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SpaceX Sets Feb. 24th Target Date For Next Launch
Rei writes: After some consternation about the pacing of Falcon 9 upgrades, SpaceX has announced that it plans to launch again from Cape Canaveral with a target date of February 24th. While the primary mission will be to place the SES-9 communications satellite in orbit, this will also mark their fourth attempt to land the first stage on an autonomous drone ship, after their last launch touched down softly but fell over when one leg failed to latch. SpaceX is working to significantly accelerate the rate of production and launches — they are reportedly moving the factory from 6-8 cores produced per year to 18 at present, and expect to reach 30 by the end of the year. After the upcoming launch, they expect to launch one rocket every two to three weeks.
Not seeing the connection. Somebody's going to be launching satellites either way, whether it's SpaceX or a competitor.
Also, don't confuse cores with launches. The Falcon Heavy is three cores. Of course, offsetting that, there's the potential for reuse of rockets...
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
It seems since our new Slashlords have taken over there have only been 1 in 10 stores about the great Elon. WTF Timmy? Work harder.
Yeah! And let's stop those repetitive posting about Linux altogether, we have enough of them already! /sarcasm
More seriously though, why are you complaining? A quick search of the tag "x elonmusk" show about 1 story per week. Furthermore, I'm very interested to follow those space launch and rocket engineering kinda fall into the spirit of /. afaik.
Elok
Not seeing the connection. Somebody's going to be launching satellites either way, whether it's SpaceX or a competitor.
Not that I am at all opposed to more satellite launches, but... how can you possibly believe that SpaceX increasing the global supply of (relatively) cheap rocket launches won't affect the quantity of stuff launched into orbit?
This is like, economics 101 - when supply goes up and prices go down, demand increases in response.
One of the things SpaceX and others are emphasizing for "the future" is small, expendable cubesats in LEO, e.g. for SpaceX's Internet plan. This is low enough that atmospheric drag brings things down relatively quickly. If launch costs are low enough, and SpaceX's satellite factory and general commoditization of satellite components keeps progressing, this could be beneficial as far as the space debris problem is concerned.
Judging from many comments posted so far in this topic it looks like the presence of Olgino trolls / bots is increasing on /.
This is even more evident in politically charged discussions.
So, congratulations to /. -- it's finally has been noticed and taken seriously.
The SpaceX internet communication satellites are expected to be in the smallsat-class of 100-to-500 kg (220-to-1,100 lb) mass; which are intended to be orbiting at an altitude of approximately 1,100 km (680 mi). There's far less drag at 1,100 km than on the ISS; which has an apogee of 416 km (258 mi).
The point of the second article was that SpaceX wants to Dramatically Accelerate Its Launch Frequency and, if all goes as planned, the company will achieve a launch rate of once every two to three weeks. They have 40 Falcon 9 missions and 6 Falcon Heavy missions on their manifest. The more launches, the more chances for problems but for now the only constraining factor appears to be the number of cores they can produce. They need 61 cores for their current manifest (40 x1 F + 7 x3 FH) so even if they increase production to 30 cores per year, it will still take over 2 years to produce all the cores they need for their current manifest.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.