Firefly Launches Alpha Rocket To Orbit (space.com) 18
techmage writes: Early this morning, Firefly Aerospace succeeded in launching their Alpha rocket to Low Earth Orbit. This marks one of a handful of companies who have reached space with that few attempts (Virgin Orbit and RocketLab are just some of the others).
Shameless plug -- I had the pleasure of building the Serenity satellite, a 3U CubeSat that flew on the mission.
Check out the video of the launch and deployment. It is quite something to watch. All three payloads were successfully deployed. Space.com reports: One of them, called Serenity, comes from the nonprofit organization Teachers in Space. Serenity was designed to collect a variety of data during today's flight, which will be shared with the educational community, according to a Firefly mission description.
Also reaching orbit today was TechEdSat-15 (TES-15), which is owned by NASA in coordination with San Jose State University in California. TES-15 features an "exo-brake" designed to help satellites leave their orbital perches more smoothly when their work is done. "The exo-brake will deploy after the cubesat is ejected from its dispenser to deorbit the cubesat," Firefly wrote in the mission description. TES-15 also carries an experiment designed to optimize data transfer from the little spacecraft, the company added.
The third payload -- the PicoBus deployer, from the nonprofit Libre Space -- carries five tiny payloads of its own. Those bantam "picosats" include Genesis-L & Genesis-N, from AMSAT (Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation) Spain. The pair will demonstrate a pulsed-plasma thruster system for spacecraft propulsion and "build heritage for future missions," according to Firefly. PicoBus is also carrying Libre Space's Qubik-1 and Qubik-2, which will perform communications experiments, and FossaSat-1B. This latter satellite, from the Spanish company Fossa Systems, will test communications and remote-sensing tech. It also carries a low-resolution Earth-imaging camera.
Shameless plug -- I had the pleasure of building the Serenity satellite, a 3U CubeSat that flew on the mission.
Check out the video of the launch and deployment. It is quite something to watch. All three payloads were successfully deployed. Space.com reports: One of them, called Serenity, comes from the nonprofit organization Teachers in Space. Serenity was designed to collect a variety of data during today's flight, which will be shared with the educational community, according to a Firefly mission description.
Also reaching orbit today was TechEdSat-15 (TES-15), which is owned by NASA in coordination with San Jose State University in California. TES-15 features an "exo-brake" designed to help satellites leave their orbital perches more smoothly when their work is done. "The exo-brake will deploy after the cubesat is ejected from its dispenser to deorbit the cubesat," Firefly wrote in the mission description. TES-15 also carries an experiment designed to optimize data transfer from the little spacecraft, the company added.
The third payload -- the PicoBus deployer, from the nonprofit Libre Space -- carries five tiny payloads of its own. Those bantam "picosats" include Genesis-L & Genesis-N, from AMSAT (Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation) Spain. The pair will demonstrate a pulsed-plasma thruster system for spacecraft propulsion and "build heritage for future missions," according to Firefly. PicoBus is also carrying Libre Space's Qubik-1 and Qubik-2, which will perform communications experiments, and FossaSat-1B. This latter satellite, from the Spanish company Fossa Systems, will test communications and remote-sensing tech. It also carries a low-resolution Earth-imaging camera.
Congrats! (Score:3)
"That few" = 2 (Score:3)
Early this morning, Firefly Aerospace succeeded in launching their Alpha rocket to Low Earth Orbit. This marks one of a handful of companies who have reached space with that few attempts.
For those who wondered, this was Firefly's second orbital launch attempt.
Who is Firefly's CEO? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Malcom Reynolds.
Re: (Score:2)
That’s a good one! Bill Weber is the current CEO. Tom stepped aside after the last round of funding.
Okay, but (Score:3)
Did the main rocket have a little Companion ship attached to it?
Re: (Score:2)
If that ship has a name, it might be considered for a future launch.
Re: Okay, but (Score:2)
Awesome - but... (Score:3)
I don't understand their business plan. I don't see how a throw-away rocket company can compete financially with a reusable rocket company.
Can anyone shed light on that?
Re: Awesome - but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I'd considered the 'not spacex' thing. But I was thinking that orbit is orbit - which it obviously is not. Thanks for your answer - makes a lot of sense.
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody has a fully re-usable rocket yet, and they don't scale down to this size. I don't think anyone even has a small re-usable booster in design.
According to wikipedia, Alpha costs $15M per launch, a lot less than Falcon 9.
So if you need a small payload (~1 ton) to a specific orbit at a specific time, and therefore rideshare is not an option, Alpha fits the need.
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking that orbit is orbit - which it obviously is not. Thanks for your answer - makes a lot of sense.
Re: (Score:2)
Specifically, Alpha costs $15M per launch as opposed to $62M for a Falcon9 launch.
Alpha boosts 1170kg to LEO.
Falcon9 boosts 22800kg to LEO.
So, if you want to boost a small amount to LEO, Alpha is perfectly cromulent. If you're looking at a larger payload, then Falcon9 is a metric fuckton cheaper - 20x the payload for 4x the price. And Starship should bring prices down even further (again, for larger payloads).
SpaceX president hopes for 30% savings. (Score:4, Interesting)
Elon HOPES they can develop enough reusability to make it significantly cheaper. And he PLANS to have stuff done in 2020 that they haven't yet.
The president of SpaceX once said they anticipate refurbishing the first stage will provide a 30% reduction in cost.
That's the hoped-for benefit after the spend more to build the thing. It could very well be that their total cost ends up higher. We don't yet know how many times each part can be refurbished.
There's also a 30% payload reduction because they have to carry extra fuel for landing. And extra fuel to carry that fuel.
Suppose you can get a disposable Bic lighter for $1.50, or a refillable Zippo for $20. If you refill the Zippo $20 times, you (arguably) come out ahead. If you refill it only 10 times, disposable would have cost less overall.
I say arguably on the first one because while the total is $10 cheaper, ten dollars today is not worth the same as ten dollars three years from now. There is a coat to spending the extra money up front rather than later.
By the way, the 30% figure they projected was a few years ago. I'm not sure what their current estimates are. But the point is building a more expensive vehicle and then refurbishing for another flight it isn't necessarily cheaper. Most people never rebuild their car engine, because it doesn't make sense cost wise.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of factless hand waving to distract from the fact that current SpaceX is the cheapest launch platform available due to the current level of reusability.
The "but the extra fuel" line of argument ignore the fact (often ignored by armchair space pundits) that fuel costs are effectively zero for launches today, it is such a tiny fraction of the launch cost (less than 1%). The only thing that matters is the launch cost and launch payload and: payload/cost= launch cost, period. Sure they burn more fuel per
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the fact checking.
Conflating two unrelated numbers? (Score:2)
You may be confusing two completely different numbers.
You said SpaceX has the lowest costs. What makes you think so? It's not a public company, so we don't know what their costs are. One can *guess*, given you're choosing not to believe company officials.
How can other companies compete, you ask? It's entirely possible that like Snowflake or Carvana, they're losing money every month and will soon be out of business.