SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket Launches First Paid Mission, Lands All Three Boosters For the First Time (cnn.com) 85
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket has successfully launched its first-ever mission for a paying customer. It was also the first time the aerospace company managed to land all three rocket boosters after launch. CNN reports: The rocket took off Thursday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida just after 6 pm ET. It delivered a pricey communications satellite into orbit for Saudi Arabia-based firm Arabsat. For the first time ever, all three Falcon Heavy rocket boosters returned to Earth after launch: The two side-boosters landed simultaneously on ground pads in Florida, while the center core landed on a remote-controlled platform in the ocean a short time later. Reusable hardware is part of Falcon Heavy's appeal. The boosters are guided back to Earth so they can be refurbished and used again. SpaceX says it can drastically reduce the cost of spaceflight.
The Arabsat mission is evidence that some satellite operators will opt for a larger rocket anyway: Arabsat 6A was small enough to fit onto a Falcon 9 rocket. But using the larger rocket allows the company to put the satellite deeper into space, which means the satellite won't need to waste as much of its own precious fuel maneuvering to its intended position. Arabsat 6A will update satellite coverage for Arabsat, which is based in Riyadh and delivers hundreds of television channels and radio stations to homes across the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. Lockheed Martin built the satellite, along with a second one, for Arabsat as part of a batch of contracts worth $650 million. When Arabsat announced the contracts in 2015, it said at the time that it planned to launch the Arabsat 6A satellite aboard Falcon Heavy. In related news, SpaceX has won a contract to launch the first-ever experiment in 2022 to deflect an asteroid through a high-speed spacecraft collision. "NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, will ride on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at a cost of $69 million," reports Florida Today. "It's expected to launch in June of that year."
The Arabsat mission is evidence that some satellite operators will opt for a larger rocket anyway: Arabsat 6A was small enough to fit onto a Falcon 9 rocket. But using the larger rocket allows the company to put the satellite deeper into space, which means the satellite won't need to waste as much of its own precious fuel maneuvering to its intended position. Arabsat 6A will update satellite coverage for Arabsat, which is based in Riyadh and delivers hundreds of television channels and radio stations to homes across the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. Lockheed Martin built the satellite, along with a second one, for Arabsat as part of a batch of contracts worth $650 million. When Arabsat announced the contracts in 2015, it said at the time that it planned to launch the Arabsat 6A satellite aboard Falcon Heavy. In related news, SpaceX has won a contract to launch the first-ever experiment in 2022 to deflect an asteroid through a high-speed spacecraft collision. "NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, will ride on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at a cost of $69 million," reports Florida Today. "It's expected to launch in June of that year."
Thanks for posting, Beau! (Score:4, Funny)
Now it won't be necessary for people to vote up my previously submitted story.
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Spotted the ULA shill.
Yeah, they cut those "profiting from monopoly status" corners. There's a new player, and they cost far less than you do. This is what happens when you stagnate from having no competition.
You've got it now, and they're going to kick your ass.
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Spotted the ULA shill.
Yeah, they cut those "profiting from monopoly status" corners. There's a new player, and they cost far less than you do. This is what happens when you stagnate from having no competition.
You've got it now, and they're going to kick your ass.
Let us just pull back a minute from your endorphin buzz.
What Spacex is doing is pretty darn cool, and I am lovin it.
But watching the launch vids, where the screaming and cheering is louder than the flight announcements and reading their syophants, y'all are getting as full of hubris as NASA and the fans before the Challenger accident. That hubris appears to be widespread and becoming more widespread.
This space candle stuff is pretty dangerous stuff. And now we're looking at things like the planned
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You sound concerned
I am. When the inevitble accident involving a rocket and people happens, the Spacex people and their fans will be thrown into a horrible shock.
Having gone through the Challenger and Columbia accidents I remember how especially with Challenger, everybody was just thinking the whole deal had been reduced to practice, that sending astronauts into space was so reduced to practice that we could send a teacher into space for shits and giggles.
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You have a point, but on paper and in practice, the SpaceX design is far more safe than the Shuttle design NASA had previously. They don't have those pretty exciting SRBs for one, and have an engine which can be throttled down or turned off. The Russian's Buran also used liquid-fueled boosters, so SpaceX isn't the first to consider this.
For your approval: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
During fueling, a SpaceX rocket blew up rather spectacularly. Perhaps this will never happen again. Me? Nope, nope nope. Fueling is not a good time to be sitting on top of a rocket. Those cold fuel components are creaking and doing all sort's of temperature acclimation inside that candle The only reason you would do it is for expedience.
This is the same sort of hubris that preceded the Challenger rapid disassembly, and a big contributer to the Colu
Re: SPACE X WILL NEVER WORK (Score:1)
Your mother cuts corners on birth control.
Way to go Space-X (Score:4, Insightful)
The first Falcon-Heavy was amazing...but this is awesome.
I know folks don't like him, but way to Elon and way to go Space-X!
Re: Way to go Space-X (Score:4, Informative)
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Is "Elon" a verb now? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? "You really Elon'd that tweet", or "You Elon'd the shit out of that jet powered go-kart".
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Although I found your post funny, I would say that looking over the data they get back there is probably plenty of micro-butt-clenching moments they are learning plenty from. :-)
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Surely a better source than CNN (Score:3, Informative)
Gonna force me to go do a search for the actual 'good stuff' eh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ; Horses mouth.
Impressive! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Impressive! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, and it draws attention to just how bad an idea the space shuttle was in an engineering sense. There is more than one way to fly a main engine back to earth, you don't actually need to boost it all the way up to low earth orbit and back.
The Russians really were on the right track with Buran: gliding back from orbit does make sense, it does make sense to have wings on a reusable crewed vehicle, but it does not make sense to stitch a huge, heavy engine onto it.
Re:Do you rocket science bro? (Score:5, Informative)
but then the main vehicle would need to have duplicates added back on to position and de-orbit, increasing the overall weight
Except it actually did. The Space Shuttle's main engines were not used for on-orbit maneuvering, and were basically deadweight once the external fuel tank was jettisoned. Instead, they had separate orbital maneuvering engines that used hypergolic propellant for all of that stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Orbital_Maneuvering_System
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To be fair, SpaceX throws away their 2nd stage.
Re:Impressive! (Score:4, Insightful)
For now. Still, getting back 27 engines for the loss of one is still a good tradeoff. It means wasting some fuel and limiting the maximum payload, tho.
Re:Impressive! (Score:5, Insightful)
For now. Still, getting back 27 engines for the loss of one is still a good tradeoff. It means wasting some fuel and limiting the maximum payload, tho.
Fuel is a small part of the cost of a launch. The maximum payload is only reduced if you want the cost saving of reusability. And one can reserve recycled boosters near the end of their useful life for higher payload missions.
Re:Impressive! (Score:4, Informative)
Fuel is a small part of the cost of a launch. The maximum payload is only reduced if you want the cost saving of reusability. And one can reserve recycled boosters near the end of their useful life for higher payload missions.
Currently fuel is about 0.4% of the cost for a Falcon 9 flight, not sure about the Falcon Heavy but definitively <1%. The extra fuel for landing is probably 0.1% or something like that, it's a rounding error. Of course the whole recovery operation (legs, fins, drone ship, inspection etc.) costs more, but if you're not payload limited and it has useful life left it's a no-brainer. If you run out of end-of-life boosters and the economics heavily favors reuse you can always go one size up, if SpaceX would rather take 27 engines for a spin than lose 9 they can simply price a reusable FH lower than an expendable F9. And when BFR comes online an expendable FH flight becomes a reusable BFR flight. Assuming it works as well as intended, they've flown the same booster three times now and the NASA abort demo will supposedly be the fourth (and final, as it will be destroyed) but it's still a way off from the 10-100 times Musk was talking about.
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Considering that the main engines fired all the way to orbit, why would it have been worth while to de-orbit and land them separately from the rest of the shuttle?
Returning the Engines was the only good thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. Bringing back the expensive engines was the only good thing it did. It wasn't worth it - but it could have been, if the second and third generation shuttles had been built, with re-usable liquid fuel boosters and shuttle designs that would have fulfilled the promise of fast, no-touch turnarounds.
The wings, landing gear, huge cabin and having to carry humans for launches that should have been fully automated were Shuttle's major problems. And Buran was only done because the U.S. was doing something similar, Russia didn't see exactly why, but couldn't be left behind if it proved to be for important strategic military reasons. Spoiler - it wasn't: Shuttle was built for silly political reasons.
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> and having to carry humans for launches that should have been fully automated were Shuttle's major problems
I'm not sure it *could* have been, given the computer technology of the 1970s and the comparative difficulty of landing a spaceplane. It might have been refit much later, but what would be the point? Replacing a well-tested system with a new experimental system to save a few hundred pounds of payload sounds like a risky and expensive decision to me. It might have saved a few lives, but lives are
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I hadn't realized the Buran was automated. Interesting...
Keep in mind though that the first (and only) flight of the Buran occurred in November 1988, Compared to April 1981 for the shuttle. That's 91 months, or a bit over five Moore's-Law doublings of computer performance. 32x the computing performance (and likely available RAM) makes a HUGE difference in real-time control systems, especially back then when pretty much any software of any complexity was severely hardware-limited.
If we instead look at subor
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The shuttles may have also stoked Russian fears of attack on their satellites. They did arm some of their satellites with guns and missles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Bringing back the expensive engines was the only good thing it did.
Now the expensive engines fly back and land without going all the way to orbit. Isn't that obviously better? There is a much cheaper second stage that still burns up, but on the plus side, it is optimized for efficient operation in near vacuum, making it lighter, cheaper, more powerful and more reliable than one engine that tries to do it all.
By the way, think about the pumps and pipes and valves and grommets involved in moving that cryogenic fuel from the external tank to the engines at stupidly high rates
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Fuck everything, we're doing FIVE boosters (Score:2)
Cool!
Now do four!
Re:Fuck everything, we're doing FIVE boosters (Score:4, Funny)
Five boosters and an extra aloe strip that lathers.
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Why settle for four? If you're gong to step it up, lets do a full cluster of six auxilliary boosters like they discussed early on, and land all seven!
Or, maybe they could design some sort of single "super-heavy" rocket that's the same size as the entire cluster would be - you could fit in even more (or larger!) engines and fuel, while eliminating much of the mass of having several smaller fuel tanks and superstructures...
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The ultimate heavy booster would be one larger enough to lift precision metal smelting and shaping gear to the Moon. Once we have that, the space economy can manufacture its own large components outside Earth’s gravity well.
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The BFR should probably be able to handle that, at least for a small, modular "starter kit" transported in multiple pieces.
There's a *lot* of R&D and infrastructure involved first though. We need a habitat for workers (ISS lessons should mostly translate), and hopefully nimble telepresence robots so that they can do most of their work remotely rather than in unpleasant, dangerous space suits. Then there's prospecting, mining, and refining - a moon-smithy doesn't do you any good until you have raw mater
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Why settle for four? If you're gong to step it up, lets do a full cluster of six auxilliary boosters like they discussed early on, and land all seven!
Or, maybe they could design some sort of single "super-heavy" rocket that's the same size as the entire cluster would be - you could fit in even more (or larger!) engines and fuel, while eliminating much of the mass of having several smaller fuel tanks and superstructures...
I think you're being sarcastic, but on the second "super heavy" do you recall the "Sea Dragon"? The ultimate vaporware rocket. That sucker was big!
150 meters tall, 23 meters in diameter 2 stage - first stage 350 MN; 79,000,000 lbf) thrust, second stage 59 MN; 13,000,000 lbf Hydrogen LOX engine. able to carry 550,000 kg (1,210,000 lb) to LEO. RP-1 and LOX burning, and no pumps, this thing was going to use Pressurized Nitrogen to push the fuel to the nozzles.
The beast was going to have to launch from
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I was actually specifically referring to the BFR, which seems to have replaced the 7-booster Falcon 9 "supercluster" that Musk mentioned a few times early on as a possible heavy launch vehicle.
The Sea Dragon though - I'm not certain I've ever encountered it before - it's been many years if I have. What a beast! And launched not just from on the water (as planned for the BFR), but *in* the water, floating vertically.
I hate to think of what that sonic blast might do to whales anywhere nearby though.
A link f
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I was actually specifically referring to the BFR, which seems to have replaced the 7-booster Falcon 9 "supercluster" that Musk mentioned a few times early on as a possible heavy launch vehicle.
The Sea Dragon though - I'm not certain I've ever encountered it before - it's been many years if I have. What a beast! And launched not just from on the water (as planned for the BFR), but *in* the water, floating vertically.
I hate to think of what that sonic blast might do to whales anywhere nearby though.
I always wondered how far away the ships would have to get. before launch. 3 miles away was considered survivable if the Saturn 5 went off on the pad or shortly after launch. And being in the ocean, there would have to be a lot of humans really close for the fueling. Maybe a unattended barge similar to what Spacex uses. All in all, an interesting exercise in "How darn big can we make a rocket?" But it also seems like an engineering "hold my beer" event.
\ And yes, it would definitely be a big issue for se
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Assuming the fueling ship wasn't automated. I'd expect it, and the launch barge, to be built like a bunker in order to survive such a blast anyway though - you don't want to lose an expensive piece of infrastructure in an accident - there'll be plenty more rockets to keep things on schedule.
And if they start offering commercial terrestrial flights? How does the crew complement compare to the number of passengers?
It sounds like they're working hard to make the risk profile of a flight resemble that of an
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Assuming the fueling ship wasn't automated. I'd expect it, and the launch barge, to be built like a bunker in order to survive such a blast anyway though
Quite the surviveability requirement. Obviously something will have to be built pretty tough.There is a bunker for astronauts to zipline to if they have time to get to the zipline. Certainly can't do that in a water launch. Then there is the issue of the blast. A rocket the size of the Sea Dragon is going to have nuclear detonation level of explosion if the unthinkable happens. So you have to figure out a whole new world of pain to avoid.
And if they start offering commercial terrestrial flights? How does the crew complement compare to the number of passengers? It sounds like they're working hard to make the risk profile of a flight resemble that of an airliner, rather than a traditional rocket.
I doubt there are plans to make a Sea Dragon a passenger vehicle. A
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Ah, I was talking BFR again. Sea Dragon... yeah, that would be a challenge. I'm not sure how exactly how the forces transmitted through the water would work - a zipline to a submerged "submarine bunker" might work - an incredible amount of energy would go toward vaporizing water, which I would think would at least stretch out the impulse so you're dealing with smaller forces over a longer period. And without a rigidly mounted foundation it should take less durability to survive. It would need to be abl
Officially ends space station dependence on Russia (Score:4, Informative)
Only a slight exaggeration. The end of dependence on Russia to service the international space station is now in sight. Finally. So sad that Russia fell off the rails so badly, but it happened, and now the only logical course is, just cut every tie, especially ones where lives hang in the balance. Thanks much for not holding the space station hostage these past years, but goodbye and good riddance.
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Either way Russia loses, and that's a great thing.
It's so nice to have the bulk of the Western world on the same page wrt Russia. Before Trump most of you were Russian apologists going way back, siding with Russia over the US at every opportunity. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was only the latest example; every vaguely plausible rationalization was offered to justify what was obviously just more Russian aggression.
But now you're so invested in `muh Russia' that Russia no longer gets the benefit of t
Re: Officially ends space station dependence on Ru (Score:5, Interesting)
The last thing the US wants to do is "take out" Russia's economy, because then we'd have to worry about dealing with an impoverished, destabilized country that owns a large arsenal of nuclear weapons with substantial resale value. It's in our best interest for Russia to be affluent, happy, and feel secure. Politics isn't a football game.
The US is enormously safer and better off when Russia is a stable, wealthy, happy partner to do research and business with. It's fine for the US and Russia to be adversarial, as long as you recognize that an "adversary" isn't necessarily an "enemy". Sometimes, it's good to have a little bit of healthy adversity between worthy opponents... it keeps everyone honest & avoids stagnation. But you don't want it to turn into silly cheerleading and enmity, because that just leaves EVERYONE worse off.
And the fact is, by the time SpaceX really starts to eat into Russia's market share, they'll be following the same path towards reusability and lower cost as SpaceX. Remember, half the battle in inventing something is knowing it's possible. Now they know.
The fact is, Russia's space program isn't going away, even IF it becomes unable to compete with SpaceX on cost, because manned spaceflight is as important to Russia's national pride and sense of identity as it is to America's. If SpaceX undercuts Russia, Russia will follow in SpaceX's footprints, duplicate its success, and will hemorrhage as much money as necessary in the meantime to keep up appearances. Because the alternative is inconceivable to Russians.
Americans were traumatized when the shuttle program ended with no replacement in sight, but we could at least take a small bit of comfort knowing that it wasn't the first time we were temporarily out of the game. The same thing happened in the 1970s... Apollo ended, Skylab crashed, and the Shuttle just kept getting delayed and delayed. Then there was the lapse after the Challenger explosion. And another lapse after Columbia's accident. In contrast, most Russians have NEVER known a world where they didn't have the ability to send men into space. Even when the Soviet Union was disintegrating and Russia was on the brink of civil war, Mir was still occupied. And by the time Mir was deorbited, the ISS was already under construction (and might, in fact, have already had the Russian module in place, though I don't think it was ready for continuous habitation at that point).
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People have know you could do more-or-less exactly "this" since the 50's. The loss of throw weight had made it no viable for most heavily-funded missions. There were flyback booster options considered for the Saturn V, go research
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The last thing the US wants to do is "take out" Russia's economy, because then we'd have to worry about dealing with an impoverished, destabilized country that owns a large arsenal of nuclear weapons with substantial resale value. It's in our best interest for Russia to be affluent, happy, and feel secure.
You're way off the mark. Every time Russia starts feeling a bit wealthy it steps up interference with its rivals and oppression of its neighbours. Every. Single. Time. Russia behaved best and almost became a democracy when it was poorest, as in immediately after losing the cold war. That pattern will never change as long as Russia is run by the mafia.
The best thing that could happen to Russia right now is another economic collapse. Best for the free world, and best for itself.
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I wouldn't want the Russians to be out of the game for a number of reasons:
1) Russia owns some of the modules on the station, which includes pretty critical roles such as life support and orbit raising.
2) It would be in US interests to keep Russian scientists in Russia rather than somewhere else where their rocketry knowledge can be turned into missiles.
3) Russia still holds a respectable command over flight safety, unparalleled even by the US. If ever the CCtap ships get grounded, Soyuz will be the only wa
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It's sad to see Roscosmos rot as it is, especially today which marks the 50th anniversary of Gagarin making it into space.
58th anniversary (12 April 1961)
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The prior Crew Demo 1 mission had more impact on the ISS than this flight did. Sure, if we were still hoisting ISS parts into orbit, then the Falcon Heavy might be relevant. The Crew Dragon 2 capsule ends dependence on Soyuz, assuming it passes its next tests ok (which it should).
If anything, the Falcon Heavy ends dependence on the Delta IV Heavy and Atlas V, which have a ~18 month lead time due to how long it takes to build a new one just for your launch.
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Russia fell off the rails so badly
Well, really, Russia was never ON the rails; they had a brief opening after the breakup of the URSS, but it didn't last. Most Russians appear perfectly OK with a dictatorship that maintains the illusion they're still a world power.
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Right, 90%+ of Russians seem to admire and support dictator Putin, making life miserable for the remaining 10%.
Welcome to the 21st century! (Score:5, Insightful)
To say I'm excited would be a huge understatement. I am thrilled! This was the highlight of the year - so far!
Mr. Musk might just be one of the greatest men of our time. First man to establish a company that makes successful electric cars (and finally kicking the traditional car manufacturers in the groin to get up and do their own homework, finally) and first man to establish a successful private space launch company. Either of those endeavors would have seemed perfectly impossible just a few decades ago. And yet, a single man has done them both.
So yeah, the Musk adoration exists for a good reason.
As for me, I am looking forward for more of the achievements of humankind, exemplified in the output of SpaceX.
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Mr. Musk might just be one of the greatest men of our time. First man to establish a company that makes successful electric cars (and finally kicking the traditional car manufacturers in the groin to get up and do their own homework, finally) and first man to establish a successful private space launch company.
You forgot PayPal.
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Let's not mention that accident.
Re:Welcome to the 21st century! (Score:5, Interesting)
That accident?!
PayPal made Elon rich. No PayPal = no SpaceX, no Tesla.
Elon Musk is a businessman first and foremost. And that's what separates him for the rest. Wasting money doing awesome stuff is easy. Making money doing awesome stuff is hard, mostly because making money is hard.
And PayPal is actually good. At least, it is for buyers.
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There’s nothing wrong with PayPal so long as you stay on the buy side. It’s when you start using it to receive money that you fall into the pit of Hell.
Now they just need to improve spectator access (Score:5, Interesting)
Kennedy Space Center desperately needs to improve their spectator logistics. The biggest single thing limiting the number of people who can watch launches "up close" isn't crowd capacity, it's limited parking and road capacity into KSC.
KSC should try to make a deal with FEC Railroad, Brightline, Tri-Rail, and Titusville Mall:
Titusville Mall is practically dead, has a huge parking lot, and sits a short block away from FEC's tracks. I'm sure its owners would be absolutely thrilled to have an excuse to collect $10/car to park there on launch days.
FEC owns the tracks leading to the spur that goes to KSC itself.
They could lease the vacant lot at/near 3547 S. Hopkins Avenue (south of the Shell Station at Country Club Drive) so they'd have a place for people waiting for the train to stand. To save money, they could build a wood platform (with stairs and a single wheelchair ramp) wide enough to span between two Tri-Rail bi-level cars, and stick additional wood stairs on concrete pads for access to two more cars. It would take some time to get everyone on board, but that's OK... it's not like it would be one station of many for daily commuter rail service. The idea is to keep it cheap enough to be basically "throw-away", so that even if they ended up replacing it with something better a couple of years later, it would be no huge loss.
Virgin/Brightline could use one of their trains for a chartered Miami-Fort Lauderdale-WPB-KSC run before and after major launches. Yeah, in theory, SpaceX is sort of a competitor for Virgin Galactic... but not really. Just about the only thing VG and SpaceX have in common is, "launching rockets into space". Their market segments don't overlap AT ALL. Meanwhile, branding Virgin/Brightline as Florida's official "Space Train" would be an EPIC win for Virgin/Brightline in almost every conceivable way. Combined with the shuttle train(s) between KSC and the off-site parking lot, it would be a huge win for SpaceX as well, by vastly increasing the number of spectators able to watch a launch up close. More spectators = more political support for US space travel = more funding from Congress = more money for SpaceX.
They could additionally rent a couple of Tri-Rail's bi-level coaches for a couple of days before and after a major launch. Tow the coaches from SFRC/CSX to FEC, let FEC pull them up overnight with one of their freight trains, then use a FEC locomotive up in Titusville to haul them back and forth between the temporary mall station and the more permanent station at KSC itself.
The station at KSC itself could be constructed near the Banana Creek Launch Viewing area. People buying expensive tickets (that include admission to KSC) get to use the bleachers at the launch viewing area. People buying cheaper tickets (without admission to KSC, since KSC itself could never actually handle that many visitors on a launch day anyway) have a short bus ride to the Shuttle Landing Facility's runway, which could probably accommodate a quarter of a million visitors without being particularly crowded. Park some food trucks next to the runway, throw down a few dozen porta-johns, done.
They could also offer three different price levels for the rail shuttle... say, $A, $B, and $C. The difference? After the launch (or scrub), there would be three lines to board at the station. The $A tickets would be limited to the total capacity of two trips using the bi-level coaches rented from Tri-Rail. Each time a train arrives after launch/scrub, everyone in the $A line gets to board until they're either all on board, or the train is full. Then the $B line. Then finally, the $C line. After the first "mall shuttle" train (using the Tri-Rail cars) departs after launch, the Virgin/Brightline train would board, and head straight to Miami. With a little luck, the Virgin/Brightline train would reach the mainline and be heading south a minute or two before the mall-KSC train heading back to KSC reached the spur leading into KSC.
Later, once Virgin/Brightline's track to Orlando is
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Instead of managing a herd of folks to a launch party that might happen, the folks at Kennedy need to focus on a safe launch.
You know you can do both, right? Or do you think the people maintaining the safety of the attractions at Disney are the same people in charge of getting people in and out of the park?
Disney is not that far away if you need entertainment. It already has the facilities to support the herd.
As soon as Disney starts launching rockets instead of charging $200 be able to stand in line for 5 rides, maybe I'll go. Until then, you can keep it.
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KSC's visitor operations are run by a company that has little to do with launch operations. NASA tells them what they're allowed to do on launch day & reviews their plans, but has very little to do with the direct handling of those launch-day crowds.
Over time, the service would presumably evolve to accommodate different crowds for different launches. For example:
* Routine launch, one of 4-6 SpaceX launches taking place that week: Single train operated by Sunrail under contract. Departs from DisneyCelebr
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That might be overkill - at least the further extensions. The very fact that SpaceX has been so successful, and is bringing launch costs down so dramatically (and thus increasing launch frequency) simultaneously makes the launches less of a novelty, and increases the number of opportunities to watch them. If you have one launch a month then everyone who wants to watch a launch that month has to be at that one viewing. If you're launching every few days you can spread that crowd across a dozen different l
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FEC is heavily used, but it's double-track in the area.
I'm not 100% sure that it's fully double-track all the way from Jacksonville to Miami, but I'm 99% confident that if it's not... it WILL be within the next 2-3 years.
Virgin/Brightline hasn't (AFAIK) OFFICIALLY announced future expansion to Jacksonville yet, but pretty much everyone takes for granted that it's going to happen, and the only real question is when it will happen compared to the launch of Miami-Orlando and its extension to Tampa. As a practi
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You've really thought this through, haven't you?
Just one slight problem:
>Even if SpaceX decides to do BFR launches from the sea, I'll be shocked if the majority of their other launches don't use Cape Canaveral.
There probably aren't going to be any other launches - thanks to the reusable second stage and lower maintenance requirements, the BFR is expected to cost less per launch than a Falcon 9.
Not per pound, per launch.
Meaning that if they use a F9 to launch a single satellite, rather than launching the
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I think the main thing we're disagreeing about is where SpaceX is likely to launch most of the BFR rockets. I think SpaceX originally explored multiple options (including the floating platform), but decided towards the end of last year to use 39A for most BFR launches once it's officially in production.
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Ah, I had not heard that tidbit. That would definitely change things.
Sadly all I can find on that front is speculation. If the pad can handle it though, it would seem like a natural choice. At least as a starting point.
Looks like SpaceX has developed a (Score:2)
Better technical achievement than most are... (Score:1)
reporting.
Not only did SpaceX recover all three boosters, but they also recovered both halves of the payload fairing in good enough condition to be re-flown.
Why does this matter?
The three cores and fairing were not discarded - so the ONLY things expended while launching a muti-ton satellite out to geostationary orbit (way beyond LEO) were the propellants and the second stage!
This makes this flight of Falcon9H(block5) the single highest ratio of payload-to-expended-stuff of any rocket ever flown. It's a huge