fifty-one years after Sputnik, the private sector catches up, sort of. Woo-hoo, Alpha Centauri here we come.
Have you read my blog lately?
You mean "Him"?
æeee!
Wow, you like cursing and insulting other people huh? Let's brush that silly ad hominem aside and look at the facts.
Many people have ALREADY put their money into F1 launches, check their launch manifest. And that was when, by your standards, they had a 100% failure rate. I expect SpaceX to receive more bids now.
The F9 and F9 Heavy uses the Merlin engine, but in multiple configurations for added thrust. Now, you would want to prove your concept in the smallest scale possible to minimize losses, so they did, the F1 flying around our rock as we speak.
Now if they say the F9 Heavy will take about 30 tons to LEO, don't mind if I believe they can deliver.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Perhaps I should take your lead then. Any articles about the Shenzhou programme (which, btw, is doing pretty well to cost only 20 times as much as Musks effort considering how much more they are doing) are dogged with comments about 'chinks' and how they must be faking it because they couldn't possibly grasp high technology, followed by some comments about Tibet by people who get awfully defensive about Iraq. It gets pretty ugly.
Sure, and as we've just seen, apparently stories about SpaceX's successes are dogged with comments about slashdotters wanting to jump on CEO's cocks. Fortunately both sorts of comments tend to get modded down pretty quickly as ignorant and/or irrelevant.
That link may contain a disturbing impressionist view the taxpayer position on the Wall Street Bailout.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
...but I'd feel perfectly safe with a 75% failure rate :)
Of course, thirty years from now the tiny zinc-aluminum $1M coin will be the smallest unit of US currency.
$7.9 million? MASA will launch any payload and successfully land it on the moon for two hundred dollars.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
He then Falcon-Punched the reporter into orbit for dramatic effect.
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
I imagine he'd do pretty badly, since he can't even calculate the failure rate correctly.
$7.9 million? MASA [aol.com] will launch any payload and successfully land it on the moon for two hundred dollars [wikipedia.org].
And how much in taxes does the average taxpayer have to pay to subsidize that $200 launch cost?
There is no free -- or even cheap -- lunch when it comes to any government-sponsored program.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up!
It is true that the early history of NASA was obviously targeted towards national defense -- and thus justified. However, the work would have been eventually done using private capital if the end result -- satellite communications for example -- were profitable -- and therefore sustainable.
I think he is trying to make amends for Paypal.
Cant really blame him....
Not since the final flight of the Saturn 1B rocket in 1975, has a rocket had the ability to lose any engine or motor and still successfully complete its mission,â said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX.
I hear what he's saying and I'm sure it can survive an engine quietly losing thrust, but I wouldn't quite bet on it with any of the more spectacular failure modes.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I would be fascinated to hear how you measured the radius of the Earth to the nearest proton diameter.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.