Slashdot Mirror
SpaceX Falcon 9 Blasts Off From California
An anonymous reader writes "SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket completed a successful first launch today, taking off from California and putting a Canadian science satellite in orbit. 'The beefed-up Falcon 9 that blasted off on its maiden flight from Southern California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, carrying a small Canadian government communication and research satellite, went through a seemingly picture-perfect countdown and performed on ascent as engineers hoped. The changes to the rocket are aimed at improving capacity and reliability, while simultaneously speeding up manufacturing. Historically, the initial launch of a new rocket has as much as a one-in-two chance of failure. Early this month, Elon Musk, the company's founder, chief executive and chief designer, seemingly tried to play down expectations by sending out a Twitter message emphasizing that the revamped rocket 'has a lot of new technology, so the probability of failure is significant.''"
"so the probability of failure is significant"
After all of these years of rocketry experience, one would think that much new technology would be added to decrease the probability of failure, yes?
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
Article available to subscribers - HAH! EABOD Wall Street Journal
Who the heck posted this here? An employee of the Wall Street Journal? Get this crap off here or at least provide links you don't have to pay to access. There's only a hundred or so other news sites carrying the same story. Ridiculous.
Better known as 318230.
I had some virgin Perl code be part of this launch. It worked!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303464504579105312781353496.html .... where is it, all i see is a title.
You wouldn't know what gay was if Poison, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and the Quire Boys jumped out of your wardrobe whistling the Archers theme tune, shouted "rodeo" and gave it to you up the bum all night so that you could never sit down ever again.
I watched the webcast live. The qualification of the upgraded Falcon 9 seemed to have gone very well, with payloads deployed in nominal orbits. They were also supposed to do some first tests for recovering the first stage. The only thing that I could find was that the second of two burns after separation sent it into a spin, after which it crash-landed in the ocean. Anyone has some more news about that?
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Historically, the initial launch of a new rocket has as much as a one-in-two chance of failure.
Historically, new rockets have been of an untested design, without much in the way of previously-tested designs to use as a reference. The SpaceX Falcon 9 is built largely around previously-tested designs, on top of solid engineering. One would suppose this would give it a better than 50/50 chance of success. In fact, the space shuttle program, viewed over its total life, had something like 93% success rate for its engines. Much of the SpaceX projects' development is based on the results of those tests, designs, and engineering expertise.
It would be highly suspect of their rockets had a failure rate much higher than that -- one would expect a higher success rate due to incremental improvement, not worse.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Space-X has four more Falcon 9 launches on their launch manifest for 2013, and ten scheduled for 2014. This is the first launch of the volume production version. Now they start cranking them out. With 9 engines per rocket, Space-X has to build over a hundred engines a year, which means they can set up an assembly line and get economies of scale.
Next year is the first flight of the Falcon Heavy, with 27 engines. Biggest rocket since the Saturn V.
Here's the Space-X price list. Pricing is about half of other launchers.
At the risk of enraging automatic supporters of bloated government programs like the old Space Shuttle, it doesn't surprise me that lean, privately funded space-exploitation outfits do so well. Reliable execution of rocket science is difficult enough already without burdening the principals with all the artificial fears and running annoyances of a crusty bureaucracy. "Could I be fired for departing from the top-down plan if I do this instead of that? Does this possible change meet the 400-page outline set down by a large committee run by political appointees?" Every millisecond squandered on peripheral distractions is a millisecond lost to the subtle considerations of consistently productive and reliable thought.
Additionally, the people who work at the private firms tend more strongly to be there for the love of it than with any government agency. That counts for a lot when it comes to repeatedly avoiding those little errors of ennui and fatigue that can build up into a disaster. Enthusiastic workers are also more prone to realizing with a joyful start that a small change that could make a real difference will likely be actually used by a quick, responsive management team. Rocketry is often about very small changes marking the difference between a successful mission and a flaming ball of fuel and rocket parts.
Along these lines, I've always thought that China has consistently lagged behind the West in leading-edge technology for much the same reasons. The Chinese have no lack of smart people, but they're subtly and powerfully burdened with the habit of "self-censorship" to avoid offending the Communist Party and with the Confucian habit of observing "face-saving" deferment to the opinions of their alleged superiors. Sounds similar to and worse than just about any government agency in the West, eh?
These are my own thoughts, and only one puppy was temporarily scared into hiding under the couch during the production of this post. I also killed a small spider, but the dratted thing was trying to crawl into my coffee cup.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Historically, the initial launch of a new rocket has as much as a one-in-two chance of failure.
Just ask Germany, North Korea, Japan, India. . .
Who modded this GNAA wannabe as "funny"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFefasS6bhc
My other signature is a car
Here's a much better link: SpaceX successfully launches debut Falcon 9 v1.1.
Then, this F9 "v1.1" was much more of a version 2.0. It had its engines uprated from 95,000 lbf (sea level) to 140,000 lbf (sea level). They also are arranged in different way (from a 3x3 grid to a circle of 8 with one engine in the center) which meant a new thrust structure. It also has its fuel tanks stretched by 60% making it much heavier. This is as far as you can go from the 1.0 and still keep the name. Succeeding with this in the first try is good.
There's no news though on them recovering the first stage. It was meant to brake and reenter intact and try for a "landing" on water. Or maybe they just want to tow it home first (but its hard to imagine Musk not bragging about it).
Let me take a guess, you're a white, Tea Party, ignorant fuck, yes? Go ignorance! Oh, and you're a coward. Nice.
Someone with a sense of humor? Funniest thing I've read on Slashdot for a long time,
Economies of scale kick in when you are able to keep your staff fully occupied and you tools continually in use. That will happen at different productive outputs depending on what you're building and how you are building it. You can't just say "Economies of scale don't kick in all that much when your annual production is that tiny." It's not that simple.
So as a Canadian Taxpayer, is there a discount on 50/50 rockets? Is there a refund for the cost of the trip, plus a sizeable amount of cash to offset the cost of a(nother) new satellite?
Why the heck would the OP link to a pay-wall when this is a generic story available from other news sites?
I refused to believe them when they said that mental illness was a handicap.
But on a more serious note, I reckon the best way to deal with bigotry and bullies is to take them down a few pegs in public with humour.