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SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Blasts Off From Florida
An anonymous reader writes After two months of delays, SpaceX was successful today with its launch of six Orbcomm telecommunications satellites. All six satellites have been successfully deployed in orbit. The 375-pound satellites will offer two-way data links to help customers track, monitor and control transportation and logistics assets, heavy equipment, oil and gas infrastructure, ships and buoys, and government-owned equipment. From the article: "SpaceX plans to use Monday's launch to test a landing system it is developing to fly its rockets back to the launch site for refurbishment and reuse. During Falcon 9's last flight in April, the first stage successfully restarted some of its engines as it careened toward the ocean, slowing its descent. The rocket also was able to deploy stabilizing landing legs before toppling over in the water. The booster, however, was destroyed by rough seas before it could be retrieved by recovery ships. Monday's launch was the 10th flight of Falcon 9 rocket, all of which have been successful."
Oh, fuck off, SpaceX. Reaganomics squeezes NASA to the point that it can barely produce anything of value, and now we have a businessman leeching off the equipment and knowledge created by the public sector, feeding into the free market fantasy with a cheap first hit.
Boeing was once a cheap innovator too, you know. Actually, no, Boeing was once the producer which government wanted to buy into. SpaceX is nothing more than an artifice of ideology - it produced nothing on its own to have made it worthy of initial sponsorship.
Guaranteed - there are no black engineers involvedin this.
The article is pretty vague about potentially the most important part of this launch - the reusable landing system. The article says they were going to "test" this. First, they're unclear as to whether that's a full return-to-launch test, or another "soft landing in water" test. Then they don't say whether that test was successful - they switch weirdly from past tense when describing the launch to future tense when describing the test, despite them being pretty much the same event.
The Reuters article makes no mention of the landing attempt this time -- that's probably because it exploded the instant it touched the water. My guess is superheated engine nozzles do not like ice cold seawater.
Shouldn't this story be "SpaceX rocket EXPLODES in the Atlantic"?
and make that sucker land like a drone/glider
1) The Merlin engine evolved from the low cost fastrack engine developed by NASA.
2) The competing 'American' rockets, the EELVs, are military rockets, that the military spends lots of money on to get very high reliability. Congress says that NASA has to use American rockets, which effectively meant, the EELVs, Delta II, or Space Shuttle, until recently. SpaceX can skimp on quality control, because the military isn't their customer.
3) Thrust oscillation is considered the biggest barrier to Ares I like rockets, and is still not fully understood.
Good luck to SpaceX reusing their flimsy rockets. Soviet rockets were overbuilt, and used lower precision parts. They just made the rocket bigger. I wonder how flimsy cheap rockets will work out for SpaceX.
why didn't they route power to structural integrity ? An ensign would tell you that, its basic.
SpaceX has a long history of LYING about success. To this day, they haven't had a single flight without major problems and haven't even managed to achieve one single mission where it completed 50% of the tasks.
But somehow, every mission is a success and every single failure is "expected" or "planned".
Guess why you never see video of the unmanned Falcon? Because not one single (water) landing has being completed without serious damage to the vehicle and two of them were total lost of vehicle and return cargo.
The space shuttle had abort options .... including an emergency landing in Spain and Africa.
Please stop spreading ignorance and lies.
I'm overjoyed that SpaceX is constantly pushing the envelope. I hope that SpaceX one day will announce that they are sending people to Mars or who knows maybe even further then that. If anything I hope SpaceX sprouts more "space companies".
Hate to destroy you nice narrative, but Mr Stalin was Georgian. Other leaders were also from other republics. The Muslims/Turkos retained their culture and were quick to expel all non-Turkos from their soil after 1991. Chrustchew was Ukrainian. They transferred computer industry from Minsk to the Turkos because they had some lofty aims of "developing" these.
But hey, if you run a war financed by New York, you need to cut corners with the truth.
Whoever does not subscribe to the New York Cleptocracy is "fascist". Why don't you idots drop yourself off a bridge and be done with your miserable life ?
Just check the ethnicity of some of the Russkie tycoons. You will figure that Russia allows plenty of Turkos and Jews to be very wealthy business-people on Russian soil. They just don't allow them to usurp power and transfer all wealth to London and New York while the average Russian family starves. Putin does what he was trained for at great expense - serve the Russian state and populace. And he does it not the heavy-handed way all the time. Because he apparently is not a dumb brute. Rather, he plays on the piano that presents itself to him. Then and now he plays the axe, when barbarians financed by America break down the gates. Boo-Hoo.
Buran had a 100% success rate. 1 out of 1. As a "drone", by the way.