With a delay of the static fire test from today to tomorrow, launch of the next Falcon 9 is now questionable for Saturday.
The company has not said one way of the other, so Saturday’s launch is still possible, assuming Thursday’s static fire test comes off successfully.
The competition heats up: SpaceX’s next commercial launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, and its next attempt to land and recover the first stage, is now set for December 19.
They will also attempt to land the stage on land, not on a barge.
The competition heats up: SpaceX is considering an attempt to land its Falcon 9 first stage on land in its next launch in two weeks.
Carol Scott, who works technical integration for SpaceX within NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told reporters here at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today that SpaceX’s first attempt at a land-based rocket landing may be coming sooner than the public expects. “You know how they want to fly the stage back, right? Their plan is to land it out here on the Cape [Canaveral] side,” Scott told reporters.
The company declined to comment on Scott’s remarks, which are vague enough to leave them plenty of wiggle room. Not that it matters. Even if they attempt the next first stage landing on a barge, a landing on land will soon follow. It is only a matter of time.
Rocket debris thought to have come from the launch failure of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 earlier this year has washed up on the shore of the Isles of Scilly near the southwestern tip of England.
I am sure that SpaceX engineers will want to look at this as it might help them better understand the causes of the launch failure.
The competition heats up: Yesterday Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin did its second test flight of its New Shepard suborbital rocket and capsule, and successfully recovered the rocket’s first stage, landing the stage vertically using its rockets.
As Jeff Bezos wrote at the link:
Rockets have always been expendable. Not anymore. Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts, a used rocket.
This flight validates our vehicle architecture and design. Our unique ring fin shifted the center of pressure aft to help control reentry and descent; eight large drag brakes deployed and reduced the vehicle’s terminal speed to 387 mph; hydraulically actuated fins steered the vehicle through 119-mph high-altitude crosswinds to a location precisely aligned with and 5,000 feet above the landing pad; then the highly-throttleable BE-3 engine re-ignited to slow the booster as the landing gear deployed and the vehicle descended the last 100 feet at 4.4 mph to touchdown on the pad.
When you watch the video you’ll see that we took the liberty of engineering all the drama out of the landing.
I have posted video of the flight below the fold.
SpaceX has been attempting this with its orbital Falcon 9 rocket for the last two years. They have come very close, hitting their target and almost landing. They plan to try again in December. Blue Origin however has beaten them to it, even if they have done it with a suborbital rocket.This demonstrates unequivocally that the concept is sound and that a rocket’s first stage can be recovered. It also demonstrates that of all the rocket companies in the world, SpaceX and Blue Origin are in position to dominate for at least the next decade. I am very confident that SpaceX will succeed in its efforts to recover its first stage. I am also very confident that Blue Origin’s plans to upgrade New Shepard into an orbital rocket/capsule will proceed quickly.
In both cases, the companies will then move forward, capable of recovering and reusing significant parts of their rockets, thus making it possible to significantly lower the launch cost and thus charge their customers less. No one else is in this position, or even close to it. The launch market will belong to them.
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The competition cools down: ULA has decided against bidding on a military GPS launch contract, leaving the field clear for SpaceX.
ULA, which for the past decade has launched nearly every U.S. national security satellite, said Nov. 16 it did not submit a bid to launch a GPS 3 satellite for the Air Force in 2018 in part because it does not expect to have an Atlas 5 rocket available for the mission. ULA has been pushing for relief from legislation Congress passed roughly a year ago requiring the Air Force to phase out its use of the Russian-made RD-180 engine that powers ULA’s workhorse Atlas 5 rocket.
This decision might be a lobbying effort by ULA to force Congress to give them additional waivers on using the Atlas 5 engine. Or it could be that they realize that they wouldn’t be able to match SpaceX’s price, and decided it was pointless wasting time and money putting together a bid. Either way, the decision suggests that ULA is definitely challenged in its competition with SpaceX, and until it gets a new lower cost rocket that is not dependent on Russian engines, its ability to compete in the launch market will be seriously hampered.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has successfully tested its abort rocket thrusters that will be used to speed a Dragon capsule away from any rocket during a failed launch.
Named SuperDracos, the engines are arranged in four pairs – SpaceX calls them ‘jetpacks’ – integrated around the outside of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. Firing all at once, the eight engines produce 120,000 pounds of thrust – enough power to accelerate a Crew Dragon from zero to 100 mph in 1.2 seconds. In the unlikely event of an emergency, that power means the ability to lift the crew a safe distance off the launch pad or far away from a booster failing on the way to orbit. That capability was demonstrated earlier this year in a pad abort test that confirmed the SuperDraco design in a flight-like condition.
A normal launch of the Crew Dragon atop a Falcon 9 rocket would not offer the SuperDracos anything to do during the mission since their only responsibility is to fire in an emergency to rescue the crew onboard. Eventually, SpaceX plans to use the SuperDracos in the place of a parachute during landing.
The competition heats up: With NASA once again delaying its decision on the next contract round for supplying cargo to ISS — this time to January — Boeing also revealed that NASA had eliminated the company from the competition, leaving only SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and Sierra Nevada in the running for the two contracts.
Earlier I had said that if the decision had been up to me, which of course it isn’t, I would pick Orbital and Sierra Nevada, since SpaceX and Boeing already have contracts to ferry crews to ISS. If you add Orbital’s Cygnus and Sierra Nevada’s reusable Dream Chaser, you then have four different spacecraft designs capable of bring payloads into orbit, a robust amount of redundancy that can’t be beat. When I wrote that I also noted that I thought it wouldn’t happen because Boeing’s clout with Congress and NASA would make it a winner.
With Boeing now out of the picture, it seems to me that the reason NASA has delayed its final decision again is that it wants to see what happens with the return to flight launches of Dragon and Cygnus in the next three months. A SpaceX Dragon success will cement that company’s position in the manned contract area, while an Orbital ATK Cygnus succuss will make picking them for a second contract seem less risky. In addition, maybe NASA wants Sierra Nevada to fly another glide test of its Dream Chaser test vehicle, and is now giving it the time to do so.
The competition heats up: NASA will announce the two contract winners for its second round of ISS cargo contracts on November 5.
If it was up to me to pick the two winners from the four companies bidding, SpaceX, Boeing, Orbital ATK, and Sierra Nevada, I would go with Orbital ATK and Sierra Nevada. SpaceX and Boeing already have contracts to ferry crews to ISS with their Dragon and Starliner capsules. By picking Orbital ATK’s Cygnus capsule and Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser reusable mini-shuttle, NASA would then have four different ways to get payloads to ISS.
Sadly, the decision is not up to me. It is more likely NASA will pick SpaceX and Boeing. Boeing especially is likely to get picked because they are an established big player with lots of capital and influence.
Link here. It appears that SpaceX hopes to complete the following launches in quick order::
1. November 24: First Falcon 9 upgrade launch: 11 Orbcomm low-orbit satellites
2. December 15: Last old Falcon 9 launch: Jason 3
3. December 27: Second Falcon 9 upgrade launch: SES-9 geosynchronous communications satellite
4. Early January: Third Falcon 9 upgrade launch: Dragon and the Bigelow BEAM inflatable module to ISS
All these dates are of course subject to delays. Launches 1 and 3 will definitely attempt vertical landings of the first stage on a barge.
The main point of the article above was to note that the SpaceX is now ready to do a full thrust test firing of the first stage that will be used in the November 24 launch, doing that test at its McGregor, Texas, test facility. As noted, “All Falcon stages pass through the Texas site, allowing them to be fired up and tested for any issues prior to continuing their journey to the launch site.” The article then described one case where the testing successfully spotted an issue that was fixed prior to launch.
I think this speaks volumes about the robustness of SpaceX’s manufacturing process. Their rockets are built in one place, shipped to another for testing, and then shipped to a third for launch. And all within mere weeks. This robustness also suggests that the rocket’s first stage will be able to withstand its vertical landing and be able to be reused, as planned.
The article also provides some further insights in why the company switched the SES-9 and Orbcomm launches.
The competition heats up: ULA will attempt its third Atlas 5 launch in October, launching a new GPS satellite for the Air Force on October 30.
In the past ULA never packed its launches in this tightly. I suspect they are now doing so because of the competition from SpaceX. They need to show their customers, both commercial and the government, that they are a reliable launch provider. Launching three Atlas 5s in one month is one way to do it.
The competition heats up: Dragonfly, SpaceX’s test capsule for testing vertical rocket landings, has arrived at their facility in McGregor, Texas.
DragonFly will be attached to a large crane, ahead of a series of test firings of its SuperDraco thrusters to set the stage towards the eventual goal of propulsive landings. The first test is set to take place in the next few weeks to kick start around two years of incremental testing.
Similar in concept to Grasshopper, Dragonfly is not an actual Dragon capsule, but a testbed for figuring out how to do vertical landings with a capsule, using thrusters.
