Atlas 5 Rocket Launches $400 Million NASA Satellite Into Space (spaceflightnow.com) 51
A new communications hub has been successfully deployed in space today thanks to the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. "TDRS is a critical national asset have because of its importance to the space station and all of our science missions, primarily the Hubble Space Telescope and Earth science missions that use TDRS," said Tim Dunn, NASA's TDRS-M launch director. Spaceflight Now reports: With its main engine running at full throttle, the Atlas 5 booster lifted off at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral. The 191-foot-tall rocket, generating 860,000 pounds of thrust, aimed eastward and accelerated out of the atmosphere with NASA's TDRS-M spacecraft. Within just five minutes, the rocket had shed 92 percent of its liftoff weight and transitioned to the high-energy Centaur upper stage. An elliptical parking orbit was achieved within 18 minutes of takeoff, beginning a 90-minute quiescent coast higher through space to reach the optimum conditions for the second burn by Centaur. That minute-long boost over the Indian Ocean propelled the 7,610-pound payload into a customized high-perigee geosynchronous transfer orbit. The spacecraft was deployed by the launcher at T+plus 1 hour, 53 minutes to cheers and handshakes all around.
The $408 million TDRS-M was built and launched with the sole purpose to extend the useful life of NASA's constant communications infrastructure, supporting the astronauts around-the-clock aboard the International Space Station, supplying contact with the Hubble Space Telescope and transmitting the data from almost 40 science spacecraft studying Earth's environment and space.
The $408 million TDRS-M was built and launched with the sole purpose to extend the useful life of NASA's constant communications infrastructure, supporting the astronauts around-the-clock aboard the International Space Station, supplying contact with the Hubble Space Telescope and transmitting the data from almost 40 science spacecraft studying Earth's environment and space.
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Re: what? (Score:1)
Why not use TRDS tech? The brits have had it forty years. They are on their fourteenth generation pilot now...
Re:Competition (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Competition (Score:4, Funny)
The industrial revolution wouldn't even have been a gleam in James Watt's eye if Thag hadn't invented fire.
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The industrial revolution wouldn't even have been a gleam in James Watt's eye if Thag hadn't invented fire.
Invented fire? The big question is why didn't Thag float away? Newton didn't "invent" gravity until much later.
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I'll assume also that Thag suffered from poor personal hygiene. It's common among knuckle draggers (visit any sporting event, you'll see)
I'm quite sure that either due to friction or because of layers of gooey filth, Thag didn't float because he was glued to earth.
The good news is that thanks to efforts by Disney, if Thag filled out the proper forms, his patent should still be valid and I imagine he and his des
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The good news is that thanks to efforts by Disney, if Thag filled out the proper forms, his patent should still be valid
The Mickey Mouse Law (which is supposedly designed to keep Steamboat Willie, and thus MM, out of the public domain) only affects copyrights, not patents.
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People understanding Far Side references is why I'm here.
Re:Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate most of what Elon Musk does. I think if he and I were in the same room at a party, I wouldn't bother with him. I love having pictures taken with important people in tech. His dependence on lithium without a long-term cleanup plan. His cars that are inconsiderately large. Well, whatever... lots of stuff like that.
Now that I've bashed him, let me say what I like about him. NY Times, Washington Post, News.com, Slashdot, keep going and going and going. The news these days is so completely filled with negativity everywhere. I won't even watch the news anymore. When it comes to politics, it's one non-stop journey of who do we hate most today.
Then comes the story about an Elon Musk vision for an exciting and brighter future. We see something that lets us dream and we see something that makes us truly believe that if we reach for the stars... we might just touch one.
So while I have no use for him... I'd like to think that the energy and excitement he's bringing to at least the press is something special.
Now let's talk about your whole rant.
The United States Space Program is bought and paid for by the United States which whether through tax money or financial print your own money magic is paid for by the American people. In a capitalistic country, the government should NEVER compete with private industry. However it can develop the initial businesses and share that information with private industry once it is positioned to take it over.
ULA is made up of Lockheed and Boeing. Lockheed has never once in history wanted to run their own space program. They are a company which primarily specializes in consuming government money. Most projects given to Lockheed are designed to be cancelled to avoid a mess related to actually needing to deliver anything. Lockheed employs massive numbers of people so the US government can provide jobs. Oh... and sometimes they actually make something that actually works... and they sell those for a REALLY long time since manufacturing is something they are pretty good at.
Boeing is the company who wants to make the plane, not own the airline. They do lots of stuff, but they spend decades doing it and they also have mastered the art of doing things like getting government funding to build things which no one really needs but we see to not be able to live without. The 787 was great, but for how long it took to make, it should have been so much more. But, all that really mattered was that they eventually delivered. Now that the Chinese are getting into the game, they and Airbus are going to be totally screwed, but at least everyone responsible for their lack of agility will have retired by then.
So... since neither Lockheed or Boeing wanted to own their own launch company... here comes SpaceX and others who do. They make use of technology that was designed with help from NASA to provide the US with their own launch capabilities. SpaceX and BlueOrigin are working hard to take American technology and build American businesses out of them. In addition, Boeing and Lockheed were forced to modernize and become more agile otherwise they'd have lost out to SpaceX and BlueOrigin.
Now, after about 20 years, we have two launch capable American companies with a third one coming. We will soon have at least one launch company capable of flying manned missions. We have completely reinvented the space industry and moved from thinking in terms of billions of dollars to do anything new to thinking in terms of hundreds of millions or less.
Musk delivered on the reusable rocket. Blue Origin is going that way too. Armadillo did a lot of work that way too. There are rockets being built that will not just get us to the moon or Mars, but will allow us to do it over and over and actually consider leaving colonizing eventually.
Yes... none of the space companies would have been able to pull this off if the US and Russia space programs as well as the wea
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The space and military programs had taken rockets and networks as far as they could conceive or afford. Other people saw other possibilities and built upon the shoulders of
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"we rule!" ?!
state of "ruling" nasa and usa space program-
unable to put humans in to space.
lots of plans announced with even more spin, with no money to implement them.
subsidies to inefficient, over budget, delayed, space and related programs, run by cooperate welfare scams owned by cronies.
etc.
"Even with Trump "
well all of that predates trump. but if all that continues well in to his term, he owns it too.
It's only outsourcing (Score:1)
They are still getting up there - transport has been outsourced to the Russians, just like with elections.
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The description kind of rubs it in that US rocket capabilities are seriously lacking compared to 50 years ago. "generating 860,000 pounds of thrust"? The Saturn V generated 6.5 million (1967) to 7.8 million (Apollo 15 - 1971).
How is this "progress?"
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For most purposes, we don't need Saturn V levels of thrust.
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If you want to get into that, for most purposes you don't need a rocket.
Don't be silly. Rockets are needed to get satellites in orbit.
Think of it - a fully functional, manned space station with just one launch
I'd rather not. The space station is a useless money pit in the sky.
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As has been pointed out many times in the past, there was no one set of tried and true plans for the Saturn V. Each bird incorporated changes to fix problems with the previous ones, as they were identified.
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Not a Saturn V, but the USA does have the heaviest lifting operational launch vehicle in the world today, the Delta IV Heavy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-lift_launch_vehicle). The Delta IV Heavy also has a greater payload weight to orbit than any other previous American launch vehicle (except Saturn V) which puts it ahead of such notables from the past as the Saturn 1B, Titan IV and Space Shuttle. Without doing any research I'd hazard a confident guess that only the Soviet Energia could outlift th
Re:USA! USA! USA! (Score:4, Insightful)
They're unable to launch humans given their own red tape and far-beyond-Shuttle safety requirements which again were far beyond Apollo. If Bruce Willis had to go up there to save us from Armageddon I bet within three weeks you'd have something ready to launch on top of an Atlas, Delta and Falcon 9 rocket. Most of the active space probes [wikipedia.org] are NASAs, there's some from Japan, China, India and ESA but the list would have been much shorter. Don't forget that the ISS supply missions to SpaceX and the Commercial Crew program are also part of the NASA budget.
The SLS and the proposed missions are pork, but they do a lot of non-pork science too. If the Falcon Heavy (finally) successfully launches in November with the new LEO fully expendable payload of 63,8 tons vs the SLS's 70 tons (in its Block 1 configuration) the SLS is pretty much a non-starter. I suspect to keep the pork barrel rolling they'll go directly for the Block 1B/2 configurations even though they're currently planned for 2022+ but at least they'd still have an unique launch capability. They certainly don't got much else going for them.
Remember that NASA is far from being just a rocket company, even if Musk takes the whole Earth-surface-to-Mars-surface transport you're not going to see SpaceX develop space telescopes, deep space probes, Mars habitats etc. any time soon. It's not that NASA needs less money, it's that they need less money for pork so they got more money for their actual mission. They'll have plenty to do designing missions that sit on top of rockets, once they get out of the launch business.
Yawn, just a boring launch (Score:2)
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"RD AMROSS, a limited liability company, is a U.S. joint venture between Pratt & Whitney of West Palm Beach, Florida and NPO Energomash of Khimki, Russia based in Jupiter, Florida.
"NPO Energomash manufactures the RD-180 rocket engine for RD AMROSS, and provides designing, manufacturing, testing and other services for liquid propulsion rocket engines. The RD-180 provides the main thrust on the Atlas V launch vehicle made by the United Launch Alliance...
"Under RD AMROSS, Pratt & Whitney is licensed to
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That ban was lifted almost two years ago.
The stink of desperation (Score:3)
Most of the comments carry a whiff of desperation as ULA tries to stay relevant during a time when SpaceX is driving down the cost of launches. The discrepancy is only going to get worse when SpaceX starts recovering the second stage.
Sorry, ULA, but it looks like you're destined to become a casualty of the creative destruction of capitalism. SpaceX built a better mousetrap and you're invested in yesterday's technology.
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Yeah, this sounds like it was written by ULA's marketing department. Makes me wish I could short their stock.
Small correction to TFA (Score:2)
"With its Russian main engine running at full throttle, the Atlas 5 booster lifted off at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral. The 191-foot-tall rocket, with its Russian first stage generating 860,000 pounds of thrust, aimed eastward and accelerated out of the atmosphere with NASA's TDRS-M spacecraft".
FTFH
Not just NASA (Score:2)
The military and the NRO use a substantial portion of the TDRS systems bandwidth as well.