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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.
This return to flight launch is going to be scrutinized by a lot of folks. Hopefully SpaceX has truly determined the problems for the accident. A landing back at the Cape would be awesome.
Word salad crunches gracefully over pineapple sunsets.
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
Aren't supercooled materials actually cooled below their freezing point, but kept in a liquid state? Oxygen "just above its freezing point" is damned cold, but not supercooled. So, which one is it?
I'm a bit confused. I thought the reason for the barge was because it was pretty far downrange. If they are launching from the Cape and then landing the first stage there too, won't that be a pretty massive turnaround for the first stage? Of course maybe that's why they are going with the "full power" mode. My understanding is that eventually they plan to launch from Texas and land the first stage at the Cape. Is this still what they are saying?
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.
It makes you wonder why they don't always spend 2 1/2 times more per launch? Really, that's something you don't understand?
Atlas is the 7th generation of a rocket family that's been around since 1957. One would hope that they'd have gotten most of the kinks by now. By comparison, Falcon 9 is a 2nd generation of a rocket family that's been around since 2006.
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
Unlike during the last Falcon 9 launch, I hope that they don't get impatient and turn on time warp again - everyone knows that it makes the physics unstable.
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
It is a private company. They are not required to tweet every 15min to keep you entertained. If your a client i am sure it would be a little different.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
SpaceX has a number of launches coming up according to Space Flight Now including:
* 19 Dec - Falcon 9 rocket will launch 11 second-generation Orbcomm communications satellites.
* Dec ? - Falcon 9 rocket will launch the SES 9 communications satellite.
* Jan - Falcon 9 rocket will launch the 10th Dragon spacecraft on the eighth operational cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station.
* Jan - Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Jason 3 ocean altimetry mission. Jason 3 will measure ocean surface topography to aid in ocean circulation and climate change research for NOAA, EUMETSAT, NASA and the French space agency, CNES.
* There are others scheduled for early 2016
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Again: "Atlas is the 7th generation of a rocket family that's been around since 1957. One would hope that they'd have gotten most of the kinks by now. By comparison, Falcon 9 is a 2nd generation of a rocket family that's been around since 2006." Not sure how you missed that part. When the Atlas family was 9 years old, it was still undergoing regular failures. Atlas LV-3A, which was used from 1960 to 1968 (and would thus be the development-time equivalent of the Falcon 9) had 49 launches and 38 successes, or a success rate of only 77%.
Now, of course, that was a different time. The had less knowledge and technology base... although contrariwise they had far larger inflation-adjusted budgets. But let's just say that the technology issue means that Falcon 9 should prove itself much faster than the Atlas family did. Okay, so maybe the comparable level is to how Atlas was performing in the 1970s? The two Atlas rockets active in the 1970s (Atlas SLV-3C and Atlas SLV-3D) had a success rate of 84%. Okay, let's say the 1980s. The Atlas SLV-3D extended into the 80s, and there was also the atlas G, with a 67% success rate. It wasn't until the 1990s that they got up to a nearly 95% success rate - decades after the creation of the family.
You want perfection in under a decade of the creation of a new orbital rocket family. Please point me to a single case where that's happened, with a statistically significant number of launches under their belt. Proton? Nope. Soyuz? Nope. Delta? Nope. Arianne? Nope.
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
Article and pic here. SpaceX is planning a main landing pad as well as four contingency landing pads at Launch Complex 13 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, according to a June 2014 environmental impact statement.
The U.S. Air Force announced Feb. 10 that SpaceX has signed a five-year lease for Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 13, which was used to launch Atlas rockets and missiles between 1956 and 1978. In its new role, it will serve as a landing pad for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy booster cores launched from Florida, the Air Force said.
“The contingency pads would only be utilized in order to enable the safe landing of a single vehicle should last-second navigation and landing diversion be required. There are no plans to utilize the contingency pads in order to enable landing multiple stages” at once, the assessment said.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Quite. I imagine there will still be lots of refinement of the landing process for some time to come, but once they have landed one, then they can start figuring out what's necessary for refurbishment. I wonder if there will be a period of high-risk, cut-rate launches to test early refurbished rockets? I imagine there are a lot of projects out there where the cost of getting to orbit dwarfs the cost of the satellite itself, so that a high failure rate of early refurbished rockets would be an acceptable risk. Might even continue with rockets approaching end of life if they can't be recycled more cost effectively - it's probably going to be a long time before the need disappears to launch food, water, spare parts, and other low-value goods into orbit.
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I used to live in Orlando - by my faulty memory one Shuttle launch in five or so went up on the planned day, so this guy's odds are good I think.
There's an urban legend about how the Cape got picked despite the troublesome weather: someone looked at the average wind velocity there and the daily average was almost zero! (The always-present coastal winds reverse direction in the evening.) Silly, but it would explain a lot.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Oh, sure, no question. Pretty much anything that's large and what you would call a "technology demostrator" (solar sail, experimental reentry system, large tether experiments, inflatables, anything of that nature) would go crazy for a cheap, even if high risk, rocket - when your spacecraft only costs a couple tens of thousands of dollars to build (or less) but launch costs are in the tens of millions, who cares if you lose the craft if it can save you a relevant chunk of the launch price? No question that SpaceX will find a market for reused rockets even during the high-risk initial phase.
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
It was a structural failure from a third-party part that didn't even approach its claimed specs. And it's not like SpaceX never tested the struts - they did, just not every single strut. The third party (which has reportedly had their contract terminated) clearly had process consistency problems.
SpaceX has never had a problem with its turbopumps.
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
The full thrust version of Falcon 9.1 has sufficient performance to fly back to the Cape without needing the barge. The barge will still be used for heavy GEO sat launches (which couldn't be recovered before), and the core stage of Falcon Heavy which will be too far down range to return to the Cape