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SpaceX Successfully Tests Nine-Engine Cluster
the_other_chewey writes "At their test facility in Texas, SpaceX, the privately funded space-flight company, have successfully tested their nine-engine cluster which is planned to provide the heavy lifting capability for their Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 Heavy rockets.
The firing lasted three minutes (a full 'mission duty cycle,' i.e. a simulated launch) under full power, delivering 3.8MN (or 855,000 lbs.) of thrust. SpaceX have made a video of the test available. The Waco Tribune has a short report about it, with comments by locals."
I'm looking forward to the launch. Anyone know when that is? I've heard everything from January to March from several people. Anywho,let's hope that SpaceX succeeds. Otherwise we'll end up depending on Russia from 2010 to 2015 for our man-capable launch systems with all the political consequences that entails.
I value politeness. If you extend it to me, I'll extend it to you.
With all the cries for help in the finance world, it warms my heart to see a science/research based company giving me some good news. Cheers!
No wonder they all voted for Bush... fearful idiots.
This space available.
1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Almost 50 years to the date. Same reaction from the tough Texan crowd.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
and the rest is deluded by the Messiah? The red states certainly didn't call him that but I do recall all the "intellectuals" spouting phrases like "The Chose One" and capitalizing Him and He when referring to the guy.
Now tell me which group is loonier. We just suffered the American Idol version of an election and people are acting all smug sipping their half caf decafs at Starbucks
It's fun to pick on Texans for things like cowboy hats, unnecessarily large barbeque pits, and their slow drawl, and it's easy to pick on people who didn't know what was going on when you're reading a news article after the fact that starts out by telling you exactly what went on, but "fearful idiots" is a remarkably stupid generalization.
How do you think residents would respond in your area? "The house is rattling, there's a tremendous roaring sound, I can feel reverberations through my body, and there's a bright glow on the horizon...meh, my WoW character is about to level up. I'll worry about it later." Somehow I'm guessing not.
Supposing they tested this near New York, or better yet Boston (The Mooninites are coming! The Mooninites are coming!)? There'd be hysteria in the streets. Heck, in some places you'd probably even get looting and throngs fleeing the city. The same goes for pretty much any place in the entire US, with the likely exception of Cape Canaveral, where rocket launches happen relatively frequently.
Things like this are genuinely bewildering when you don't know what's going on. About 10 years ago I saw a natural gas pipeline fire...from 50 miles away. The whole family was out on the back porch staring at the eerily pulsating glow of the reflection off the clouds trying to figure out what was going on. Until the local news reported on what was actually happening, our best guess was a forest fire, but a nuclear bombing of Portland was another speculation (we figured it unlikely, however, partially because there was no similar glow to the north, in the direction of Seattle). Coincidentally, they said the flames from that fire were as much as 200 feet high, so it was probably similar in brightness to the SpaceX test, but not nearly as loud.
A final more general comment: SpaceX has been conducting engine tests out there for several years now. In fact, their first Falcon 9 firing (1 engine at that time) on that test stand was almost a year ago, and their first nine-engine, short duration fire was three months ago. In view of this, SpaceX's statement that the sound carried much further than in the past due to the weather is probably quite accurate. It also probably didn't help that they did the test at 10:30 PM. Perhaps in the future they'll work safe stopping points into their procedure so they can delay to the next day if the test preparations take too long.
They probably also should consider putting up simple walls to reflect some of the sound upward and reduce the complaints long term. At the very least, have a facility-wide arbor day celebration and go plant lines of trees along the edge of the test site. I know our local racetrack was able to reduce neighborhood complaints (and make the treehuggers a little happier) by doing this.