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SpaceX Launches Super-Heavy Satellite Atop Falcon 9 Rocket (usatoday.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the heavy-lifting dept.

SpaceX has successfully launched a heavy commercial communications satellite atop one of its Falcon 9 rockets today. "Weighing in at nearly 13,500 pounds atop the rocket, the fourth Inmarsat-5 satellite was the heaviest load lofted by a Falcon 9 yet," reports USA Today. From the report: The 230-foot rocket delivered the spacecraft larger than a double-decker bus to an orbit more than 22,000 miles over the equator. As a result, SpaceX did not attempt to land the rocket's first stage either at Cape Canaveral or at sea, and the Falcon 9 booster was not equipped with landing legs. The Inmarsat-5 Flight 4 satellite, built by Boeing, completes Inmarsat's four-satellite Global Xpress constellation focused on delivering high-speed broadband data to mobile customers, including commercial aircraft and ships and the U.S. military.

85 comments

  1. Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Heaviest to GTO, not heaviest overall. They've lofted bigger loads to low earth orbit. Iridium flight was over 9 tons. All Dragon missions to ISS (Dragon + Trunk + all the stuff inside and mounted in the trunk) are also heavier than this sat was.

    But different orbits, so this is legit heaviest satellite to this specific orbit.

    1. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ok. Next step is to send to space a rotating space station with artificial gravity.

    2. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by CeasedCaring · · Score: 1

      Rotation would provide centrifugal force, simulating gravity, no need for artificial. /pedant

    3. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Next step is to send to space a rotating space station with real gravity. /retard

    4. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by zmooc · · Score: 1

      All space stations have real gravity. /dot

      --
      0x or or snor perron?!
    5. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 0

      Centrifugal force is not simulating gravity but rather it is indistinguishable from it, according to GTR. /pedant^2

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    6. Re: Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Approximately indistinguishable, right? Because you can perform experiments to determine you are in a rotating frame. And it seems to me (who knows absolutely none of the math) that you could also infer that the force you feel is due to centripetal acceleration -- no?

    7. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

      Tidal forces beg to differ ;) F may be the same, but dF is very different.

      --
      FSB hits! FSB hits! Your democracy dies. Do you want your possessions identified?
    8. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by hey! · · Score: 1

      True, but seven tons to GTO is hell of a lot more impressive than 9 tons to LEO.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    9. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 0

      It would have to have a radius of around 700m to produce 1g without making people perpetually sea-sick.

    10. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by taiwanjohn · · Score: 1

      I suspect that people could adapt, just as they do to zero-g. But we've never tested it. Not even on mice. (Though I think there is such an experiment in the pipeline in the next year or two.)

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
    11. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean dF/r. Just dF is too ambiguous. /pedant

    12. Re: Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by rkordmaa · · Score: 1

      I think the basis was that there is no difference between moving through flat space following a curve and moving in a straight line through curved space. So no, in principle you can't tell the difference, for every acceleration felt and equivalent space distortion can be constructed. In practice planet does not produce equivalently shaped space distortion to acceleration of a centrifuge. One is spheroid other is cylindrical for starters. One causes forces towards a common center other causes forces away from common center. Moving up and down by a small amount produces barely measurable difference on a planet, but a very notable one in a centrifuge.

    13. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      I meant that the nature of the phenomenon is supposed to be the same, not "gravity vs. fake gravity". My impression was this was the big deal about GTR.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    14. Re:Heaviest load to geosynchronous transfer orbit by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 0

      I suspect that people could adapt, just as they do to zero-g. But we've never tested it. Not even on mice.

      We have, it's called an Aerotrim and it makes people vomit and animals eventually die.

  2. Lasers are heavy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You better hope it doesn't have lasers, Comey!

  3. Mysterious units by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    The 230-foot rocket delivered the spacecraft larger than a double-decker bus to an orbit more than 22,000 miles over the equator.

    Could someone please convert that to football fields? ;)

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:Mysterious units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's approximate 1/687 the total volume occupied by the Library of Congress, making it 1/24 the area of a US regulation football field.

    2. Re:Mysterious units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By football I assume you mean the real football.

      a standard field is 90 to 120 meters long giving us.

      295046,4 to 393395,2 football fields above the equator.

    3. Re:Mysterious units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can give some even less meaningful units:

      13500 pounds = 419,4 slugs
      230 ft = 38,3 fathoms
      22000 miles = 161333,3 cables

      Helpful, right?

    4. Re:Mysterious units by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Here you go:
      http://www.convertunits.com/fr...
      The joke has got so old that someone has knocked up a conversion script for miles to football fields.
      Also the payload is around the mass of seven and a half Volkswagen Beetles.
      Libraries of Congress? I've got nothing.

    5. Re:Mysterious units by oobayly · · Score: 0

      Over in the UK we prefer to use El Reg Standard Units, for length it's Linquine, Double-decker bus or Brontosaurus.

      So, 22,000 miles is the equivalent of 1.61 mega-brontosauruses, which I think everyone can agree is much simpler to envisage.

    6. Re:Mysterious units by feargal · · Score: 4, Funny

      A football field is a unit of area, not distance. However, since we know a mile is eight furlongs, there's five furlongs to a kilometer, and approximately forty-five and a half brontosauruses per kilometer, we can quickly do the maths:

      22,000 * 8 / 5 * 45.5 gives us an approximate distance of 1,601,600 apatosauruses. And since we know five brontosauses can be laid along the length of a football field we can correct the sentence from the article.

      The 500-linguine rocket delivered the spacecraft larger than 237,000 grapefruits to an orbit higher than 320,320 football fields if they placed vertically end-to-end over the equator.

      --
      "A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
    7. Re: Mysterious units by bn-7bc · · Score: 1

      Yes thank you, converting a usless unit to anothher useles unit, thank you, why cant't pople stopp using silly units, use metric, metric works and makes sence On a more positive note, good to see SpaceX msking progress and delivering pay,oafs

    8. Re: Mysterious units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where can I get my own pay oaf. Are you one of them. Your spelling would indicate you do the pay very well.

    9. Re: Mysterious units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Surely you mean 'metres' not 'meters' ;)

    10. Re: Mysterious units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Linguini? Did they serve the pasta with rocket?

    11. Re: Mysterious units by danjump · · Score: 1

      Shouldn't the football field be measured corner to opposite corner though? That's how all the cool kids measure screens

    12. Re: Mysterious units by feargal · · Score: 1

      You wouldn't be able to stack them vertically on that axis though, so it wouldn't be a useful measurement to give. You're right however, I should have at least specified that they were standard 340' football fields.

      --
      "A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
    13. Re:Mysterious units by wbr1 · · Score: 1

      Football fields is an incompatible unit. Just request freedom units and let the neckbeards figure it out.

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
    14. Re: Mysterious units by tsqr · · Score: 1

      Where can I get my own pay oaf. Are you one of them. Your spelling would indicate you do the pay very well.

      You need to pay better attention to punctuation. He said, "delivering pay,oafs", which means they are delivering both pay (shades of stagecoach payroll deliveries) and oafs (of which he may be an example).

    15. Re:Mysterious units by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      Did you want CFL or NFL? There's a big difference in the length between the two with the CFL field being longer.

    16. Re:Mysterious units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is that British Cables or American Cables ;
      American Cables would be 7,039,998.55 rods, but British cables would be 5,944,887.67 rods. Since we're talking about cables and rods, it would be more consistent to say the rocket was 3.48 chains high.

    17. Re:Mysterious units by networkBoy · · Score: 1

      LoC/sec is a good BW measurement.

      Based on Boeing’s BSS-702HP satellite platform, each weighs in at around 6,100 Kilograms and hosts 89 Ka-Band transponders, supporting high user download speeds of 50Mbps and uplink of 5Mbps.

      and

      “A TB, or terabyte, is about 1.05 million MB. All the data in the American Library of Congress amounts to 15 TB.”

      So:
      download aggregate (50MB+89 transponders)/15TB == 0.000296666667 LoC/sec download and 1/10th that in upload.

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  4. http://www.sasken.com/industries/satcom by saskenseo · · Score: 1

    http://www.sasken.com/industri...

  5. Re:Good Joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A black guy and a Mexican guy opened a restaurant. It's called Nacho Mama.

  6. Re:Good Joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why do blacks smell? So blind people can hate them too.

  7. Why no recovery? by edxwelch · · Score: 1

    I was just wondering it says that they wouldn't attempt recovery of the first stage because the payload was so heavy, 13,400 lbs and it was to GTO orbit. That sort of indicates that the Falcon 9 is maxed out at that weight. But then if you look at the Wikipedia page it says that the max weight to GTO is actually a lot more, 18,300 lb.
    So, what gives? Is Wikipedia wrong?

    1. Re:Why no recovery? by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      18,300 lbs is the maximum payload it can deliver to GTO if they don't try a recovery. If they wan't to recover the 1st stage the maximum payload is 10,690 lbs.

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    2. Re:Why no recovery? by Ost99 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The limit for recoverability for GTO missions depends on weight and the exact orbit.
      A 5300kg (~11600lbs) GTO payload mission has been flown with recovery, wikipedia lists 5500kg as max (perhaps a bit optimistic) for reusable and 8300kg for expendable.

      With the same ~33% penalty in payload weight for a recoverable mission, the 5300kg reusable mission could have been a 8000kg expendable mission.
      In other words, the 6070kg mission flown yesterday was in just a bit over reusable weight and the in the lower end of expandable mode.

      --
      ---- Sig. gone.
    3. Re:Why no recovery? by edxwelch · · Score: 1

      Right, so they could have made their satellite a lot heavier with at extra cost

    4. Re:Why no recovery? by edxwelch · · Score: 1

      I mean, they could have made their satellite a lot heavier at no extra cost

    5. Re:Why no recovery? by Ost99 · · Score: 1

      Probably.
      But the satellite was ordered in october 2013 and was built to the same specifications as the previous 3, ordered in 2010. It's not something they could or would change based on the improved performance of Falcon 9 (F9 1.2 FT).

      I think the satellite was booked on Falcon Heavy (FH), but the delay of FH and the improvements to F9 1.2 made it possible to launch as F9 expendable.

      --
      ---- Sig. gone.
    6. Re:Why no recovery? by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      Not really. Although the bulk of the cost of launching is the cost of the Stages the cost of the fuel is not insignificant

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    7. Re:Why no recovery? by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not really. Although the bulk of the cost of launching is the cost of the Stages the cost of the fuel is not insignificant

      Bzzzt, wrong answer

      SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket currently carries a list price of about $54 million. However, the cost of fuel for each flight is only around $200,000 - about 0.4% of the total.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    8. Re:Why no recovery? by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      And currently they use rather expensive RP-1 fuel (a highly refined form of kerosene). The new Raptor engine design will use methane, which is dirt cheap in comparison,

    9. Re:Why no recovery? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They renegotiated their cost for RP-1. They now get it for closer to the price of jet fuel. (~$2/gal vs $8/gal).

      But yes, methane is cheaper (and higher Isp).

    10. Re:Why no recovery? by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2

      They renegotiated their cost for RP-1. They now get it for closer to the price of jet fuel. (~$2/gal vs $8/gal).

      They also signed up for the loyalty card, so they get additional discounts on their groceries whenever they buy fuel.

  8. Goddamn imperial units in a science article by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 2

    That's 6123.5 kilograms for people who are thinking straight.

    1. Re:Goddamn imperial units in a science article by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      Actually people usually use metric tons to describe the weight of satellites or the payload of a launcher. So the way it should be done is say it was a 6.12t satellite.

    2. Re:Goddamn imperial units in a science article by Maritz · · Score: 2

      Certain peoples' obsession with medieval units continues.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    3. Re: Goddamn imperial units in a science article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have no frame of reference for that number

    4. Re:Goddamn imperial units in a science article by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

      Sorry, I only us Planck units.

    5. Re: Goddamn imperial units in a science article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's just a multiplication to convert. If one can't multiply perhaps one shouldn't be reading such heavy fare.

    6. Re: Goddamn imperial units in a science article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're stupid.

      Enjoy your snack, little troll.

    7. Re:Goddamn imperial units in a science article by The+Raven · · Score: 4, Informative

      6100 kilograms for someone actually thinking straight. Don't add precision when you convert.

      --
      "I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
    8. Re:Goddamn imperial units in a science article by chihowa · · Score: 1

      Yeah, let's complain about customary units and then go ahead and convert through logical SI into more goofy customary units! It's 6.1 megagrams (Mg) or 6100 kilograms.

      --
      If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
    9. Re:Goddamn imperial units in a science article by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      If you can't handle your steam tables in units of BTUs per pound then you can just turn in your RPN calculator.

  9. Dear Slashdot by cheesybagel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Next time get your "News for Nerds" from a site other than USA Today:
    http://spacenews.com/spacex-la...

    See. Metric. Although in your defense the article did originally come from Florida Today which is usually a decent site for space coverage.

  10. Fast internet? by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 1

    Regardless of the bit rate, there's considerable latency with a geosynchronous orbit. Radio waves travel around 186,000 miles/second, meaning a round trip to the satellite is 1/4 of a second. If you're typing in ssh, double that. Press a key, half a second later the letter appears. If you click a link that has to hit a server, same thing - 1/2 second of overhead. The way some web pages are made those half seconds are going to stack up.

    I know there are plenty of places where the latency won't matter, but geosynch satellites will never have widespread usage for internet.

    --
    Do you have ESP?
    1. Re:Fast internet? by Aqualung812 · · Score: 2

      I know there are plenty of places where the latency won't matter, but geosynch satellites will never have widespread usage for internet.

      I could see a mode where geosynch does the heavy lifting while other low latency & low bandwidth methods do the SSH and other low latency stuff.

      Imagine browsing the Netflix list while on a LEO sat, and then when you click on the movie, the stream comes from a high-bandwidth, high latency GEO sat.

      If that happens, then geosynch satellites may have a very high usage for Internet, in terms of bits moved.

      --
      Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
    2. Re:Fast internet? by BradleyUffner · · Score: 1

      Radio waves travel around 186,000 miles/second, meaning a round trip to the satellite is 1/4 of a second. If you're typing in ssh, double that. Press a key, half a second later the letter appears. If you click a link that has to hit a server, same thing - 1/2 second of overhead

      So it's the world's highest Comcast simulator?

    3. Re:Fast internet? by Ranbot · · Score: 1

      ...there's considerable latency with a geosynchronous orbit. ...The way some web pages are made those half seconds are going to stack up.... geosynch satellites will never have widespread usage for internet.

      Yes, but their commercial and military customers probably do not allow users surf the web like normal folks.

      The Inmarsat-5 Flight 4 satellite... focused on delivering high-speed broadband data to mobile customers, including commercial aircraft and ships and the U.S. military.

      And for those customers half second delays are probably really fast compared to the alternatives.

    4. Re:Fast internet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but when you're on a ship in mid-ocean, getting a good cable (or fiber) connection is a bitch.

    5. Re:Fast internet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The way some web pages are made those half seconds are going to stack up.

      I know there are plenty of places where the latency won't matter, but geosynch satellites will never have widespread usage for internet.

      Geosynch satellites do have widespread usage for internet, Exede and HughesNet provide satellite internet.

    6. Re:Fast internet? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      As the satellites are by coincident nearly exactly 1/10 of a light second away, the round trip is 2/10 of a second and not 1/4th. But well, that is close enough :D probably 1/4th is actually a tick closer than 2/10th, to lazy to do the correct math.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    7. Re:Fast internet? by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 1

      As the satellites are by coincident nearly exactly 1/10 of a light second away, the round trip is 2/10 of a second and not 1/4th. But well, that is close enough :D probably 1/4th is actually a tick closer than 2/10th, to lazy to do the correct math.

      Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. 22,000 x 2 = 44,000. 44,000 x 4 = 176,000. 44,000 / 186,000 = .236. It's closer to 1/4 than 2/10.

      That's the actual math.

      --
      Do you have ESP?
    8. Re:Fast internet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So... on par with Comcast then.

    9. Re: Fast internet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      from equator? ... yeah.

    10. Re:Fast internet? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      I was more thinking about the fact that it seems people actually have to look up those numbers instead of simply memorizing the moon is roughly 1/3rd of a light second farer away than one second and a GSO is roughly 1/10th of a light second away from earth. I would be already happy if they would say the moon is about one light second away.
      And that has obviously nothing to do with metric versus imperial ...

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  11. Take that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Take that, flat earthers.

  12. You can go anywhere in world by glenebob · · Score: 1

    "You can go anywhere in world, and you’re still our customer,” said Pearce. “And you can do it on the move.”

    wat

  13. Blogger Grammar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Super-Heavy"

    Good-effort on that hyphen, bro.