SpaceX--Spacecraft, rockets, and Mars

[SpaceChampion]

A horrible vision of spending $30 billion doing nothing worthwhile in space.  10 SLS missions, but no boots on the ground on either Mars or Moon due to lack of money to actually pay for payloads / landers.
 

I do have a hard time seeing Trump caring enough to listen to his pro-commercial space advisors and fight Congress on this.  Plus the anti-Musk people are already campaigning.

On the other side of the coin, Gingrich is pro-commercial space and favours SpaceX.  We'll have to see if that means anything.

[SpaceChampion]

I think he should just get on with it and build that Iron Man suit we all know is coming.

[SerHaHa]

I agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson that the NASA budget should be doubled.  I'm a fan of SpaceX and the other civilian companies too, we should be putting everything we can into helping them out.  The hundreds of billions wasted on stupid crap through the defense budget, and various other make work projects during the last 8 years (1 million dollar study about kids and what juice tastes better, etc...come ON).  All that crap should have the $ put directly into the space budget, and the reason I feel this way isn't just about exploration, and learning about the moon/mars, even though that's a worthy goal.  Survival is my primary concern.

It doesn't take that large of a rock to greatly affect life on this planet should one connect with us.  The last big hit mars took a short while back, we only detected it 22 months prior to impact.  It takes 4 years to prepare a ship for a launch.  We should have ships ready to go, several of them, with the tasking of deflecting/stopping potential threats to earth.  A friend who worked for SpaceX told mee that one of the simplest options they have for this will work better than nuclear weapons or all the other sci fi ideas seen throughout the years - all they need to do is paint the asteroid white.  Making it white means that that solar light will give it a harder push when that light hits it, they can actually change the color brightness to affect how much they want to move the orbit of the threatening rock.  So, ships with large paint/liquid cargo capacities need to be ready to go, whether we station the payloads in earth orbit, ready to be hooked up by a ship on alert still based on earth, or whatever, we still should be building a capability to act.  We have the technology finally to have a shot at saving life on this planet, when I see all the $ wasted on ridiculous crap, it's infuriating we haven't developed that tech to do so. 

Also, IMO we should be setting up a base on the moon before going to Mars, there are so many things that will come up with such a project, and the moon is just days away for extra emergency parts or whatever comes up.  Mars, even at its closest, is many months.  Once we have proven tech and methods for sustaining humans on the moon - even though it's a different environment than Mars, it's still a different body than Earth - we can then consider a Mars mission IMO.

[SpaceChampion]

SpaceX planning on returning to flight next week with a commerical flight from Vandenberg AFB of a flock of Iridium satellites.  January 8th target date for launch.

This one if successful would be the first west coast launch with landing.  It's only going to 780km altitude, so should have plenty of thrust available for landing.  SpaceX was building a Landing Zone there at Vandenberg, but I don't know if that's completed; if not, then it'll land on one of their autonomous drone ships.  Since Iridiums are placed into a 86-degree near-polar orbit the Falcon 9 will launch southwards instead of the usual eastwards as from Florida.

[Free Northman Reborn]

One of the most important launches in SpaceX's history. We need this to go well. A successful landing will make it even more convincing.

Also, their next launch, this time from LC39A, is scheduled for only a week later, on Jan 15.

And the next Dragon launch to the ISS only a few weeks thereafter.

This is the year where SpaceX will hopefully reach the 2 launches per month milestone. I'm hoping for 24 launches in total this year. Quite a huge leap, considering they haven't achieved 10 launches in a previous calendar year yet.

[SpaceChampion]

They have done 2 launches in a month before (3 times), just not every month for an entire year.  They need to get up to about 36 launches a year to start eating away at their backlog of scheduled launches.  With 4 launch sites eventually, they should be able to do much more than that.

Part of the reason for low launch rate is of course the two interruptions to the schedule due to the recent explosions (1 in flight, 1 on the pad during fueling, both involving the helium tank, a year apart). 

The other part is the constant improvement and change to the rocket design which has more than doubled the performance in terms of payload lift capacity since initial announcement of the original version 1.0 F9 and Falcon Heavy specs.  In fact, the F9 of today can nearly lift what the original specs for Falcon Heavy v1.0 were listed as, 22T vs 25T.   If SpaceX wasn't going to Mars, a Falcon Heavy wouldn't even be needed any more for many of the commercial payloads.  F9 is more than enough.

But now an F9-Full Thrust can land on Mars a payload the similar size as their F9 v1.0 could only launch to GEO, 4.0T vs 4.3T.   Improving F9 improves the FH's Mars payload capacity to 13.6T.

However the constant change means they're taking their time to get the design pushed to its theoretically maximum.  Some have criticized them for this, but it saves on costs in the long term, rather than getting experience flying a design that would eventually be abandoned, but fulfilling their contracts rather than have their design engineers sit on their hands drawing a salary and doing paper studies instead of accumulating valuable experience.  Every flight includes at least getting new data they need to tweak the design.  This is the year F9 will be finalized, so FH's maiden flight should be close to finalized as well, with perhaps just a few more iterations, probably by the end of this year.  FH should be ready for the first Mars flight announced for 2018.

Maybe it's too much to hope for, but the maiden flight of the FH doesn't have a payload from a paying customer for it, so maybe SpaceX will do something splashy with it like send a Dragon around the Moon.  That would be a Sputnik moment.  But no Dragon is known to be flying on that flight, so perhaps it's wishful thinking, because they likely have performance data to collect from normal operations.

[SpaceChampion]

Stormy weather postponing the flight until the 14th.

[Free Northman Reborn]

Must say this is disappointing. Not looking like a good start for my prediction of 24 launches this year.

Already Echostar was NET 26 Jan. And the Dragon supply launch only 7 Feb. Really hope this delay does not make any of the next launches slip any further.

 

[SpaceChampion]

Different launch sites, so if there is any delay for those, it won't be because of this first one.

[SpaceChampion]

Some news today straight from SpaceX's proposal to NASA to expand facilities at LZ-1 (Landing Zone 1) to accomodate landing of the three first stage cores of Falcon Heavy indicate they expect up to 12 F9 launches a year and 6 FH launches -- so 18 total at LZ-1.  That's just at the one launch site, so since they'll have potentially 4 sites the launch rate could be around 64 launches at year if we want to be optimistic.

HOWEVER, for 2017 at KSC and Cape Canaveral the documents indicate an expectation of only 10 F9 flight this year and 1 FH1 (the maiden flight).

Looking at other sources I see this year 7 flights for Iridium out of Vandenburg AFB scheduled, and possibly a second Falcon Heavy there.  Same source says 21 F9 out of KSC, and a third FH too.  So who knows?

[SpaceChampion]

Live stream of the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch of the Iridium Next satellites starting nowish:

 

[Free Northman Reborn]

Nailed the landing! Awesome footage.

[Free Northman Reborn]

On 2017/01/10 at 2:07 AM, SpaceChampion said:

Some news today straight from SpaceX's proposal to NASA to expand facilities at LZ-1 (Landing Zone 1) to accomodate landing of the three first stage cores of Falcon Heavy indicate they expect up to 12 F9 launches a year and 6 FH launches -- so 18 total at LZ-1.  That's just at the one launch site, so since they'll have potentially 4 sites the launch rate could be around 64 launches at year if we want to be optimistic.

HOWEVER, for 2017 at KSC and Cape Canaveral the documents indicate an expectation of only 10 F9 flight this year and 1 FH1 (the maiden flight).

Looking at other sources I see this year 7 flights for Iridium out of Vandenburg AFB scheduled, and possibly a second Falcon Heavy there.  Same source says 21 F9 out of KSC, and a third FH too.  So who knows?

Gwynne Shotwell said in an interview this week that they are aiming for between 20-24 launches this year.

[SpaceChampion]

Wow, good landing!  Impressive view out the rocket-cam, so that might just be the best landing video they've gotten so far.

 

[SpaceChampion]

Next launch is targeted for Monday, the 30th -- an Echostar sat to geosynchronous for Brazilian TV.  This will be on a unflown F9 Block 3 rocket (aka a v.1.2 Full Thrust) that isn't going to be recovered.  Probably the last expendable rocket they fly.  This is because the sat is heavy, and in the future payloads of this mass range would be taken up by a reusable Falcon Heavy.  SpaceX has a few Block 3 rockets to use up anyway before moving on to Block 4 and Block 5 (the final version).

"Block 4" is expected by SpaceX watchers to have the performance upgrades to the engine, while "Block 5" is expected to have all the final little tweaks that make for improving reusability.  Apparently the landing legs are useful as air brakes too!  They can cut descent velocity down in half, saving a lot of fuel.

They only plan to fly a few Block 4 rockets for testing purposes before moving on to Block 5.  Manufacturing of Block 5 was expected to have started earlier this month.

Concerning reusability, the engines on Block 5 should be able to be used for 100s of launches, if not indefinitely for decades.

Quote

"Final Falcon 9 has a lot of minor refinements that collectively are important, but uprated thrust and improved legs are the most significant.

"Actually, I think the F9 boosters could be used almost indefinitely, so long as there is scheduled maintenance and careful inspections. Falcon 9 Block 5 -- the final version in the series -- is the one that has the most performance and is designed for easy reuse, so it just makes sense to focus on that long term and retire the earlier versions. Block 5 starts production in about 3 months and initial flight is in 6 to 8 months, so there isn't much point in ground testing Block 3 or 4 much beyond a few reflights."

 

[Free Northman Reborn]

On 2016/11/23 at 2:14 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That's just wonderful .  He'll put the squeeze on Musk.  I'll be shocked if he doesn't.

I noted in in the press briefing today that Elon Musk was one of the select business leaders invited to the business breakfast on Trump's second day in office.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

15 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I noted in in the press briefing today that Elon Musk was one of the select business leaders invited to the business breakfast on Trump's second day in office.

Are you sure this isn't where he puts the squeeze on Musk?

[Mudguard]

7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Are you sure this isn't where he puts the squeeze on Musk?

Trump seems to generally like other rich and successful people, at least based on who he's selected for his cabinet and other top level positions, and as long as they haven't made a habit of publicly insulting him.  I'm not sure why Trump would want to hurt Musk, since Musk's companies are very high profile and employ a lot of Americans.  Helping Musk out likely would help create more jobs, and Trump could try to share/steal some of Musk's success.  I could see Trump trying to take credit for developing the commercial space industry if it really takes off while he's President.  The timing is just about right for that, with or without Trump.

[Altherion]

There is some speculation that Trump might be interested in the Mars mission. There's no evidence for it as of right now, but it seems plausible simply because of Trump's campaign rhetoric. Think about it: to somebody like Trump, when was America "winning" or "great"? Surely the day of the Apollo 11 lunar landing must qualify (Trump was 23 years old at the time). There are a few other events (e.g. the fall of the Soviet Union), but none of them can be replicated or surpassed in the same way as the Mars mission would surpass all space efforts up until now. It also has the benefit of being relatively non-controversial, mostly already paid for (up through the 2020 campaign, anyway) and under Musk's control (i.e. if it works out, Trump can claim credit for it, but if it doesn't, he can disavow it and cite minimal investment).

[SpaceChampion]

I'm extremely dubious this is anything more than speculative hype from journalists.  More likely its just the Mars faction putting out a story to cut the wind in the sails of the Moon faction that had been getting some press a few weeks earlier.  Its all happened before, it'll all happen again.  Every new administration it is the same back and forth jostling.

When GWB came into office and his people presented their Moon plan to him, he said "But this isn't just about the Moon, right?"  So Bush single-handedly turned the Back to the Moon plan into a Moon, Mars and Beyond plan with that one comment.  Didn't matter.  Mike Griffin became NASA Administrator and came up with the Constellation program, which was a Moon rocket, lacking a deep space habitat that could survive a 6-9 month journey to Mars.  So it was a defacto Moon-only plan, which Congress supported.  Bush never mentioned it again.