Big Flying Rockets: Space Launches V

[SpaceChampion]

Psyche press briefing live now, in anticipation of tomorrow launch on a Falcon Heavy.

 

[SpaceChampion]

Launch video for Psyche on Falcon Heavy:

 

[SpaceChampion]

Today's annular solar eclipse:

 

[SpaceChampion]

FAA has issued a launch license for the 2nd Starship test launch for Friday.  Launch window 7am to 9am CST.

Launch is now targeted during a 20-minute launch window opening Saturday, November 18th, at 7:00 a.m. CST / 13:00 UTC.

Edited November 16, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[SpaceChampion]

Nasaspaceflight's livestream:

Tim Dodd's streaming in 4k video:

 

What NASA wants to see from SpaceX’s second Starship test flight

Quote

"Tomorrow is a test and we’re going to learn a lot either way," Lisa Watson-Morgan, who manages NASA's Human Landing System program, told Ars in an interview this week. "We’d love to see it go off perfectly, but frankly, if it doesn’t, it’s still going to be a great learning event, and it still will give us progression on the schedule for the different flight tests, and then we’ll know the areas we need to more deeply penetrate.”

 

 

SpaceX's official stream on X:
https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB

Edited November 18, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[SpaceChampion]

Successful launch!  Not a single engine failed. Booster and ship terminated though, unknown yet what issues triggered the computers to end it.  Booster hot stage (lighting the ship first while still attached to booster) separated perfectly, but there seemed to be a leak and moments stage flight termination system triggered.  

Ship used nearly all its fuel before loss of signal.

Launch pad appears pristine.

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, SpaceChampion said:

Successful launch!  Not a single engine failed. Booster and ship terminated though, unknown yet what issues triggered the computers to end it.  Booster hot stage (lighting the ship first while still attached to booster) separated perfectly, but there seemed to be a leak and moments stage flight termination system triggered.  

Ship used nearly all its fuel before loss of signal.

Launch pad appears pristine.

 

 

Watching all engines burn without a flameout was pretty cool as was the “hot staging”… 

They’re getting there.  Now get ride of the “Musky” taint and keep it up.

[SpaceChampion]

Interesting speculation.  There was possibly a fluid hammer effect that could have been avoided, but we don't know the reason for the slowing down of thrust, whether intended or something else caused it.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

Progress is progress. Interesting to see the NASA pre-launch PR indicated a reasonable expectation of the mission not achieving completion with success being defined as doing better than the first launch. And you can't deny that happened.

The sheer physics problems of getting something that big into space have a way to go before being solved. On Scott Manley's post launch analysis he thinks some of the heat shielding on stage 2 was coming off which means Starship would probably not survive re-entry, so the fixing of the heat shielding to the hull will need looking at.

I can't help but think if this was a solely NASA (govt funded) project lots of people who are celebrating this as a great success would be complaining that this is a waste of money and the project needs to be shut down. A good thing all the testing done for the moon mission, or the pre-human/animal flight testing, back in the 60's wasn't live streamed. Starship is partly funded by NASA. The space industry doesn't totally get by without welfare cheques.

[SpaceChampion]

Launch pad looks great, and three more ship/booster stacks are nearing ready to go.  It's possible the next launch will be ready to go in 4 weeks on a technical level, not sure if the licensing process will slow things down.

View from the pad:

https://imgur.com/bbExMHg

 

[SpaceChampion]

A good explanation of the test flight, including a review of ground operations happening in the hours before:

 

[SpaceChampion]

Rocket Lab returns to flight for its Electron rocket after a failure in September.

What's interesting about this rocket is you don't hear a thud thud thud of the pumps because they are driven by electric motors.  Usually, a portion of the propellants is diverted to ignite in a small chamber to drive the motors.  Without that this sounds really smooth.

[SpaceChampion]

The most reused Falcon 9 rocket (booster 1058), having flown 19 flights over 3.5 years, had a tumble on the recovery droneship after the launch and landing on the 23rd. 

In total it's launched 260+ metric tons to space, including 2 astronauts to the ISS, and more than 860 satellites.

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During transport back to Port early this morning, the booster tipped over on the droneship due to high winds and waves. Newer Falcon boosters have upgraded landing legs with the capability to self-level and mitigate this type of issue.

The initial certification of the boosters was to launch and land 10 times with minimal inspection, this was later expanded to 20, however SpaceX does expect them to last to as much as 100 flights each with more serious refurbishment.

Edited December 27, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[SpaceChampion]

ULA is attempting to launch their Vulcan rocket for the first time in about 40 minutes...   2:18 AM EST, January 8, 2024.  The Vulcan is just the first stage, using Blue Origin's BE-4 methalox enginess, while the upper stage is ULA's Centaur.

This is called the Certification-1 mission, and it'll have payloads -- the first is the Peregrine Lunar lander for Astrobotic, in fulfillment of their NASA contract in the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.  Peregrine itself is carrying 20 payloads to the lunar surface.  Astrobotic aims to be a shipping company like a Fed-Ex for the Moon.

The second is Celestis Memorial Spaceflights deep space Voyager mission known as the Enterprise Flight -- sending ashes to the moon to spread human remains...  I have questions about that, but it's late.

More details: https://www.ulalaunch.com/missions/next-launch/vulcan-cert-1

Launch stream:

 

Edited January 8 by SpaceChampion

[SpaceChampion]

Really clean first launch of Vulcan, but unfortunately the Peregrine lander is having issues with a critical loss of fuel.  It likely will be unable to land.

 

[Zorral]

Nope.

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2024-01-08/peregrino-1-la-primera-mision-comercial-para-preparar-el-regreso-de-astronautas-a-la-luna.html

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.... The Peregrino 1 module was already flying towards the Moon, in a mission that aims to be the first private initiative to achieve a soft landing on the satellite, when "an anomaly occurred." Seven hours after a successful launch from Cape Canaveral (Florida) at 8:18 a.m. (Spanish peninsular time) aboard the Vulcan Centaur rocket , the company in charge of the lunar module, Astrobotic, announced in a statement that it had not been able to direct it toward the Sun to feed off their energy. In another later note, the company explained that the problem may have arisen from poor module propulsion, which "if confirmed, threatens the ship's ability to make a soft landing on the Moon." Three tense hours later, the company's technicians managed to take control of the device when the battery was already "low" and reestablish communications with the probe to reorient it towards the Sun. But the failure in the propulsion that caused the initial anomaly has meant “a critical loss of fuel.” Everything indicates that it is going to be lost. ....

Is ... " already flying towards the Moon" ... isn't exactly the correct way to say what was going on?

Well, this is a translation into English, which was probably initially translated out of English!

Edited January 8 by Zorral

[SpaceChampion]

Update from SpaceX:

* reason for the IFT-2 Starship RUD traced to when they vented extra oxygen that wasn't needed since Starship wasn't carrying a payload to orbit.  If they had been carrying a payload, and thus didn't dump the oxygen, they would have made it to orbit.

* expected to get to orbit with IFT-3, aiming for mid February. 

* Sounds like carrying the new Starlink v.3 as payload, and ejecting them while on a suborbital trajectory to Hawaii, but apparently still high enough to deploy the Starlink into proper orbit.

* want to solve orbital refueling this year, but likelier next year.  Will perform an inter-tank (still within a single vehicle) propellant transfer for NASA on IFT-3.   About 10 tons of oxygen from the header tank (containing LOX used for landing) to the main tank, and back again.

* plan to test the payload door in this next launch as well.

* and do a zero G burn of the vacuum Raptors for the first time.

* with Starship there is a path to 200t to orbit with full reusability.

* Aiming for up to 150 orbital launches in 2024

* Qualifying Falcon 9 boosters for reuse on up to 40 flights each

* Demonstrated 3-day launchpad turnaround, aiming for under 24 hours by the end of this year

* Shipped the 4th generation Starlink Terminal and introducing Starlink Mini later this year that "can fit in a backpack."  

* Starlink V2 mini sats: upgraded from 88TB/s to 165TB/s .

* Building a second Starship tower in Texas.

 

 

Edited January 14 by SpaceChampion

[SpaceChampion]

Update from NASA regarding the Artemis Program:

* Artemis 2 (the four-person crewed circumnavigation of the Moon) will be delayed to NET September 2025

* Artemis 3 (landing the crewed Starship HLS) postponed to NET September 2026

- the reasons for the delays on NASA's side of the  equation is that there were 3 issues found:

1) unwanted erosion of Orion's heat shield was seen in the Artemis 1 mission back in Dec 2022.

2) issues found in the life support circuitry.

3) issues found in Orion's electrical systems found in various scenarios of the launch abort sequence.  Probably would work just fine but might not maintain power margins needed from separation all the way to touchdown.

 

Edited January 18 by SpaceChampion

[Erik of Hazelfield]

Those are ambitious goals for the Starship! If they succeed with just half of those then that’d be a resounding success.

If all this came to pass - what would still be needed to be done before a manned trip to Mars could happen?

[SpaceChampion]

2 hours ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

Those are ambitious goals for the Starship! If they succeed with just half of those then that’d be a resounding success.

If all this came to pass - what would still be needed to be done before a manned trip to Mars could happen?

If what is necessary means you can leave out things needed for the long term plans, then:

1. getting Starship to mars -> orbital refueling
2. getting Starship back from mars -> fuel production on mars from frozen and atmospheric sources of CO2 and water.
3. getting the humans inside Starship to mars -> life support in space (some of it can be scaled up from Dragon)
4. keeping the humans inside Starship alive on the surface of mars -> life support on mars

the last could involve landing near a source of ice to use to make drinking water and breathable oxygen, or they could plan to cache enough of that with prior cargo ships (along with the food, medicine, and other consumables).

What SpaceX engineers have said is that the first missions won't need totally closed-loop recycling of air and water.  The benefit of taking 100 to 200 tons per cargo delivery is you have a lot of mass to use for consumables.