Tag: commercial

Some details on the SpaceX’s attempt to land its Falcon 9 first stage

8:38 am

This SpaceX press release gives some good info on the difficulty they face getting the first stage on Tuesday’s Dragon launch to land successfully on its floating sea platform:

To complicate matters further, the landing site is limited in size and not entirely stationary. The autonomous spaceport drone ship is 300 by 100 feet, with wings that extend its width to 170 feet. While that may sound huge at first, to a Falcon 9 first stage coming from space, it seems very small. The legspan of the Falcon 9 first stage is about 70 feet and while the ship is equipped with powerful thrusters to help it stay in place, it is not actually anchored, so finding the bullseye becomes particularly tricky. During previous attempts, we could only expect a landing accuracy of within 10km. For this attempt, we’re targeting a landing accuracy of within 10 meters.

They are going to try however, and they will be filming their attempt all the way. Stay tuned for some very interesting footage.

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A Russia/Brazil partnership for Sea Launch?

9:30 am

The competition heats up: Russia is negotiating a partnership with Brazil to operate Sea Launch.

The Sea Launch rocket is built by Ukraine, which presently has hostile relations with Russia, to say the least. The platform, built with Boeing money, is presently docked on the the U.S. west coast, which is also not what Russia wants. Moving it to Brazil and adapting it for use with a Brazilian rocket solves both problems, though the usability of Brazil’s rocket is at this moment quite questionable.

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Nicaragua and China break ground on new canal

2:47 pm

In a largely symbolic act, Nicaragua broke ground on Monday on the Chinese-backed construction of a new canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The project is being pushed by Nicaraguan President (and former Marxist guerrilla leader) Daniel Ortega and financed by Wang Jing, “a little-known Chinese telecom mogul well connected to China’s political elite.” And as much as normally support any ambitious effort to create business opportunities for people in poor countries, this quote from the article raised some red flags about the project I hadn’t thought of previously:

The proposed canal is set to intersect Lake Nicaragua, known locally as Lake Cocibolca, sending cargo ships and tankers straight through the largest source of freshwater in Central America. Further, the canal is expected to displace tens of thousands of mostly rural and indigenous landholders and would likely devastate over 400,000 acres of rainforests and wetlands, which scientists say are critical to local and regional biodiversity conservation efforts.

I am usually very skeptical of environmental protests since their motives are almost always to promote socialism or communism and not to protect the environment. Here however the protests are against a project being promoted by a Marxist ruler and the communist Chinese. Moreover, it does seem a reasonable question to worry about the possible introduction of ocean saltwater into “the largest source of freshwater in Central America.”

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Angara A5 rocket launches successfully

8:55 am

The competition heats up: Russia successfully completed the first test launch of the heavy-lift version of its Angara rocket today.

More background here.

At this moment the dummy payload is in a preliminary orbit and requires additional engine burns by the Briz-M upper stage to reach its planned geosynchronous orbit. Briz-M however is well tested and has been in use for years already on the Proton rocket. Therefore, for Angara this flight has now been a complete success, even if the Briz-M stage fails.

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Successful Falcon 9 static fire

9:25 pm

After unspecified issues on a static fire test last week caused the postponement of the Falcon 9/Dragon launch until January 6, SpaceX followed up with a successful full static fire test of the rocket on Friday.

SpaceX fueled up a Falcon 9 rocket, ran through a mock countdown and fired the booster’s nine Merlin main engines Friday in a successful preflight static fire test officials hope will clear the way for liftoff Jan. 6 on a space station resupply mission. The exercise occurred at approximately 2:55 p.m. EST (1955 GMT) Friday while the Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon supply ship were kept grounded at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad.

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Friday’s Falcon 9 launch delayed

6:31 pm

Because of a scrubbed static fire test on Tuesday, it is now likely that Friday’s Falcon 9/Dragon launch will be delayed until January.

Attempts during the four hour test window on Tuesday did not result in a successfully conducted Static Fire. Several requests for further information, sent to SpaceX during and after the test window, resulted in the company saying they had no information to provide. SpaceX normally provide confirmation after a successful conclusion to the test.

Source information noted at least one full countdown towards the firing was attempted, which was classed as aborted at the very end of the count. At least one NASA-based outlet claimed the Static Fire had taken place, potentially pointing to ignition of the Merlin 1D engines, before an abort – due to an issue – was likely called. No confirmed information on the issue has been forthcoming from SpaceX. However, the company has promised to provide more information to this site when “they have something to share.”

It was, however, understood that the next Static Fire attempt is likely to take place no sooner than Thursday. That too appears to have been cancelled following review.

If tomorrow’s static fire test has been canceled then Friday’s launch will definitely be canceled as well. None of this has been confirmed yet, however, so it is possible that all is well and the launch will go forward as planned.

Update: The launch delay has now been confirmed. A new launch has not yet been announced however.

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Countdown begins for the suborbital test flight of India’s new rocket

9:52 am

Link here. The launch is scheduled for 11 pm Eastern tonight.

Thursday’s test launch will check the performance of the GSLV Mk. 3’s first stage and strap-on boosters, which will carry the rocket out of the atmosphere beyond the boundary of space. The launcher’s cryogenic upper stage, which will be active and fueled by liquid hydrogen on future missions, will be dormant on Thursday’s flight.

…After the rocket’s propulsion shuts down, a gumdrop-shaped capsule will separate from the GSLV Mk. 3’s dummy upper segment about five-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, according to the Times of India, another English-language paper in India. The capsule weighs about 8,000 pounds — about 3.6 metric tons. Indian engineers from Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. fabricated the car-sized module, and ISRO added sensors, strain gauges, a guidance and control system and a heat shield for the suborbital flight, which is called the Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment, or CARE.

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The seas of Titan

9:27 am

Thar’s black gold up thar! Data from Cassini has confirmed the presence of ocean waves on Titan’s seas, while also providing suggesting that they are made mostly of liquid methane, not ethane as had been predicted.

The maximum depth of Kraken Mare appears to be 160 meters, and Ligeia Mare could be as much as 200 meters deep, reported Marco Mastrogiuseppe of Sapienza University of Rome. The fact that the radar signals could bounce off the sea bottom suggests that the seas were more transparent than expected and thus must contain mostly methane, not ethane. Hayes says his best estimate is about 90% methane. Essam Marouf, a planetary scientist at San José State University in California, reported on the first results from a separate radar experiment that sent radar reflections to Earth instead of back to the spacecraft. Those tests provide independent evidence that the seas are dominated by methane, Marouf says, and it implies that the lakes are kept filled by precipitating methane.

As the article also notes, this methane is “55 times Earth’s oil reserves.”

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The Falcon 9 first stage landing barge about to set sail

7:08 pm

The competition heats up: The barge that SpaceX has modified to provide an ocean platform for the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket to land on is ready to leave port for Friday’s Dragon launch.

I think this Friday’s launch should be far more interesting and exciting that the Orion test flight a little over a week ago. Unlike the Orion flight, SpaceX will be attempting something that has never been done before. And should they succeed, they will rock the aerospace industry as much as Sputnik did in 1957.

Update: SpaceX put out a press release late on Tuesday detailing precisely what they hope to do, with videos from previous atttempts.

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