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SpaceX's Big Falcon Topic 2


SpaceChampion

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On 3/14/2019 at 11:11 AM, SpaceChampion said:

Falcon Heavy isn't "rated" for human crews so Orion can never fly on it, since SpaceX doesn't want to bother when it has Starship in the pipeline.  So as you said the TLI stage would be more likely for FH to loft.

It's an uncrewed mission, so Falcon Heavy and Delta IV Heavy not being human-rated wouldn't be an issue (for this flight). 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Next launch is the return of Falcon Heavy to the launch pad!  April 7th is current target date for the launch of Arabsat-6A at the Cape, LC-39A.

All boosters are Block 5, so this is the most powerful rocket SpaceX will fly until Starship & Super Heavy is in the sky.

 

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Not sure if this is the right thread, but has anyone been paying attention to India shooting down one of its satellites in LEO?

NASA said today that the debris from the explosion now threatens the ISS.

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"What we are tracking right now, objects big enough to track - we're talking about 10 cm (4 inches) or bigger -about 60 pieces have been tracked," he said.

He said 24 of those pieces were traveling above the ISS, even though the satellite had been orbiting 185 miles above the Earth, lower than the station, which orbits roughly 250 miles above the Earth.

Apparently the risk of satellite debris colliding with the ISS has increased by 44% since the test.

Guess we'll know in a few weeks if we have a "Gravity" situation on our hands.

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Unsurprisingly, Bezos' Blue Origin & Amazon wants to compete with Musk's SpaceX on providing satellite internet as well.

Amazon Project Kuiper announced, 3236 sats.

It's going to get crowded up there.   Though Blue Origin has yet to launch anything to orbit (they're just barely doing suborbital hops right now) Bezos obviously has much deeper pockets than Musk / SpaceX, so it's going to be a competition eventually.  But SpaceX has the advantage -- considering Blue Origin was founded the year before SpaceX but still has no orbital rocket means SpaceX could eat up the market by completing their constellation first.

Only OneWeb is likely ready to compete, backed by Virgin Galactic, who doesn't have an orbital rocket either, but is providing hefty financial support in addition to that from SoftBank.   OneWeb has already launched the first 6 of its satellites on Russian Soyuz rockets.  OneWeb is also working with Intelsat, so some of the communications backbone will be done by the latter in the mean time.

Sooner or later I'd expect a Chinese constellation to be announced.  Would anyone outside China trust the Chinese to provide their internet though?  Maybe some of their African and South American client states...

 

 

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They also did the static fire test for the next Falcon Heavy launch yesterday. This will be the first commercial launch of the Falcon Heavy and it uses the Block 5 version of the Falcon 9 rockets that comprise it which means that it's capable about 10% more thrust than last year's demo. The launch is currently scheduled for sometime next week -- if all goes well, it can be as early as April 9th.

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Yes, Starhopper is for hop tests (1. lift off, hover, then land; 2.  lift off, hover, translate some distance, hover, then land.  3. suborbital hop to above 100km, then land.)  They are starting with one Raptor engine to test the engine firing and integration with the rocket, and will soon add 3 to get the configuration needed for landing from orbit.    The above video is the one-engine version for tethered test firing.  I believe one engine is probably enough for the final stages of landing (a hover-slam where speed is reduced to zero the instant it touches the surface), but three engines are needed to slow down from orbital speeds and make the landing not so slammy.

 

 

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Falcon Heavy might launch tomorrow if the systems check and weather goes well.

Meanwhile, here's a interesting quote from Lori Garver, former Deputy Administrator of NASA:

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"I'll never forget being at Marshall with the leadership team the day that SpaceX announced the Heavy," said Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator from 2009 to 2013. She recalls NASA officials telling her: "Lori, you have got to tell your friend Elon he can't do that. He's in our lane. You made us get out of low-Earth orbit, so we've given him that lane, but this is our lane. We build the big rockets."

 

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Israel's SpaceIL "Beresheet" landing on the moon RIGHT NOW

 

Update: landing failed.  No specifics yet. 

SpaceIL is not an Israeli government-funded company, but privately funded from donations including some billionaire.

 

 

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Too bad about the Moon landing, but that's a really hard thing to do -- when they first started doing it, both the US and USSR crashed several landers.

I watched the Falcon Heavy live and it was awesome. The tweet about fairings is interesting: looks like they've given up on catching them and decided to just waterproof the things.

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