SpaceX

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Re: SpaceX

#661 Post by Boac » Wed Jun 16, 2021 10:31 am


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Re: SpaceX

#662 Post by PHXPhlyer » Thu Jun 17, 2021 12:02 am

SpaceX likely to miss July target date for Mars rocket test

https://www.azfamily.com/news/us_world_ ... _id=997200

(CNN) -- SpaceX has been targeting July for the first orbital flight of its gargantuan Starship system, which will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever created -- and, the company hopes, will eventually take humans to Mars. But the company is not likely to hit that goal, CNN Business has learned.

SpaceX's Starship launch operations are the subject of an ongoing environmental assessment. Depending on the outcome of that assessment it may also be required to go through a more detailed review culminating in an updated Environmental Impact Statement. Only after that process is complete can the Federal Aviation Administration move on to licensing a possible orbital Starship launch.

Those reviews and approvals will not be done in time for an early July launch, according to a source familiar with the licensing process.

That means that, for SpaceX to remain in compliance with federal rules, it will likely have to push back its target launch date.

So far, the company has only flown various early prototypes of the upper spacecraft portion of Starship. Those tests have all been relatively low-speed test "hops," which involve the vehicles flying a few miles into the air before attempting to land upright. Only one landing in five such test flights conducted to this point has been successful.

An orbital launch would require a similar Starship spacecraft to be stacked on top of what SpaceX is calling its "Super Heavy" booster, a behemoth envisioned at 230 feet tall which has for years existed in various renderings and design mockups but has yet to be fully assembled or launched.

SpaceX laid out its flight plans for Starship's first-ever orbital mission in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission that was posted last month. The company intends to launch Starship atop the Super Heavy rocket booster from its South Texas facilities before the booster separates and comes back in for a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about eight minutes later.

The upper Starship spacecraft will continue through orbit, burning its engines for roughly nine minutes. About an hour and a half after that, it would dive back into the Earth's atmosphere and make a splashdown in the Pacific, about 60 miles from the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

The document did not give a proposed flight date, though it did list a "requested period of operation" for between June 20 and December 20 of 2021.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed in a March 16 tweet that the company was targeting July for the first orbital launch, following a NASASpaceflight report that the company's internal target date was July 1.

Another indication of the early July target came on Monday, when Northwestern University aired a taped commencement speech from SpaceX chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell. Briefly visible in the background of Shotwell's speech, which was filmed at SpaceX's headquarters, was a screen that read "Starship Orbital Launch" with a countdown that said "25 days, 7 hours, 30 minutes."

Twenty-five days from Monday, when the speech aired for Northwestern students, would be July 9, though it's unclear when Shotwell recorded the commencement speech.

SpaceX's plans for an imminent launch go beyond documentation and filings, however. The company also appears to be making headway constructing the kind of large launch tower that would be required to support such an orbital launch. Photos taken by fans at SpaceX's South Texas facility and shared on social media show a massive crane assembling a metal tower that closely resembles launch towers like those at government launch facilities in Florida.

Musk did share an early morning update on Twitter Tuesday, confirming that SpaceX is continuing to piece together the first Super Heavy booster at its facilities in South Texas.

The final version of the upper Starship spacecraft is expected to contain six rocket engines, while the Super Heavy booster could have nearly 30, giving the rocket more than 16 million pounds of thrust. That's more than twice the total thrust output of NASA's Saturn V rocket, which powered the mid-20th century moon landings, and for decades has held the record for the most powerful launch vehicle ever flown.

SpaceX is known to set aggressive target dates for major test launches, and to blow past them. It's common in aerospace for design and development of new spacecraft to take far longer than initially anticipated.

But SpaceX has been particularly aggressive with its Starship testing schedule, angling to rapidly conduct test flights in order to collect data rather than taking the more traditional approach of thoroughly vetting a spacecraft's design and putting it through numerous ground tests before putting it on a launch pad.

The pace at which the company has moved in South Texas has previously run afoul of federal regulators: A suborbital test flight in December of a prototype dubbed "SN8" was carried out despite the FAA's having denied a waiver SpaceX sought allowing it "to exceed the maximum public risk allowed by federal safety regulations," according to a previous statement from the FAA.

That matter has since been resolved, allowing the company to move forward with suborbital testing of its Starship spacecraft prototypes.

But approval for an orbital launch hinges on whether federal regulators can determine that the Super Heavy booster, which packs many times the amount of power as the spacecraft portion alone, can launch from South Texas without posing a significant threat to nearby property, people or the surrounding environment.

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Re: SpaceX

#663 Post by Boac » Thu Jun 17, 2021 3:50 pm

20 minutes to the launch of the US mil's new GPS satellite. https://www.spacex.com/launches/

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Re: SpaceX

#664 Post by Boac » Thu Jun 17, 2021 4:21 pm

.....and they've done it again. Nominal initial orbit for the load and the 19th successful recovery of the first stage on the boat.

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Re: SpaceX

#665 Post by PHXPhlyer » Thu Jun 17, 2021 4:25 pm

Ho Hum! :YMAPPLAUSE: :-bd

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Re: SpaceX

#666 Post by Boac » Thu Jun 17, 2021 4:53 pm

Problem is I recall the Space Shuttle becoming 'boring' and our not even hearing about 'yet another successful launch' - until.............

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Re: SpaceX

#667 Post by Boac » Tue Jun 29, 2021 8:34 pm

Transporter2 launch, scheduled for 18:56Z Wednesday, should be worth watching. It is planned to land the first stage booster at Cape Canaveral.

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Re: SpaceX

#668 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Jun 30, 2021 7:15 am

SpaceX chief Elon Musk has hit out at US airspace regulations after his company was forced to reschedule a rocket launch due to an unauthorised aircraft entering the so-called “keep out zone”.

With SpaceX just seconds away from launching 88 different satellites on its new Transporter-2 cosmic ride share mission, the countdown was halted due to a stray helicopter coming into range of the launch site.

The incident, which will now delay the mission by at least a day, drew the ire of tech billionaire Musk on Twitter. “Unfortunately, launch is called off for today, as an aircraft entered the ‘keep out zone’, which is unreasonably gigantic,” Musk tweeted after the launch was halted.

“There is simply no way that humanity can become a spacefaring civilisation without major regulatory reform. The current regulatory system is broken,” he said.

According to local TV news reports, the aircraft was a private helicopter that entered the restricted area in the final 11 seconds before launch. A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesperson told US media that the government body is investigating the incident.

While the company’s launches have been called off in the past due to circumstances like bad weather, Tuesday’s incident could be the first due to an air traffic disturbance.

Musk had previously criticised the FAA in January after a starship test was delayed.

“Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure,” the SpaceX chief had similarly tweeted then.

With the company launching rockets at a brisk space this year – an average of nearly once every nine days – Musk said the FAA’s air traffic rules are meant only for a “handful of expendable launches” per year from a few government facilities.

“Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars,” he said.


While Musk publicly criticises regulators, he had also said in April that he agreed with them “99.9 per cent of the time.”

“On rare occasions, we disagree. This is almost always due to new technologies that past regulations didn’t anticipate,” the SpaceX chief noted.

In a recent Congressional hearing, members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, including representative Peter DeFazio, expressed concerns over increasing air traffic as a result of the growing number of spaceflight missions in US air space.

“I am not in favour of telling people in America who are travelling for pleasure or for work or whatever reason on a commercial airplane that their flights are delayed by an hour and a half because some billionaire is going to experience 15 minutes of weightlessness. I want to see that does not happen,” Mr DeFazio said.

FAA associate administrator Wayne Monteith, who spoke at the hearing, said the first operational tests of Space Data Integrator – a system designed to support integration of launches into the national airspace system, limiting the size and duration of airspace restrictions – could address these concerns in a few months.
From the Independent
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Re: SpaceX

#669 Post by Boac » Wed Jun 30, 2021 8:23 am

Peter DeFazio

Idiot

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Re: SpaceX

#670 Post by CharlieOneSix » Wed Jun 30, 2021 6:49 pm

Looks like a delay to 1930Z…..
The helicopter pilots' mantra: If it hasn't gone wrong then it's just about to...
https://www.glenbervie-weather.org

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Re: SpaceX

#671 Post by Boac » Wed Jun 30, 2021 7:41 pm

Amazing! and a bulls-eye.

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Re: SpaceX

#672 Post by CharlieOneSix » Wed Jun 30, 2021 7:56 pm

Just incredible!
The helicopter pilots' mantra: If it hasn't gone wrong then it's just about to...
https://www.glenbervie-weather.org

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Re: SpaceX

#673 Post by Boac » Wed Jun 30, 2021 8:41 pm

Sitting here watching 31 satellites deploying from the ship. I have to pinch myself.

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Re: SpaceX

#674 Post by PHXPhlyer » Wed Jun 30, 2021 9:52 pm

Virgin Orbit just launched seven satellites today.
Their first stage hit the runway. Don't know about the centerline though. :-?

Virgin Orbit sends satellites into orbit from air-launched rocket


https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/v ... t-n1272715

Virgin Orbit sends satellites into orbit from air-launched rocket
The "Tubular Bells: Part One" mission marks the company's first since its successful orbital demonstration launch in January.


Virgin Orbit launched seven satellites into orbit Wednesday, marking its first commercial mission.

Virgin Orbit's aircraft, a Boeing 747 better known as Cosmic Girl, took flight shortly after 9:50 a.m. ET from the Mojave Air and Space Port, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles.

After reaching its drop-off point about an hour after takeoff, the company's LauncherOne rocket separated from the aircraft and carried the seven small satellites from three different countries, including the United States, Poland and the Netherlands, into Earth's orbit.


The rocket launch is the first part of Virgin Orbit's "Tubular Bells" mission, which is named after the first track on Mike Oldfield's 1973 titular album — the first record released by Richard Branson's Virgin Records.

"Tubular Bells: Part One" also marks the first mission since the company's successful orbital demonstration launch in January.


Instead of a traditional launch pad, the Virgin Orbit system uses a modified Boeing 747-400 aircraft to launch a rocket from under the wing of its carrier plane, according to its website. The engines are then ignited and the rockets power themselves into orbit.

Of the seven satellites, four belong to the U.S. Department of Defense's Space Test Program, two to the Polish company SatRevolution, and one to the Royal Netherlands Air Force.

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Re: SpaceX

#675 Post by Boac » Fri Jul 02, 2021 7:29 pm

Can someone with a better understanding of structures and loads please explain how on earth this 'cherry picker' works?
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Booster is 230 ft high, plus the stand.

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Re: SpaceX

#676 Post by G-CPTN » Fri Jul 02, 2021 9:38 pm

I would imagine it is susceptible to 'wobble'.
I cannot imagine that it is 'rigid'.

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Re: SpaceX

#677 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Jul 03, 2021 8:02 pm

Though you remain
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"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: SpaceX

#678 Post by Boac » Sat Jul 10, 2021 12:26 pm

Excitement (of a sort) tomorrow - Branson + 5 launch in his pocket rocket - 09:00 EDT, I think.

Does anyone have access to an up-to-date aerial of the Boca Chica complex? Google maps 'suggest' the image is 2021 but it isn't. I am puzzled by the need to ferry everything down the road from Starbase to launch pad and would have thought Muskrat would have built a different route.

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Re: SpaceX

#679 Post by Boac » Sat Jul 10, 2021 8:17 pm

1400 BST. Not sure if that is 'Mother's' take-off' or Galactic release, though.

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Re: SpaceX

#680 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Jul 10, 2021 10:45 pm

Boac wrote:
Sat Jul 10, 2021 8:17 pm
1400 BST. Not sure if that is 'Mother's' take-off' or Galactic release, though.
I guess one should watch Beardie et al. It has taken some time to get to this point. I wish them luck.
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Your destination remains
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