Not surprisingly, last night’s successful launch of Falcon 9 has produced a large number of news articles. Rather than list them all, go to spacetoday.net for the links.
However, I think Clark Lindsey, in describing Elon Musk’s reaction to the successful launch, captured the most important aspect of last night’s success:
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Falcon 9 has cleared the tower and is “looking good.”
First stage has completed its job and has been released. The second stage is firing as planned.
Dragon has separated from the second stage and is now in orbit. Now comes the real test of this mission: Can Dragon maneuver and rendezvous with ISS?
The best moment for the entire launch sequence was when Dragon’s solar arrays deployed. The camera link was still working, so that everyone could see it. When the arrays locked open, there was a gigantic roar from the crowd of people watching at SpaceX’s mission control. Dragon was in orbit and operational!
Tonight’s Falcon 9 launch: The countdown has begun, and the weather conditions have improved.
SpaceX will begin its own webcast at 3 am (Eastern), which is midnight here in Arizona.
An aside: The ashes of actor James Doohan, who played Scotty on the 1960s television show Star Trek, will be among 308 other cremated remains launched into space by Falcon 9 tonight. As one commenter for the above article noted quite appropriately,
You haven’t really covered any of the important questions here.
i.e. Are there enough dilithium crystals in the engine room to get Scotty up there? And are they using photon torpedoes to blast him out into space? And when they launch, will someone say, “Take her out, Mr. Sulu. Warp factor one.”?
Godspeed, Scotty old bean.
The Falcon 9 launch tonight is a go, with weather 80 percent favorable.
SpaceX is set to begin the countdown tonight for a 3:44 am (Eastern) May 22nd launch of Falcon 9/Dragon.
In an email update, SpaceX reports that they have found the cause of the Falcon 9 launch abort this morning.
During rigorous inspections of the engine, SpaceX engineers discovered a faulty check valve on the Merlin engine. We are now in the process of replacing the failed valve. Those repairs should be complete tonight. We will continue to review data on Sunday. If things look good, we will be ready to attempt to launch on Tuesday, May 22nd at 3:44 AM Eastern.
If this is true, than this entire exercise is an unqualified success and illustrates a certain robustness to SpaceX’s engineering on Falcon 9. Their control computer during the launch process spotted the problem before it caused a complete loss of the vehicle and payload. They can now locate the problem, fix it, and proceed with launch.
Last night Falcon 9’s computers shut the launch down at T minus zero seconds after sensing a high chamber pressure in one first stage engine.
Two thoughts, one good, one not so good.
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Falcon 9 is now upright on launchpad for tomorrow morning’s 4:55 am (Eastern) launch. For continual updates, go here.
The Soyuz spacecraft with three astronauts has docked successfully with ISS.
Barring weather or another launch scrub, it looks like Saturday will be launch day for Falcon 9 and Dragon
An overview of what will happen on Dragon’s first flight to ISS next week.
The competition heats up: Bigelow and SpaceX announced today that they are teaming up to offer manned flights to space.
The SpaceX test launch of Dragon to ISS has now been rescheduled for May 19.
The test flight of Falcon 9/Dragon to ISS will almost certainly not launch on May 7.
It appears they need more time to assess the results of the static engine test on Monday.
SpaceX’s static fire test of the Falcon 9 still set for 3 pm today.
I will be discussing this story and the mining of asteroids on The Space Show today, even as this static fire occurs. Don’t forget to tune in.
Update: the static firing appears to have been a success, after an initial abort.
Want to watch the launch of Falcon 9/Dragon? Here’s the low down.
SpaceX and NASA have now set May 7 as the planned launch date for the Dragon test flight to ISS.
SpaceX has delayed the launch of its Dragon test mission to ISS, with the launch now scheduled sometime between May 3 and May 7.
“After reviewing our recent progress, it was clear that we needed more time to finish hardware-in-the-loop testing and properly review and follow up on all data,” SpaceX spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham wrote in an email. “While it is still possible that we could launch on May 3rd, it would be wise to add a few more days of margin in case things take longer than expected. As a result, our launch is likely to be pushed back by one week, pending coordination with NASA.”
There are really only two important stories today concerning space exploration. The story that is getting the most coverage is the big news that the space shuttle Discovery is making its last flight, flying over Washington, DC, as it is delivered to the Smithsonian for permanent display.
Of these stories, only Irene Klotz of Discovery News seems to really get it. This is not an event to celebrate or get excited about. It is the end of an American achievement, brought to a close probably three to five years prematurely so that the United States now cannot even send its own astronauts to its own space station.
The other news, actually far more important, has gotten far less coverage, and includes three different stories all really about the same thing.
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ISS’s robot arm has now been moved into position in preparation for the Dragon berthing flight, scheduled for April 30.
The article also gives a nice outline of the entire Falcon 9/Dragon test flight.
SpaceX is planning its own spaceport about three miles north of Mexico at the southern tip of Texas.
SpaceX had been looking at sites at various potential sites, including ones in Florida, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Company officials have said they plan to operate out of Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base as well. A third, commercial launch site frees them from range restrictions that exist at the other two locations.
In writing this short post on the efforts of Lockheed Martin and Orbital Sciences to launch rockets for the small satellite market, Clark Lindsey made this comment:
It costs around $50 million to launch a Orbital Sciences Minotaur 4, which can put 1,730 kg into LEO while the Lockheed’s Athena 2 will cost around $65 million to put 1,712 kg into LEO. SpaceX currently posts charges $54M – $59.5M for launching to LEO 10,450 kg (equatorial) and 8,560 kg (polar). If SpaceX is able to sustain these prices in routine operation, it will obviously result in some disturbance to the launch industry.
Let’s deconstruct these numbers again, this time listing them by the cost per kilogram:
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In hearings Wednesday, several members of Congress suggested that NASA force the new competing commercial space companies to combine their efforts in order to save money.
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) asked NASA Administrator Charles Bolden during a March 21 hearing on the agency’s 2013 budget the same question he asked of the White House’s chief science adviser last month: would NASA’s partnership with commercial companies to develop astronaut transports be cheaper if the companies competing for NASA funds combined their efforts into a single “all for one and one for all” project?
Similarly, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) made the same stupid argument in her continuing effort to keep the funding of the Space Launch System, the rocket-formerly-called-Constellation, as high as possible, at the cost of cutting everything else in NASA if necessary.
If you needed any evidence that members of Congress are ignorant idiots, you only need read the comments of these elected officials at these hearings to get your proof. Wolf or Hutchison as well as several others from both parties very clearly haven’t the slightest idea what these various space companies are building. Nor do they have the faintest notion of the difficulties entailed in building these manned space vessels.
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Aviation Week looks at the launch challenges facing SpaceX over the next two years.
Though it is very clear SpaceX has a tough schedule of launches coming up, with much of the future of American aerospace riding on their success, this article is strangely hostile to the company. There is no doubt the company has fallen behind schedule, but the list of customers who have been willing to commit to the company is quite impressive, especially considering that SpaceX literally didn’t exist six years ago.
I’ll make several predictions:
SpaceX has now set April 30 as the target launch date for its Falcon 9/Dragon capsule test flight to ISS.
Good news for commercial space: SpaceX has gotten another launch contract, this time to put up four satellites for an Asian/Central American communications partnership.
Good news: SpaceX’s dress rehearsal countdown and fuel test of the Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral today was a complete success.
Fingers crossed: Falcon 9 is on the launchpad in Florida, being prepared for a countdown and fuel test tomorrow.
The fundamental design flaw of all of Tesla Motors’ electric cars.
A Tesla Roadster that is simply parked without being plugged in will eventually become a “brick”. The parasitic load from the car’s always-on subsystems continually drains the battery and if the battery’s charge is ever totally depleted, it is essentially destroyed. Complete discharge can happen even when the car is plugged in if it isn’t receiving sufficient current to charge, which can be caused by something as simple as using an extension cord. After battery death, the car is completely inoperable. At least in the case of the Tesla Roadster, it’s not even possible to enable tow mode, meaning the wheels will not turn and the vehicle cannot be pushed nor transported to a repair facility by traditional means.
This problem could destroy the company, which, believe it or not, might actually have a negative effect on the American space program! Elon Musk, the man behind SpaceX and the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon capsule is also the CEO of Tesla. If Tesla goes down, one wonders if that could have an impact on SpaceX’s effort to get Americans into space.
The Dragon/Falcon 9 test flight to ISS has been delayed again, until late April, in order to complete additional software tests.
