Go Space X - Falcon 9 Launch

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I missed it. They're doing some sort of server testing, and all streaming video is blocked during the day this week. I'll watch it when I get home.
 
Watched the lift-off on telly for the first 45sec,
then hopped out to front yard for live feed at T+50 sec...

Sweet...
 
Mains just deployed successfully, waiting for splashdown. GO DRAGON!

(bittersweet moment for me, the last hardware I worked on at SpaceX before leaving for grad school was on this flight...)
 
Splashdown!

Seems like Space X had a very big day......huge you might say.
 
but I missed it. read it was delayed until Thurs. still trying to find the vid.

According to payload dims, get 4-6 people to split the ride.
7 if someone hides in the trunk.


Shotgun!


Mission Type Price*
LEO
(s/c<80% capacity to the customer orbit) $49.9M
LEO
(s/c>80% capacity to the customer orbit) $56M
GTO
(s/c<3,000 kg)** $49.9M
GTO
(s/c up to 4,680 kg) $56M
*Standard Launch Services Pricing through 12/31/10.
 
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CBS news is reporting that Space-X is saying the mission was 100% successful. Excellent news. And I'm pretty impressed...
 
Post flight conference on. Good stuff.
Elon describes jubilation seeing the drogues and mains come out. Words like Awesome used. Photo of capsule uploaded to cellphone onto NASA.
1st stage not recovered as before. Not part of mission plan. All those motors gone.
(My thoughts)Should use solid SU :D. If theyre going into the ocean, why not?

Delay was nozzle shroud cracks. Called in Marty to do a crack n' patch. Good ole Marty.
2" thick capsule heat shield overkill. Room temp inside. Redesign to lower mass.
2-3 passenger(ok, not 6).
Elon likes Monty Python, my kind of guy. As a controlling interest, not in it for the money, but envisions space exploration as goal.
States anything that Orion can do, Dragon can do better.

Elon was definitely excited. Like he got his Lvl3 cert. He was almost speechless at first, but then couldnt stop talking about all the capabilities of his baby.
Hopefully, as in the 60's, this event will have a trickle down effect onto model rocketry.
 
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The post flight conference was very refreshing, neat to see people truly excited and actually show it. It cool to hear about Marty repairing the nozzle. Interesting that Marty is afraid to fly, but made the trip to fix the nozzle anyway.

This mission certainly proved that Space X is up to the task! Truly amazing in my book and certainly shows the COTS program is working.
 
They showed pics of the cracks-2 and Marty fixin' them. I swear he looked straight out of an auto body shop. The SpaceX prez(woman) said it would of taken NASA weeks to do this.
 
Our president (sadly Obama) chose not to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are&#65279; easy, but because they are hard.....because that challenge is one that he is not willing to accept, one he is willing to postpone, and one which he does not intend us to win....:eyeroll:


I'm really glad someone will be continuing with the space program. I've got a few words about Obama canceling the shuttle...but most teenagers like me won't say them in front of adults :D

A while back I promised my dad when I grew up I'd take him to a shuttle launch


-Braden
 
Our president (sadly Obama) chose not to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are&#65279; easy, but because they are hard.....because that challenge is one that he is not willing to accept, one he is willing to postpone, and one which he does not intend us to win....:eyeroll:


I'm really glad someone will be continuing with the space program. I've got a few words about Obama canceling the shuttle...but most teenagers like me won't say them in front of adults :D

A while back I promised my dad when I grew up I'd take him to a shuttle launch


-Braden
Sorry Braden but you got your facts wrong.

1.) Obama did not cancel the Shuttle Program, President Bush did in 2005 when he initiated the Constellation Program to go to the Moon and Mars.

2.) The failure of the Constellation Program to meet performance, cost and schedule milestones lead to the cancellation of the Bush moon program.

This was the only decision to make. There was in 2005, and are now, a number of viable options to get the US back into space quicker than continuing with Constellation.

1.) Back in 2005, most space experts favored man-rating the existing Delta IV or the Atlas V LVs, but this was not considered by the White House for political reasons. The Delta IV Heavy has more payload capacity than the full-up Ares I to LEO and the Moon (without inefficient and expensive solid boosters) and had flown in 2004. The man-rating of the Delta IV (or Atlas V) would have cost less than what has been spent on Ares-1, and would have been done by now. This is still an option that should be pursued.

2.) The decision to fund the COTS program of Space-X using the Falcon-9 and eventually the Falcon-9 heavy with the Dragon capsule is looking better and better after each success. This effort has proceeded quickly, and at substantially lower cost, than the Ares-1/Orion effort which progressed at a glacial pace and expended all of it's planned funding before completing a single flight. (The Ares-1X was not an Ares-1, it was an unused Shuttle booster with extra bling, and the Orion capsule hasn't even been built.)

Bob
 
I'm really glad someone will be continuing with the space program. I've got a few words about Obama canceling the shuttle...but most teenagers like me won't say them in front of adults :D

-Braden

Then please go to Texas and say them to George W. Bush, since *he* was the president who cancelled the Shuttle.
 
Canceling the Shuttle was like the railroads canceling steam locomotives.

Sadly the Shuttle never lived up to its hype. Those of us old enough can remember how the shuttle kept being lowballed from a completely reusable/recoverable vehicle to what we know today.

Then there was &#8220;Challenger&#8221; and the cancellation of the Air Force shuttle program which was to be launched from Vandenberg AFB and would have allowed the Shuttle to attain Polar orbits.
 
Canceling the Shuttle was like the railroads canceling steam locomotives.

Sadly the Shuttle never lived up to its hype. Those of us old enough can remember how the shuttle kept being lowballed from a completely reusable/recoverable vehicle to what we know today.

Then there was “Challenger” and the cancellation of the Air Force shuttle program which was to be launched from Vandenberg AFB and would have allowed the Shuttle to attain Polar orbits.

I find it interesting that SpaceX now has flights scheduled from Vandenberg.
 
Bob, Thank you for correcting me...regardless, I promised to take my dad to a shuttle launch.

I want to hear the roar of APCP by the tons going off.:cool2:


-Braden
 
A shuttle launch won't help you there -- SRBs are ANCP.

-Kevin

Are you sure about that? From the KSC website: The propellant mixture in each SRB motor consists of an ammonium perchlorate (oxidizer, 69.6 percent by weight), aluminum (fuel, 16 percent), iron oxide (a catalyst, 0.4 percent), a polymer (a binder that holds the mixture together, 12.04 percent), and an epoxy curing agent (1.96 percent).
 
Are you sure about that? From the KSC website: The propellant mixture in each SRB motor consists of an ammonium perchlorate (oxidizer, 69.6 percent by weight), aluminum (fuel, 16 percent), iron oxide (a catalyst, 0.4 percent), a polymer (a binder that holds the mixture together, 12.04 percent), and an epoxy curing agent (1.96 percent).

I just had someone else ask me, so I checked. Web sites list both, and it was from an ATK VP (at a talk) that I had heard it was AN. The other rocketry guy and I then specifically asked him why they used AN instead of AP.

Apparently, his facts were wrong.

I just verified on the NASA website (apparently same one you did) that it's APCP.

>sigh<

-Kevin
 
Our president (sadly Obama) chose not to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are&#65279; easy, but because they are hard.....because that challenge is one that he is not willing to accept, one he is willing to postpone, and one which he does not intend us to win....:eyeroll:


I'm really glad someone will be continuing with the space program. I've got a few words about Obama canceling the shuttle...but most teenagers like me won't say them in front of adults :D

A while back I promised my dad when I grew up I'd take him to a shuttle launch


-Braden

I believe that the cancellation of the Shuttle was a good thing, if done a little bit too quickly. The Shuttle is old technology, and moving on to newer and better things is the way to progress. It will be expensive, but worth it in the end. The Falcon 9 is going the right way.

Also, with the cancellation of the Constellation program, there may be a small chance that the Venture Star program will be brought back. If it works, then a new era of space travel will begin.

Also, what will a return trip to the Moon prove to us? That we can do the same thing twice? I don't think that we should be spending our recources to go to the Moon, but use them to find a cheap way to orbit instead. If we can find that, the Moon and Mars will surely come later and far cheaper.
 
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I believe that the cancellation of the Shuttle was a good thing, if done a little bit too quickly. The Shuttle is old technology, and moving on to newer and better things is the way to progress. It will be expensive, but worth it in the end. The Falcon 9 is going the right way.

Also, with the cancellation of the Constellation program, there may be a small chance that the Venture Star program will be brought back. If it works, then a new era of space travel will begin.
I agree that we need to move away from the shuttle, but the Shuttle system worked remarkably well in every aspect except for cost and on the two occasions where NASA's management totally failed to follow their own written safety procedures.

The great advantage of the Shuttle is to land on a runway with a payload recovered from orbit. Landing in the ocena requires a very expensive naval recovery force so Ares/Orion was step backwards from the Shuttle in terms of payload deployment capability, the ability to return payloads from orbit, and cost. Falcon 9 and Dragon have the same payload issues, but at least the costs are substantially lower.

The Russian got it right with Buran by not putting the main engines on the orbiter. All you need to get to orbit is a big cheap dumb rocket with the orbiter strapped on for the ride up. This greatly reduces the cost and the turnaround time.

The Falcon 9/Dragon system has the potential to be the American version of the Russina Soyuz launch system which is the most reliable manned launch system ever built. Only time will tell how successful it becomes.

The isn't a chance in hell that another Single Stage to Orbit concept will be funded, by anyone, and that's a good thing. The concept is fatally flawed from the beginning by physics. It simply is not an efficient, or cheap way to get into space. A winged man capsule on a convention booster is a great way to go, but for whatever has never been persued by anyone.

Bob
 
I just had someone else ask me, so I checked. Web sites list both, and it was from an ATK VP (at a talk) that I had heard it was AN. The other rocketry guy and I then specifically asked him why they used AN instead of AP.

Apparently, his facts were wrong.

I just verified on the NASA website (apparently same one you did) that it's APCP.

>sigh<

-Kevin

People often see the term PBAN (polybutadiene acrylonitrile) as the binder in the shuttle solids and think it refers to AN as the oxidizer.

-John
 
People often see the term PBAN (polybutadiene acrylonitrile) as the binder in the shuttle solids and think it refers to AN as the oxidizer.

What's funny, to me, is that it was a VP of ATK who got it wrong...and then I believed him.

Moral of the story? Check with people who actually do the work, not the suits.... :)

-Kevin
 
The isn't a chance in hell that another Single Stage to Orbit concept will be funded, by anyone, and that's a good thing. The concept is fatally flawed from the beginning by physics. It simply is not an efficient, or cheap way to get into space. A winged man capsule on a convention booster is a great way to go, but for whatever has never been persued by anyone.

Bob

There isn't a chance in hell that a chemically powered SSO will be funded, and there isn't much better a chance that any other will be funded. I believe that we need to start stepping away from chemical reactions and moving to higher energy sources. Fission would be nice, but it would leave a radioactive trail. Fusion would be better, but it is a hundred years away if that.

VASMIR has some promises. If they can be reliably amped up and paired with a small nuclear reactor, it could have a diddley chance at making it to orbit. The only thing better would be fusion, but that won't be around for awhile. Of course, the technology needed for something like this would probably come around late in my lifetime.
 
There isn't a chance in hell that a chemically powered SSO will be funded, and there isn't much better a chance that any other will be funded. I believe that we need to start stepping away from chemical reactions and moving to higher energy sources. Fission would be nice, but it would leave a radioactive trail. Fusion would be better, but it is a hundred years away if that.

VASMIR has some promises. If they can be reliably amped up and paired with a small nuclear reactor, it could have a diddley chance at making it to orbit. The only thing better would be fusion, but that won't be around for awhile. Of course, the technology needed for something like this would probably come around late in my lifetime.
Brian

I have been studying and developing high Isp non-chemical propulsion systems for 3 decades. Most of them are designed for operations in space, not for earth to orbit applications.

The main claim to fame for this type of propulsion system is the ability to develop specific impulses in excess of 500 second which is the limit of chemical combustion systems. (Think of specific as push per unit mass of fuel e.g. pounds of thrust per pound of fuel which in turn is equivalent to miles per gallon in a car.)

The exhaust velocity of the rocket exhaust is g*Isp. For an Isp = 500 seconds, the exhaust velocity is 500 s * 9.81 M/s2 or approximately 10 * 500 meters/s ~ 5,000 m/s. The problem with non-chemical systems is that while they are highly efficient in terms of accelerating propellant mass efficiently, they don't accelerate much mass and consequently don't deliver much thrust.

VASIMR and other similar concepts have a very poor thrust to mass ratios and no matter how amped-up you make this type of system, they are incapable of lifting a vehile into orbit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket

The only method that can be used for earth to LEO application is pulsed laser propulsion that was developed at Physical Sciences Inc. https://www.psicorp.com and Avco Everett Research Laboratories in the mid-1970s. (I work at PSI and was involved in some of the research.) Leik N. Myrabo, a co-worker at the time, left PSI and several years later became a Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1983 and persued an air-breathing pulsed laser propulsion concept he developed at PSI, called Lightcraft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightcraft

When a lightcraft is in the atmosphere, air is used as the propellant material (reaction mass). In space, a lightcraft would need to provide the propellant material from onboard tanks or from an ablative solid. By leaving the vehicle's power source on the ground and by using ambient atmosphere as reaction mass for much of its ascent, a lightcraft could potentially be capable of delivering a very large percentage of its launch mass to orbit. It could also potentially be inexpensive to manufacture.

Since a lightcraft's propulsion is dependent on the external laser's power and so propulsive power is not limited to that generated by on-board machinery and the thrust to weight of the vehicle can exceed 1 which is the requirement for gound launch.

Bob
 
Sorry Braden but you got your facts wrong.

1.) Obama did not cancel the Shuttle Program, President Bush did in 2005 when he initiated the Constellation Program to go to the Moon and Mars.

2.) The failure of the Constellation Program to meet performance, cost and schedule milestones lead to the cancellation of the Bush moon program.

This was the only decision to make. There was in 2005, and are now, a number of viable options to get the US back into space quicker than continuing with Constellation.

1.) Back in 2005, most space experts favored man-rating the existing Delta IV or the Atlas V LVs, but this was not considered by the White House for political reasons. The Delta IV Heavy has more payload capacity than the full-up Ares I to LEO and the Moon (without inefficient and expensive solid boosters) and had flown in 2004. The man-rating of the Delta IV (or Atlas V) would have cost less than what has been spent on Ares-1, and would have been done by now. This is still an option that should be pursued.

2.) The decision to fund the COTS program of Space-X using the Falcon-9 and eventually the Falcon-9 heavy with the Dragon capsule is looking better and better after each success. This effort has proceeded quickly, and at substantially lower cost, than the Ares-1/Orion effort which progressed at a glacial pace and expended all of it's planned funding before completing a single flight. (The Ares-1X was not an Ares-1, it was an unused Shuttle booster with extra bling, and the Orion capsule hasn't even been built.)

Bob


Spot on...

Reflect on the fact that SpaceX just flew their Falcon 9 for the SECOND time and their Dragon capsule successfully on the FIRST ATTEMPT, while the Ares I-X "test" was merely a slightly modified four-segment shuttle SRB topped with a battleship interstage, modified EELV avionics, and a tuna-can upperstage and boilerplate Orion and LAS tower... In other words, a TOTAL FAKE... NO actual flight spec hardware was used... the REAL Ares I would use a five segment SRB with a heavily modified design, a COMPLETELY different interstage, a totally new upperstage, capsule, and LAS...

Realize that SpaceX just achieved what they did in *roughly* the same amount of time that NASA has been working on Ares I and Orion, and didn't even get Ares I past the CDR milestone without a 'cheat' (sidestepping KNOWN issues with the design that were unsolved and pending, and SHOULD have been solved prior to the design passing the CDR milestone).

SpaceX has spent a little under ONE BILLION dollars on the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule BOTH and now have flying hardware.

NASA has spent NINE BILLION dollars on Ares I, with virtually NOTHING to show for it. I don't have the exact figures on money spent on Orion, but it's still YEARS from flying, and it's at least several billion dollars...

SpaceX has 1200 employees... NASA has well over 10,000 working JUST on shuttle program alone... Not sure of the exact number of folks working on Orion/Ares before the cancellation/slowdown (technically they're still working on Ares/Orion/Constellation, because of the way the law read for prior NASA appropriations, and that law will not be nullified/superseded until a NEW budget appropriation is passed by Congress, which hasn't happened yet). I DO know that between NASA and the contractors, there were MANY THOUSANDS of folks working on Constellation (Ares and Orion). I know when Obama "cancelled" Orion in his 2011 budget proposal, that 6,000 jobs were figured to be lost JUST at JSC in Houston due to Orion development being cut.

Elon has said he could do a Saturn V class HLV (or better) for about 2.5 billion dollars, with a fly-away cost of $300 million for each launch. Given his track record thus far, I tend to think that maybe, just maybe, he can...

Given the fact that NASA has wasted almost 6 years and 9 billion dollars, I'd say give the man a chance!!!

Later! OL JR :)
 
while I am VERY excited with what Space X has done, It is only 2 launches.
They have a ways to go, but this is great start.

NASA has been a bloated bureaucracy for years, Like everything the government runs.
 
I find it interesting that SpaceX now has flights scheduled from Vandenberg.

Do they?? There was a discussion recently on www.nasaspaceflight.com/forums in which it was said that SpaceX can't fly out of Vandenberg...

The old Vandenberg SLC-6 pad that was designed for shuttle was turned over and modified for Atlas V IIRC and would require mods for use by SpaceX...

All the military/DOD flights of spy sats and milsats are supposed to fly on EELV-- after all, that's why the Air Force built them...

I'm sure that if SpaceX can prove their hardware to the military's specs, that DOD would be happy to use them. After all, EELV's aren't the cheapest thing going either...

Later! OL JR :)
 
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