Successful Falcon 9 Launch

[Brovane]

Another Successful Falcon 9 launch. Lets see if Space X in the next couple of days can get the Dragon capsule docked to ISS. Space X still has lots of work but it looks like despite all the early ridicule that Space X has developed a reliable launch vehicle in the Falcon 9 system.

I wonder if Romney is also going to call Space X a Obama Administration loser like he did Tesla?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49323756/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.UHIsOU0818E

 

[monovillage]

Another Successful Falcon 9 launch. Lets see if Space X in the next couple of days can get the Dragon capsule docked to ISS. Space X still has lots of work but it looks like despite all the early ridicule that Space X has developed a reliable launch vehicle in the Falcon 9 system.

I wonder if Romney is also going to call Space X a Obama Administration loser like he did Tesla?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49323756/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.UHIsOU0818E

What does NASA have to do with the private companies successfully launching payloads when NASA crashes and burns payloads?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57490372-76/nasas-morpheus-moon-lander-crashes-and-burns/#!
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/09/business/la-fi-climate-satellite-20110309

 

[CrackRabbit]

What does NASA have to do with the private companies successfully launching payloads when NASA crashes and burns payloads?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57490372-76/nasas-morpheus-moon-lander-crashes-and-burns/#!
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/09/business/la-fi-climate-satellite-20110309

Most of the money for the SpaceX launches is coming from NASA as they are contracted to move cargo to the ISS.
BTW going back to 1999 for the Mars Climate Orbiter debacle is a bit of a stretch.

 

[Paratus]

What does NASA have to do with the private companies successfully launching payloads when NASA crashes and burns payloads?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57490372-76/nasas-morpheus-moon-lander-crashes-and-burns/#!
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/09/business/la-fi-climate-satellite-20110309

Launching is SpaceXs business other than hitting their launch window to catch the station at the right time.

Berthing however is joint effort and both sides will be working diligently over the next few days to make sure it happens.

Bringing two vehicles going 17,500 MPH together is not the easiest thing out of this world to do.

I'm just glad they went on time since as I said in the OT thread planning and replanning is a pain due to all the time dependent analyses that need to be done.

 

[herm0016]

What does NASA have to do with the private companies successfully launching payloads when NASA crashes and burns payloads?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57490372-76/nasas-morpheus-moon-lander-crashes-and-burns/#!
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/09/business/la-fi-climate-satellite-20110309

do you also expect everything you own to work 100% of the time for all eternity?

 

[Brovane]

What does NASA have to do with the private companies successfully launching payloads when NASA crashes and burns payloads?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57490372-76/nasas-morpheus-moon-lander-crashes-and-burns/#!
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/09/business/la-fi-climate-satellite-20110309

NASA is the customer of Space X. Space X launches and flies the rockets and the Dragon Capsule and essentially gets the Dragon capsule to within a couple of meters of the ISS and then NASA brings the capsule in. This allows NASA to concentrate on other hard science things like putting rover's on Mars, exploring other planets. Saves the taxpayers money. Getting into space is a tricky business and all companies in the business have had failure at some point, including NASA.

 

[Brovane]

Interesting it looks like they had a engine anomaly during first stage and one of the 9 first stage engines shutdown prematurely. However the built in engine out capability in the rocket to orbit just meant the first stage burn was a little longer than planned. Hopefully they will be able to look back through the data and determine what caused it.

 

[monovillage]

Giving mad props to NASA for doing their job is like cheering when a taxi driver delivers you across town and charges you $20,000 to do it.

 

[randomrogue]

Giving mad props to NASA for doing their job is like cheering when a taxi driver delivers you across town and charges you $20,000 to do it.

Cost to build Endeavor: $1,700,000,000
Cost to launch Shuttle: $450,000,000 per mission
NASA yearly Shuttle Budget: $4.3B-$5B

Cost to launch Dragon: $1.6B for 12 flights ($134 million per flight)

 

[herm0016]

Giving mad props to NASA for doing their job is like cheering when a taxi driver delivers you across town and charges you $20,000 to do it.

why do you hate nasa so much? Can a taxi travel millions of miles with no maintenance?

without nasa and the billions spent over the years on developing technology, there would be no space x or any other private space firm.

 

[herm0016]

also, space x has had plenty of failures too. they have failed at least 4 launch attempts that I know of.

 

[FaaR]

Bringing two vehicles going 17,500 MPH together is not the easiest thing out of this world to do.

Bah, a mere 8km/s. Why stop there? The earth orbits the sun at roughly 30km/s, and the solar system orbits the milky way at an even faster velocity; it's a wonder we here on earth can get anything done! Rofl.

...Of course, the relative motions of the ISS and the Dragon capsule are much, much, much smaller than 17500MPH. It's really not that big a deal. We've been docking stuff together in space since the mid-sixties. We've never had any accidents during such a procedure.

 

[Emos]

Giving mad props to NASA for doing their job is like cheering when a taxi driver delivers you across town and charges you $20,000 to do it.

*sigh* Space travel is still a very dangerous and extremely costly endeavor, doesn't matter if its NASA or SpaceX. Oh wait, NASA is government...GOVERNMENT BAD!

 

[Paratus]

Bah, a mere 8km/s. Why stop there? The earth orbits the sun at roughly 30km/s, and the solar system orbits the milky way at an even faster velocity; it's a wonder we here on earth can get anything done! Rofl.

...Of course, the relative motions of the ISS and the Dragon capsule are much, much, much smaller than 17500MPH. It's really not that big a deal. We've been docking stuff together in space since the mid-sixties. We've never had any accidents during such a procedure.

Well I'm glad it appears that way but I don't think you quite appreciate the amount of work it takes to make it look easy.

Plus not every docking has been "accident" free. We've had a couple where some serious problems have occurred.

 

[Brovane]

also, space x has had plenty of failures too. they have failed at least 4 launch attempts that I know of.

There was 3 failures in a row for space X with the Falcon 1 rocket, which was their first attempt to build a launch vehicle. However so far the Falcon 9 rocket has been successful with every launch.

 

[Nintendesert]

What does NASA have to do with the private companies successfully launching payloads when NASA crashes and burns payloads?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57490372-76/nasas-morpheus-moon-lander-crashes-and-burns/#!
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/09/business/la-fi-climate-satellite-20110309

So clueless it's almost funny.

 

[Paratus]

There was 3 failures in a row for space X with the Falcon 1 rocket, which was their first attempt to build a launch vehicle. However so far the Falcon 9 rocket has been successful with every launch.

Falcon 9 for the first test of Dragon to the ISS earlier this year had a pad abort. Their turn around time was impressive though. They managed to launch two days later.

 

[Paul98]

Great news, it cuts the cost to NASA, they can put more money towards advancing space technology. It's great to see a private company is able to do this.

 

[Darwin333]

What does NASA have to do with the private companies successfully launching payloads when NASA crashes and burns payloads?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57490372-76/nasas-morpheus-moon-lander-crashes-and-burns/#!
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/09/business/la-fi-climate-satellite-20110309

Because launching shit into freaking space and THEN launching it at a planet that is between 50,000,000KM and 200,000,000KM away and moving at a speed of roughly 50,000mph is easy as hell. Not like its rocket science or something, right?

 

[Brovane]

Falcon 9 for the first test of Dragon to the ISS earlier this year had a pad abort. Their turn around time was impressive though. They managed to launch two days later.

I don't really know if I count that as the same as the rocket launching and failure during the launch and loss of payload. Basically the computer did it's job and aborted on the pad. Basically the redundancy in the system did it's job exactly as designed. So I really don't count this as a failure.

The Falcon 9 has a hold down on the rocket that doesn't release until the rocket determines all engines are working correctly after ignition and then the rocket is released from the pad.

 

[Darwin333]

I don't really know if I count that as the same as the rocket launching and failure during the launch and loss of payload. Basically the computer did it's job and aborted on the pad. Basically the redundancy in the system did it's job exactly as designed. So I really don't count this as a failure.

Agreed. At least in terms of shooting shit into space, I call a failure when the rocket and/or payload are destroyed or the payload doesn't reach its intended position. I would call a 2 day delay exactly that, a delay.

The Falcon 9 has a hold down on the rocket that doesn't release until the rocket determines all engines are working correctly after ignition and then the rocket is released from the pad.

That is pretty damn cool. I am going to have to do a bit of reading on that, its got to be one strong SOB of a device to hold the rocket down against all that thrust. Not to mention whatever its attached to has to be equally as strong, very impressive if it works like I think it does.

 

[Albatross]

Elon Musk is probably a genius:not only is he co-founder of Paypal and founder of SpaceX,Tesla and Solar city but he also wants to tackle fusion and has in mind an electrical VTOL plane.

 

[Brovane]

That is pretty damn cool. I am going to have to do a bit of reading on that, its got to be one strong SOB of a device to hold the rocket down against all that thrust. Not to mention whatever its attached to has to be equally as strong, very impressive if it works like I think it does.

The Saturn V had the same type of hold down on it that confirmed full engine ignition before release and also the Shuttle had the same thing. Just imagine the power of 5 F1 engines going. The only difference with the shuttle was that after the ignition of the SRB's there was no going back. The Shuttle Main Engines ignited first and confirmed thrust and then the SRB's where ignited last and after these ignited everything was released. So litterally if you had a SRB issue and only one ignited the shuttle could have been ripped apart by the other one igniting. If the SRB's ignited and the shuttle didn't release it would have also been ripped apart. At least with Liquid fuel engines you can turn them off again and do a abort. The SRB's where very dangerous but provided a lot of thrust.

 

[ichy]

That is pretty damn cool. I am going to have to do a bit of reading on that, its got to be one strong SOB of a device to hold the rocket down against all that thrust. Not to mention whatever its attached to has to be equally as strong, very impressive if it works like I think it does.

As Brovane said the shuttle did the same thing with its liquid-fuel engines. I believe there were several pad aborts during the program where the launch was aborted after the main engines ignited but before the solids went off.

 

[Brovane]

As Brovane said the shuttle did the same thing with its liquid-fuel engines. I believe there were several pad aborts during the program where the launch was aborted after the main engines ignited but before the solids went off.

The really big pucker factor with the Shuttle where the SRB's. Once those things ignited there was no turning them off. The Saturn V and Falcon 9 since they used all liquid fuel they could do a pad abort even with all engines ignited since the engines could be turned off.

The other big pucker factor with the Saturn V was the first 10 seconds of the flight. If you suffered a failed engine in the first 10 seconds you where basically screwed. The remaining 4 engines didn't have enough thrust to get the rocket ascending. After the first 10 seconds you burned off enough fuel that the rocket was light enough that only with 4 F1 engines you could keep going up.