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Musk Announces Return-to-Flight Date For Falcon 9 Rocket
Rei writes: After being grounded for six months after a strut failure doomed the launch vehicle, Elon Musk has confirmed rumors that SpaceX plans to try for launch again on December 19th, with a static test firing on December 16th. SpaceX will also attempt a landing of their first stage — not at sea, but on land. Lastly, this will be the first launch of a Falcon 9 "Full Thrust" variant, where the propellants are supercooled (with the oxygen just above its freezing point) to increase their density and thus fuel flow and thrust.
Turnaround is much easier when the stage is nearly empty. First off you have air resistance killing off part of your lateral momentum for you, and you already have altitude. Your stage is vastly lighter as well, having used up most of its propellant and separated from the second stage and payload. Your last kilogram of propellant delivers about 23 times more delta-V than your first (in a way it's kind of problematic - even with just one engine operating and throttled all the way down (70%) it can't "hover", it still has way too much thrust). So turnaround is actually quite doable, if you have a little margin left over. It depends on how heavy your payload is and what sort of trajectory it's being launched to.
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
It might be because the Atlas flies on Russian RD-180 engines? If the entire manned space program ended up depending on the continued goodwill of the Russians; well it would be sort of embarrassing at that point.