Boeing Successfully Launches Mammoth Delta-4 Heavy 327
nick-bts writes "CNN, the BBC and Space.com are reporting the first successful launch of the new Boeing Delta-4 Heavy, capable of lifting 23 tonnes into a low-Earth orbit (similar to the space shuttle). Personally I think the Ariane 5 and 'Satan' are way sexier..."
Hungry crew (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously though, it appears the Delta 4 Heavy will primarily service military--rather than commercial or scientific--interests.
space shuttle why now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anyone cite a reason for continued shuttle lifetime that isn't political?
Re:I agree with the poster... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or if you want to put up some crazy, ineffective missile shield, it looks pretty good too.
I don't think that people in the market for rockets of this scale are swayed by a name.
Yeah, I know. I should get a sense of humor.
Finally a new large scale US rocket Motor! (Score:5, Interesting)
The RS-68's [boeing.com]on the Delta IV Heavy are the first new big rocket motor to be designed and built in the US in a long time (The space shuttle uses motors designed in the late sixties or very early seventies).
And for the record, I think a new rocket motor qualifies as sexy . . .
Re:NOT successful (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This doesn't seem like progress to me (Score:5, Interesting)
while it's not using antimatter or fusion or something, it makes use of "off the shelf" components to strap together a powerful rocket.
If you want more power, just bundle another couple on. You couldn't really do this with the shuttle or the Saturn. Plus, if you have different mission parameters, you can use basically the same hardware without the need to do R&D for years for a new rocket.
Yeah, it's still chemical propulsion but it seems like a better way of thinking to me. This is something that can actually get some economy of scale.
Re:space shuttle why now? (Score:3, Interesting)
plus, how much data do we need on this? We've been gathering it for decades now. The result: eat right, excersize, take it easy for a few days when you re-enter a gravity well.
Re:space shuttle why now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Secondly, there are still missions that require both heavy lifting and human beings. For example, if NASA were to choose to repair the HST using a non-robotic mission, it would be the Shuttle that carried the repairmen aloft.
Re:Finally a new large scale US rocket Motor! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:space shuttle why now? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or maybe I'm just talking out my ass. I blame Jack Daniel's.
Which units? (Score:4, Interesting)
Boeing [boeing.com] is a US company, but Nick [mailto] (and the BBC [bbc.co.uk]) used the British spelling of tonnes. What kind of tonnes are we talking about?
The space.com story [space.com] provides some more useful numbers:
That would seem to be (roughly) metric ton(ne)s; there are 2,204.623 pounds per metric ton.
For comparison:
1 ton, gross or long (same as a British ton) = 2,240 pounds
1 ton, metric = 2,204.623 pounds
1 ton, net or short = 2,000 pounds
Re:Saturn 5 vs. Delta 4 Heavy (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of what may have been if Von Braun had been allowed to proceed with Nova. It made the Saturn V look like a bottle rocket.
Better late then never. (Score:2, Interesting)
"First launch of the Boeing Delta IV is scheduled for 2001 and support projects are well under way."
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/1998/news_rel
Re:NOT successful (Score:3, Interesting)
How about the Alamo? Texans cite and use it as a rallying point so often that it's easy to forget that it was a huge military disaster.
In that light the "Don't mess with Texas" always made me chuckle a bit.
(I incidentally proposed that Ohio coopt the line and make it "Don't mess with Ohio or we'll burn Atlanta down again" because while Texas lost the Alamo, we burned the south.)
Re:space shuttle why now? (Score:2, Interesting)
The additional modules for the ISS are built and reinforced to mount into the Shuttle's payload bay. It not a standard coupling structure that can be easily replaced.
Re:NOT successful (Score:2, Interesting)
Why we called it Satan (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, say it with me: s-s-eighteen... ss-eighteen... s-eighteen... s-eight-en... satan. In an era when you refer to the other side as the evil empire, cool names that emphasize the whole evil thing tend to stick.
Just thought you might want to know...
Re:This doesn't seem like progress to me (Score:2, Interesting)
Nope. The rocket is only engineered for what is attached. There is a base in place to perhaps attach a few more rocket motors. But more components means a greater percentage of failure. This route has been taken before with the Soviets.
The sad thing is that it will still be cheaper just to pay the Russians to throw something up into space. Perhaps the more realistic and effective use for NASA's money would be to invest and manage (by customer requirements) the operations end of Russia's launch facilities. In other words, outsource.
You still need to put money into a D-9 program for domestic considerations (the military). Also, with an active rocket program, you have an infrastructure to propel development of rockets to take care of unique missions which the Soviets would not be interested in developing.
The worst thing is that the average American voter is a crippled mind. Not just is it substandard in science knowlege, but now Americans lack imagination and vision. The answer to a future space launch platform is not rockets. Its the space elevator. You're not going to colonize planets or develop an extended presence in space with rockets.
Its as doable now as thermonuclear weapons were back in the '40's. NASA should outsource launch facilities, maintain its current scientific missions, and put the bulk of its money into engineering a space elevator. If its too expensive, get the rest of the world to kick in for its development. Get those cheap Indians and Russians crunching out the numbers, and let the Americans specialize in the design and engineering.
Even if you keep the project in-house, think of the boon it would be for American infrastructure. Hey MIT, Caltech, Los Alamos, etc., here's a billion dollars, go engineer a space elevator. Then put it out to bid for Lockheed, Boeing, etc. to actually build it. Nope, Americans are too stupid to see the economic utility and importance of scientific investment. No vision.
Re:I agree with the poster... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well then, it must all be related to your point of view. From here on the beach this one was extremely sexy.
Absolutely gorgeous day with crystal clear weather and a light breeze coming in off the Atlantic.
Pad 37 is way back up north past the end of ICBM Row and the tip of the cape, so the bottom half of the vehicle was obscured by intervening vegatation as it sat on the pad, but as soon as they ignited the engines, the flash of orange light and the discharge of smoke from the flame deflector made things abundantly obvious as to what was going on.
This particular bird rose at an excruciatingly lethargic pace, and even well after it had cleared the tower, it was still taking its sweet old time. Probably the slowest liftoff I've ever watched, and I've watched a bunch going all the way back to the 50's.
The alignment of the CBC's placed them 'face on' from my point of view, and all three of them looked quite spectacular, front lit by a late afternoon sun, each core producing a beautiful orange pillar of flame.
Finally, it really got going and started to move out like you would expect. As it did so, it reached an altitude where the LH2/Lox exhaust produced a pure white contrail that stood out in stark relief against the deep blue sky. At about the same time, the rumble arrived and it was a fine, deep-throated one that bespoke of the power being released quite well.
For those of us used to things like The Shuttle or any of the large Titan's, outboard CBC separation seemed to take forever to finally occur. The vehicle was well downrange when this happened, but with optical aid the sudden plume as they separated was easily visible, as well as the CBC's themselves, slowly tumbling end over end as the core continued to accelerate on away from them.
All in all, quite the sexy launch, if you ask me.
Re:Better late then never. (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/q4/nr_02
Still late, but today was the first launch of a Delta IV heavy.
Re:NOT successful (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, doesn't that make it a success? They have an opportunity to fix a problem now, and it didn't cost them as much as it could have to expose that problem.
I don't understand why people still insist on everything working 100% the first time, even though it has never ever worked that way. How did we somehow start expecting it?
Re:NOT successful (Score:3, Interesting)
Btw, Boeing is not part of the Government. How can you call boeing's spin another example of government spinning?
Re:I agree with the poster... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Throttles (Score:3, Interesting)
$2800/lb to Low Earth Orbit (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I agree with the poster... (Score:2, Interesting)
Even on the ratty webcast link the launch was impressive as hell in my opinion. A plus to the webcast though was being able to watch a replay from the onboard cameras.
First watchign the Florida coastline shrink, then CBC seperation. There were a couple of other cameras showing first stage seperation and blowing the payload shell, but they weren't much to see. All in all, I would say it rocked though.
It was also good to see University Nanosat get a ride. Watching it sit in the clean room and not collect dust after the suttle accident cost the team their ride was pretty sad. Having friends and coworkers who put a lot of time in on that program was the primary reason I actually remebered to watch the launch in the first place.
I am sure there were a bunch of really thrilled undergrads yesterday from the design teams.
Re:All Nixon (was Re:Saturn 5 vs. Delta 4 Heavy) (Score:5, Interesting)
I feel lucky that I was able to see every Saturn launch in person, the I's the V's even the Skylab and SATP. They were maginificent birds, powerful and mighty. To see one in person was to know the most awesome machine ever built in the history of humanity.
I cite Ford and Carter because even then we had *some* of the momentum from the Apollo days, and with a little push, the engineers and technicians would have come back and had us on Mars by 1990, or 2000 at the latest. Some may scoff at that now, but simple fact is that they would have scoffed at Kennedy in 1961 on the onset of the moon effort. With Nova in service, Mars could have been had. As it is now, we cannot even launch a single astronaut into LEO with American hardware. That's something Mercury could do, but not us in 2004.
Pitiful.
Space Double-Speak (Score:3, Interesting)
Billions have been spent on the stillborn missile defense program. IMO it's a collosal waste of money and resources. Many tests have outright failed but a launch vehicle practically has to blow up on the pad before the governemtn will even begin to think about the word "failure".
Now a new rocket - and the Delta IV is a cool rocket - fails to put its primary payload into the proper orbit and the government terms the flight a "success". WTF is wrong with these people? While there are successful aspects of the flight, you can't call it a "trmendous success" when the primary payload is left in a useless orbit! You just can't. If this were a test, it might have scored a 75 or maybe an 85. To qualify as a "tremendous success" it needs to get at least a 95 IMO.
What is it with this double-speak lately? It's downright scary when truth begins to matter not.
bad info (Score:2, Interesting)
For one, as others have pointed out, the Russian name refers to a leader position.
It's also not the RS-18 in Russia, it was either RS-20 or R-36M depending on who you ask.
The name Satan is mostly because all NATO designations of Soviet surface to surface missiles begin with "s"- Sapwood, Sasin, Saddler, Satan, Scud, etc.