SpaceX Eyeing June 4 Window For Falcon 9 Launch 67
PeterBrett writes "SpaceX has finally announced the window for its first much-awaited Falcon 9 launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. Subject to good weather, the company plans to launch either on Friday, June 4, or Saturday, June 5, with the window opening at 12:00 UTC on each day. As usual, SpaceX will be broadcasting the launch live from its website."
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I believe that is a US vs British situation.
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I believe that is a US vs British situation.
Confirming that I'm British, if that helps.
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I believe that is a US vs British situation.
Slashdot vs British?
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IIRC, this is a UK thing. Google is failing me, but I'm sure someone will be able to provide a link.
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Weak Handshake (Score:1, Offtopic)
What's up with that chics handshake? Reminds me of that episode of King of The Hill when hank meets the president and gets distressed about the weak handshake...
1200 UTC? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:1200 UTC? (Score:5, Funny)
Blasphemy! (Score:1)
The summary is never wrong, please, you have hurt me in my core beliefs :p
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According to SpaceX, the launch windows will open at 11:00 EDT (10 CDT for those of us in NOLA), which is 1500 UTC.
Yeah, sorry -- I'm an idiot who, apparently, can neither read the e-mail in my inbox nor the website I linked to.
Hey, you get what you pay for. :-P
Nice (Score:2)
I'd been under the impression that other issues at the Cape had pushed it further back and I'd miss it. If they can hit either of these dates I'll be able to watch it.
The last Atlas launch I got to watch was very impressive. Not quite like a shuttle launch but still cool.
Kind fo sad really (Score:3, Interesting)
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NASA still has a good shot... a better shot really, with things like Falcon 9 happening.
If programs like COTS and CCDev can take the hassle of maintaining our basic LEO flight capability away from NASA, it makes it easier for them to pursue those things that are truly frontier-expanding. Think of something like the Odyssey (from 2001) built in orbit that we can get astronauts to and from (relatively) cheaply using simple capsules like Dragon or an LM Orion-lite.
Commercial space isn't in competition with NA
Re:Kind fo sad really (Score:4, Informative)
There was no ship called Odyssey in 2001. That's the name of the movie. The ship was Discovery.
Why? (Score:2)
When Charles Lindbergh crossed the atlantic he wasnt doing it in a government plane he did it on a Ryan-NYP. NASA didnt exist back then.
The fact that it was an American pilot flying an american plane was all that mattered.
As for the rest we simply have to figure out how to do it for billions instead of trillions.
What is past is prologue and the future is not yet written.
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Well... Lindbergh got his training flying in the Air Mail service for the US government. The Engine he used was developed mainly for the US Navy because they wanted reliable air cooled engines.
And Lindbergh was not the first to cross the Atlantic. The first planes to cross the Atlantic was the NC-4 flown by a crew of the US Navy. The first to fly none stop where two englishmen Alcock and Brown in a WWI Vickers Vimy bomber.
Lindbergh made the first none stop flight from NY to Paris and even then he got a lot
Re:Kind fo sad really (Score:5, Informative)
The journey to the moon happened in a rocket built jointly by Boeing, Douglas, and North American, in a spacecraft built by Boeing, and the landing on the moon happened in a spacecraft built by Grumman. Even those spacesuits with the NASA patches were manufactured by International Latex Corp.
If NASA is paying the bills for a Mars mission and providing the Astronauts, everything will still have NASA patches on it, regardless of who builds the rocket.
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Believing that is kinda like still believing in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. It's not realities fault that your unfounded childish fantasies didn't come to pass.
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This idiot legend again... Saturn production was capped in 1965 - and subsequent Congresses declined to restart it. At worst Nixon pulled the plug on a brain dead patient on full life support. For all intents and purposes it was already dead by the time he arrived on the scene.
As above, the basic Shuttle design (essentially what we have today) was already nearly complete by the time Nixon took office. By the time NASA signed the develop
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Delta Hey Max Nine (Score:2)
Falcon 9! (Falcon 9!)
Even though NASA say
"Way out of line!" (outta line!)
.
One large step... (Score:1)
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Re:One large step... (Score:4, Informative)
Note, for reference, that the Falcon 9 can put 4500+ kg into GEO, and the Falcon 9 Heavy can put 19500 kg into GEO.
Note further that the total deltaV required to put something into GEO (the insertion into the transfer orbit, plus the final burn to circularize the orbit) is slightly greater than escape speed.
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When you change the price point of something, you open the market again. There are things that can't be done in the commercial market because it costs too much. "Cheaper" means some of those things can now (well, "now" meaning after Falcon 9 is operational) be done.
What commercial really means (Score:1, Flamebait)
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Certainly not true. ITAR is export controlled only. Typically DoD stuff. The model being looked into will be that of procurement only. The government will no longer have any ownership of the systems. Just like government cars and trucks that are bought for every day use are assembled in Mexico/Canada from parts from China or wherever GM/Ford builds them. Oh the contract winning company may be US based, but that's where it stops. There is no protection for the workers underneath.
Oh, sure, this is entirely correct. Maybe I should apologise for calling you an idiot, despite your hideously misinformed opinions on the constitution of the SpaceX workforce and supply chain. :-P
But think about it this way. If you, the US taxpayer, have just spent a billion dollars on a set of instruments for use in orbit and have four of your best and brightest young people sitting on top of it, surely you'll want to make sure that you have the best performing and most reliable launcher money can buy?
If t
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ITAR is export controlled only.
...which includes "deemed export", e.g. exporting information by permitting a foreign national access to it.
Typically DoD stuff.
Most of the categories in the list of "munitions [gpoaccess.gov]" covered by ITAR are pretty clearly military. Category XV, however, covers "Spacecraft Systems and Associated Equipment", including non-military equipment.
Just like government cars and trucks that are bought for every day use are assembled in Mexico/Canada from parts from China or wherever GM/Ford builds them.
See "deemed export". Sending drawings and technical data to an overseas supplier would get you in trouble.
Re:What commercial really means (Score:4, Informative)
Certainly not true. ITAR is export controlled only.
Which, if you take the time to read the ITAR documentation, you would know also includes any and all spacecraft systems. I used to help on a small, local satellite project at the university where I went to school. We designed and built 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm cubesats that were primarily constructed from commercial off the shelf components. Even our cubesat systems were subject to ITAR control and all of our projects, developed entirely for civilian, educational purposes, were inspected by national security officials regularly to ensure we met ITAR compliance. I guarantee you that Falcon 9, and all of SpaceX's systems are also ITAR restricted and, probably, even more heavily scrutinized. Furthermore, SpaceX does all of its development in-house which is precisely why they have managed to keep their production costs so low. They don't rely on subcontractors (and thus, outsourcing). So your original point is moot. ITAR applies to every space system developed within American borders. Circumventing such heavy restrictions costs millions of dollars in legal wrangling and an indescribably painful court battle (that will probably earn you a lot of enemies in the government).
In short, you, sir, are a terribly misinformed fool.
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Re:What commercial really means (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent is a complete idiot. Elon no longer has any involvement in PayPal. SpaceX's technology is completely covered by ITAR; I should know, because I considered applying for a job there and was told that, as a non-US citizen, I shouldn't even bother. The Falcon 9 is very much an American rocket built by Americans. There are indeed "no foreign nationals, no outsourced jobs."
It's unusual to hear someone praising ITAR. ITAR is the reason that non-US organisations generally don't use US launchers for their payloads -- they can't work closely with the launch provider, particularly with respect to the sort of detailed technical information that's often very important in ensuring payload-launcher compatibility. People I've spoken to in the space industry while at conferences in the US frequently bemoan the fact that ITAR heavily restricts their hiring practices, meaning that they often miss out on being able to employ top people.
ITAR is what's holding the US space programme back.
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Oh cheer up.. the next Von Braun is simply another World War away..
Re:What commercial really means (Score:4, Informative)
It's unusual to hear someone praising ITAR. ITAR is the reason that non-US organisations generally don't use US launchers for their payloads -- they can't work closely with the launch provider, particularly with respect to the sort of detailed technical information that's often very important in ensuring payload-launcher compatibility. People I've spoken to in the space industry while at conferences in the US frequently bemoan the fact that ITAR heavily restricts their hiring practices, meaning that they often miss out on being able to employ top people. ITAR is what's holding the US space programme back.
Completely agreed. It's particularly silly when one notes that the US would have almost certainly lost the 1960s space race if it weren't for Von Braun [thespacereview.com] and his team of rocket engineers from Germay, and the Canadian and British engineers from Avro [avroarrow.org].
It also makes it considerably more difficult when a launch provider like SpaceX wants to sell launch services, which is a large part of why Russian and European launch providers are currently creaming US launch providers on the international market. For example, the following difficulty occurred when SpaceX's Falcon 1 was launching a Malaysian satellite:
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=13078 [hobbyspace.com]
Technicians discovered the satellite and the Falcon 1 upper stage rocket share a nearly identical vibrational mode, which could set up a damaging resonance. SpaceX is bound by ITAR restrictions from assisting with any technical problems on the foreign-owned payload, so the company delayed the launch to add some vibration isolation equipment between the rocket's upper stage and the payload adapter.
"The easiest thing would actually be to make some adjustment to the satellite . . . but that's not allowed," Musk says.
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It also makes it considerably more difficult when a launch provider like SpaceX wants to sell launch services, which is a large part of why Russian and European launch providers are currently creaming US launch providers on the international market. For example, the following difficulty occurred when SpaceX's Falcon 1 was launching a Malaysian satellite:
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=13078 [hobbyspace.com]
Technicians discovered the satellite and the Falcon 1 upper stage rocket share a nearly identical vibrational mode, which could set up a damaging resonance. SpaceX is bound by ITAR restrictions from assisting with any technical problems on the foreign-owned payload, so the company delayed the launch to add some vibration isolation equipment between the rocket's upper stage and the payload adapter.
"The easiest thing would actually be to make some adjustment to the satellite . . . but that's not allowed," Musk says.
Just one of many examples, sadly. Unless Congress acts promptly to introduce some sanity into the ITAR provisions, I fear that ITAR is inevitably going to drive innovative and competitive launch providers like SpaceX out of business, and prove to be the final nail in the coffin of the US space industry.
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You are in fact an idiot of epic proportions. You couldn't be any more wrong, from their website:
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As others have pointed out, this is not how things work in the real world. As far as the US government is concerned, all rocket development is "munition" development. Not only must you get permission to export any rocket or rocket technology developed in the US, as a US national you can't go to another country to work on a rocket project without running afoul of the law. Having foreign nationals working on your rocket falls under the "exporting rocket technology" part.
This came up a few years back when
Counting going up. (Score:1)
Cool rocket (Score:5, Interesting)
If you compare the Falcon 9 to other rockets you can't fail to see that this thing is quire cleverly designed in a very straight way.
It has only two stages and uses Kerosine/LOX in both stages. Kerosine is much denser than LH and makes for smaller tanks and easier handling. Both stages are essentially identical, with the second stage much shorter but using the same diametre tanks and domes and the same tools for fabrication. Both stages use the very same engines, too. 9 on the first stage, one in the second stage. This allows them to be build assembly-line style, much cheaper than to build several differently sized engines in small numbers.
The Falcon 9 Heavy will add to this two boosters consisting of just two first stages strapped to the center one. This thing will still use the same tools and the same tanks and domes and engines (28 of them) for all stages and for the boosters. Compare this to other similar launchers which often use two (or even three) different engines and tanks for their stages plus solid boosters, all expensively build in small numbers.
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principle copied from the Soviet. now Russian launch arsenal: same engine bundled.
keep it simple
the Russians however have a variety of tanks
- engineers in their younger years tend to invent things for the fun of it
when growing older, they appreciate matured technology and also matured wine *g*
Unconventional countdown procedure (Score:2)
In retrospect, NASA officials have decided that the time-honoured countdown-to-launch procedure is overly complicated - so this time around the flight controller will simply say "FALCON... LAUNCH!" and it will take off.
Mars, the Corporation route (Score:2)
I would give better than 50% that the first person on Mars will be wearing a space/mars suit that has sponsor logo's like a race driver.