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SpaceX Launch Achieves Geostationary Transfer Orbit
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket this afternoon in a bid to deliver a large commercial satellite into geostationary orbit. The flight was successful: "Approximately 185 seconds into flight, Falcon 9’s second stage’s single Merlin vacuum engine ignited to begin a five minute, 20 second burn that delivered the SES-8 satellite into its parking orbit. Eighteen minutes after injection into the parking orbit, the second stage engine relit for just over one minute to carry the SES-8 satellite to its final geostationary transfer orbit. The restart of the Falcon 9 second stage is a requirement for all geostationary transfer missions." This is a significant milestone for SpaceX, and it fulfills another of the three objectives set forth by the U.S. Air Force to certify SpaceX flights for National Security Space missions.
The United States relies too much on ULA for its space-launch, ULA has easily raised its price and the tax-payers ended up having to cough up the dough.
FTFY. This is the first commercial satellite launched in the US since November 23, 2009 when Intelsat 14 launched on an Atlas V from LC-41.
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> What if one day Russia or Iran or China ends up owning SpaceX ?
What if one day large corporations could pay-off american politicians, on a large and wide scale, with many people knowing it happens. And those people end up determining how the country is run?
We both know that already happens, and *this* is what your worried about?
What does it even matter if Russia or the Chinese own SpaceX, they dont, but who cares. They have their own space agencies... ones that actually still operate.
that existing space providers are in big trouble.
Even the Chinese are quaking in their boots, as they can't do it as cheaply as SpaceX. And EADS is frantically redesigning their new Ariane 6 to try to be more cost competitive with the Falcon.
SpaceX has completely rocked the space industry upside down, and A LOT of naysayers need to eat crow now. As recently as 2012 (see this article), managers at NASA were poo-pooing Elon saying rockets are hard and noobs shouldn't try.
I have no idea why the NSA/USAF requirements is such a big deal, as it really doesn't have much of anything to do with a private company (in this case SES... an operator of GEO telecommunications satellites) is spending its money on another private company (SpaceX) to accomplish an otherwise very public mission. People are going to be pointing their satellite dishes at this satellite for crying out loud and watching television coming from it. I don't know how more public you can make such a flight.
The USAF is simply throwing up some BS that SpaceX needs to fly a few more missions and prove it can deliver satellites into various kinds of orbits before they are able to tell Boeing and Lockheed-Martin lobbyists where to go when the next round of launch contracts come out. Those two companies (in the form of the United Launch Alliance... jointly owned by both companies) want to pretend they are the only people in America capable of launching anything into orbit at all.
SpaceX could easily raise its price 100-fold and the tax-payers will end up having to cough up the dough.
What the heck are you talking about? Why would Boing or Lockheed (the current owners of the US govt launch monopoly) be and different? How is *more* competition from SpaceX going to lead to price increases and fewer options?
What if one day Russia or Iran or China ends up owning SpaceX ?
And what if some day Russia or Iran of China owns General Dynamics, Lockheed, Honeywell, Northrup, etc? Then those companies will no longer be US defense contractors, and others will *happily* step up to take over their cushy multibillion dollar cost-overrun laden US military contracts. So it's a totally absurd concern that would be no different 30 years ago than it is today.
When your #1 customer spends more than the rest of the world combined, you don't piss them off.
When you accomplish something of this complexity for near half the price of the competition the media better be extolling the accomplishment.
No, he's suggesting that all government satellites be launched directly by the government.
You know, the way all government ground vehicles are built by the government, the way they make all their own computers, their own lightbulbs, their own paper, the way all government cafeteria food is grown by government workers.
You're being deliberately obtuse. Computers, lightbulbs, paper and cafeteria food are all commodities produced by companies who thrive from supplying a wide range of customers.
Lockheed in particular, and Boeing in great part, are doing custom round-trip design to deployment work often exclusively for the US government. There is no reason not to employ engineers directly, except (from a political PoV) ideological and (from a pragmatic PoV) that Uncle Sam is private business' bitch.
There is one similarity between Lockheed+Boeing and the businesses you list: all these enterprises began their work decades ago, using their own expertise. SpaceX started merely as a loss-making venture poaching ex-government and contractor employees, and taking government money - it really had nothing meritocratic to bring to the table.
(Also, "she".)
Forrest M. Mims, III. Caught a NASA satellite's instrument mis-calibration. Very much an amateur when it comes to astroscience anything. A rather decent educator, and man, does he have good handwriting or what.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Near half? Closer to one tenth. A Falcon 9 costs $56.5 million. The last ULA launch cost $465 million. I don't know that the price difference is all that much of an accomplishment though. How hard is it to beat a bloated cost-plus military-industrial complex dinosaur that exists mainly as welfare for mediocre engineers? The short fabrication and assembly times, the incredibly short integration time, the miniscule size of the launch crew, all while conducting rocket surgery—now those are accomplishments worth extolling.
For the SES-8 and Thaicom-6 launches SpaceX commited 100% of the rocket's capabilities to boost the rocket into a super sync orbit.
A GTO orbit is less than 36000Km x 185Km.
SES-8 was inserted into a 80000Km x 295Km orbit.
It reaches apogee when the moon is close by.
This trick helps save fuel to allow SES-8 to live much longer. Typically satellites useful lives are limited by fuel used for station keeping maneuvers.
In this sense, SES-8 and Thaicom-6 launches are even more valuable to their operators than a typical GTO launch.
GEO satellites are responsible for circularizing the orbit, and this consumes a lot of their precious on board fuel.