Slashdot Mirror
NASA Uses Its First Recycled SpaceX Rocket For a Re-Supply Mission (nypost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Post:
SpaceX racked up another first on Friday, launching a recycled rocket with a recycled capsule on a grocery run for NASA. The unmanned Falcon rocket blasted off with a just-in-time-for-Christmas delivery for the International Space Station, taking flight again after a six-month turnaround. On board was a Dragon supply ship, also a second-time flier. It was NASA's first use of a reused Falcon rocket and only the second of a previously flown Dragon.
Within 10 minutes of liftoff, the first-stage booster was back at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, standing upright on the giant X at SpaceX's landing zone. That's where it landed back in June following its first launch. Double sonic booms thundered across the area. At SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, cheers erupted outside the company's glassed-in Mission Control, where chief executive Elon Musk joined his employees.
The Dragon reaches the space station Sunday. The capsule last visited the 250-mile-high outpost in 2015. This time, the capsule is hauling nearly 5,000 pounds of goods, including 40 mice for a muscle-wasting study, a first-of-its-kind impact sensor for measuring space debris as minuscule as a grain of sand and barley seeds for a germination experiment by Budweiser, already angling to serve the first beer on Mars.
Also onboard were several hundred Star Wars mission patches created by a partnership between Lucasfilm and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (the non-profit organization managing the ISS National Lab). Space.com reports that Elon Musk named the Falcon X after the original Millennium Falcon in Star Wars.
Within 10 minutes of liftoff, the first-stage booster was back at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, standing upright on the giant X at SpaceX's landing zone. That's where it landed back in June following its first launch. Double sonic booms thundered across the area. At SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, cheers erupted outside the company's glassed-in Mission Control, where chief executive Elon Musk joined his employees.
The Dragon reaches the space station Sunday. The capsule last visited the 250-mile-high outpost in 2015. This time, the capsule is hauling nearly 5,000 pounds of goods, including 40 mice for a muscle-wasting study, a first-of-its-kind impact sensor for measuring space debris as minuscule as a grain of sand and barley seeds for a germination experiment by Budweiser, already angling to serve the first beer on Mars.
Also onboard were several hundred Star Wars mission patches created by a partnership between Lucasfilm and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (the non-profit organization managing the ISS National Lab). Space.com reports that Elon Musk named the Falcon X after the original Millennium Falcon in Star Wars.
With a few careful observations, you can begin to understand that the
heliocentric model is a lie, and you live on a flat plane.
Science says the tilt of the Earth gives less sunlight to the North this time of year. But have you noticed that the sun also appears weaker, and yellower? The tilt only moves it towards the south, and gives it a shorter, lower track through the sky. But the amount of atmosphere traversed is the same for any light coming up from the horizon -- East or South. So what makes the light itself appear weaker in Winter? There should be the same amount of atmosphere to cross whether the Sun rises due East in the summer, or South-East in the winter.
So why is the winter Sun weak and yellower than the summer sun at the same altitude in the sky?
Space is fake. The Earth is flat. The eclipses prove it.
Solar Eclipse: https://vimeo.com/230976895
Light of the chromosphere can be observed on the back of the moon. Allais Effect
Lunar Eclipse: https://vimeo.com/92378881
Shadow is black, then changes color to reddish.
Next lunar eclipse: January 30/31, 2018 North America
So little scientific return on investment. No need for humans to be there. The whole thing should be 1/10th the size and 1/10th the cost, and run by machines
America is broke. We can't afford frivolous things like this anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F1d3QWsyk0
#DeleteFacebook
NASA said reusable rockets would not work!
more like FIFTY times
Another Trump Victory! Suck it, Obummer!
Yeah, and your a tosser you flat earth Luddite. Why don't you do us all a favour and find the edge and fall off
The good news is that it seemed like NASA would be one of the last groups to use reused rockets because of their deep-seated bureaucracy. That they've used both a reused first-stage and a partially reused Dragon shows how far this has really come. And this sort of thing adds up to massive savings for the taxpayer, as well as making satellite launches cheaper for everyone else. Moreover, easy back of the envelope calculations also show that reusing first stages takes drastically less energy than throwing them away and so less CO2 is produced. (When SpaceX switches to their next rocket type which they intend to use the Raptor rocket engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family) which will use methane, which can be produced using the Sabatier process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction, which will allow in the long-run actually carbon neutral rockets.
The bad news is that as far as it seems, this sort of thing hasn't stopped the Space Launch System from continued to being funded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System. The SLS is essentially a massively expensive, very large rocket that can only be used once. It has cost billions of dollars and will cost billions more, and it isn't going to be ready for a very long time, and may end up launching only 2 or 3 times. In contrast, SpaceX continues to work on the BFR (Big Falco Rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFR_(rocket), yes, "Falcon" can also stand for something else), is costing far less to develop than the SLS, will likely have a higher payload to low-earth orbit, and will be fully reusable. What this should be is a wake-up call to stop funding the SLS which is primarily massive pork for a small number of big defense and old space companies rather than a serious development of a useful launch system.
She shops at SpaceX for used space capsules. Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!o
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
So they launched hundreds of Lucas Film|Star Wars Mission Patches into space for what? To hand out to the visiting aliens?
They had to take care of some outstanding bugs and feature requests for the death star attack run simulator our astronauts use for training.
.:Semper Absurda:.
If you have to replace the engines, fuel system and tanks and all the heat tiles on the exterior, can you still call it recycled? At what point is it just a new rocket?
It would be neat if this were just a refueled rocket but this is practically completely rebuilt, not actually recycled (as in using old/used parts to build the rocket).
Still props for not having to dump it into the seas or burning it up in the atmosphere.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
First you ask how much of it is replaced and then you immediately claim it's 'practically completely rebuilt'?
Here's a direct quote from the prelaunch press event:
Jessica Jensen: Sure thing. So, the biggest thing is insuring that all the hardware is qualified for multiple flights. And basically we do that with test units that are built to the same specification as the flight hardware, and make sure those can go through multiple life cycles. So for example, we will take one of our engines and fire it in Texas over and over and over again to simulate multiple flights. In between flights, the goal is to not swap out hardware. Basically, every piece of hardware has a service lifetime, based on that testing I just talked about, and if it's still within its service lifetime, we verify that all of the environments on the previous flight were good, then you can just continue to reuse it. We do, in between flights, do very thorough inspections, to make sure that something off-nominal didn't happen on the previous flight. So we go through, we look at critical areas, we inspect welds, but we do not, generally, replace engines. If we need to, we can do that, but in general, we do not do that. So, it's mostly just inspecting everything and making sure we're good to go. One of the other things we do, as you know, our stages go to Texas prior to each mission, where we do a stage firing. And after that we do a series of pressure tests and all kinds of avionics checkouts on the vehicle afterwards. We do that same set of tests now after each flight. And what that is, it gives us high confidence moving into the mission, like Kirk said, we're basically at an equivalent level of risk as we were on the first flight.
Has no more excuses for failing now.
Just write the check to SpaceX from now on.
Nobody's going to be able to sell non-reusable rockets, with SpaceX and Blue Origin competing. Unfortunately, ULA's current re-use strategy, so-called "SMART reuse" isn't going to be competitive and they are going to have to come up with another plan, but both ULA and Arianne understand that they can't compete without reuse
ULA's so-called "SMART reuse" is the wrong kind of efficient. It's actually more efficient in use of fuel and lifting power than SpaceX, but because they throw away the tanks and booster body, they are less efficient economically, and they lack the readiness aspect that has been a big seller for SpaceX of late - SpaceX has recovered boosters on hand and ready to go, and can mount a satellite launch quickly because of it. So far, this has been at least as important to customers as the total cost.
Bruce Perens.
Another folder. 20 by simple fucking as those non gay, Bought the farm.... work That you conducted at MIT
Get up off Momma's couch! There's a job waiting for you with these guys:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Don't feed the troll. He doesn't actually believe that. Its just one of our copypasta trolls. I've been on the site long enough to recognize this type. We'll see this unending for a few weeks maybe months, then the troll will get bored and go write some new drivel. It encourages him when someone responds seriously.
He's absolutely right! It's all a conspiracy that is being perpetrated by the entire US Navy, all airline pilots on international routes, every astronaut ever, every shipping freighter captain, and the cartography-industrial complex! They all know the earth is flat, but somehow the hundreds of thousands of people named above all keep it secret!
If you didn't catch it, I'm being sarcastic. The best proof of humans landing on the moon, is that the Soviet Union didn't immediate disprove it by showing radar tracks of Apollo not actually going to the moon, and that the large number of people involved could never keep that secret for this amount of time.
JPL do all the magic
how do we know he's a luddite software user and not an appy app apper