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SpaceX completed the last big test of its crew capsule before launching astronauts in the next few months, mimicking an emergency escape shortly after liftoff Sunday.
No one was aboard for the wild ride in the skies above Cape Canaveral, just two mannequins.
A Falcon 9 rocket blasted off as normal, but just over a minute into its capsule catapulted off the top 12 miles (20 kilometers) above the Atlantic. Powerful thrusters on the capsule propelled it up and out of harm's way, as the rocket engines deliberately shut down and the booster tumbled out of control and exploded in a giant fireball.
The capsule reached an altitude of about 27 miles (44 kilometers) before parachuting into the ocean just offshore to bring the nine-minute test flight to a close and pave the way for two NASA astronauts to climb aboard next time.
Everything appeared to go well despite the choppy seas and overcast skies. Within minutes, a recovery ship was alongside the capsule and preparing to pull it from the water.
"I'm super fired up," Elon Musk, the company's founder and chief executive, said at a news conference. "It's just going to be wonderful to get astronauts back into orbit from American soil after almost a decade of not being able to do so. That's just super exciting."
NASA astronauts have not launched from the U.S. since 2011 when the space shuttle program ended.
[...] Last month, meanwhile, Boeing's Starliner crew capsule ended up in the wrong orbit on its first test flight and had to skip the space station. The previous month, only two of the Starliner's three parachutes deployed during a launch abort test.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday January 21 2020, @11:38PM (1 child)
A couple of numbers put this into perspective.
The land based receiver for a 10GW orbital solar power station is about 27km2. That is 6km diameter as parent said.
For comparison, a 1 MW terrestrial PV plant is about a hectare, 0.01km2. Scaling that up to 10GW is about 100km2 of just PV panels, ignoring the other infrastructure. The big win isn't from the space though. It's from the uptime. The Terran panels lose roughly 12 hours a day from the rotation of the Earth. An orbital station loses less than an hour and a half.
We'll need to field test the receivers to see if we can use them as nature parks or if they end up as barren desertified wastelands. The projections lean toward the former, but I want to see it before I believe it.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday January 22 2020, @01:51AM
Few points.
The eclipses are not an everyday thing. If the SPS's are in GEO then their orbit is inclined at 23° to the ecliptic. The eclipses only happen through two short periods twice a year - spring / autumn equinoxes - and they last about 20 minutes.
Terran panels lose a lot more than 12 hours a day. Depending on location and climate terran panels produce a maximum of about 8 hours a day equivalent. Most of the time it is less than six.
IMHO if the land under your receiver is unusable then your receiver is obviously missing too much energy.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.