The competition heats up: SpaceX has successfully put two commecial satellites in orbit. The first stage hit the barge, but the landing was unsuccessful. More details to come.
The full video of the entire launch is embedded below the fold. One interesting part includes a view from inside the first stage looking back at the second stage at separate, followed with images from the first stage on its way back to Earth..
The competition heats up: SpaceX will attempt another commercial launch on Wednesday morning, this time putting two satellites into orbit.
They will once again try to land the first stage in what they say are difficult circumstances. They are also picking up the launch pace, with this the second commercial launch in less than three weeks. It will also be their sixth launch of the year, matching what they did in each of the last two years, with more than half the year to go.
The competition heats up: In an interview with the Washington Post this week, Elon Musk gave some more hints at his company’s future plans to send its Dragon capsules to Mars.
“Essentially what we’re saying is we’re establishing a cargo route to Mars,” [Musk] said. “It’s a regular cargo route. You can count on it. It’s going happen every 26 months. Like a train leaving the station. And if scientists around the world know that they can count on that, and it’s going to be inexpensive, relatively speaking compared to anything in the past, then they will plan accordingly and come up with a lot of great experiments.”
The key to Musk’s effort is that he plans on doing it. He isn’t sitting around waiting for others, or trying to convince others to join him in a partnership before proceeding. He is simply doing it, and is welcoming others to take advantage of the opportunity he is offering.
The competition heats up: Yesterday Elon Musk sent out a tweet that simply repeated something his company has been saying now for several months — but with one slight additional detail — and the press went gaga.
What Musk said was that SpaceX hopes to reuse one of its used Falcon 9 first stages by September or October. Previously they had merely said they were aiming to do it before the end of the year. Since SES has offered one of its satellites for the job, and since it has had for months two such satellites scheduled for launch by SpaceX in September and October, this announcement by Musk is not really much of a surprise. Yet, the tweet was enough for all of the following mainstream news sources to gin up news-breaking headlines:
I am not really complaining. What I am really noting is how serious the world now takes what Musk and SpaceX are doing. They say they plan to do something new and revolutionary, and people sit up and take notice. And the reasons are twofold. First, everything they have said they were going to do, they have done. Musk’s announcement has to be taken seriously. Second, Musk owns SpaceX, and does not really need anyone’s permission to do this. He isn’t in a negotiation with numerous other players, as has been the case with NASA and its projects for the past half century. We know that if he wants to try something, the only things that could stop him are lack of capital and lack of good engineering, neither of which are an obstacle in this case.
So, be prepared for the first relaunch of a rocket’s first stage sometime this fall. And don’t be surprised if that isn’t the only new thing SpaceX accomplishes at the time.
The competition heats up: The first stage from SpaceX’s most recent Falcon 9 launch returned to port today, showing a visible lean.
Musk said that the stage was probably OK, but there was some risk of tipping. This was due to the fact that the contingency “crush core” was used up. He described on Twitter that the crush core was an aluminum honeycomb for energy absorption in the telescoping actuator. Once the stage was within sight of land, it became clear that the booster had a noticeable lean to it, due to the aforementioned contingency crush core being used up. The ramifications of this are still unclear, but Musk’s tweet implied that the crush core is easily replaceable.
SpaceX has released a high speed version of the camera view taken from the camera mounted on the Falcon 9 first stage that successfully landed on a barge on Friday.
I have embedded that video below the fold. Quite entertaining, though it emphasizes how much the flight resembles a high speed roller coaster ride.
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SpaceX is beginning to make the landings of its Falcon 9 first stage routine. They just successfully landed another first stage on their drone ship, even though this was once again a difficult geosynchronous satellite launch with high speeds and limited available fuel.
It also appears that they will also successfully place the commercial satellite in orbit.
The recovered first stage from SpaceX’s last Falcon 9 launch experienced significant wear and tear during its high speed descent and landing.
They do not think they will be able to use the stage again, but will instead test it to determine the engineering tolerances that need to be met to make recovery and reuse in these situations more likely. The data will also help them increae the likelihood of reusability on launches that are less stressful.
Posted from Belize.
After a month docked to ISS, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule has successfully splashed down in the Pacific.
Below is video of the Falcon 9 first stage landing last night. There isn’t really much to see, because this happened at night. However, I must repeat that this happened at night. In other words, SpaceX was able to bring its first stage down accurately in the middle of the ocean onto a tiny barge in the dark.
Who says the impossible is not possible?
During the live telecast, the audience broke out into a chant of “USA! USA!”, as they did after the previous first stage landings. Can you guess why?
The competition heats up: In tonight’s launch, SpaceX not only put a commercial satellite into geosynchronous orbit, it successfully landed the first stage on a barge, a landing they did not expect to succeed.
Go here to watch a launch replay. The landing is at about 38 minutes.
With this success, I think they have demonstrated that they can recover that first stage in almost every circumstance. The next big challenge: Launch Falcon Heavy and recovering all three of its first stages.
They will try to launch 24 hours later, at 1:21 am Eastern early Friday morning.
Note that though they will try to land the first stage on the barge, they don’t expect to succeed this time because of the mission’s launch requirements.
