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Weather Promising for Sunday Morning SpaceX Launch
USA Today reports that the weather looks good for Sunday morning's planned launch at 10:21, Florida time (14:21 GMT) of SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule, loaded with a docking adapter intended for future manned-crew access to the International Space Station. An excerpt:
"The forecast calls for a 90% chance of weather good enough to permit SpaceX's 208-foot Falcon 9 rocket to blast off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during an instantaneous launch window.
... "This is actually pretty cool, because it does play right into our next Crew Dragon program," [Hans] Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president for mission assurance, said of the docking adapter in a separate news briefing. "It's something that we bring up for our own future, and so we're really motivated to bring this up."
Related: astroengine points out that as part of this launch, SpaceX will make another attempt at landing the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a floating platform off the coast of Florida after sending the Dragon cargo vehicle to the International Space Station. Although SpaceX is hoping to achieve something the rocket industry has never done before (true usability of rocket engines, cutting costs), it's not the only game in town — Blue Origin, ULA and Airbus all have rocket return desires.
SpaceX *is* the only game in town: they have 2 landing attempts and a 3rd imminent. Blue Origin, ULA, and Airbus have PowerPoint, nothing more.
For anybody who doesn't know about it, http://spacexstats.com/index.p... is a neat site that lists upcoming SpaceX missions with countdowns to expected launch times, or estimates where the exact time isn't yet determined. It also has some statistics (though, sadly, they're almost always out of date) about things like launch records, flight times, payload mass, and so on. Obviously not as useful as SpaceX.com itself on launch day, but handy for checking when launch day will come (or when, for example, the first flight of a new vehicle is expected). It also has links to info about past launches.
I'm not affiliated with the site in any way (if I were, it'd keep those statistics better up to date) but I thought it might interest some other folks who like to follow SpaceX. Oh, and for the record, the link to tomorrow/today's launch is http://spacexstats.com/mission...
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
We deserve the truth, and more clickbait headlines. I won't even look at the summary unless the title is phrased as a "controversial" question.
They came very close, twice. And both attempts failed because of mechanical problems, not because it can't be done. Watching the video of the 2nd attempt, I'd say that they have control authority to spare. I think the lesson from both failures is that landing their first stage is in fact very doable.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Ariane 1 - second and fifth launches failed
Ariane 2 - only 6 launches, first failed
Ariane 3 - fifth launch failed
Ariane 4 - eighth launch failed
Ariane 5 - first launch failed, two partial failures in first 11
Atlas A - only 8 launches, 5 failed
Atlas B - only 10 launches, 3 failed
Atlas C - only 6 launches, 2 failed
Delta - first launch failed
Delta II - first eighteen successful, partial failure on the 42nd launch which substantially reduced the satellite's operational lifespan (55th was first total failure)
Falcon 1 - only five launches, first three failed
Falcon 9 - first eighteen launches successful (Secondary payload on the 4th launch aborted as a precaution, 19th was first total failure)
Long March 1 - only 2 launches, both successful
Long March 2 - first launch failed
Long March 3 - no complete failures in first 11, but 1 and 8 were partial failures
N-1 - only four launches, all failed horribly
Proton - third launch failed
Proton-K - second, third, fourth and sixth launches failed
Proton-M - eleventh launch failed
Saturn I - only ten launches, all successful
Saturn IB - only nine launches, all successful (unless you count Apollo 1 - it didn't launch but still killed three astronauts)
Saturn V - second launch (Apollo 6) failed, Apollo 13 doesn't count because it was a payload, not launcher, failure
Soyuz - third launch failed, with fatalities
Soyuz-U - seventh launch failed
Soyuz-FG - first eighteen launches successful (all 46 to date completely successful, including lots and lots of astronauts delivered to ISS)
Space Shuttle - first eighteen successful (19th was first partial failure (ATO), 25th was first full failure)
Titan I - fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth and tenth launches failed
Titan II - ninth and eleventh launches failed
Titan III - first and sixth launches failed
Titan IV - seventh launch failed
Zenit-2 - first and second launches failed
It was a good run, but the game is over. Falcon 9 slots in to the rankings as fourth in the history of rocket development, with a success record exceeded only by Shuttle, Soyuz-FG, and Delta II.
Maybe Falcon 9 Heavy will have better luck.