SpaceX Successfully Launches Falcon 9 Carrying Starlink Demo Satellites (techcrunch.com) 51
SpaceX has successfully launched a Falcon 9 from SLC-4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base today, its first launch since its successful Falcon Heavy test earlier this month. The launch took off early Wednesday morning, after being rescheduled a couple of times from an initial target of this past weekend. From a report: The launch was primarily designed to bring the PAZ satellite to orbit (which was deployed as planned into a low Earth, sun-synchronous polar orbit), a satellite for a Spanish customer that's designed to provide geocommunications and radar imaging for both government and private commercial customers. This launch had a secondary purpose, however, and one that might ultimately be more important to SpaceX's long-term goals. SpaceX packed two demonstration micro satellites for its planned internet broadband service (which Elon Musk confided via tweet it will call 'Starlink'). These will perform tests required before it's certified to operate the service, which it hopes to use to generate revenue by signing up subscribers to its internet service, which will hopefully be globe-spanning once complete.
Impressive (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't invoke Godwin's Law, either. Prat.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot to add they are electric
That's Rocket Lab, not SpaceX.
Re: (Score:2)
SPACEX Launch (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
... it was a great experience that was over in around one minute.
Well, that was about thirty seconds longer than my wedding night...
Re: (Score:2)
It is really only worth it if there is an expected Twilight effect.
Like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xzs-R193U0
Re: (Score:2)
From LA it was mostly in the clouds. I think you could kind-of see the first stage separation, but not clear enough to be sure.
Starlink? (Score:3)
Still wondering why the uber-geek who sent a car beyond Mars orbit with "DON'T PANIC!" on the dashboard didn't name his satellite swarm "Skynet" instead. Somebody else must already have the trademark.
Re:Starlink? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Also, new fairing successful (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Also, new fairing successful (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks, I was unaware of the new fairing.
A few interestings points in the linked article :
- Falcon9 fairings have an estimated cost of about six million dollars. After a quick search, it's look like the advertised cost is 61.2 million maiking the fairing about 10% of the cost. Honestly, it's way more than I anticipaded.
- The new fairing will not only survive atmosphere reentry, but they will "reorient themselves" before the ewentry and then deploy a parachute. It's bery impressing and I'm very curious about how they did this.
- SpaceX is making a recovery boat with a big net to catch those new fairing that will come. For what I read, it's pretty similar to Of Course I Still Love You drone ship.
Can't wait to see if they succeded.
Re: (Score:2)
...the ewentry ... It's bery impressing ...
I hope you get over that cold.
Funny coincidence, I do have a cold right now. ...but I think my new keyboard is the real culprit. I missed a few keys.
Re: (Score:3)
It's more than SpaceX anticipated as well. Initially there were no plans to recover the fairings because, hey, it's a fairing, how much could it cost? Turns out, quite a bit actually.
Already exists. Its name is "Mr. Steven". And it's actually quite different from Of Course I Still Love You; i
Re:Also, new fairing successful (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes fairings are expensive (Score:5, Informative)
From the article you linked: the fairing costs $6m? Really?
You are aware that economies of scale are rather limited here right? It's not at all shocking that something like that would cost $6m in the sort of volume SpaceX deals in. Plus they aren't an "inert chuck of metal". Per SpaceX it is composite structure consisting of a 2.5 cm (1 in.) thick aluminum honeycomb core surrounded by carbon fiber face sheet plies [spacex.com] (see section 4.3.7). It will require a huge oven for the carbon fiber which you can be sure is expensive and a lot of fancy tooling.
It has to be light, designed to take quite a lot of pressure, shock, and vibration, and deal with temperatures, and it has to separate reliably. These are hard to make and expensive. In some cases the mission requires a custom fairing.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
It has to be light, designed to take quite a lot of pressure, shock, and vibration, and deal with temperatures, and it has to separate reliably. These are hard to make and expensive. In some cases the mission requires a custom fairing.
Piffle, just carve it out of balsa wood. Learn from those who came before you... Estes.
Where to buy? (Score:2)
Piffle, just carve it out of balsa wood. Learn from those who came before you... Estes.
Please direct me to where I can purchase an orbital class Estes rocket.
Re: (Score:2)
Please direct me to where I can purchase an orbital class Estes rocket.
All Estes rockets are orbital class. Where do you think all the lost rockets end up?
Re: (Score:3)
All Estes rockets are orbital class. Where do you think all the lost rockets end up?
I think they go where my socks go so they really are Behind The Dryer class rockets.
Re: (Score:2)
Estes!
Blast from the past.
I built and flew a bunch of their rockets about 60 years ago. Great fun.
Good to see that they are still in business.
https://www.estesrockets.com/ [estesrockets.com]
Article showing fairing recovery (Score:5, Informative)
I found another article [geekwire.com] that has a link showing Mr Steven (the catcher boat) and the fairing (which Mr. Steven missed this time, but the fairing, er, faired quite well landing in the ocean).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Their sats will not be in geosync orbit so your entire premise is null and void.
But you knew that, didn't you?
Re: (Score:1)
They will be in LEO, pings will be a lot quicker, possibly quicker than cable over long distances.
Re:PINGS of 240 ms minimum! Not a gamers solution (Score:4, Informative)
Most communications satellites are located in the Geostationary Orbit (GSO) at an altitude of approximately 35,786 km above the equator. At this height the satellites go around the earth in a west to east direction at the same angular speed at the earth's rotation, so they appear to be almost fixed in the sky to an observer on the ground.
If you are located on the equator and are communicating with a satellite directly overhead then the total distance, single hop (up and down) is nearly 72,000 km so the time delay is 240 ms
If you were to communicate with another similarly located site, the total distance is nearly 84,000 km so the end to end delay is almost 280 mS, which is a little over quarter of a second.
They're putting them up a lot, lot lower than that, some only 200 km up. Pings expecting to be 25-35ms, which isn't out of ordinary for normal broadband latency. A speedtest on my fast connection just now put my latency at 51ms (with ~120 Mbps up/down).
Re: (Score:1)
https://www.quadranet.com/new-... [quadranet.com]
Tracing route to 23.226.128.10 over a maximum of 30 hops
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms x
3 1 ms 2 ms 1 ms x
4 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms x
5 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms x
6 11 ms 11 ms 10 ms x
7 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 128.177.133.21
8 11 ms 10 ms 11 ms ae0.mpr2.msp1
Re:PINGS of 240 ms minimum! Not a gamers solution (Score:5, Informative)
SpaceX's constellation will be orbiting 35 times closer than GEO, at ~1,100 kilometers. So... "Pings of 7-8 ms minimum" is slightly more accurate.
As satellites near the end of their life they'll carefully lower these orbits down to less than 300km before de-orbiting them. Their documentation does not indicate if they'll continue active communications during that period. My guess is they won't because of the shorter orbital period, but I could be wrong.
If I were a last-mile monopoly Telco I would be slightly concerned. Mr. Musk's companies have a delightful habit of redefining the impossible.
Internet from the sky (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Common for SpaceX, yes...