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Cygnus Launches In First Mission Since Antares Rocket Explosion (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: An Atlas V rocket carrying a Cygnus cargo spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station has lifted off from Cape Canaveral. This is the first flight of the Cygnus since the previous spacecraft was destroyed during an Antares rocket explosion in 2014. Ars reports: "Sunday's successful launch was the fourth attempt this week to get CRS Orb-4 into space. Three previous launch attempts—one per day since Thursday—were scrubbed due to foul weather at Cape Canaveral. The CRS-4 Cygnus capsule is currently en route to the ISS, carrying about 7300 pounds (about 3300kg) of food, hardware, and scientific equipment for the Expedition 44 crew on board the ISS (which includes US astronaut Scott Kelly, who is more than halfway through a year-long stay aboard the station)."
I remember when Cygnus was a major name in writing FOSS for Linux and Unix platforms until Red Hat acquired them. They've really taken off since then - literally - by the look of it, given where they are today
The vitally important Tang and freeze-dried waffles have arrived! Let the science commence!
wasted on corporate welfare.
Why didn't NASA just buy station resupply flights from ULA instead of making a bad deal with the incompetent SpaceX or ATK the having to buy backup them as well?
an ill wind that blows no good
...but it was the Antares which exploded, wasn't it? I know that payload-rocket coupling is a serious concern, but was it thought to be involved in this case?
while this example of government selected (as opposed to free market selected) corporate welfare proves itself to be both expansive and unreliable, soyuz launches regularly takes place both cheaply and more reliably (though far from slashdot notice) .
there is no free market here and as such whole idea of privatizing this is flawed. this is same as a government program, with whole cost on government and all profits, regardless of success, to corporates.
or Clint Eastwood in fist full of dollars etc. I could see where this would be really cool if done properly.
I know its popular to hate on cyngus for basically recycling unused parts, but you gotta give it to them, at least they slap together this stuff into something workable. Sure it might blow up from time to time, but its better than letting the stuff rot in a warehouse.
I'm not sure you can take credit for overcoming your rocket disaster when you "solve" the problem by using some other company's rocket.
The Air Force wants very reliable rockets to launch its billion dollar satellites. The Atlas V has had 60! successful launches in a row. The Atlas V should be carrying astronauts.
However, the commercial sector, and ISS cargo, want a cheaper rocket, that will explode from time to time. The Falcon 9, and Antares, are great for this. I'm guessing there is some stupid 'buy american' policy that is responsible for putting Cygnus on an Atlas V.
The Delta IV is probably going to be killed off. That should save some money.
The Atlas V has had 60! successful launches in a row.
That's a mighty big number, 60 factorial. Approximately 8.3209871 x 10^81, in fact. That's not far off from the total number of elementary particles in the universe (10^86).
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
That argument might hold some water if their prices had stuck at the same high rate for a long time (with increases for inflation). But those prices jumped by more than an order of magnitude when Boeing and Lockheed Martin merged thereby creating a monopoly in the defense launch industry (ULA). No doubt that the commercial launch industry isn't as safe as the defense launch market, but there is a point at which reliability becomes moot. By some estimates you could launch 4 Falcon 9 rockets for every ULA launch. That might not fly when you're launching some billion dollar satellite but if you're launching some communication satellites or lower end spy satellites you'd be a fool to launch them on a rocket more expensive than the spacecraft itself.
And as a good Space Nutter, you probably think that's not nearly enough rockets...
I came here to write a snarky comment about deciding to out source lifting services when your cobbled launch system goes boom. However, the more think about it, this seems like the smarter thing for Cygnus to do.
Get out of the lifting business. ULA and SpaceX (last launch not withstanding) have a reliable proven launch systems.
Bezos is coming to the party possible soon.
What they should instead do is get everybody at the table and agree to an interface that everybody would use for connecting their space craft to the lifting system. That way if your X launch system. You receive a standard launch container. You'd latch it onto a testbed that would do gyro/tip weight balancing calculations.
Have your software take the balancing calculations to figure out angular moment, etc, then mount the container in the fairing, put it on top of the rocket, and away you go.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.