SpaceX Trifecta
SpaceX Successfully Launches the Arabsat-6A Satellite and Lands Three Boosters, SpaceRef
“SpaceX accomplished its primary mission of launching the Arabsat-6A telecommunication satellite late this afternoon from famed Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.”
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Falcon heavy first to the moon with a dragon 3( lunar version) coming next with LEO docking of large life support system.
The dragon could launch with a regular falcon and dock in LEO with lunar life support with lunar stage ( falcon heavy)
Yep, if they use these stages and the preflown Dragon2 at the Cape they could probably do an uncrewed flight by the end of the year. And then top it off by landing the Dragon2 at the Cape, on its rockets, like a rocket should land.
Could be just a little like biting the feeding hand, though; thee is very little mileage in SX directly shaming NASA.
And, yes, capabilities of the two organizations are well known by the cognoscenti. The general public, though, has none of my own space obsession, which carries the knowledge that SX could do many things in advance of NASA.
Headlines would simply read “SpaceX Embarrasses NASA!” or: “Oh, The Ignominy Of It!” or, perhaps worse: “What Happened That Shining Space Agency On the Hill?”
These headlines are wildly off the mark. But still.
Whatever….What they are shaming is Congress, that has handcuffed NASA for years.
Just imagine what NASA could do if it didn’t have to take political considerations into account for every decision, or have its direction switched every 2 to 4 years?
Same reply. Nobody cares. NASA stands for science in this country. Period. The rest is just fluff.
Are you suggesting privatization of NASA? Interesting…
That would be the only option, or at least a public/private model like Comsat, were they are able to develop, and keep, revenure streams other that tax payer’s money for funding.
For now. But once he gets Starlink up and running SpaceX will have a revenue stream that will truly set it free. And he will start deploying it next month, well ahead of his rivals. We may even get to see, as he puts up the first 1,500 satellites in blocks of 30, just how fast a pace he will be able to launch the Falcon since it will take 50 F9R Block 5 flights to deploy it.
That raises a concern about these large, small satellite constellations. Once they go up, what does it take to maintain them? Starlink is, I think, going up on 340 km altitude orbits. That’s not going to last more than a few years. I think the earlier plans for a higher altitude were looking at a five year lifetime. Assuming five years, SpaceX will need ten Falcon 9 launches per year, just to replace the Starlink satellites which have reentered. And if they ever get up to their full constellation of 12,000, that would be 80 Falcon 9 launches per year.
Sounds like a job for the Starship. But if they have the revenue to ramp up they should have the revenue for replacements, or to simply return the existing ones into their original orbit.
I read this and wondered, oh boy, & we thought we had an orbital debris issue now…. just wait.
The Indians shot a satellite out of orbit. Russia, China and USA have do similar tests. It is obvious satellites are very vulnerable against attack. In the mean time, we just keep shooting them up there, including Cubesats and other short duration space missions. Oh well. Looks like the Pacific Garbage Island will have an equivalent Space Junk Station above. Soon, we are going to have to add armor plate to satellites. Ok, now I am being silly. Sorry.
We’ll probably find out if you’re right by the end of the year. When SpaceX flies DM-2 and sends astronauts to the space station, there will be lots of mainstream press coverage. I think we’ll learn something from the headlines. Will they be about why NASA can’t do it themselves? Or will they describe DM-2 as a NASA mission? Or will they correctly describe SpaceX as providing self-driving taxi services?
Given DM1, where even the astronauts seem to avoid saying Elon Musk’s name and barely mentioned SpaceX, I expect it will be the latter.
Asking or expecting them to behave otherwise isn’t realistic, if by “even the astronauts” you are thinking they would be among the freest speakers. They are the very last to jump or criticize. And why should they? Getting an astronaut slot is difficult; getting an actual mission even more so. Nobody having achieved these ranks would criticize.
Covering this story will require numerous explanatory sidebars, answering the questions you’ve raised, as well as generally establishing for the reader some kind of framework.
Will this happen? Probably not. And having worked as something of a reporter for ten years (well, a columnist, actually), I’d predict a sort of ‘dummification.’ Look at it from the editor’s point of view. How many readers want the full explanation?
The story would be framed in terms of Apollo. This would provide a point of departure and could include several man-in-the-street quotes from those who actually recall Apollo. The actual hardware could be compared to S5, of course, but nothing too technical.Returning boosters could be seen as saving money, keeping the wondrous tech to a minimum.
And why not? We might obsess about SLS, or (heaven forbid) mass-to-orbit; but while these topics provide grist for the mill among the space intelligencia*, any mention would involve far too much explanatory material when read by folks with better things to do. Like, for instance, put the kids to bed, or get them ready for school the next day. Or go to work.
*yours truly excepted.
Sure. The editors will simplify the story. Actually, the reporters will probably do it themselves. But in the process, they will end up putting some sort of spin on it. I think what sort of spin that is will be informative.
What was it Kennedy said in 1962? “Whoa, whoa, let’s not shame the Russians by landing on the Moon first!”
Watching the boosters land (3 of them!) just never gets old.
Good work. Falcon heavy to the moon first. With dragon 3(lunar-falcon 9), and falcon heavy life support and lunar stage. LEO docking.
Quite possible, but it might be better to go with the BFR which might meet orbital status next year. After refueling in LEO from another Starship, it could land on the moon and come back to earth with no further refueling..
I’d be stunned if the test rocket isn’t still being modified by next year. Besides SpaceX has all the incentives to send a Falcon Heavy to the Moon, even an unmanned orbit, to test their systems etc.
Of course it will, as will the operational ones. You will have block 4, 5, 6, …, each one better than the last one. Just look at how Falcon 9 evolved.
About refueling: on-orbit refueling has a very long way to go before achieving real application.
It’s the kind of thing that we so obviously need, yet isn’t actively developed.
I was wondering about that, because we hear that quite often as a justification for SLS. But isn’t exactly true. The Soviet (now Russian) Progress cargo vehicle has been transferring propellent to space stations since 1978. So what, exactly, needs to be developed for in space refueling?
We are talking about a much larger amount of propellent. Progress only carries 700 to 900 kg of propellent. We would be talking about liquid oxygen (-183 deg. C at one bar) and methane (-162 deg. C at one bar, and Progress doesn’t carry cryogenic fuels. And we would be talking about launching the spacecraft and tanker in rapid succession, or having one or the other wait in low Earth orbit. That might cause some propellent loss to boil off.
But doesn’t sound too terrible to me. Larger amounts of propellent just mean bigger pumps and pipes, and/or longer transfer times. Handling liquid oxygen isn’t exactly a new thing, and liquid methane, or liquified natural gas, is transported on specialized ships all the time. Maintaining cryogenic temperatures in space is a well-established technology. The primary mirror on the Spitzer space telescope was kept at -268 deg. C for six years. It isn’t easy, but Spitzer was harder problem than maintaining thermal control for a liquid oxygen tank in low Earth orbit.
So I’m asking myself what, exactly, needs to be developed for in space fuel transfer? And, since that’s allegedly why we need SLS instead of multiple Falcon Heavy launches, would developing the necessary capabilities for in space fuel transfer be easier, faster and less expensive than developing SLS?
I think the main thing is deciding how you’re going to transfer the fuel – using other gases (helium) to maintain pressure, designing the cryogenic fuel tank to spin along with the spaceship being fueled, or such.
The other stuff I’m not so worried about. Boil-off isn’t going to be too bad if the fuel launches are only a few weeks separated from the ship needing fuel, and if you have to send up a lot of them it would probably be more worthwhile to figure out a propellant depot with enough solar power to reliquefy the boil-off and return it to the tanks.
I think I’d prefer helium, but for the volume of fuel in question, it would be a lot of helium. And I agree about boil off. But those are details.
I guess I keep coming back to the Apollo program’s debate over mission mode. Direct ascent lost to orbital rendezvous because it would have required developing a launch vehicle almost twice the size of a Saturn V. Figuring out how do dock spacecraft in orbit (even in orbit around the Moon) was easier than developing a Nova or Saturn 8. Now I’m asking a closely related question: Is figuring out how to transfer cryogenic propellents in orbit easier than developing the SLS?
At the very least, it would be much easier to test. You wouldn’t even need to send up crewed spacecraft to test it at first, just two robotic spacecraft that could dock and transfer cryogenic propellant and oxidizer. They could use existing launchers to do it.
Great Job! Looks like another winner for SpaceX!
Elon’s Innovation is achieving great results whether in ETO LV, EV’s, or terrestrial solar power…IMHO he is the Tom A Edison and Henry Ford and G Westinghouse of the 21st century… I truly wish our nations Space agency had this type of right stuff today…he and his team must be commended for making such technical strides — and stuff like this can only happen in the good ol USA!!!
I’d say that the USA and NASA are populated with hundreds of equally capable engineers and scientists, missing only the spark of the entrepreneur.
But your point bears underscoring: as far as I can tell everything built by SpaceX is originated, machined, developed, and finally manufactured in America. Every time I hear folks bitching about American workers, or their demands for fair wages, I point them to SpaceX. Moving factories to Mexico, or wherever, is greed-driven.
Not just built in America, built in-house by SpaceX. Musk realized early on that the ULA approach of buying everything from somebody else was easy but very expensive.
NASA Goddard & Musk, rocking the boat….
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
The high tech space hardware being outsourced overseas is even worse over at Grumman Orbital ATK. The first stage of Antares is Russian RD-181 engines under a mostly Yuzhnoye Ukrainian fuselage. Second stage is an American Castor 30 SRB derived from ICBM military booster. Third stage is domestic SRB borrowed from Minotaur and Pegasus. Payload fairing is made in California. But take apart a Cygnus ATV cargo ship and you will find a Thales-Italy pressurized cargo module , formerly flown with Dutch solar panels now Orbital’s own , but the rendezvous avionics and Common berthing mechanism are Japanese based on the JAXA H- II cargo ship. Very international all of this , horizontally integrated from half the planet. SpaceX on the other hand pretty much integrates their entire stack vertically from components made in-house mostly under a single roof… not a lot of primary components from third parties. That’s how vertical in-house integration of the final product is supposed to work . Then there’s Boeing trying to build the SLS White Elephant….aaaarrrrggghhh.
Of course, that means SpaceX can’t show congressmen a map of the United States illustrating how they have subcontractors in every state. Boeing can and has done that in the case of SLS. (Or was that NASA who put the map together? I can’t remember and I’m fairly sure they’ve both used that map.)
Space EXPLORATIONS Technology will be replacing NASA within the next 10-20 years.
Perhaps not that, but they’ll certainly be the train company.
As long as Musk stays at the helm, that’s true. As long someone who’s driven to a specific goal (human habitation of Mars), and is a great businessman is at the Helm, Spacex will be the leader in space.
NASA’s problem is that it is an impossible organization to lead, when the leaders keep changing every 4 to 8 years, and a new direction is introduced at the same time. It’s hard to build complex systems that need vision over a 20 to 30 year time period to succeed. Look at Spacex, it’s taken almost 20 years to get to this point, under one leader, with one goal. How many NASA administrators have there been in the last 20 years? There have been 9. Is it any wonder NASA’s best accomplishment has been to develop a program to harness companies like Spacex, rather than build their own human space program? Spacex needs NASA (money), and NASA needs Spacex (vision, drive, and rapid innovation).
Well, duh.
So we either continue to bitch about an obvious situation, or figure out a way to harness it.
I’m not complaining. I think we’re seeing rapid progress with NASA laying out needs and SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA etc filling those needs with the money NASA can provide. I think SpaceX is doing the best job, because they’re eye is on another prize. I actually think things are going very well now.
The only thing that’d be better is if they killed SLS. Who knows though, I’m sure Musk considers SLS the competition. So maybe it’s good to have that hanging out there to push SpaceX even harder. It’s an expensive motivator though…think of all of the amazing missions they could send to Titan, Io, Mars etc with that money shooting rovers up on Falcon Heavy and Starship!
NASA has all that. Folks in Congress stifle it.
Which is why historically the private sector has led the way in innovation. It’s allows dreamers to spend their life and fortune following their dreams. It is a prime reason why economies that are centrally planned and controlled tend towards technological stagnation over the long term, by creating too large a barrier to innovation.
I still prefer the information and communications theory. Without market prices, there isn’t any feedback about what people want or need, or how badly they want or need it. Which, among other things, turns decisions about investing money in research and development into a guess. Not that following the latest fad is a great way to decide on what research to fund, but there are worse ways to go.
Yes, and with markets there is no limit to a single approach. Instead multiple parties try different solutions and the best ones win.
So SpaceX is going to take over doing all the airplane analysis that NASA does? The Stem education? How about sending hardware, science probes? SpaceX going to build all the science probes on their dime? All the Technology research NASA does, SpaceX going to fund all that too?
I could easily see them and Blue Origin doing that yes. Especially within ten years, never mind the $$$ that companies, universities would pay to have experiments take flight etc. That and in house tests that SpaceX and BO might want to learn for future projects.
If a rocket launch is 1 to 10 million dollars, instead of 100 to 200 million, you’re going to see rapid development and exploration of the solar system. Which will bring the cost down even more, and will yield a massive treasure trove of science, discovery and exploration. It’s that innovative spark, that NASA was unable to create on its own, despite using many of the same people, that will unlock these things and free up funds to do more of everything you just laid out.
I don’t think anyone is saying NASA is useless. However with space, they are jaded, cynical, and unmotivated. Watch that press conference with Bridenstine and all of the NASA administration people. He’s excited about the future and what NASA is doing, talking about the amazing things they want to achieve, and they all look like they are sucking on sour grapes as they listen to him. The staff over there looked like exactly the type of people you wouldn’t want running things. People that have failed too many times, and the rug pulled out from them too many times, and have just given up, and are collecting a pay check. It was disturbing and sad to see the disconnect between them and their leader.
With the exception of Apollo, this is the most exciting time to be interested in human spaceflight. Really, this is even more exciting than Apollo, because the reality of what’s being accomplished, and the potential of these emerging rocket designs, far outstrips what was possible with Apollo era hardware. Yeah, Apollo was more powerful, but with the cost coming way down, the advancements in computers, AI, and our understanding of the universe, what we are capable of is far greater now. Those people SHOULD be excited and motivated by what’s happening right now. If they aren’t, it’s time to move on and find a new job, or retire.
“I don’t think anyone is saying NASA is useless. However with space, they are jaded, cynical, and unmotivated.”
Maybe on the human spaceflight side .. but aeronautics and non human spaceflight exploration NASA seems to be on the top of their game. Lower launch costs will no lower the basic costs on a two billion dollar probe. Maybe the launch savings can mean more hardware but I do not believe the private sector is going to be banging out many billion dollar probes with absolutely no financial return anytime soon.,
Actually, one of the main cost drivers for those $2 billion missions is reliability. And the emphasis on reliability is that these are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, and if you get it wrong you won’t get a chance to try again. To the extend that low launch costs make flight opportunities more frequency and reflight opportunities more likely, the cost of those missions could easily drop by a factor of two.
But it’s also important to think in terms of the lower cost robotic missions. Typically, NASA uses launch vehicles which cost a quarter to a half of the spacecraft/mission cost. They are seriously considering launching Europa Clipper, a $2 plus billion mission, on a SLS. But they’d never fly a Discovery mission ($500 million) on one. The lower cost Small Explorer line (about $150 million) have typically been restricted to launches on a Pegasus ($55 million.) So lowering launch costs may enable more capable and ambitious low cost missions. (Or even lower cost but equally capable ones, if they can throw mass rather than dollars into solving development problems.)
“you’re going to see rapid development and exploration of the solar system”
Which reminds me of a possibly tangential question posed here from time to time: aside from Earth-facing satellite, where is the economic opportunity? It is easy to talk about the ‘riches of the asteroid belt.’
A possible exception: ice on the moon, ice that can be turned into fuel. But the enabling technologies don’t need to be listed as they are obvious. And in any case, refueling on the moon isn’t needed unless we are going there for some reason, other than refueling.
This is possible chicken-and-egg. There’s a lot of talk about how to go to these places but little discussion o f why other of course than research.
Once Starlink is operational, SpaceX will have a multi-billion dollar revenue stream. In order to colonize the solar system like Elon wants to, they are going to have to send many advanced probes throughout the solar system to scout for resources and suitable locations.
Nasa can keep their airplane analysis.
In sports, that’s what they call a “hat trick”, doing three notable things in one game. E.g. in association football (soccer) one player scoring three goals in the same game. With luck, SpaceX will manage it often enough that it will no longer be seen as a rare thing.
It may have just been my web feed, but a question: it looked to me like they lit all three boosters at t-0 this time, where the first launch they lit the side boosters at about t-3, then the core at t-0. Can anyone confirm, comment, or add some engineering insight?
It looked that way to me, and we don’t have enough visibility into the details to guess at a engineering reason for a change. All I can say is the last launch used Block 4 rather than Block 5 boosters and core. That could have affected something we don’t now about and resulted in a minor change in the firing sequence.
Yep, that may be because of the upgraded Merlins on the Block 5 which I assume would have upgraded software.
On the previous FH flight side booster ignition was at T-0:00:05 with core ignition at T-0:00:03. I had assumed the extra two seconds was to make sure the side boosters had time to reach a balanced thrust level. If that theory is correct then presumably they now feel they don’t need the additional time, either due to changes in block design or perhaps just based on the buildup of experience. Whatever the reason for the change, I would think these type of decisions get a lot of scrutiny because of the huge amount of fuel burned every second.
NASA Spaceflight.com is reporting that “this Falcon Heavy did not undergo a staggered start sequence” and “all 27 engines lit at once at T-2 seconds”.
It looked to me like they fired all 27 engines at once instead of staggered . A year ago they said that would’ve torqued the whole stack severely in possibly unexpected ways . Now I read they did in fact light ’em all at once. Those Merlins must be really something in the performance specs category. Having said that , I thought the firing sequence before would’ve ignited opposite engines in 200 millisecond rotation pairs , so each booster would see all nine engines up and running in 0.6 secs from T-0 . Not an easily perceptible sequence to the latency of the human eye. When a Soyuz spools up it’s four engines/ 20 nozzles plus verniers , it sits there for what seems like an eternity before lifting off. At least 5 seconds, maybe longer.
Do they still ignite the Soyuz engines with external glorified matchsticks?
It gets better! SpaceX was able to recover the farings and plans to use them on a future Starlink flight….
https://twitter.com/elonmus…
Probably spent 50k to recover 5 mil
So they worked out how to make the fairing indifferent to a sea water dunking? Cool!
Yeah, just hose them down after they pull them out of the salt water. The main problem is usually with electronics, but there may not be much of that on a fairing. But what boats did they use? It looks like they used an A-frame crane.
Mr. Stevens was sent into the Atlantic a while ago.
The fairing recovery boats are GoSearcher and GoNavigator; Mr Stevens seems to have been dedicated to supporting Of Course I Still Love You on this operation.
It would be excellent if a simple hosing sufficed. Water gets into every tiniest gap, and sea water will corrode aluminum, as SpaceX re-discovered with F1 on Kwajalein.
Simply being on the pad at KSC exposes the vehicle to salt spray so some corrosion control is essential. The fairing is reportedly fabricated from carbon fiber over aluminum honeycomb core, but the aluminum is not exposed and the carbon fiber is unlikely to be affected. Fittings, release mechanisms, electronics, etc would require more detailed evaluation, but there is no a priori reason to think a brief salt water immersion would necessarily be damaging, after all the Dragon spacecraft has been reused.
Excellent news. They even recovered the payload fairing halves in good shape!
Although the mass it can deliver to Low Earth Orbit and beyond is much reduced in the “all three reused” formation. I think it’s about 8 metric tons to GTO with all-three-reused.
Wonder if its cheaper reused than the normal F9 expended.
I can’t imagine a disposable payload fairing would be that expensive, especially if retrieval would mean you have to put parachutes and jets on to it (and send a ship out to get it). But maybe it does shave off some cost here and there.
The cost of the fairing is reported as $6 million, a significant fraction of the launch cost. It is a large composite structure 13m x 5.2m, carbon fiber over aluminum honeycomb.
It’s so easy to lose a sense of scale. Showing my wife some pictures of BFR, for instance, went unremarked until she noticed a small figure standing at the bottom.
Your approach- just quote the dimensions- is a good one. The folks busy imaging the black hole are reaching everywhere for ways to describe the gargantuan dimensions and distances, and to make them ‘relatable.’ One recalled a donut on the moon as comparable.
The public is woefully under educated.
Not surprised. Just compare what is taught in schools today compared to the 1950’s. Most of my business students have no clue about the history of entrepreneurship in America. Mention names like Robert Grey, Robert Fulton, Samuel Morse and you get a blank look. They actually think it was the English government that settled America and not private corporations that had charters from the government. They haven’t a clue about how the technology of the modern world was invented and financed.
And the media seems to work to help dumb down the nation. Next month is the 150th Anniversary of one of the greatest engineering achievements of the 19th Century, the Transcontinental Railroad, and you hear nothing about it in the press outside of the railroad news site
That is why I created courses both at the undergraduate and graduate level on the history of American Entrepreneurship. I was forced to because of the huge gaps in K-12 education that emerged with standardized testing. Since I have been teaching the courses students taking then have started doing much better in their other business classes because they understand the role of business in society.
I agree we need some practical education in finance, at the high school level as well as many of my patients did not get to go to college. Home economics, you might call it. Except no cooking or sewing.
It isn’t limited education. Scientists have the same problem with very large and very small numbers. It’s extremely common for scientists to pick units, to make the numbers they are working with less than a thousand and more than a thousandth. If possible, between ten and a tenth. I think in terms of Jupiter being 5.2 AU from the Sun (5.2 times as far as the Earth), Europa orbiting 9.8 Jovian radii from the planet, and oxygen having a mass of 16 AMU (sixteen times as much as hydrogen.) I have to take out a calculator to know that’s 778 billion meters, 0.67 billion meters and 2.7×10^(-23) grams, respectively. It’s just harder for me to think in terms of all those billions and trillions.
Of course, that can backfire. The Jansky, a unit of brightness used in radio astronomy, is 10^(−26) watts per square metre per hertz. Why 10^(-26)? Well, when the unit was introduced in the 1973, most observable radio sources were in the 1 to 1000 Jy range. But the state of the art has improved considerably, and now radio astronomers are stuck with working with those annoying thousands and possibly millionths.
We need a less cumbersome format for exponential notation. I prefer the capital E, i.e. 6.02E23.
Quote from Musk a couple of years ago, “The analogy I use with my team is ‘guys imagine we had six million dollars on a pallet of cash. Six million dollars is falling through the sky. Would we try to catch it?’”
Spaceport USA in the world beyond NASA, 2019 AD. (With apologies to Tom Corbett and Space Academy USA in the World Beyond Tomorrow, 2350 AD) Three boosters coming back down on their exhausts…the way a rocket should land! Oh, BTW, they successfully launched the customer’s payload. Go SpaceX!
I watched this with my 15 year old son and he wasn’t nearly impressed with the three point landings as I was (for the young, technological miracles are the norm these days.) I tried to explain to him the significance of it all and the fact that in his lifetime, humanity will finally be reaching out to the solar system and putting roots down off earth. It is the dawn of an amazing age. Congrats Mr. Musk and his amazing SpaceX team.
I had a similar experience with my family. My 10-year old only seemed to think it was interesting because I thought it was interesting, and my wife seemed like she just didn’t get why I thought it was so fascinating.
I don’t know how anybody can’t get a visceral thrill watching these thin candlesticks contain and direct millions of pounds of explosive force, and target those astounding forces with such precision that two of them land side-by-side within seconds of each other. Maybe it’s just because I do engineering work (not rockets though) myself, so I have some understanding of how difficult it is to make so many layers work together correctly to make such an undertaking possible,
For one thing, they may not realize how big the things are. Notice the people standing next to the booster. You’ll need to zoom in! https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Too many people take our miraculous technology for granted — until the lights go out or the car won’t start!
Maybe in the lifetime of his grandchildren.
If we leave it to NASA and government that is probably optimistic. But private firms are on the job now, so we are moving up the S curve rapidly.
Will we become accustomed to the sight of two boosters landing simultaneously?
Probably. But for now, it’s magic.
I’m sorry, Falcon heavy launches are just beautiful…
Watching the launch I wondered how to describe the difference between a Delta Heavy and a Falcon Heavy launch, leaving aside for now the magical landing.
First, DH: This is a brilliantly magnificent rocket with huge capabilities. Regrettably, her first-stage lifespan is a mere 328 seconds (Wikipedia). And her operational lifespan – she first flew in 2004 – will likely be short.
And, in this corner…we are watching the youngster, FH, the new kid eager to prove herself, brimming with enthusiasm but not much of a track record. And, of course, with a few secrets that are all her own.
Aside from DH requiring 30+ months to build, is there much of a difference? DH is, to those who take the time to learn, can be seen as emblematic of corporate abuse – here I am referring to the costs, and not to the bright women and men who manage and build this magnificent rocket with staggering capabilities.
Take nothing away from DH- this is a breathtaking system with startling abilities.
So, where are the fawning news stories covering DH? Even accounting for DH not being new, these launches are very ho-hum. A little like Apollo16, I suppose.
Watching FH every observer projects herself into the Musk story. The FH story becomes the possibilities become real: showing what can happen in the land of the free, home of the brave. Can it really be that simple?
SpaceX achievements are tied to a dream. Each improvement, innovation, and new accomplishment is a furtherance of that dream.
DH is about providing a service, doing a job, and doing it well. Nothing wrong with that approach, it just doesn’t capture the imagination the way that SpaceX does.
I remember meeting some of the Delta IV engineers when Cx-37 was just being put together. They were given a clean sheet on the design and were proud of putting together what at that time appeared to be an efficient flow and a cost effective design. Yet in retrospect it was not cost-competitive. The time spent on the pad in the vertical position integrating the payload was part of the problem, it would have been difficult to achieve the flight rate that had been hoped for. Also the use of hydrogen for a booster fuel was not logical and left the boosters and core stage larger and more expensive than they would have been with a denser fuel.
I am concerned that it remains unclear how SpaceX will integrate DOD payloads that supposedly (for questionable reasons) have to be kept vertical at all times. If the payload is integrated will the vehicle have to stay vertical and on the pad regardless of weather and slips?
I thought SX planned to install a crane on top of the tower at LC-39A. The encapsulated payload would be transported and installed at the pad, after the rocket is vertical. This is required for some DoD payloads that cannot be rotated after they have been fueled.
There’re real and big technical difference between Delta IV Heavy and Falcon Heavy, the biggest being Falcon Heavy is twice as large as Delta IV Heavy by liftoff mass and 2.4x larger by liftoff thrust.
USAF has been flying big boosters on par with DIVH for decades, Titan IV is larger than DIVH and payload capability is only somewhat lower.
FH on the other hand is the biggest operational launch vehicle right now, it’s basically half the size of a Saturn V, or 60~70% the size of a Shuttle stack, you don’t see big rocket like this flying everyday.
You aren’t going to let a little thing like numerical accuracy get in the way, are you? 🙂
Of course you are right, but my point remains. From a distance these two rockets are very close indeed, particularly to folks tuning into NBC Nightly News. FH gets headlines, DH, not so much.
I like your handle.
One thing I love about this is Space X/Musk has made space exciting again.
As a kid, I watched every NASA launch. NASA was scrappy, agile.
Today NASA is bloated and slow and super expensive. SpaceX is scrappy and agile.
SpaceX is the “NASA of the 1960s”.
Continuous telescopic video of launch and side booster landing, taken by a 3rd party, here:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
That was effing amazing!;-D
Not only is F9H largely reusable, but it delivers a large payload while doing so – and with less reuse, an enormous payload. Compare the costs in either case with the flying (allegedly) money-pit that is SLS (a vehicle which has taken recoverable Shuttle elements and made them throwaways) and weep. And, SpaceX are already testing their next generation rockets…
The best part was the SpaceX Stargate:
https://reddit.app.link/FC3…
Hey, Keith,
Given that SpaceX had even recovered the payload fairings, wouldn’t this make it a “Quadfecta”? (or “Quint-“, if you count the halves as 2).
(Now the final and most challenging effort would be to see if they can ever recover that second stage … might be a bit of an expensive reach)
But then they lost the core stage later when rough seas toppled it so … trifecta sounds good 😉
Yeah, I had just heard about that. Tough luck, but I know they’ll figure out how to retain these Heavy-cores next time.
However, for now, what’s to be done with the one that went over? It, as you said, just toppled over; it didn’t go in at XX kph and go to pieces on impact. BTW, that core was near empty at that point too. So now, I’m imaging this puppy is floating around, waiting for someone to either rescue it…. or run into it! =8-O
They lost the core booster in rough seas on the way back to port because it wasn’t tied down.
They have had problems with the boosters sliding and I thought they had added a hydraulic securing mechanism. That said, anyone who has been that far out in the Atlantic knows the power of the sea must be taken seriously indeed. Maybe they will add a crane to lower the booster into a horizontal position or a bracing structure.