SpaceX Returns To Flight, And Nails Another Drone Landing (cnn.com) 129
Applehu Akbar writes: SpaceX successfully launched a 10-satellite Iridium NEXT package, and then landed on a drone ship — this time from Vandenburg AFB in California. The launch had been delayed several days by this week's record rainfall and flooding.
CNN has video of the launch, and points out its obvious significance. "Because rockets are worth tens of millions of dollars, and they have historically been discarded after launch, mastering the landing is key to making space travel more affordable... Saturday's launch marks the seventh time SpaceX has successfully landed a rocket."
CNN has video of the launch, and points out its obvious significance. "Because rockets are worth tens of millions of dollars, and they have historically been discarded after launch, mastering the landing is key to making space travel more affordable... Saturday's launch marks the seventh time SpaceX has successfully landed a rocket."
Sweet (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't wait to see three boosters land at once
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Can't wait to see three boosters land at once
You won't. All going well, at some point you'll see two landing at once, and a third a few minutes later.
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't wait to see how much more free money the govt. gives them.
So now building an object 23 stories tall that can fly into orbit is free? Good to know.
Or maybe you're just an asshole.
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Space-X sells services that the government needs at a much lower price than anyone else. Should pizzas be free just because they are ordered by the government? No and it's the same with Space-X's Launch services. You have to be willfully obtuse to argue that the money Space-X earns is "free":
Re: Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
What Asshole Coward purposely lies about is that ULA gets 1B / year for the last 10 years, AND SpaceX has lowered the costs of launch to the gov so much, that in the first couple of years, the feds made back their 300 Million.
And if the Asshole Coward tries to bring up 'gov subsidies' for Tesla/Solar City, he will only make more of an asshole out of himself.
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Hey moron, which part of "services that the government needs" is it that you refuse to understand? Access to space is a need that is indépendant of politics.
Re: Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sweet (Score:4)
Musk did nothing to do that, increasing tension between Russia and the US did.
Apart from that, keeping a large number of Russian rocket scientists and engineers gainfully employed after the collapse of the USSR wasn't some Star Trek fantasy, it was the right strategy. Much better than letting those chips fall where they may. We'd have seen a lot worse than Scuds in various wars.
Third, if we're talking about idiocy, that monikers fits 'narrow national hatreds' rather well.
Fear is the mind killer (Score:3)
That AC is being dumb about the subsidies--Elon has done far more good with those than most and I cheer for his success. I sincerely wish more of our subsidies were bringing us awesome tech the way the ones going to him are. That said, your post is nonsense too.
Elon is a Trump advisory team member [thehill.com] and they've been cooperating together [electrek.co].
But why let facts get in the way here when you can conjure more Russian boogeymen?
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Maybe you can get the space cops to send him to space jail.
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Great strides (Score:5, Informative)
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Exactly, since you certainly know that's what dooms the Space Shuttle.
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It depends what you mean by "refurbishing"; each element is different.
The solid rocket boosters, for example, suffered a hard impact into salt water. They then had to be fished out of the water. And of course you don't just "refill" a SRB, they have to be taken apart and recast, then put back together.
The ET is disposable, and had to be rebuilt from scratch.
The orbiter was legitimately reusable, but with design flaws.
I don't blame the shuttle program - they were sort of pigeonholed into this dead end by ci
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Rebuilding the SSMEs is what I was thinking of.
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And the Merlins were designed from the start under the principle of preventing the need for a full teardown. That doesn't mean that they will be cheap to reuse. But it does mean that they have the possibility of it.
Considering they've publicly stated that one of the earlier successfully soft-landed first stages has undergone no less than 10 test firings on the test stand in Texas, with "minimal refurbishing," it seems cost-effective reuse isn't merely a possibility: it's a virtual certainty.
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Eh. It doesn't matter how extensive the refurbishment is, just as long as it costs a fair bit less than building another one from scratch. ;)
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Delivering services for money is not getting free money...smh
Re: Great strides (Score:5, Informative)
I don't normally reply to ACs, but the fuel cost is roughly negligible. The propellants used for landing are mostly the contingency propellants they woudl need to cary any way in case of a problem with one or more engines. As far as refurbishment costs go, we'll see, but the second landed booster has had at least 10 full duration test firings since landing, without anything going boom, and minimal refurbishment.
And finally, ok, so SpaceX is getting government funds. Do you think that ULA isn't? Competition and different approaches are a good thing. From a strategic perspective, the United States Government needs to maintain launch capabilities for its own payloads. It's better to have multiple options for those launches.
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The problem is, that he works for ULA, and hopes to actually convert ppl with more fake news/lies.
Sadly, the asshole does not care about our nation, but only ULA. That is why he does not mind seeing NASA and DOD waste 10x to launch what space does.
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Recently the alt-right have been targeting Elon Musk with alt-facts because he's a capitalist or something. I imagine it originate with Russians unhappy that the US has a second source of rocket engines.
Re: Great strides (Score:4, Interesting)
That idiot is the same one running around screaming about musk, tesla, solar city and spacex on
But, you are correct about the far right targeting musk. They are the ones that have been screaming about 'subsidies' for musk, while making up all sorts of BS. For example, the 7.5K subsidy for EVs is actually a tax break for the car buyer, not the car company. And it applies to EV AND Hybrids. But the far right are the same ones that tried to gut SpaceX from CCxDev and instead harmed SNC (another local company here).
Re: Great strides (Score:5, Informative)
ULA, the launch consortium of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, got $1 billion dollars per year just to maintain "launch readiness". Then they charged $400 million or so for each launch. SpaceX charges about $130 million for cargo launches to the space station. Oh, and do you really think that Boeing or Lockheed Martin paid fully for the development of the Delta [wikipedia.org] or Atlas [wikipedia.org] rockets? SpaceX is providing an essential service for a fraction of the cost of "competitors". The Musk "government subsidy" meme has been a laughable piece of propaganda put forward by Musks competitors, who are themselves recipients of FAR MORE government largesse than Musk could ever hope for. For all I know, repeaters of this meme are in fact getting paid by ULA, GM, Ford, Exxon, or any number of competitors who are likely to lose billions to Musk's companies.
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Not true. When a booster is a few 100 km downrange and moving at a few km/s, turning it around and bringing it back to the launchpad takes a fair bit of fuel.
That's why you don't do it. With a launch profile that takes you 100 km downrange, you land downrange.
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the second landed booster has had at least 10 full duration test firings since landing
Can I add a (somewhat, possibly) intelligent question to the group? What would be the most likely cause of a failure on a "flight proven" (used) booster? Something functional such as a pump, sensor or electronics, something likely to be caught by a test firing. Or would it more likely be something structural, that wouldn't be caught until full-flight stresses are placed on it?
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I'd wager that the most likely cause of failure would be a fatigue and/or structural failure in the rocket, but I'm just making an educated guess. The high stress systems (turbopumps, engines, cryo systems) have been strongly tested by the static firings. That said, 50 years of aerospace technology has taught a lot about how aluminum ages and operates under stress, though of course we still saw a structural failure on CRS-7, so who knows?
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Yes, they've run a load of static fire tests, and yes, I'm sure they've done a very thorough inspection of the structure, but the stresses of launch are high and you'll only really see how re-usable it is when you actually re-use it.
There's an argument to be made that the return flight is a second stress test. The booster is flying at Mach 10 above the majority of the Earth's atmosphere. Then it intentionally dives back in. Coming back in is very nearly as tough on it as going up was. Other first stage boosters actually break up in the atmosphere when they reenter, it's so tough to do. The Falcon 9 booster not only makes it back into the atmosphere, but flips itself end-for-end twice, which has gotta be a severe lateral jolt, and
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This criticism is based on a naive look at $/kg aka you sacrifice 30% of payload for re-use and it costs 30% more. But that ignores the fact that many launches are already well within the capabilities of the launcher so there isn't a 30% additional payload that anyone wants to send.
It's a bit like the old trope "An SUV uses less fuel per passenger than a car!" while ignoring the regular use cases where a bus operates at half or quarter capacity.
It also only assumes a 30% reduction in cost/kg which is where
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The cost of additional fuel is so far down the list of various costs that it's essentially measurement noise. The recovery and refurb costs are already less than having to manufacture a whole new stage. That's all you need to make reuse economically viable. Even 10% savings is all it'd take to make it viable. As it stands, their recovery flow cost is much better than that. Think a couple times better than 10% saving. Alas, since nobody has ever done booster recovery, they are of course working on streamlini
more CNN fake news (Score:4, Funny)
Re:more CNN fake news (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, they probably faked it from the moon. Takes less fuel and is probably easier in general in the low gravity. Cheaters!!!!
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If they faked it on the moon how come the flag is waving?
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If they faked it on the moon how come the flag is waving?
Springs! Duh! It's all done with springs. And smoke. And mirrors.
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Who said the landing was on Earth? Mr. Musk's creation is a lot more advanced than we can even suspect.
CNN video sucks.. here's the link on Youtube (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTmbSur4fcs
Re:CNN video sucks.. here's the link on Youtube (Score:5, Informative)
To skip over the music, https://youtu.be/tTmbSur4fcs?t... [youtu.be]
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wow, thanks
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It's Vandenberg, not "Vandenburg"!
May I help to explain the difference?
http://www.harmless.de/images/... [harmless.de]
Making America great again (Score:5, Insightful)
What do people mean when they say "make America great again"? My understanding is that they want a USA which is making new innovative industries, employing lots of people in the USA with high paying jobs, and making profit in the process (the more the better.) Elon Musk is the poster child for doing all of those things - yet many people crying "Make America great again" are trying to tear him down. The kindest explanation is that they are so blinded by ideology that they can't think straight.
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It isn't an oil well, or car factory... oops, he makes cars... well, it isn't a gas guzzling car factory.
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Re:Making America great again (Score:4, Informative)
What do people mean when they say "make America great again"?
I think most of those people actually mean "I want the world to revert back to how it was X years ago". With X depending on personal experiences.
Of course, that's impossible.
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What do people mean when they say "make America great again"?
I think most of those people actually mean "I want the world to revert back to how it was X years ago". With X depending on personal experiences.
Of course, that's impossible.
Very true. And I think what Trump is thinking of when he says it is the greatness of the captains of industry, like Rockefeller, Sinclair, Carnegie, etc., with himself and his friends in the leading roles.
Re:Making America great again (Score:4, Insightful)
What do people mean when they say "make America great again"? My understanding is that they want a USA which is making new innovative industries, employing lots of people in the USA with high paying jobs, and making profit in the process
What they actually mean is "make America great for white people again" because it was never great for anyone else. Time was, even the lowest, most useless white person had an edge over darker-colored people in the job market, which kept them employed at a time when there were enough jobs to employ all the white people. So point the first, they're racist fucks, whether they actually even know it or not. Point the second, they're idiots and dumbfucks, because you can't turn back the clock. Soon there will not be enough jobs for anyone and it won't matter what color you are. The world is already trending that way; as we diminish racial inequality (still going strong, but less so than in the past) we simply stratify still further along economic lines. Or as the saying goes, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.
People who want to "Make America Great Again" are racists. Full fucking stop.
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Am I the only one... (Score:5, Interesting)
.... who can't help but cheer at my screen when they nail one of those landings? Now I finally understand how sports fans feel when they watch a game and do the same thing ;)
One thing nobody can deny about them is optimism. ;) Seriously, their IPS numbers are, pardon the pun, out of this world. $200k per booster launch. $500k per tanker launch. I mean, really? Good luck with that. No, seriously, good luck with that; I won't be expecting anything close to that, but please by all means prove me wrong ;) ITS would be a great system to have, I've been playing around with some Venus trajectories with it recently. Looks like it can do a low-energy transit with nearly 300 tonnes of payload from LEO and back again with the same, over 400 if starting at a high orbit - but from an economics perspective the high energy transfers actually make more sense.
I noticed a lot of people were confused about why Musk wanted the trips to be so short and was willing to sacrifice so much payload to do so - many assumed it had to do with radiation or something. But the issue is, when your craft costs so much but your launch costs are cheap, you can't have it spending all of its time drifting in deep space, you need to get it back for a new mission as soon as possible. There's a balancing point, in that if you try to go too fast, you reduce useful payload below the point of making up for it with going faster - but a minimum energy trajectory is just not optimal when the ratio between launch costs and transit vehicle cost is so extreme. I come up with the same thing from Venus as they were getting for Mars, although for the Venus case you end up aerobraking to a highly elliptical orbit rather than to the surface for ISRU refill (you need ISRU, but for the ascent stages, so it's not realistic to do so for the return stage in the nearer term). So for Venus they get no refill like on Mars, but they also don't have to do a powered landing nor do an ascent on return - it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. Both are quite accessible with it.
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There's a big difference between LEO and GEO in terms of fuel and weight and how much you can get out of the gravity well. Once you get past GEO, the cost difference of going further and getting to the moon and Mars just depends on how fast you want to get there.
Hell, without the need to land and lift off, there could be space tourism just for a trip around the close bits of solar system lasting for a year.
Nobody can bring enough food in one launch to last a year in space. Humans are a needy component.
Once there is sufficient number of people out there, new for profit opportunities happen
Unfortunately that's backwards. You won't have people out there unless there's profit opportunities. That's also pretty overly optimistic assuming tha
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
SpaceX is launching for Iridium, a private corporation, and making lease payments to the Air Force for use of SLC-4B at Vandenberg. At the Cape, SpaceX sells launch services to NASA as a replacement for the more expensive Russian launches of its Progress space sattion supply missions. Eventually, it will take over NASA's other Russian operation, ferrying ISS crews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Let us all know when you come up with some real news.
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Trump, why are you here trolling?
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Free as in "Here's $3B in free money Elon, have a party or buy a yacht or do whatever you want with it" or was it free like "Here is $3B Elon, please build the following rockets so we can use them instead of expensive Russian rockets"?
You and I likey disagree as to what constitutes "free money".
Re: Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of Europe agrees with you. And even the US agrees with you up through high school plus with various forms of assistance for college, including state-subsidies, particularly for state colleges, and federal subsidies (direct subsidies, tax credits, and tax breaks), roughly $80B/year each. Pell grants alone cost the government $35B.
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By that token the government should pay for my education because when I graduate I will help move the country forward, generate more tax revenue, reduce the unemployment rate, and create more jobs.
Unless, of course, you don't. Maybe they should bill you the full amount of your education when you turn out to be a waste of oxygen?
Re: Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
And mostly fail if you look at the launch record..
Take a gander at Falcon 9's launch statistics [wikipedia.org]. 30 launch attempts with 4 failures (including one while test burning the engines). "Most" would be 16 or more, not 4.
Even if we try to inflate the number of failures by including Falcon 1 (3 failures of 5 launch attempts) and all 6 Falcon 9 first stage landing failures (even though not a one of those counts as a launch failure since NASA didn't pay for even one of those), we still end up with 13 out of 35 launches. 18 is "most".
That's brazenly wrong.
You sir, have the credibility of CNN.
Look who's projecting.
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Falcon 9 had 2 failures, not 4. They had one secondary failure that you might count as the 3rd one. But `4` as a failure count of F9 is patently false.
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Well, you could allow ULA to have an (also ultimately government subsidized) monopoly. See if that saves you money.
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Well, when CRS-7 failed, it did destroy a reasonably valuable piece, the International Docking Adapter A.
Interestingly, the Dragon would most likely have survived (and will now in the case of a similar failure) had the software been setup to deploy the parachutes in case of a breakup like that. Unfortunately, the IDA was in the trunk, which wouldn't have been saved by the parachutes.
Happiness (Score:1)
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Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Awesome, hating on Elon for having a private company pay to launch private satellites on a private launch vehicle.
Successfully
At a lower price than the competition
"hate" is the only unifying principle of the right (Score:4, Interesting)
Everything else is negotiable, including the "free market" and "love of their country".
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Awesome, hating on Elon for having a private company pay to launch private satellites on a private launch vehicle.
While actually paying the US Air Force pad lease and range fees at Vandenberg. The US government actually came out ahead on that launch.
I really wonder why Slashdot is subjected to so much ham-fisted, pathetically obvious, qualitatively bad propaganda. Why do they care what we think? Why is someone spending actual money trying to change how we think? There's a handful of millionaires lurking. I would be astonished if there's even one billionaire lurking on Slashdot. The vast majority of us control not
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I can't believe how many think Elon is some swell guy, even after he created that rabid parasitic overlord called PayPal with his mates.
PayPal is still the only service that let's me transfer money fast and easily internationally.
So, yes, Elon is a great guy.
And the rest of your post is just as much of a lie.
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And the rest of your post is just as much of a lie.
One word: Why?
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One answer, because it's factually incorrect at best, and misleading at worst.
Without the 'welfare' to musk, NASA and the military would have spend far more 'welfare' with ULA and the Russians. Even at current prices, the 300 million that was given to SpaceX will be recuperated by having paid less for the launches within 3-4 years, and that is *without' any future reductions in price in the future.
So, however you look at it, it is cheaper, even in the relative short term, than not having given SpaceX the mo
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Without all the welfare given to musk, it would have been cheaper to launch with the Russians.
Which means that with the welfare given to Musk, it is cheaper to launch without the Russians.
Works for me.