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SpaceX, Blue Origin to launch within minutes of each other Tuesday
The billionaires' battle for commercial space supremacy continues Tuesday with planned launches from both Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and SpaceX, run by Elon Musk.
Blue Origin only announced the launch window for one of its New Shepard rockets carrying nine NASA-sponsored experiments into space a day ahead of time. Blast-off is set for 8:30 a.m. Central time from the company's west Texas launch facility.
That comes less than 20 minutes after the launch window for a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket opens at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida starting at 9:11 Eastern time. A brand new Block 5 Falcon 9 booster will loft into orbit GPS III SV01, a new, super powerful global positioning system satellite for the US Air Force. You may also hear the satellite called by its nickname, "Vespucci."
And, not to be left out of the fun, Arianespace is set to launch about 2 hours later... and then India's GSLV is set to launch at 10:30 UTC that same day!
Launch Schedule – Spaceflight Now
Update: Double scrubbing has dashed hopes of a 4-launch day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @06:54AM
I think you can take it for granted that the US military will never need to block or jam it. The probability that it does not have turn-off or deliberate inaccuracy capability is zero.
If you meant harder for Russia to block, well yeah, but no big deal, if things get to that point then the nukes aren't far behind, and they don't need GPS.