Privately Built Antares Test Flight Successfully Launched From Virginia 85
After high winds (up to 140mph) delayed yesterday's scheduled launch (itself a re-do because of a cabling problem), Orbital Science's Antares rocket has made it to space. This launch was a test run, but Antares is intended to launch supplies to the ISS. Space.com reports: "The third try was the charm for the private Antares rocket, which launched into space from a new pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, its twin engines roaring to life at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) to carry a mock cargo ship out over the Atlantic Ocean and into orbit. The successful liftoff came after two delays caused by a minor mechanical glitch and bad weather." Congratulations to all involved.
Horray for Antares (Score:5, Insightful)
Congrats for Antares.
The more ways to get to orbit, the better!
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The EMP is created by the surrounding atmosphere too, so there probably wouldn't be much of an EMP in LEO either.
Re:Horray for Antares (Score:4, Informative)
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You're failing to grasp the size difference between NK's nukes and the stuff the US and Russians tested in LEO back in the day. We have conventional bombs that rival what NK can do with a nuke. We're talking something that would only take out a few city blocks... still very bad, but in space? Totally useless. The EMP would be tiny.
The most destructive thing they could do with a nuke on a missile is hit one of our carrier groups. THAT would be devastating to our fleet. But we have some pretty fancy gadgetry
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Especially since I predict the greatest impact of North Korea's nuclear program is if they manage to time their detonation to be in LEO above Nebraska, taking out the maximum number of LEO satellites and spraying debris through orbit, possibly causing the Kessler effect. And that being in addition to an EMP causing massive disruption over the US. We are at the point where a single nuke can cause trillions of dollars of damage. Just getting it there is the problem. No more space program, public or private, until it's cleaned up, if we are to the point where a nuke in LEO can seed the cloud.
You need to get out more
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I just want to add that the quality of the launch video was superb - even better than the quality of SpaceX's video footage.
Their video was crystal clear from start to finish. Even SpaceX's onboard cameras tend to get moisture and ice accumulating on them during ascent, but the Antares cameras were nice and clear. Likewise, even the interior cameras gave a perfectly serene view of the interior before faring separation.
A textbook launch - very nice and very smooth.
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A launch T-Pain would be proud of. Pitch perfect.
Did we make that joke last time? I didn't read the thread.
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Yes, sending a rocket into orbit is a major breakthrough, just like it was half a century ago.
I know it thrills the hearts of the Galtians among us that some billionaires have finally succeeded in solving a puzzle that the rest of us solved collectively in the early 1960s, so I'm going to refrain from saying "big whoop".
Space will not be truly conquered until private enterprise makes it profitable to do so. So yes, it is a "big whoop" as you so eloquently put it.
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You're making a lot of unwarranted assumptions.
Coming of the true Space Age? (Score:1)
Some decades ago, when the Space Race happened, people began saying that humanity has entered the Space Age, but the subsequent years of sitting on our asses and accomplishing nothing have proven that wrong, demolishing several generations' worth of dreams.
Today, perhaps, that might actually be coming true.
We sure as hell are living in exciting times.
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While it's a nice achievement, I'm not sure this has much to do with a new space age. Orbital Sciences already has a number of working launch options [orbital.com], which they regularly use to launch both commercial and NASA payloads. This is adding one which can launch larger payloads than their current options (such as the Minotaur) are able to do, but it's not for going to Mars or anything like that.
No (Score:3)
I wish you were right.. but the answer is no. What those rockets are used for has not changed. The missions are still the same; the customers are still the same.
We have to discover something valuable in space.. then the space age will begin as everyone capable goes into space to claim their share of whatever it is.
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That made me laugh a little.. but seriously.. I don't think that would do it. There's no place on earth that comes close to the conditions on Mars (for example).. even if an asteroid hit earth, it would still be the best place for us to survive.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. If we really want to "survive a catastrophe" it's orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to build a sustainable submarine station on multiple sides of the earth that only open their hatches once every year or so than to send one colony to mars.
What could kill the human race?
- Disease. It's trivial to filter out microbes and viruses from air supplies here on earth. An antarctic base is also extremely unlikely to get a pathogen spread to it quickly. Avoiding contact with wildlife and all travel to and from would essentially guarantee even an unfiltered antarctic base would be free of disease transmission.
- Asteroid/comet. It's highly unlikely that an asteroid would incinerate everybody on every continent. A small underwater base would be easier and safer. Nuclear submarines already provide a perfectly safe refuge if you have multiple subs in multiple oceans preventing the chance of simultaneous impacts. The dust would be problematic and the temperature but with a space heater from Home Depot and some grow-lamps you could just put on a hepa filter and be perfectly fine inside of an insulated aircraft hanger.
- Nuclear War: It would be nearly impossible to hit a hidden submarine which can hold as many people as proposed martian bases. Also the radiation and fallout from a nuclear war is probably less than just the regular radiation a mars colony would experience on a daily basis from cosmic radiation.
- The sun goes supernova: This is pretty much the only thing that we would need to be a space faring species to overcome and that's unlikely to happen not to mention we would need interstellar not just interplanetary travel to avoid.
Any problem that an apocalyptic catastrophe would cause--would only render the earth almost as uninhabitable as everywhere else in our solar system is every single day.
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Well you would need to drastically increase the proportion of fertile women in these subs and bases.
I think you will find that women are in the minority, whereas to repopulate the Earth: you would need possible about 90% females - as 1 man can impregnate over a 100 women, but most women would have less than 10 babies.
You need a few men to improve genetic diversity, so having only one man per group of women would not be a good idea.
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So really, the conservatives are doing us a favor. Once the planet is unlivable, we'll have to leave. So doing your best to destroy the environment is actually progressive.
Yes. Ironic isn't it?
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Homeworld: "Enemy contact. We Have Enemy Contact. We have contacted the Enemy. Enemy Contact..."
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Yeah, they need to get someone experienced in public announcement to do these things. Maybe an air show commentator or something. Because this guy is pretty bad... he's probably an engineer.
Or at least have a script and tell the guy a list of things to say and go over it beforehand, maybe practice a few times.
Hint: Just say "All systems nominal" once, and don't bring it up again until something *isn't* nominal. You don't need to say "XXX is nominal" every 2 seconds.
Phones in Space! (Score:5, Interesting)
I like this:
Antares also carried three coffee cup-size Phonesat satellites - called Alexander, Graham and Bell - into orbit as part of a space technology experiment for NASA's Ames Research Center in California. The tiny 4-inch-wide satellites use commercial smartphones as their main computers.
Re:Phones in Space! (Score:4, Interesting)
samsung sponsored? (Score:3)
Cause u know how cool it would be to have Galaxy III satellites.
Why mock cargo? (Score:2)
It's getting it up there that is expensive not the cargo itself necessarily. So for test flights why not put something up there anyway that can be used... Maybe a supply of water or fuel. It it's lost it's no big loss.
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Re:Why mock cargo? (Score:4, Informative)
1) Dragon has berthed 3 times. The first was under COTS, and then they have done 2 successful CRS missions. [wikipedia.org] As you can see by the link, that SpaceX has 5 more launches for this year, with 1 of them for another CRS.
2) The next flight is the COTS for cygnus which is June. [wikipedia.org]
Interesting fact (Score:3)
The engines used for the Antares are refurbished Russian NK-33's, originally built for use on the N-1 booster. These engines are pretty much 40+ years old.
Re:Interesting fact (Score:4, Interesting)
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I believe Aerojet licensed the *design* and built new, somewhat modernized engines.
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This gets done in rocketry all the time. The engine designs from the Saturn have been dug up, and redesigned with something like a 100:1 parts ratio and a dramatic increase in thrust with a smaller nozzle.
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no. what they did is take the 40 year old engines and refurbish them (replace perishable seals etc), then add modern, western electronics and gimbal hardware and adjust for RP-1 rocket fuel rather than the 1970's Soviet equivalent.
whether they could actually produce new engines under the license they have is an open question - there has been a license for the RD-180 (used on the Atlas-V) for a long time, but no attempt at production has ever been made in the US. hell, they may not even be able to make new N
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The engines used for the Antares are refurbished Russian NK-33's, originally built for use on the N-1 booster. These engines are pretty much 40+ years old.
So is the engine on my Hemi Road Runner. Want to run for pinks? There's this thing called "maintenance" and another called "improvement" that all the cool guys do. Oh yeah, get off my lawn.
Phonesats (Score:3, Insightful)
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Define "Android", define "Java" then.
Most Apps running on Android are programmed in the Java programming language. The Android "Java" environment is technically not Java as it uses its own class file format/its own bytecode and its own VM to interprete that bytecode. In other words: standard Java classfiles dont work on that VM but need to be crosscompiled.
How much "Android The OS" is C and derived from Linux and how much is "Java", I don't know.
However your parent had a point, besides his idiotic Java scar
Well done to all involved (Score:2)
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Why not? It would be nice if sending a rocket into space was easy.
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And I was hoping that one day rocket science might not be "rocket science."
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Rockets are very complicated machines, and we have much still to learn.
They're complicated when the design criteria includes maximizing performance regardless of cost, which was the general design rule in the 1950s and 60s. (In the 70s and 80s, that morphed to maximizing NASA jobs and the number of congressional districts the work is done in, almost regardless of cost.)
As an above poster mentioned, the Saturn F1 (for example) has been redesigned as the F1-B with different design goals, reducing the parts
Re:Well done to all involved (Score:4, Insightful)
May we never get to thinking that sending up a rocket into space is easy...
We may never get to thinking that buliding a mechanical computation device is easy... However, regardless of how difficult that very complex engineering task is, you can't deny it's down right affordable now.
Antares: an outsourced rocket (Score:1)
The first stage itself was designed and built by a Ukrainian rocket company. It used old Russian NK-33 engines. The second and third stages were designed and built by ATK. So, what value did Orbital Sciences provide? Lobbying and paperwork?
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Re:Antares: an outsourced rocket (Score:4, Interesting)
As such, they one of the most expensive launch costs going, as well as zero control. Within 4 years, OSC will be out of the launch industry. Instead, we are likely to see Aerojet and possibly Rocketdyne merging with one of the smaller builders and then building a tug/depot, or perhaps their own form of a land-able launch system.
But as for OSC, with 20 years worth of launch, they have control over next to NO technology. They outsourced it to Europe, Russia, Aerojet, ATK, and a few others. IOW, they are finished.
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Instead, we are likely to see Aerojet and possibly Rocketdyne merging with one of the smaller builders and then building a tug/depot, or perhaps their own form of a land-able launch system.
Not sure if you were implying that Aerojet or Rocketdyne merging independetly with a small builder, or if you meant the combined Aerojet/Rocketdyne merging with a small builder. Aerojet (parent company Gencrop) is actually in the process of closing on the purchase of Rocketdyne.
http://www.aerojet.com/media/InvestorPresentation_GenCorpAcquisition.pdf [aerojet.com]
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And yes, pegasus was the original private of what the USAF did and what NASA wanted. And during the 90's, it was useful, though very expensive.
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This post is nonsense. NASA sure as heck will use OSC in the future, if they bid competitively
So they had some problems with a fairing on one of their launch families (Taurus I). Big deal. They have had dozens of successful flights in a row with their Pegasus launch vehicle, and they just had a basically flawless launch, perhaps even better than SpaceX's first Falcon 9 launch. The fairing thing was a problem with Taurus I, but clearly it hasn't hurt them on this launch.
Just because OSC doesn't vertically in
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3 failures out of 9 launches. [wikipedia.org] The last success was almost 10 years ago.
the pegasus was enjoyed some success, but most of it was in the 90's. [wikipedia.org] Right now, the pegasus costs 30 million to launch
Now, I really want to see competition. BUT, OSC is not the company. They own little to no IP with regard to launch. They are doing nothing to bring down the price of launch. A
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If you had listened to the commentary after the launch, you would have heard the boss of OSC rattling down a laundry list of companies doing stuff for them - including external companies doing the ground systems and the separation systems (which I distinctly remember). Basically everything was done by somebody else.
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And all of that will be destroyed when SpaceX is successful with Grasshopper I
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Right now, the Falcon 9 carries 13 tonnes to LEO for 50 million... Pretty scary.
Hey dude, I think you are farting out of you mouth because Elon Musk' prick is stuck in your rectum due to the presence of a some amount of constipated feces.
Right now Falcon 9 carries 5 tons to LEO (of which only 0.5 ton is useful payload) for 133 million...talking about scary...scarily incompetent.
Nope. V1.1 which is the current launcher carries 13 tonnes and it costs 54 million. [spacex.com]
Sadly, idiots like you prove that 'No child left behind' is a failure.
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Orbital has a history of using hardware from other sources. The main stage of their Taurus is based on the Peacekeeper missile, for example.
Nothing really wrong with that, except it means they don't have the same kind of cost control that SpaceX does, who design and build all their own systems.
AMSAT says it carried some small Ham Satellites (Score:2)
"Antares PhoneSat Cubesat Launch Now Planned for April 21"
can be selected from the list on Right side column of this page:
+ http://ww2.amsat.org/ [amsat.org]
No solar panels => Satellites get short lives (a week or two?)
So, use 'em while their batteries last... as soon as they begin
to work. AMSAT site should have the uplink & downlink freq's
(& you should have an Amateur Radio license to transmit...)
Heavens-Above.com can tell you when to listen for the little,
battery-powered Ham satellites. (Cf Amsat.org for n
Definitely not privately built (Score:5, Informative)
The whole second stage is from ATK, made using the same factories where they usually build ICBMs. The first stage engines are 1970ies Soviet relics. The rest of the first stage (tanks, thrust structures etc.) was build by Yuzhmash [wikipedia.org] a state-owned Ukranian rocket builder. The Cygnus spacecraft will be provided by Tahles Alenia Space, which itself stretches the definition of "private".
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The whole second stage is from ATK, made using the same factories where they usually build ICBMs.
That's private right there. I sense you started with that because you thought otherwise. Even being as dependent on public funding as ATK is, it is still a private company.
The rest is correct, though I understand the private company Aerojet made the engines for the first stage using a 70s Soviet design.
Dimensional Portal (Score:2)
What no MOO2 references here? Disappointed Slashdot, disappointed...