Re: SpaceX
Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 2:57 pm
Yay, competition!
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons bring us some web forums whereupon we can gather
http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/
"File not found"Enough wrote:Both? What about all three?
Kraken wrote:"File not found"Enough wrote:Both? What about all three?
Odd woman out, you mean. Don't take this the wrong way, but it always bothered me that SNC is so in-your-face about being woman owned. It's a husband and wife ownership team but for federal contractracting they get the Woman-owned tag. Which is fine but it just has always seemed so token. And don't forget, they did get $250M in federal funds to work on Dream Chaser.Enough wrote:Kraken wrote:"File not found"Enough wrote:Both? What about all three?
Works for me. I was linking to a story about Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser. I am curious why they didn't get funded, the comments on Reddit make it sound like their design was actually pretty robust. I think Boeing got it cause Boeing and Space X is already in action with ISS, making Dream Chaser the odd man out.
Boeing's planned "space taxi," which will ferry U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station, or ISS, will include a seat for paying tourists to visit the facility, a first for the U.S. space program.
Boeing will be permitted to sell rides to tourists under its contract with NASA, Boeing Commercial Crew Program Manager John Mulholland told Reuters, adding that the price would be competitive with what the Russian space agency now charges tourists for future flights to the orbital outpost.
That's true as far as it goes. The mission was actually a pretty solid success given the pre-launch expectations, though. Rocket went boom, but still got much closer than anyone else has ever done. Further, they think they know the cause of the failure (despite the conjecture by Ars), and have corrected it for the next scheduled launch (currently scheduled for late this month). Plus, we got some cool shots of a rocket exploding.Isgrimnur wrote:Landing on a barge didn't go so well.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James made the comments during a State of the Air Force briefing Thursday at the Pentagon.
“As far as I’m concerned, this is not a question of if they will be certified, it’s a question of when,” she said. “It’s still some months away, but I’m certain that it will be there.”
Air Force officials were “disappointed” they weren’t able to qualify the start-up rocket-maker by the end of the year as planned, James said. Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, is leading the certification process, which was delayed by at least six months.
The company, known as SpaceX and headed by billionaire Elon Musk, met 80 percent of the criteria for certification; 20 percent remains to go, James said.
“This is real engineering work that needs to be demonstrated, this is not a paperwork shuffle,” the secretary said. “I hope SpaceX knows we’re operating in good faith.”
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“We will get there,” James said, referring to SpaceX certification. “It’s in our national security interest to get there.”
Suit droppedKraken wrote:SpaceX is suing the government to force competition in military launch contracts.
Start-up rocket-maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX and headed by billionaire Elon Musk, has agreed to drop its lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force after the service pledged to open more satellite launches to competition.
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“The Air Force … has expanded the number of competitive opportunities for launch services under the EELV program while honoring existing contractual obligations,” according to the statement. “Going forward, the Air Force will conduct competitions consistent with the emergence of multiple certified providers.”
SpaceX hasn’t yet received certification to launch GPS and other military satellites.
Brigadier General Nina Armagno, commander of the US Air Force 45th Space Wing, signed an agreement with SpaceX; giving the company a five-year lease on Launch Complex 13 (LC-13) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, which will be converted to receive returning boosters and spacecraft making powered soft landings.
In recent years, SpaceX has been showing remarkable progress as it develops its reusable launch and spacecraft system, but it still needs someplace to land its rockets other than its drone barge. Until now, returning spacecraft have landed by parachute on land or at sea, or have been caught in midair.
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In an environmental impact statement (PDF) filed in 2014, SpaceX outlined its plans for the LC-13 pad, which will consist of a 750-ft (228-m) diameter pad of compressed soil and gravel designed to support the thrust and weight of returning spacecraft, and four 150-ft (45-m) contingency pads on the periphery for last-second emergency landings. In addition, SpaceX will build an access road and a mobile crane to move landed vehicles.
The U.S. Air Force overstepped its bounds as it worked to certify privately held SpaceX to launch military satellites, undermining the benefit of working with a commercial provider, an independent review showed on Thursday.
The report cited a "stark disconnect" between the Air Force and SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies, about the purpose of the certification process and recommended changes.
Air Force Secretary Deborah James ordered the review after the service missed a December deadline for certifying SpaceX to compete for some launches now carried out solely by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.
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The Air Force said on Monday it was revamping the certification process, but did not release the report on the review until Thursday and hoped to complete the work by June.
The report, prepared by former Air Force Chief of Staff General Larry Welch, said the Air Force treated the process like a detailed design review, dictating changes in SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and even the company's organizational structure.
That approach resulted in over 400 issues that needed to be resolved, which was "counterproductive" to a national policy aimed at encouraging competition in the sector.
In fact, the process was intended to show that SpaceX met overall requirements to launch military satellites, not carry out the more detailed review required for each launch on a case-by-case basis, he said.
Welch faulted SpaceX for assuming its experience launching other Falcon 9 rockets would suffice to be certified, and not expecting to have to resolve any issues at all.
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He urged the Air Force's Space and Missiles Systems Center to "embrace SpaceX innovation and practices," while SpaceX needed to understand the Air Force's need to mitigate risks, and be more open to benefiting from the government's experience.
Launch is scheduled for 16:33 Eastern today.Elon Musk’s SpaceX will make another attempt to precision-land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a custom-built ocean platform after Monday’s scheduled mission for NASA to resupply the International Space Station.
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Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX’s vice president of mission assurance, said SpaceX has upgraded the drone ship so that it can keep its position better and handle higher ocean swells than previously, improvements that bode well for success Monday.
“I would up my probability to 75 percent at this point in time. Maybe 80,” said Koenigsmann during a pre-launch press conference Sunday. If the landing attempt is successful, Koenigsmann predicted an “epic landing party.”
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The modified landing barge, marked with a huge X, is floating hundreds of miles offshore. The name of the SpaceX vessel is Just Read the Instructions, Musk’s literary nod to the late Scottish science-fiction author Iain M. Banks.
And the landing attempt is ~9 min later. May take a bit longer for confirmation of success/failure since that part will not have live video.cheeba wrote:Supposedly this is supposed to start at 4:33pm EST.
Looks like Falcon landed fine, but excess lateral velocity caused it to tip over post landingZaxxon wrote:Landed on drone ship, but too hard for survival.
SpaceX’s rival, United Launch Alliance LLC, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., is taking a different approach. Rather than try to recover the entire first stage of the rocket, the firm wants to fly a CH-47 Chinook helicopter to capture the rocket engine as it falls from the sky.
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After the first stage of the rocket launches and finishes its burn, the engine would separate from the booster and fall in free flight. Moments later, a heat shield would deploy, adding drag and slowing the engine’s descent. After the heat shield or airfoil separates, a drogue would deploy, followed by a main parachute, further slowing the engine’s descent. At that point, the chopper would fly by and snag the engine out of mid-air.
ULA announced the initiative, called the Sensible, Modular, Autonomous Return Technology (SMART), as part of a larger unveiling of a new rocket design, called the Vulcan, also known as the Next-Generation Launch System (NGLS), this week here at the Space Symposium, the nation’s largest space conference.
In a test lasting just under 100 seconds, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. appears to have demonstrated that its crew capsule – one of two NASA is banking on to carry American astronauts to and from the International Space Station – can vault clear of danger on a launch pad.
The company plans to return the capsule to its facility in Texas for a thorough analysis of the results, but each stage of the brief flight appeared to go as planned.
The next step, coming later this year, is a test of the capsule's ability to kick free of a rocket during the most stressful part of its ascent.
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For six seconds, the engine vaulted the capsule and trunk off the pad and out toward the Atlantic Ocean. By the time the engine shut off, the capsule was moving at between 330 and 400 miles an hour.
At the highest point in the capsule's trajectory, the trunk separated, and a short time later the capsule's two-step parachute system deployed, lowering the capsule into the water about 1 minutes and 38 seconds after launch.
This was the first time SpaceX had tested the system with all eight of the capsule's engines operating. Unlike the escape engine NASA mounted on the noses of the Mercury and Apollo capsules, which had to be jettisoned during ascent, Dragons engines can be used throughout an ascent and into orbit. Eventually, the company hopes to use the engine for landing crews near their launch sites.
3/5 through, I concur that it's worth the time. I haven't learned much that I didn't already know but it's well presented and entertaining.Zaxxon wrote:Wait But Why's long-promised SpaceX article is up. Well worth the longish read.
I landed 1 after 30 tries.