Falcon 1 Ready to Launch 107
DarkNemesis618 writes "SpaceX's new rocket, the Falcon 1 is set to launch February 8. Twice now it has been delayed for technological problems and then for structural. It's payload is set to be the FalconSat-2 satellite. What's interesting is that this satellite was built by the cadets at the USAF Academy. The satellite is going to be studying the effects of space plasma. It appears NASA & the shuttle are not the only ways for the government to launch satellites anymore."
Could Have been called (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Could Have been called (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Could Have been called (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Could Have been called (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are ambitious enough and have the money burning a hole in your pocket, you can even start designing the spacecraft, but you are right that I would like to see if SpaceX can eve
Re:Could Have been called (Score:2)
I show myself to be an Old Fart when I admit that I remember NASA claiming spectacularly low costs for the space shuttle, once it gets off the ground. Turns out that they were a bit, well, over-optimistic.
Re:Could Have been called (Score:2)
NASA were not over-optimistic... (Score:2)
Re:NASA were not over-optimistic... (Score:2)
Re:NASA were not over-optimistic... (Score:2)
To put is simply, bullshit. NASA based their cost estimated on a very rosy vision of what could be done, even though almost no development had been done. (NASA is historically very bad at estimating costs.)
Re:NASA were not over-optimistic... (Score:2)
Re:NASA were not over-optimistic... (Score:2)
Nope, I'm continuing to counteract your drooling fanboy fantasies about how the history of NASA played out.
I have read some real history. My personal library contains about 45 volumes devoted to the history of space and strategic missile development, and I'm a regular participant on a space history newsgroup. I've spent 25 years studying the issues.
Millenium Falcon (Score:2, Informative)
No more satellite jockeys (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No more satellite jockeys (Score:4, Insightful)
Space exploration is a job for probots, not people.
Re:No more satellite jockeys (Score:1)
I unlike some people actually dream of someday flying into space. It may be just a dream right now, but so was the idea of man flying 250 years ago (keep in mind balloons.)
Re:No more satellite jockeys (Score:5, Insightful)
But I differentiate between "exploration"--something best done by probots--and "adventure"--something best done by humans.
Re:No more satellite jockeys (Score:1)
Re:No more satellite jockeys (Score:1)
If I try to keep in mind the ballons, I start to think of flying women instead of your flying man, then the dream changes completely. It's still nice though.
Re:No more satellite jockeys (Score:2)
Space exploration is a job for probots, not people.
The thing is, "space exploration" really refers to two different things: space science and preparing for space settlement. Humans tend to be quite useful for the latter.
Not really. (Score:1)
Re:Not really. (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, Slashdot: quit adding ignorant taglines to your articles.
Huh? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
GI Joes don't like Smurfs.
Other Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever hear of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, or Orbital Sciences? The government hasn't launched any major satellite besides ISS on the Shuttle for a decade. Satellite launches are contracted out.
Re:Other Alternatives (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Other Alternatives (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Other Alternatives (Score:1)
Re:Other Alternatives (Score:1)
Re:Other Alternatives (Score:2, Informative)
Military (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Military (Score:3, Insightful)
No more worried than I am about the military getting involved in any other area of human endeavor.
Might as well ask if I'm worried about people getting involved in space.
Re:Military (Score:2)
Alright then. Are you worried about people getting involved in space?
Re:Military (Score:2)
Re:Military (Score:2)
Does it worry me? No.. It would make me feel better protected against possible upcomming nuclear threats from agressive nations.
Re:Military (Score:2)
Re:Military (Score:1)
An advisory role to launch NASA
An advisory role to propel NASA to sucess
An advisory role to help NASA start with(out) a bang
etc
Re:Military (Score:2)
Re:Military (Score:1)
Re:Military (Score:2)
1960's
- space race between the US Military and USSR Military. The astronauts and cosmonauts
were/are military pilots.
- ALL space missions are military, and much of what is aboard the various satilites and
manned flights is secret until decades later.
- We launch DOZENS of spy satillites, and I assume the USSR had just as many.
Now
- NASA hasn't actually flew anything in qu
Polyus orbital weapons platform (Score:2)
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/polyus.htm [astronautix.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_spacecraft [wikipedia.org]
The USSR launched this back in 1986, but it had a launch "accident" and was unable to successfully deploy.
Re:Polyus orbital weapons platform (Score:1)
Never mind assasinating Hitler - amasing how fates can rest upon the smallest things...
Re:Military (Score:1)
It's to set up a military base on the moon, which would be the ideal place to put one. Virtually impossible to attack from earth, and insanely easy to strike precisely at any point on the planet with minimal energy exausted.
Re:Military (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. Clearly, you don't understand the space business - at all. Military and other related agencies are *the primary users* of space resources, and have been from the beginning. NASA, commercial, and other civilian users are very minor players in aerospace. Only during the mid-60's with Apollo was it even comparable in any terms.
Point being, military/related users ARE the space business. Cadets tossing togeth
Re:Military (Score:3, Insightful)
No, not really. I'd rather have our military involved than somebody else's.
Re:Linux? (Score:1)
Re:Linux? (Score:1)
Re:Linux? (Score:2)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/02/02/00
Re:Linux? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know if the rocket itself runs Linux, but Dell's website cites SpaceX as an example of a company which uses Linux for high-performance computing. From Dell's site [dell.com]:
SpaceX uses an eight-node cluster of Dell PowerEdge 1855 blade servers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Infiniband switches to further the company's mission to dramatically reduce the cost and increase the reliability of access to space. With this cluster, SpaceX should be able to reduce the time needed to run comput
Re:Linux? (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Wrong again. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wrong again. again (Score:3, Informative)
The only satellites that NASA has launched recently are the Chandra Space Telescope and the ISS itself.
The most recent US Government non-NASA, non-Military satellite was NOAA-18, launched May 20, 2005 on a Boeing Delta Rocket.
If you don't believe me, check the Launch Log [planet4589.org].
There is no requirement that NASA must launch all US government payloads. The parts of the ISS, unfortunately, were designed to fit exactly in the Shuttle Cargo Bay. There is no law stating that
The way things used to be (Score:3, Interesting)
As an example of private payloads launched through NASA, the Te [wikipedia.org]
Re:Wrong again. again (Score:2)
Space Plasma? (Score:4, Interesting)
Secondly, we've had satellites, space stations, and an assortment of space probes out in space for over 40 years, so why are they only sending one up now? Wouldn't the "effects" of this space plasma already have made itself obvious with it's impact on military satellites already in existence? So what are they really testing, hmm?
Obviously I have a lot of questions, but something seems out of place with this mission. Shouldn't they have done this before they sent up human beings to the moon? I'm obviously totally uninformed or totally paranoid. Maybe both!
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:2)
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:2, Informative)
"used to sample plasma in the upper atmosphere. The data will be used to correlate the effect of ionospheric plasma on trans-ionospheric radio communications."
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:2)
I think the most interesting thing about FalconSAT-2 is that it's a cadet project. In other words, a bunch of kids in their late teens or early 20s put this thing together.
The Air Force Academy's newspaper will probably have some information about it when it launches. They had a short article in Page 4 of their Dec. 2 [csmng.com] issue after one of the delays.
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:1, Informative)
The point at which the Sun's ejected plasma slows below the speed of sound (in the plasma) is the Termination Shock (the Voyagers reached this point a while back), the point at which the pressure of the Sun's plasm
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:2)
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:5, Informative)
There's practically nothing up there but plasma. The only places in the universe that aren't practically all plasma are planets and bits of space junk, a negligible fraction of the universe's (observable) mass. Maybe you're confused because you think plasma is some sort of exotic substance. Compositionally, the only difference between a gas and a plasma is that some fraction of the atoms in a plasma are ionized. That just means one or more of the electrons that, at lower temperatures, would be bound closely in orbit around the nucleus are instead banging around loose.
That seems like a small difference, but oh! what a difference. In a familiar gas, the atoms only interact when they collide, so at very low pressures nothing much happens. In a plasma, particularly at very low pressure, the particles interact with immediate neighbors, via the electric force, at distances of centimeters, and with large masses, via magnetic forces, at distances up to light years.
Plasma dynamics, the description of how masses of plasma behave, is fiendishly complex, largely because the positive particles (nuclei) are all at least 2000 times more massive than the negative particles (electrons). As a result, anything that accelerates a nucleus at X cm/s/s blasts any electrons at more than 2000X cm/s/s the other way. Furthermore, plasmas can be neutral, or biased positive, or biased negative. When a biased plasma moves, it produces a magnetic field, and any magnetic fields it moves in affect the its motion.
Even an ionization of one in 10 000 particles is enough to make celestial stuff behave by plasma-dynamical rather than ordinary gas laws. Under rather weak electric fields, the ions accelerate enough to ionize and re-ionize the neutral atoms, a process called "entraining". Motion of biased plasma amounts to an electric current, which self-generates a magnetic field that, in turn, concentrates the current (and particles of the conductive medium) into flux tubes, called "Birkeland currents", that span solar systems (e.g. producing the Aurora) and galaxies.
The equations that describe real plasma dynamics are fiendishly complicated, and the observed behavior exhibits so many fundamental instabilities, that nobody can solve typical problems mathematically. Serious researchers fall back on computer simulations and extrapolation from vacuum-lab observations. Most fall back, instead, on a (usually) distinctly unphysical approximation known as "MHD".
Typical astronomers and astrophysicists have had a semester of MHD, where they were misled about how little it resembles any phenomenon they will ever observe. As a result, most astronomers are ill-equipped to evaluate such observations. They tend to ignore them, instead, and to discount explanations that depend on awareness of actual plasma-dynamical phenomena. This causes them two problems: they have to explain what they see using only gravitation, stellar-core fusion, and shock waves; and they have to explain why plasma dynamics has no effect on the system. Their colleagues generally give them a pass on the latter. Such common plasma-dynamical phenomena as ultraviolet and x-ray emission have traditionally been easy to ignore.
Most of the working plasma dynamicists are not involved in astrophysics, and their contribution isn't generally welcome in astrophysical journals. Of course the most vocal of the ones interested in astronomy, and thus most easily found in web searches, are highly-motivated and ... interestingly quirky. Nonetheless, there's a lot to learn even from those of the catastrophism cultists [thunderbolts.info] who are also working physicists.
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:2)
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:2)
Sort of... the velocities measured at varying distances from galactic centers are not actually, as is commonly implied, velocities of stars, but of hydrogen "gas" (plasma) in the ISM, the interstellar medium. Astronomers assume the stars move the same way as the ISM, which they might if gravitation were the only force acting on the ISM. However, since a galaxy i
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:3, Informative)
It would be silly to try to name all of the spacecraft that have flown plasma instruments during the space age as many woul
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:1)
Space plasma is plasma which is located in open space (most of the plasma in the universe, I guess).
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:1)
Lately, my university library has been using plasma to display a boring slide show of "events" in the library that everyone ignores. Every time I see one of those, I see a $3000 bulletin board that I could be watching movies on. Interior decorators are evil.
Re:Space Plasma? (Score:2)
Contact Birdman! (Score:1)
Ready! Set! Go! (Score:1)
What? (Score:2)
cadets
feet
Re:What? (Score:2, Funny)
eggplant : carnival
Hand Luggage (Score:1)
"Please safely stow your sattelites in the compartments above your heads"
Specifics (Score:1)
Whatever this space plasma is, the testing is probably to find the less significant effects of it. Just because it's there doesn't mean that we don't know exactly how it works.
Be
Good luck. (Score:2)
Pre-launch comments from SpaceX's Elon Musk (Score:5, Interesting)
This set of notes by Michael Belfiore from their pre-launch press conference [michaelbelfiore.com] for their launch attempt last year is a pretty interesting read and gives great insight into what Musk wants to do with SpaceX. Some excerpts:
SpaceX's second Gen rocket engine will be the biggest rocket engine in the world, though not the biggest in history. The F1 engine that sent people to the moon is no longer in production, so Musk doesn't count that.
Q: What customers will you put on Falcon 9?
A: We haven't thought a lot about it because it's speculative, but big customers would be NASA, Bigelow Aerospace, which is launching its first subscale space station module next year, and potentially people who just want to go to orbit and just spend some time on orbit. Also we could do a loop around the moon, which actually wouldn't require a huge rocket. [Space Adventures recently cut a deal with the Russian Space Agency to do just that, so that may be what inspired Musk to say that.]
Q: When will you go to space?
A: I'm not doing this to go into space myself, per se. I want to help build a space faring civilization. It would have been very easy for me to pay to go to the International Space Station myself. I want to help other people get to space.
Musk: The expansion of life on earth to other places is arguably the most important thing to happen to life on earth, if it happens. Life has the duty to expand. And we're the representatives of life with the ability to do so.
Q: When will you fly cargo missions to the space station?
A: I hope in the next 3 to 4 years.
Another question from me: Are you developing a manned vehicle right now, or have you thought that far ahead yet?
A: I can't comment on that right now.
Q: What's next in the entreprenurial space field?
A: Lots of people doing things--Paul Allen [who funded SpaceShipOne], Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin, John Carmack with Armadillo Aerospace...Musk thinks we're heading toward a Netscape moment, when someone turns a profit, and hopefully it'll be SpaceX, and then investment capital will start to flow in.
It's payload (Score:1)
Re:It's payload (Score:1)
Joe = Singular
Joe's = Joe is - as he is doing something: Joe's going home.
Joes' = The car belongs to Joe, therefore it's Joes' car.
If I'm wrong either someone will correct me or they could completely ignore this as "off-topic".
HTH
Re:It's payload (Score:1)
Re:Nigger (Score:1)
Never were the only ways to launch (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Sea Launch Consortium (Score:1)
SpaceX is a different organization altogether.
Re:The Sea Launch Consortium (Score:3, Informative)
Sea Launch are using russian Zenit rockets and launch from a ship. (hence the name)
SpaceX have there own rocket and launch from land (a small island or an airforce base)
They don't have much in common besides going up.
Re:The Sea Launch Consortium (Score:2)
Re:The Sea Launch Consortium (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Odyssey [wikipedia.org]
Re:The Sea Launch Consortium (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Sea Launch Consortium (Score:2)
Re:The Sea Launch Consortium (Score:5, Informative)
Also given the nature of his lawsuit against Boeing and Lockheed, I doubt that he would want to be part of an organization that is run by Boeing. Secondly, the launch is from a facility in the Kwajalein Atoll on solid ground, not from a SeaLaunch platform.
Re:The Sea Launch Consortium (Score:1, Informative)