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SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket Launches First Paid Mission, Lands All Three Boosters For the First Time (cnn.com)
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket has successfully launched its first-ever mission for a paying customer. It was also the first time the aerospace company managed to land all three rocket boosters after launch. CNN reports: The rocket took off Thursday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after 6 pm ET. It delivered a pricey communications satellite into orbit for Saudi Arabia-based firm Arabsat. For the first time ever, all three Falcon Heavy rocket boosters returned to Earth after launch: The two side-boosters landed simultaneously on ground pads in Florida, while the center core landed on a remote-controlled platform in the ocean a short time later. Reusable hardware is part of Falcon Heavy's appeal. The boosters are guided back to Earth so they can be refurbished and used again. SpaceX says it can drastically reduce the cost of spaceflight.
The Arabsat mission is evidence that some satellite operators will opt for a larger rocket anyway: Arabsat 6A was small enough to fit onto a Falcon 9 rocket. But using the larger rocket allows the company to put the satellite deeper into space, which means the satellite won't need to waste as much of its own precious fuel maneuvering to its intended position. Arabsat 6A will update satellite coverage for Arabsat, which is based in Riyadh and delivers hundreds of television channels and radio stations to homes across the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. Lockheed Martin built the satellite, along with a second one, for Arabsat as part of a batch of contracts worth $650 million. When Arabsat announced the contracts in 2015, it said at the time that it planned to launch the Arabsat 6A satellite aboard Falcon Heavy. In related news, SpaceX has won a contract to launch the first-ever experiment in 2022 to deflect an asteroid through a high-speed spacecraft collision. "NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, will ride on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at a cost of $69 million," reports Florida Today. "It's expected to launch in June of that year."
The Arabsat mission is evidence that some satellite operators will opt for a larger rocket anyway: Arabsat 6A was small enough to fit onto a Falcon 9 rocket. But using the larger rocket allows the company to put the satellite deeper into space, which means the satellite won't need to waste as much of its own precious fuel maneuvering to its intended position. Arabsat 6A will update satellite coverage for Arabsat, which is based in Riyadh and delivers hundreds of television channels and radio stations to homes across the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. Lockheed Martin built the satellite, along with a second one, for Arabsat as part of a batch of contracts worth $650 million. When Arabsat announced the contracts in 2015, it said at the time that it planned to launch the Arabsat 6A satellite aboard Falcon Heavy. In related news, SpaceX has won a contract to launch the first-ever experiment in 2022 to deflect an asteroid through a high-speed spacecraft collision. "NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, will ride on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at a cost of $69 million," reports Florida Today. "It's expected to launch in June of that year."
Yes, and it draws attention to just how bad an idea the space shuttle was in an engineering sense. There is more than one way to fly a main engine back to earth, you don't actually need to boost it all the way up to low earth orbit and back.
The Russians really were on the right track with Buran: gliding back from orbit does make sense, it does make sense to have wings on a reusable crewed vehicle, but it does not make sense to stitch a huge, heavy engine onto it.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I wouldn't want the Russians to be out of the game for a number of reasons:
1) Russia owns some of the modules on the station, which includes pretty critical roles such as life support and orbit raising.
2) It would be in US interests to keep Russian scientists in Russia rather than somewhere else where their rocketry knowledge can be turned into missiles.
3) Russia still holds a respectable command over flight safety, unparalleled even by the US. If ever the CCtap ships get grounded, Soyuz will be the only way up the station.
It's sad to see Roscosmos rot as it is, especially today which marks the 50th anniversary of Gagarin making it into space.
Kennedy Space Center desperately needs to improve their spectator logistics. The biggest single thing limiting the number of people who can watch launches "up close" isn't crowd capacity, it's limited parking and road capacity into KSC.
KSC should try to make a deal with FEC Railroad, Brightline, Tri-Rail, and Titusville Mall:
Titusville Mall is practically dead, has a huge parking lot, and sits a short block away from FEC's tracks. I'm sure its owners would be absolutely thrilled to have an excuse to collect $10/car to park there on launch days.
FEC owns the tracks leading to the spur that goes to KSC itself.
They could lease the vacant lot at/near 3547 S. Hopkins Avenue (south of the Shell Station at Country Club Drive) so they'd have a place for people waiting for the train to stand. To save money, they could build a wood platform (with stairs and a single wheelchair ramp) wide enough to span between two Tri-Rail bi-level cars, and stick additional wood stairs on concrete pads for access to two more cars. It would take some time to get everyone on board, but that's OK... it's not like it would be one station of many for daily commuter rail service. The idea is to keep it cheap enough to be basically "throw-away", so that even if they ended up replacing it with something better a couple of years later, it would be no huge loss.
Virgin/Brightline could use one of their trains for a chartered Miami-Fort Lauderdale-WPB-KSC run before and after major launches. Yeah, in theory, SpaceX is sort of a competitor for Virgin Galactic... but not really. Just about the only thing VG and SpaceX have in common is, "launching rockets into space". Their market segments don't overlap AT ALL. Meanwhile, branding Virgin/Brightline as Florida's official "Space Train" would be an EPIC win for Virgin/Brightline in almost every conceivable way. Combined with the shuttle train(s) between KSC and the off-site parking lot, it would be a huge win for SpaceX as well, by vastly increasing the number of spectators able to watch a launch up close. More spectators = more political support for US space travel = more funding from Congress = more money for SpaceX.
They could additionally rent a couple of Tri-Rail's bi-level coaches for a couple of days before and after a major launch. Tow the coaches from SFRC/CSX to FEC, let FEC pull them up overnight with one of their freight trains, then use a FEC locomotive up in Titusville to haul them back and forth between the temporary mall station and the more permanent station at KSC itself.
The station at KSC itself could be constructed near the Banana Creek Launch Viewing area. People buying expensive tickets (that include admission to KSC) get to use the bleachers at the launch viewing area. People buying cheaper tickets (without admission to KSC, since KSC itself could never actually handle that many visitors on a launch day anyway) have a short bus ride to the Shuttle Landing Facility's runway, which could probably accommodate a quarter of a million visitors without being particularly crowded. Park some food trucks next to the runway, throw down a few dozen porta-johns, done.
They could also offer three different price levels for the rail shuttle... say, $A, $B, and $C. The difference? After the launch (or scrub), there would be three lines to board at the station. The $A tickets would be limited to the total capacity of two trips using the bi-level coaches rented from Tri-Rail. Each time a train arrives after launch/scrub, everyone in the $A line gets to board until they're either all on board, or the train is full. Then the $B line. Then finally, the $C line. After the first "mall shuttle" train (using the Tri-Rail cars) departs after launch, the Virgin/Brightline train would board, and head straight to Miami. With a little luck, the Virgin/Brightline train would reach the mainline and be heading south a minute or two before the mall-KSC train heading back to KSC reached the spur leading into KSC.
Later, once Virgin/Brightline's track to Orlando is
The last thing the US wants to do is "take out" Russia's economy, because then we'd have to worry about dealing with an impoverished, destabilized country that owns a large arsenal of nuclear weapons with substantial resale value. It's in our best interest for Russia to be affluent, happy, and feel secure. Politics isn't a football game.
The US is enormously safer and better off when Russia is a stable, wealthy, happy partner to do research and business with. It's fine for the US and Russia to be adversarial, as long as you recognize that an "adversary" isn't necessarily an "enemy". Sometimes, it's good to have a little bit of healthy adversity between worthy opponents... it keeps everyone honest & avoids stagnation. But you don't want it to turn into silly cheerleading and enmity, because that just leaves EVERYONE worse off.
And the fact is, by the time SpaceX really starts to eat into Russia's market share, they'll be following the same path towards reusability and lower cost as SpaceX. Remember, half the battle in inventing something is knowing it's possible. Now they know.
The fact is, Russia's space program isn't going away, even IF it becomes unable to compete with SpaceX on cost, because manned spaceflight is as important to Russia's national pride and sense of identity as it is to America's. If SpaceX undercuts Russia, Russia will follow in SpaceX's footprints, duplicate its success, and will hemorrhage as much money as necessary in the meantime to keep up appearances. Because the alternative is inconceivable to Russians.
Americans were traumatized when the shuttle program ended with no replacement in sight, but we could at least take a small bit of comfort knowing that it wasn't the first time we were temporarily out of the game. The same thing happened in the 1970s... Apollo ended, Skylab crashed, and the Shuttle just kept getting delayed and delayed. Then there was the lapse after the Challenger explosion. And another lapse after Columbia's accident. In contrast, most Russians have NEVER known a world where they didn't have the ability to send men into space. Even when the Soviet Union was disintegrating and Russia was on the brink of civil war, Mir was still occupied. And by the time Mir was deorbited, the ISS was already under construction (and might, in fact, have already had the Russian module in place, though I don't think it was ready for continuous habitation at that point).
That accident?!
PayPal made Elon rich. No PayPal = no SpaceX, no Tesla.
Elon Musk is a businessman first and foremost. And that's what separates him for the rest. Wasting money doing awesome stuff is easy. Making money doing awesome stuff is hard, mostly because making money is hard.
And PayPal is actually good. At least, it is for buyers.