Delta 4 Inaugural Launch A Success

brandido writes "Space.com is reporting that the Delta 4 has lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 5:40 pm EST. According to the Article: 'Boeing's Delta 4 has lifted off from pad 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Everything appeared to be working normally with the rocket as it made its initial climb out over the Atlantic Ocean during the first minute.' It will now take the two-stage rocket some 37 minutes to deliver the Eutelsat W5 spacecraft to orbit, so keep your fingers crossed all continues to go well.'" Looks like everything went swimmingly well.

Re:All this technology available...

[linux_student]

Look at how most people drive; would you really like to deal with that at any kind of altitude?
Not me buddy! I'll continue using normal roads until they actually give real driving(or flying)
examinations before putting some kid behind the wheel of a flying car.

Delta what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The space.com story said that a "rocket" is putting a "satellite" into orbit. Forgive me for being a complete ignoramus, but what's so special about that? Hasn't this been going on for decades? Somebody explain this to me like I'm six.

Re:All Looked good from a live view

[targo]

The Delta rockets have a pretty good (98%+?) success rate

But imagine if the civilian airplanes had a 98% success rate, wouldn't call that good, huh?
Just illustrates the fact that our space technology has long ways to go before even thinking about cool stuff like colonization, space mining etc.

Re:All Looked good from a live view

[Jeffrey Baker]

Why? Do you think the Atlantic crossing had a 100% success rate before Europeans started colonizing North America? Why are people intolerable pussies these days? I'd like to return to the days when America was a nation full of people who had already done a lot of dangerous risky shit, and were sitting around thinking of how they could risk their hides one more time. I'd like to visit the age of space exploration when people thought astronauts were cool not because they grew earthworms in zero-gravity, but because they had the balls to climb up on top of a fucking rocket and light it.

Re:Delta what?

[Penguinoflight]

Well son, you see... The engineers have to work for hours and hours and it costs a lot, and they launch up a sattilite with a big rocket. The satillite is how you get to see spiderman on TV.

Shuttle has its limitations

[Caid Raspa]

The shuttle is the heaviest launcher in the world right now, it can put more payload into orbit than any other system. That does not include the mass of the shuttle itself. There may not be a space vehicle as versatile, powerful and reliable as the Space Shuttle for another 50 years.

How much a launcher can put on orbit depends also on the orbit. Shuttle may be useful when putting heavy loads to low orbits. Getting the payload to geostationary (many communiations satellites) or other high orbits (e.g. INTEGRAL satellite observatory has 3 day orbit going halfway to Moon at apogeum), or launching probes to other planets is easier with Delta.

Wasting fuel on getting the shuttle to high velocities needed to reach these orbits is just stupid. If the astronauts wanted back home after being fried in the (Van Allen) radiation belts, an extra load of fuel is needed. In principle the Shuttle could be used to get an upper stage and the real payload to a lower orbit, but it does not make sense.

The astronauts are a problem. Plenty of equipment is needed to keep them alive, they can't take that much radiation, and you want them back. A robotic shuttle (like Buran) or preferably fully reusable lower stages would be much, much better for simply putting stuff on the orbit.