SpaceX's Grasshopper VTVL takes a 40 meter hop

josip

Raptor test fired

Knifey Spoony

Mars colonization conference by Elon starting in half an hour:

http://www.spacex.com/mars

Zillah

Knifey Spoony wrote: »

Mars colonization conference by Elon starting in half an hour:

http://www.spacex.com/mars

The quality of the audience questions is making me wonder if I'm all that enthused about spreading the human race.

thecommander

Zillah wrote: »

The quality of the audience questions is making me wonder if I'm all that enthused about spreading the human race.

Makes me want to save up for a ticket

Ghost Train

It's great to see somebody who has that sort of vision and is trying to push the boundaries. He does make it sound like it's not an impossible project and might just become a reality (fingers crossed)

Would have preferred if the audience was more of type you'd get in a nasa press conference.

Zillah

Ghost Train wrote: »

Would have preferred if the audience was more of type you'd get in a nasa press conference.

"So, like, I was at Burning Man..." *ten minute ramble about shit at world's foremost technoindustrialist*
Bizarre that the questions weren't screened for quality.

Maximus Alexander

It's remarkable how awful a public speaker Musk is.

Zillah

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

It's remarkable how awful a public speaker Musk is.

He is a little stiff. I think anything more severe than that is unfair.

expectationlost

he makes it sound all too easy

Hmmzis

That's a whopper of a LOX tank! And all made out of carbon fibre.

First test article for the ITS:

Ghost Train

Here's link to the presentation (~40mb) few more photos of tank, and lots of other details he went through on stage
http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars_presentation.pdf

Thing I'd see as most challenging would be making fuel on mars but I guess they can work that out a bit later

Ghost Train

Bit more info on what might have happened to caused falcon 9 failure
Although a bit light on exact details at least (they think) they understand it

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/5/13533900/elon-musk-spacex-falcon-9-failure-cause-solved

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that his company has finally gotten to the bottom of the September 1st Falcon 9 explosion — claiming it was the “toughest puzzle” they’ve ever had to solve. And now that the problem is known, he expects SpaceX to return to flight in mid-December.

Speaking on CNBC yesterday, Musk said “it basically involves liquid helium, advanced carbon fiber composites, and solid oxygen. Oxygen so cold that it actually enters solid phase.”

So what does that mean exactly? Musk gave some hints a little while ago during a speech he gave to the National Reconnaissance Office. According to a transcript received by Space News, he argued that the supercooled liquid oxygen that SpaceX uses as propellant actually became so cold that it turned into a solid. And that’s not supposed to happen.

This solid oxygen may have had a bad reaction with another piece of hardware — one of the vehicle’s liquid helium pressure vessels. Three of these vessels sit inside the upper oxygen tank that holds the supercooled liquid oxygen propellant. They’re responsible for filling and pressurizing the empty space that’s left when the propellant leaves the tank. The vessels are also over wrapped with a carbon fiber composite material. The solid oxygen that formed could have ignited with the carbon, causing the explosion that destroyed the rocket.

SpaceX isn’t giving too many more details about the process, and the company declined to give further clarification about what Musk said on CNBC. Plus, it’s unclear what caused the solid oxygen to form. There’s speculation from the New York Times that if liquid helium was used in the pressure vessels, which Musk seems to have indicated, it might have been cold enough to freeze the liquid oxygen into a solid. Liquid helium exists at -452 degrees Fahrenheit, a lot colder than SpaceX’s liquid oxygen propellant at -340 degrees Fahrenheit. And oxygen solidifies at -361 degrees Fahrenheit.

Despite all this, SpaceX is confident about getting back to flight by the end of the year, based on what the company has found. And in a recent update, SpaceX claims to be focused on improving its helium loading processes so this accident doesn’t happen again.

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE

Back in action Dec16

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/187901/20161206/spacex-could-launch-falcon-9-rocket-on-december-16-iridium.htm

Knifey Spoony

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE wrote: »

Back in action Dec16

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/187901/20161206/spacex-could-launch-falcon-9-rocket-on-december-16-iridium.htm

Pushed back to early January now.

http://www.spacex.com/news/2016/09/01/anomaly-updates

But, on the plus side, January should see the first re-use of a booster.

Capt'n Midnight

Knifey Spoony wrote: »

But, on the plus side, January should see the first re-use of a booster.

Indeed

the Space Shuttle has "reusable" boosters. But they were split into individual sections and re-manufactured and reassembled.

SLS will reuse much of the SRB hardware, but won't re-use the boosters. Just not worth it given the low numbers of flights and the overhead of ships and people and facilities needed.
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/10/orbital-atk-booster-production-sls-maiden-flight/

OCEANIC FIZZY POP NINE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brE21SBO2j8

http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14028254/spacex-falcon-9-launch-elon-musk-reaction-gifs

yoppy

Grand little vid, it's 7 minutes but worth it, of why the rocket exploded, you have liquid oxygen (at super low temperatures) in a tank with another tank of highly pressurised helium in that tank, so you've a tank in a tank, or a "composite overrap pressure vessels" (sounds more expensive and board roomy) and its the inner tank that failed but it failed due to the way the liquids/gases were loaded, superlow and highly pressurised don't want to hang around, a few pages back you'll see it mentioned that they were trying to speed up the launch process, vid explains better, so they don't actually have to change anything for the next launch they just have to go back to how they use to do and redesign that inner tank in the future. The case is closed, the FAA has given them their launch licence back and they're looking at sending up a few iridiums on Monday, weather permitting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBcoTqhAM_g

http://www.geekwire.com/2017/faa-spacex-falcon-iridium-satellite-launch/

yoppy

Bad weather, delayed till saturday.

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/spacex-will-have-wait-little-longer-its-return-flight-n704841

Ghost Train

60% chance of good weather
17:54 GMT launch
coverage from 17:20
http://spaceflightnow.com/2017/01/14/falcon-9-iridium-mission-1-mission-status-center/

Ghost Train

Almost missed this myself

Wonder will it land okay

edit, such small landing pad, looks like all went well, much better video than early launches

Peregrine

Ghost Train wrote: »

60% chance of good weather
17:54 GMT launch
coverage from 17:20
http://spaceflightnow.com/2017/01/14/falcon-9-iridium-mission-1-mission-status-center/

Did they launch from Vandenberg? That's interesting.

Edit: Ah, the Iridium satellites go into polar orbits. Makes sense.

Ghost Train

Peregrine wrote: »

Did they launch from Vandenberg? That's interesting.

Edit: Ah, the Iridium satellites go into polar orbits. Makes sense.

Yes, first successful landing on the just read the instructions drone ship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_spaceport_drone_ship

Peregrine

Ghost Train wrote: »

Yes, first successful landing on the just read the instructions drone ship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_spaceport_drone_ship

I was more interested in the launch trajectories from Vandenberg. I hadn't realised that the satellites were to go into polar orbits. Vandenberg would be more suitable than Cape Canaveral for polar and retrograde orbits.


SpaceX have put up some pretty good pictures from the launch and landing:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/spacex/31579784413/

Ghost Train

Never quite seems this big on the live streams

zboz

They're leaked financials show the explosion in 2015 cost them 260million and 6 missed launches so Septembers blow up be even more and with 12 missed launches. They're making no money. They've a billion in cash from Googles investment but at least little to no debt.

Projecting 27 launches for this year despite 8 being their most launches in a year. 44 in 2018 and a mighty ONE A WEEK in 2019.


Everything is gonna depend on their still in the planning stage Satellite internet business, they're planning on sending up 4425 car sized satellites, waaay more than everything ever sent up. Their's currently 1400ish working Satellites up their and over 2800 dead ones. When the system is fully up and running sometime after 2025 at a cost of 10 Billion they project speeds for every user in the 1GB range. Googles investment is so they can have some control over this system. Revenue is expected at 25Billion a year when fully up and running...a mars launch by 2024 seems like not a chance when you look at the money end of things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD4X8CKGU5s

Capt'n Midnight

Ghost Train wrote: »

Never quite seems this big on the live streams

Small , far away.

josip

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Small , far away.

We just need some of those orange-vested perspective guys to be around at launch time, that's all.

Capt'n Midnight

josip wrote: »

We just need some of those orange-vested perspective guys to be around at launch time, that's all.

or maybe some mannequins ?

old cars would be good for scale , do a top gear !

Capt'n Midnight

https://xkcd.com/1788/

ricimaki

First Falcon launching from Pad 39a will launch in a half hour. Live stream here.

Its strange seeing the old shuttle equipment with a different rocket at the pad