SpaceX Successfully Tests Nine-Engine Cluster 182
the_other_chewey writes "At their test facility in Texas, SpaceX, the privately funded space-flight company, have successfully tested their nine-engine cluster which is planned to provide the heavy lifting capability for their Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 Heavy rockets.
The firing lasted three minutes (a full 'mission duty cycle,' i.e. a simulated launch) under full power, delivering 3.8MN (or 855,000 lbs.) of thrust. SpaceX have made a video of the test available. The Waco Tribune has a short report about it, with comments by locals."
Congrats SpaceX (Score:4, Insightful)
Cool! Go Science! (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Texans... (Score:2, Insightful)
I live in waco, I didn't know about the rocket launch ahead of time and it was friggin scary. The sky turned orange and the ground was rumbling.
I'm educated and a democrat (not a fox news republican). When the sky turns orange at NIGHT and the ground rumbles, you don't know what to think but you gut says, "This isn't good"
After finding out it was a SpaceX test, I was like, "Cool! I wish I had known about it to take my kids out there to watch it".
Deja Vu (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Congrats SpaceX (Score:3, Insightful)
SpaceX pwns Slashdot - there is cultural convergence involved since Elon founded PayPal and is young and geeky. On top of that he is the furthest along in fielding crew-capable private orbital spacelift. Much further than Virgin/Scaled, BlueOrigin or others. In some ways, SpaceX is further toward native crew-launch than Lockheed, Boeing or United Space Alliance (Post-Shuttle) - mostly because Dragon and Falcon 9 are coming along much faster than Orion/Constellation on much, much less money.
There is a certain amount of cred Elon gets from putting his money where his mouth is. He is on-record as saying he wants to make it possible for ordinary people to be able to go to Mars.
another J
Yeah, whatever (Score:1, Insightful)
and the rest is deluded by the Messiah? The red states certainly didn't call him that but I do recall all the "intellectuals" spouting phrases like "The Chose One" and capitalizing Him and He when referring to the guy.
Now tell me which group is loonier. We just suffered the American Idol version of an election and people are acting all smug sipping their half caf decafs at Starbucks
Re:Texans... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's annoying that on a site with so many smart people that moronic generalizations can be seen as insightful. You know, not everyone who voted for McCain is a racist, or is a bible thumper, or is a fear and/or war mongerer. Some places actually do better under Republican policies (small towns). I didn't vote for McCain, but I don't bash the people who do. They have the right to vote for whomever they want for whatever reason they want.
Picking on Texans? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you think residents would respond in your area? "The house is rattling, there's a tremendous roaring sound, I can feel reverberations through my body, and there's a bright glow on the horizon...meh, my WoW character is about to level up. I'll worry about it later." Somehow I'm guessing not.
Supposing they tested this near New York, or better yet Boston (The Mooninites are coming! The Mooninites are coming!)? There'd be hysteria in the streets. Heck, in some places you'd probably even get looting and throngs fleeing the city. The same goes for pretty much any place in the entire US, with the likely exception of Cape Canaveral, where rocket launches happen relatively frequently.
Things like this are genuinely bewildering when you don't know what's going on. About 10 years ago I saw a natural gas pipeline fire...from 50 miles away. The whole family was out on the back porch staring at the eerily pulsating glow of the reflection off the clouds trying to figure out what was going on. Until the local news reported on what was actually happening, our best guess was a forest fire, but a nuclear bombing of Portland was another speculation (we figured it unlikely, however, partially because there was no similar glow to the north, in the direction of Seattle). Coincidentally, they said the flames from that fire were as much as 200 feet high, so it was probably similar in brightness to the SpaceX test, but not nearly as loud.
A final more general comment: SpaceX has been conducting engine tests out there for several years now. In fact, their first Falcon 9 firing (1 engine at that time) on that test stand was almost a year ago, and their first nine-engine, short duration fire was three months ago. In view of this, SpaceX's statement that the sound carried much further than in the past due to the weather is probably quite accurate. It also probably didn't help that they did the test at 10:30 PM. Perhaps in the future they'll work safe stopping points into their procedure so they can delay to the next day if the test preparations take too long.
They probably also should consider putting up simple walls to reflect some of the sound upward and reduce the complaints long term. At the very least, have a facility-wide arbor day celebration and go plant lines of trees along the edge of the test site. I know our local racetrack was able to reduce neighborhood complaints (and make the treehuggers a little happier) by doing this.