Tag: Falcon 9

Falcon 9 first stage to land on floating platform

7:11 pm

The competition heats up: During an event at MIT on Friday Elon Musk revealed that SpaceX will to try to land first stage of the next Falcon 9 launch on a floating platform.

“We actually have a huge platform that’s being constructed in a shipyard in Louisiana right now,” Musk said in the interview, which was webcast live. He described the platform as about 90 meters long by 50 meters wide. “We’re going to try and land on that on the next flight.”

If the stage successfully lands on the platform, Musk said, it could potentially fly again. He put the odds of success at no greater than 50 percent for this particular attempt, but was more optimistic about the company’s chances of landing on the platform on a future mission. “There’s at least a dozen launches that will occur over the next 12 months,” Musk said. “I think it’s quite likely — probably 80 to 90 percent likely — that one of those flights will be able to land and refly.”

Based on everything this company has promised and later actually delivered, I would be willing to bet that they will do exactly as Musk says, and that sometime in the next year they will successfully recover the first stage of their rocket, an achievement that will shake the entire launch industry to its foundations.

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Why NASA picked Boeing over Sierra Nevada

9:43 am

A NASA internal document obtained by Aviation Week outlines the agency’s reasons for rejecting Sierra Nevada and its Dream Chaser spacecraft in its commercial manned space program.

Although the document praises Sierra’s “strong management approach to ensure the technical work and schedule are accomplished,” it cautions that the company’s Dream Chaser had “the longest schedule for completing certification.” The letter also states that “it also has the most work to accomplish which is likely to further extend its schedule beyond 2017, and is most likely to reach certification and begin service missions later than the other ‘Offerors’.”

Discussing costs, Gerstenmaier says that “although SNC’s [Sierra Nevada] price is lower than Boeing’s price, its technical and management approaches and its past performance are not as high and I see considerably more schedule risk with its proposal. Both SNC and SpaceX had high past performance, and very good technical and management approaches, but SNC’s price is significantly higher than SpaceX’s price.”

The document essentially was written, and probably leaked to the press now, to justify the political decision to give the contracts to Boeing and SpaceX. Thus, it waxes very enthusiastic about Boeing, since giving Boeing the contract, with the highest price and the least metal cut, needs some justification.

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Launch abort system installed on Orion for December test flight

9:14 am

Engineers have installed a test version of the launch abort system (LAS) for the first test flight of the Orion capsule in December.

The LAS will not be active during the uncrewed EFT-1 mission, but during future missions it will be equipped to act within milliseconds to pull the spacecraft and its crew away from its rocket so that Orion could parachute safely back to Earth.  While the abort motors  are inert and not filled with solid fuel, the LAS will have an active jettison motor so that it can pull itself and the nose fairing away from the spacecraft shortly before Orion goes into orbit. The flight test will provide data on the abort system’s performance during Orion’s trip to space.

Based on what I know of the Orion/SLS launch schedule, I don’t think NASA ever intends to test it during a full launch of the SLS rocket. For one thing, the rocket is too expensive and NASA can’t afford to waste a launch just to test this one component. For another, the rocket’s development is too slow as it is, with the first launch not scheduled until 2018 and the first manned flight not until 2021, at the earliest. If they add a launch test of the abort system, NASA might not fly an SLS manned mission until late in the 2020s.

Meanwhile, NASA is sure insisting that SpaceX do such tests. And they will, since their capsule and rocket is affordable and quick to launch. What does that tell us about the two systems? Which would you buy if you were the paying customer?

Oh wait, you are the paying customer! Too bad you your managers in Congress don’t seem interested in managing your money very wisely.

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SpaceX wins safety design award

4:52 pm

I post this story about SpaceX winning an award for its safety-in-design work mostly to illustrate again that, except for one lone commenter on my webpage, most of the aerospace industry recognizes the generally good work that SpaceX has been doing. Not only do their recognize it, they have found themselves struggling to meet the competitive challenge that SpaceX now represents, an effort that has been all to the good for everyone in the space industry.

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Congress demands American rocket engines for military launches

9:11 am

In a letter written by a bi-partisan group of California legislators, Congress is pressuring the Air Force to replace the Russian engines on its Atlas rocket, and do to it competitively.

“While it is important that we invest in new technology, the problem of Russian reliance calls for an immediate solution,” states the Sept. 22 letter, which was signed by 32 of California’s 53 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. … In the letter, the House members said they are “troubled by the Department’s willingness to continue sourcing this engine from the Russian government, apparently in the hope that the situation with Russia does not deteriorate further, and that Russia chooses to continue supporting U.S. military launches — while it ignores American sources of engine technology. “We strongly encourage you to recognize that the United States — and specifically, California — today produces technology that exceeds any capability offered by Russian systems,” the letter said. “It is time for the Department to look to these existing U.S. engine manufacturers and launch vehicle providers.”

This letter suggests to me that SpaceX has won its battle with the Air Force and is going to get some launch contracts. It also suggests that ULA and Blue Origin will likely be able to get the funding from Congress to finance the design and construction of the replacement engine they have jointly proposed.

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The Great Space Race

1:00 pm

Yesterday the private commercial launch company SpaceX broke ground on its own private spaceport near Brownsville, Texas.

“This feels great. It feels like the future,” [SpaceX founder Elon] Musk said at the ground-breaking. … He intends to have the first launch in late 2016, with an initial 12 launches a year. Ultimately, “thousands of launches,” he projected. Furthermore, “when we start doing commercial crew activities, I would expect us to launch a crew from here,” he said.

The significance of this construction is not trivial. This will be the first spaceport built by a private company that will be used to launch its privately-built commercial rockets, and will do it for profit. Other spaceports have been established in the last decade for the purpose of private space tourism, but none have seen anything fly, and all those spaceports were some form of quasi-government operation.

SpaceX’s Brownsville spaceport, rumored to be dubbed Mars Crossing, is not a government-run operation, however. It will be wholly owned and operated by the company, and is being built to allow them to launch commercial satellites unconstrained by the rules that make launches from the government controlled spaceports at the Kennedy Space Center as well as Vandenberg Air Force Base in California difficult and complicated.

This ground-breaking also comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that SpaceX and Boeing have been chosen by NASA to build spacecraft to ferry human astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

It also comes at the same time the Russian government has reorganized its entire aerospace industry to place it under government control, committed billions for the accelerated construction of a new spaceport on Russian territory, and launched the first test flight of its own new rocket, Angara, designed to compete for commercial market share while also reenergizing the entire Russian space effort.

Nor is that all.
» Read more

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Falcon 9 launch puts Dragon in orbit

11:03 pm

The competition heats up: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has successfully put its fifth Dragon cargo freighter into orbit, with a docking at ISS scheduled for Tuesday.

Spaceflight Now’s status update above also noted that this is the 13th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket since 2010. All these flights have successfully put their primary payloads into orbit as promised, an amazing track record for a new rocket built by a new company only in existence for less than a decade.

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No first stage landing attempt on next Falcon 9/Dragon launch

3:44 am

SpaceX has decided not to attempt a soft splashdown of the Falcon 9 first stage during Saturday’s launch of the Dragon capsule to ISS.

In a change of plans, the Falcon 9 booster stage set to launch Saturday will not carry landing legs, according to Hannah Post, a SpaceX spokesperson. She said SpaceX does not plan to attempt a water landing of the first stage after its job during launch is completed.

SpaceX initially planned to program the rocket’s first stage to fly back to Earth after completing its work to boost the Dragon spacecraft off the launch pad, but engineers swapped out the Falcon 9 booster with a first stage originally assigned to another flight, officials said.

The reason for the changeout was not disclosed.

I suspect this decision is in connection with the Falcon 9R failure last month, but admit I am speculating with no inside knowledge.

I should also note that if Saturday’s launch goes as planned, it will set a new SpaceX record for the fastest turn-around between launches, less than two weeks. If they succeed, I think they will prove once and for all to most of their remaining naysayers that they are a serious, reliable, and well-run launch company.

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The competition in space continues to heat up

9:10 am

Two news stories today indicate that things are going to get increasingly interesting in the exploration of space in the coming years.

First there is this story from Joe Abbott of the Waco Tribune, who routinely reports on SpaceX news because their McGregor test facility is nearby. In it Abbott reports that SpaceX has scheduled its next Dragon supply mission to ISS for no early than September 20.

This news item however is not Abbott’s most interesting news. He also notes several twitter reports coming out a commercial satellite conference in Paris that indicate that SpaceX has closed 9 deals, including several more for its as yet unflown Falcon Heavy.

But even that is not the most interesting news. Abbott also reports that a replacement for the destroyed Falcon 9R test vehicle will be shipped to McGregor for testing in less than two months. Considering how long it takes governments to build and fly test vehicles, getting this replacement in shape for flight mere months after the failure a few weeks ago is quite impressive.

But even that was not Abbott’s most interesting SpaceX news item. » Read more

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Russia to match SpaceX launch prices

4:29 pm

The competition heats up: The head of Russia’s United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC), which now controls that country’s entire space industry, said today that they intend to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 much cheaper launch prices.

They intend to do it with both the Proton rocket as well as their new family of Angara rockets. The heavy version of Angara will allow them to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, and in fact might even put more payload into orbit for less.

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Another launch contract for SpaceX

9:24 am

The competition heats up: In a deal to build Bulgaria’s first communications satellite, Space Systems/Loral has contracted SpaceX’s Falcon 9 as launch vehicle.

The article makes a point of noting that the deal was financed by the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a detail that has in the past almost never been mentioned. The Ex-Im Bank however faces almost certain shutdown because of opposition in Congress, so this mention might be part of a vain attempt to save it.

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Another Falcon 9 launch success

9:31 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX has successfully launched its second commercial Asiasat satellite into orbit in just over a month.

“These two satellites launching a month apart are really growth satellites for us,” [William Wade, AsiaSat’s president and CEO] said. “They’re not replacements. They’re new, incremental growth satellites for us across Asia, with C-band on AsiaSat 6 mainly in China, and Ku-band on AsiaSat 8, which was mainly for the Indian subcontinent as well as the Middle East.”

AsiaSat paid SpaceX $52.2 million for each of the launches, according to regulatory filings. [emphasis mine]

As has been noted frequently, that price of $50 million per launch is anywhere from half to a quarter what other companies have been charging. Asiasat got a great deal, and every commercial satellite and launch company in the world is aware of this.

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Indecision in Europe about their future commercial rocket

5:57 pm

The competition is burning them up! With Germany and France unable to come to an agreement about the next Arianespace commercial rocket, the company is considering cancelling a December conference that was supposed to settle the issue.

The basic division remains despite the German government’s alignment with the French view that Europe needs a lower-cost rocket to maintain its viability in the commercial market — which in turn provides European governments with a viable launch industry.

Despite the consensus over the longer term, the two sides remain split on whether European Space Agency governments should spend 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion) to complete work on a new upper stage for the existing Ariane 5 rocket, which could fly in 2018-2019, or abandon the upgrade to focus spending on a new Ariane 6 rocket, whose development would cost upwards of 3 billion euros over 7-8 years. [emphasis mine]

Though SpaceX is not mentioned in this particular article, numerous previous articles on this subject (such as this one) have made it very clear that it is SpaceX’s low prices that are driving the need for Arianespace to cut costs. The problem, as this article makes very clear, is that Arianespace’s partners can’t figure out how to do it, at least in a manner that will still provide them all an acceptable share in the pie. The result might be that the entire partnership falls apart.

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Musk vs Bezos

9:08 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX is challenging a patent issued to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin for landing the first stage of a rocket vertically on a floating platform.

“The ‘rocket science’ claimed in the ‘321 patent was, at best, ‘old hat’ by 2009,” says SpaceX in one of two challenges, filed last week with the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board following the approval of the Blue Origin patent in March. SpaceX cites prior work by researchers and scientists who proposed techniques similar to those in Blue Origin’s patent.

If the patent holds it might force SpaceX to pay Blue Origin for the right to bring its Falcon 9 first stage back safely,

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SpaceX delays commercial launch 24 hours

8:55 am

SpaceX has delayed its next commercial launch one day to Wednesday in order to make sure the issues that caused its Falcon 9R test rocket to self-destruct are irrelevant to the full Falcon 9 rocket.

Seems like a prudent decision that is also not overly timid. If this had been the NASA of the past few decades, they would have generally delayed the launch for far longer.

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Falcon 9R destroyed during failed test flight

10:49 pm

In a test flight today of SpaceX’s Falcon 9R vertical take off and landing rocket the rocket was destroyed when ground controllers detected an “anomaly.”

Falcon 9R is a three engine version of the Falcon 9 first stage, designed to test designs for making that first stage capable of landing vertically. It has flown successfully a number of previous times, but this time it appears something was not quite right during the flight and ground controllers had to destroy it for safety reasons.

Is this a set back? Of course. Is it a failure? Not really, as it was a test flight of very cutting edge technology and even failures will teach you something to improve the engineering.

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New footage of the Falcon 9 soft spashdown

3:31 pm

SpaceX has released new additional footage showing the controlled descent and soft spash down of the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket during its July launch. I’ve posted it below.

As they note on their webpage, “Towards the end of the video, the camera operator attempted to zoom in and unfortunately lost sight of the stage and was unable to capture the tip over into the water.” Nonetheless, the controlled nature of the stage’s descent says that they succeeded, and need only try to do this over land to prove they can recover their first stage.

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Video of the Falcon 9 first stage doing a soft splashdown

9:08 am

Video taken from a chase plane during the July 14 Falcon 9 launch shows the first stage appearing from out of the low clouds, engines firing, vertical and ready for landing. The video, below the fold, also shows the stage slowing just before it hits the water, much like the test vehicles Grasshopper and Falcon 9R do.

Though SpaceX has already claimed their first stage had done this during the July 14 launch, this video proves it. All they need to do now to recover their first stage is to direct it to a land-based landing site.

Hat tip to Doug Messier and Parabolic Arc for this story.
» Read more

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SpaceX launch schedule heats up

9:48 am

A close look at SpaceX’s launch schedule through the rest of 2014 calls for six Falcon 9 launches, including two before the end of August.

If the company is successfully in maintaining this schedule, they will end any doubts about their ability to transform the launch industry. Every other launch company will have to match their prices, or lose their customers.

One paragraph in the article does tell us that there are limits to the re-usability of the Falcon 9 first stage, even if they do succeed in bringing it back safely to a vertical landing on land.
» Read more

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Falcon 9 soft lands on water

6:55 pm

SpaceX claimed in a press release on Tuesday that it had successfully completed a soft splashdown of the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket in its launch earlier this month.

Video below the fold. The quality is not great because of a buildup of ice on the camera, but it does show they were able to restart the engines twice after separation. It also shows the landing legs deploy just before the stage hovers above the water.
» Read more

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Falcon 9 launch

8:41 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has successfully launched six Orbcomm commercial satellites into orbit.

The six satellites still must be deployed. We will know if this is successful sometime in the next hour or so. Also, no news yet on SpaceX’s effort to recover the rocket’s first stage after a soft splashdown in the ocean.

Update: All 6 Orbcomm satellites have successfully deployed.

Update 2: From Elon Musk as to the first stage recovery: “Rocket booster reentry, landing burn & leg deploy were good, but lost hull integrity right after splashdown (aka kaboom).”

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Air Force certifies Falcon 9

11:21 pm

The competition heats up: The Air Force today certified that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket had completed three successful flights.

This certification is a preliminary okay before the official certification. What it means is that the Air Force is agreeing that the Falcon 9 is capable of launching its satellites, which also means that the official certification is almost certain.

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