SpaceX Rocket Successfully Completes Record 9th Launch and Landing (cnet.com) 48
The Verge reports:
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the latest batch of 60 Starlink satellites into orbit Sunday, and returned to Earth successfully, landing on its Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, the company announced. Sunday's mission marked a record ninth flight and landing for this Falcon 9 booster, SpaceX said...
Sunday's launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center was the second in the past few days for SpaceX, which sent another of its Falcon 9 rockets skyward from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday. That launch also brought 60 satellites into orbit.
Sharing a video about the mission, CNET calls it "a new standard for rocket recycling." The first stage that boosted the satellites is a veteran of five previous Starlink missions, Crew Dragon's first demonstration flight, a SiriusXM satellite launch and a Canadian Space Agency satellite mission. The fairing, or nose cone, also previously flew on the Transporter-1 ride-share mission.
Sunday's launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center was the second in the past few days for SpaceX, which sent another of its Falcon 9 rockets skyward from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday. That launch also brought 60 satellites into orbit.
Sharing a video about the mission, CNET calls it "a new standard for rocket recycling." The first stage that boosted the satellites is a veteran of five previous Starlink missions, Crew Dragon's first demonstration flight, a SiriusXM satellite launch and a Canadian Space Agency satellite mission. The fairing, or nose cone, also previously flew on the Transporter-1 ride-share mission.
SpaceX leading by doing (Score:2)
SpaceX has picked up the ball that the U.S government kicked out of NASAs hands back in the 70s.
As an aging "Space Cadet" way to go SpaceX.
Note to Bezos and Blue Origin. You want to be someone other than Bezos who? Those of us who cheer on SpaceX it isn't because of Musk or his hyperbole but because of the ACCOMPLISHMENTS of SpaceX like this. Want our cheers shop talking and LEAD THE WAY. Walk the Walk don't just Talk the Talk.
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Re:SpaceX leading by doing (Score:4, Insightful)
SpaceX,like the COVID vaccine, is due to generous public funding of basic research. The flashy endgame is what makes public relations. The research to create a process to make the atomic layers for computer chips or reliable create hundreds of interconnects is what makes it possible.
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Note to Bezos and Blue Origin. You want to be someone other than Bezos who?
Too bad Jeff doesn't have any other [wikipedia.org] businesses [wikipedia.org] to make a name for himself with...
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Note to Bezos and Blue Origin. You want to be someone other than Bezos who?
Too bad Jeff doesn't have any other [wikipedia.org] businesses [wikipedia.org] to make a name for himself with...
I did think that the context made it clear that it was specifically in reference to those who are followers of the space industry and cheer on those who do things to push the industry ahead. In the space industry it is hard to rate Bezos high enough to call him an "also ran".
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Note to Bezos and Blue Origin. You want to be someone other than Bezos who?
Too bad Jeff doesn't have any other [wikipedia.org] businesses [wikipedia.org] to make a name for himself with...
I did think that the context made it clear that it was specifically in reference to those who are followers of the space industry and cheer on those who do things to push the industry ahead. In the space industry it is hard to rate Bezos high enough to call him an "also ran".
Actually, I got that. Specific to space travel, you're right, but more broadly, the initial comment was absurd. Getting back your point, are we sure Blue Origin has the same long-term goals as SpaceX, Boeing, etc... and are/will be in direct competition with them or he/will they be striving for a different market?
Re: SpaceX leading by doing (Score:1)
I doubt either cares about having the biggest cheer squad.
SpaceX is obviously in the lead at the moment but it's a very long race to the stars. I applaud the others for even trying and talking about it to help keep us looking up instead of navel gazing at whatever topless bikini some bimbo starlet wore to her beach photo shoot yesterday.
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Which is strange to say because Bezos has improved my life far more than Musk ever did. I'm going to get a random piece of crap shipped to me for $0.75 (free) then watch a movie (free) all for lower annual fee than Netflix charges (or CC companies used to charge). Then I'll spin up a webserver in the AWS cloud which powers like a
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Which is strange to say because Bezos has improved my life far more than Musk ever did. I'm going to get a random piece of crap shipped to me for $0.75 (free) then watch a movie (free) all for lower annual fee than Netflix charges (or CC companies used to charge). Then I'll spin up a webserver in the AWS cloud which powers like a quarter of the internet.
I thought it quite clear that it was in the context of the space industry so Amazon is irrelevant.
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Mr. Bezos is providing a useful service to the space industry. He's creating competition. That's has been missing for decades, and why cost-driven innovation has been notably absent. I'd love to see New Glenn flying, but I'm not going to give him a hard time about it if he's not test crashing one every couple of weeks.
More broadly, I want Mr. Bezos to succeed. I want ULA to come out with a rocket that runs circles around SpaceX. I want Arianne to make a rocket that has a Mr. Fusion and runs on Banana P
Good news and not so great news (Score:5, Interesting)
On the one hand, this is good news. The Falcon 9 is showing to be a very robust rocket, with its first stage working really well for reuse. And each time a Falcon is used, SpaceX learns more about what their capabilities are. They've shown that first stage reuse is definitely practical and doable. Not surprising that many other companies are now trying to follow with the same thing. Even Rocketlab, whose founder Peter Beck explicitly said was never going to do reuse, is now experimenting with using parachute recovery for their small sat launcher the Electron, and has announced plans to build a rocket, Neutron, which will be optimized for landing and reuse. https://www.rocketlabusa.com/rockets/neutron/ [rocketlabusa.com] And the reduced cost means we all benefit.
But there's a down side to this. One of the major uncertainties in the last few years in the rocket industry was how elastic demand was. That is, if the cost of launches went down, how many new satellite launches would result? Some people speculated that it wouldn't be much change at all, because satellites are naturally expensive. Others suggested that there would be a massive leap. That massive leap has not occurred and that's reflected in how often SpaceX is using their Falcons to launch their own Starlink satellites rather than any satellites of an actual customer. Now, part of that may be that it often takes years to make satellites so the industry just hasn't caught up yet. But that does show at minimum that the immediate leap isn't happening. If there end up being a lot of different companies with reusable rockets keeping the price down and there doesn't end up being a lot of new demand, the rocket industry may find itself very squeezed. And already, a lot of people think there are more companies than is really sustainable https://spacenews.com/shakeout-in-small-launch-industry-is-coming-but-nobody-can-predict-when/ [spacenews.com]. If there isn't serious growth on the demand side, there's going to be a pretty serious issue on the supply end.
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If there isn't serious growth on the demand side, there's going to be a pretty serious issue on the supply end.
I agree and I think that demand is being created and will grow. There are a lot of potential opportunities as prices come down (and this is true for heavy lift/deep space as well as LEO). Still it has to materialize ...
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On the other had, if the price of launches was reduced and SpaceX did lot launch a low latency high-ish speed satellite based internet service, some Telco would have done it itself using SpaceX's launch capacity and the service would be slow, filtered, expensive and crap.
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On the other had, if the price of launches was reduced and SpaceX did lot launch a low latency high-ish speed satellite based internet service, some Telco would have done it itself using SpaceX's launch capacity and the service would be slow, filtered, expensive and crap.
SpaceX launches its own stuff at cost. They would launch for "Some Telco" at their normal market price. Maybe higher as they won't want competition with their own service. Who else can currently launch the satellites at the same price? Also who would have paid to be the first to put their expensive satellite on a 9 times reused booster? SpaceX wins twice, low price for their own satellites and prove to others they can safely launch on the highly reused boosters keeping SpaceX launch costs down and prof
Re:Good news and not so great news (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the major uncertainties in the last few years in the rocket industry was how elastic demand was. That is, if the cost of launches went down, how many new satellite launches would result? Some people speculated that it wouldn't be much change at all, because satellites are naturally expensive. Others suggested that there would be a massive leap. That massive leap has not occurred and that's reflected in how often SpaceX is using their Falcons to launch their own Starlink satellites rather than any satellites of an actual customer.
I don't understand how this is NOT an indicator of existing elasticity. Clearly someone jumped on the opportunity enabled by cheaper launches; why does it matter that it's the same company? Had they not succeeded in reusing the LVs, the business case wouldn't have been there and neither would these extra launches.
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Re:Good news and not so great news (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand how this is NOT an indicator of existing elasticity. Clearly someone jumped on the opportunity enabled by cheaper launches; why does it matter that it's the same company? Had they not succeeded in reusing the LVs, the business case wouldn't have been there and neither would these extra launches.
Starlink was conceived as a project to use all of their spare capacity in a (hopefully) sustainable way. It is was conceived to generate business. Oddly, there's a good chance it just might help promote competition as anyone who wants to compete with Starlink is unlikely to want to use SpaceX to put their constellation in orbit. Rocket Lab clearly understands this.
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It's natural that demand for something that *was* so fantastically expensive looks price inelastic at first. Even if you've been thinking about what you would do with reliable, low cost access to orbit, which most people haven't, it takes years to transform an idea into a payload.
Re: Good news and not so great news (Score:2)
I think itâ(TM)s more that the industry has been slow to respond to the reduced price. Itâ(TM)s clear that the price of a satellite is massively reduced. After all, Musk is launching 60 of them every week at the moment, that would have been unthinkable pretty recently. The tricky thing is that companies havenâ(TM)t yet figured that out. Personally it surprises me that the big mapping, weather, communications, TV, astronomy, ⦠companies arenâ(TM)t jumping on the opportunity
Not the holy grail of space flight (Score:2)
This is a really good step, but the holy grail of space flight is a non-reaction-based propultion system.
If we can get out of our gravity well without burning chemicals, then the cost goes down significantly. Reaction mass removed means payload mass increased, and then generating delta-V to move between planets is only dependant on energy source.
Re:Not the holy grail of space flight (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless there's some kind of revolution in physics, that's not happening. Reactionless drives are like perpetual motion. Every once in a while somebody claims to have one, and it never tests out. It's generally regarded as violating some basic laws of physics. I think we'll just have to settle for more compact energy sources, higher reaction mass velocity, and perhaps harvesting reaction mass from the tenuous gas and dust of space; but I don't think we can eliminate it.
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"No, no, no.... I no do that." - Consuela
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You know... that was in the original lyrics for a song [wikipedia.org], but Kansas dropped it for being too wordy.
Re: Not the holy grail of space flight (Score:1)
If you had listened to Bob Lazar you'd know about element 115 and reactionless flight.
(*wink* at the ancient alien fans). :-)
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Unless there's some kind of revolution in physics, that's not happening.
Well, there is always the Space Elevator. It has the advantage of only being infeasible, rather than impossible.
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That is a big part of it. The other is being able to manipulate gravity or working against the earth's magnetic field, if those are even possible.
I've been reading Sci-fi novels lately. Perhaps my fancy is exceeding reality.
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Those aren't reactionless drives of course. They just displace the reaction away from the ship. Calling them "reactionless" is like calling a street-car "power free transit" because the power for that comes from the overhead wiring and not the vehicle.
I haven't studied the issue of interacting with Earth's field. Manipulating gravity is th
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Will be along time before we have rail launches or a space elevator... Until then it's gonna be chemical. But with refueling in orbit, you still get that delta-v needed to go exploring/pillaging the solar system.
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...and also whalers on the moon, carrying a harpoon.
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But there ain't no whales...
Reactionless drive == perpetual motion (Score:3)
Re:Not the holy grail of space flight (Score:4, Informative)
If we can get out of our gravity well without burning chemicals,
It is not about chemicals. Nuclear or steam rockets are also subject to the tyranny of the rocket equation. [google.com]
Non-rocket space launch is theoretically possible, with a space elevator, rotating skyhook or space fountain structure:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
then the cost goes down significantly.
Only per-kg at massive scale! And why do we want to send millions of tones to space?
generating delta-V to move between planets is only dependant on energy source.
"reactionless" drives in deep space are a silly schoolboy fantasy. In this house we obey the laws of momentum.
However, we can do a lot better than chemical rockets. Once you are in orbit, you no longer need high thrust, so can use heavier rocket engines with higher exhaust velocity, such as nuclear thermal and ion drives. The trick is to have a super-high temperature exhaust without melting your rocket.
Thrust of just 1% of earth gravity will give you 60km/s delta-V in a week!
But to achieve this you need million-degree plasma, and to avoid it touching your rocket. So basically, you need a fusion reactor. But that is a whole lot better than needing a magical reactionless drive.
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US Army routinely launched space vehicles* with guns (project HARP). The altitude record of a gun-launched rocket is 179 km (the International Space Station flies at 400+ km)
* The US Army definition of space starts at 80 km altitude.
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The altitude record of a gun-launched rocket is 179 km (the International Space Station flies at 400+ km)
So what? You can "get to space" with a weather balloon. Orbit is all about velocity, altitude to get away from air-resistance is a minor factor.
HARP had a muzzle velocity of 2,164 m/s max, and is far from reactionless. The only reactionless "gun" is a rocket lancher.
Editors? (Score:3)
Makes no sense if you don't know the drone ship's name. How about doing some editorial work? ...landing on its Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean...
This is read much good better easy.
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While acknowledging the validity of your main point, I did find the sentence
This is read much good better easy.
quite difficult to parse.
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That was the point, to mirror how bad Slashdot titles and summaries are sometimes difficult to parse.
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Notice it is a Human-Rated Booster! (Score:2)
SpaceX gets paid extra for NASA-mandated work on first stages that lift humans into space. I suspect these "human-rated" first stages are "super-clean" in every known way possible, and thus should be expected to last longer. Notice that the single use of a "flight-proven" first stage for human flight was also human-rated for its first flight.
It may not be correct for these human-rated first stages to be classified in the same category as other Falcon 9 Block 5 first stages. Let's stay tuned and see which
Re: Notice it is a Human-Rated Booster! (Score:2)
I mean, booster 1049 is sat on 8 reuses and being checked out for its next flight as we speak.
Booster 1060 is also not a âoehuman ratedâ one (I doubt thereâ(TM)s actually any difference), and doing quite nicely on the reuse, itâ(TM)ll launch for its 6th flight in 7 days time.
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SpaceX gets paid extra for NASA-mandated work on first stages that lift humans into space. I suspect these "human-rated" first stages are "super-clean" in every known way possible, and thus should be expected to last longer. Notice that the single use of a "flight-proven" first stage for human flight was also human-rated for its first flight.
It may not be correct for these human-rated first stages to be classified in the same category as other Falcon 9 Block 5 first stages. Let's stay tuned and see which others reach or exceed 9 flights!
Here's a handy chart [reddit.com] that shows you are wrong. The other two 8-flight boosters have not carried crew. So... nope.
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Imagine you have the choice of two cars. One has been assembled by top engineers to the highest standard but they haven't started the engine or pumped the brakes. They may have flicked on the indicators and the lights, and checked the instruments, but that's it. I have been using the other one all week and it worked fine. Which would you chose?
Being human-rated is a good declaration of intent. It says 'we have worked on this booster as though it was going to carry people'. But it does not make the rocket