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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-IS-rocket-science dept.

Update: Launch seems to have been successful. The two side boosters landed nearly simultaneously. Footage from the drone ship was cut off. The car made it into space; but the third stage will need to coast through the Van Allen radiation belts for around six hours before it makes the final burn for trans-Mars injection.

Update 2: The middle booster of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket failed to land on its drone ship
Falcon Heavy Post-Launch Media Briefing - Megathread

SpaceX's newest rocket, the Falcon Heavy, is set to be launched at around 1:30 PM EST (6:30 PM UTC) today. The launch window extends to 4:00 PM EST (9:00 PM UTC).

SpaceX will attempt to recover all three boosters during the launch. The two previously-flown side boosters will attempt to land nearly simultaneously at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Landing Zones 1 and 2. The center core will attempt to land on a drone barge hundreds of miles off the coast of Florida.

The dummy payload for the Falcon Heavy is Elon Musk's personal 2008 Tesla Roadster. It is carrying a mannequin wearing SpaceX's space suit flight suit that will be used when the company begins to send astronauts to the International Space Station. The car will be launched into a heliocentric orbit that will bring it close to Mars (and back near Earth) periodically, and is equipped with three cameras. Its stereo system will be playing David Bowie's Space Oddity.

If the launch is successful, the Falcon Heavy could be flown within the next 3 to 6 months for a customer such as the U.S. Air Force, Arabsat, Inmarsat, or ViaSat.

Falcon Heavy will be capable of launching 63,800 kg to low-Earth orbit (LEO), 26,700 kg to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO), 16,800 kg to Mars, or 3,500 kg to Pluto (New Horizons was 478 kg). It will supplant the Delta IV Heavy, which is capable of launching 28,790 kg to LEO or 14,220 kg to GTO. Space Launch System Block 1 will be capable of launching 70,000 kg to LEO (Block 1B: 105,000 kg to LEO, Block 2: 130,000 kg to LEO).

Musk has suggested that an additional two side boosters could be added to Falcon Heavy (perpendicularly?) to make a "Falcon Super Heavy" with even more thrust. This may not happen if SpaceX decides to focus on the BFR instead, which as planned would be able to launch 150,000 kg to LEO while being fully reusable and potentially cheaper than the Falcon 9 (or capable of launching 250,000 kg to LEO in expendable mode).

The webcast can be seen here or directly on YouTube.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday February 06 2018, @02:15PM (7 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 06 2018, @02:15PM (#633815) Journal

    Comparison term - ISS mass in 2016: 419,725 kg [nasa.gov] - so 3 LEO trips with the same rocket will be enough to put an ISS-worth of mass on LEO.
    Took ISS 13 years (between 1998 and 2011).

    This may not happen if SpaceX decides to focus on the BFR instead, which as planned would be able to launch 150,000 kg to LEO while being fully reusable and potentially cheaper than the Falcon 9 (or capable of launching 250,000 kg to LEO in expendable mode).

    100 tons difference between uncontrolled reentry and total recovery of the launch vehicle ... mmm, need to check that (launches Kerbal Space Program)

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:49PM (1 child)

    by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:49PM (#634018) Homepage
    ITYM "that would be impressive". That value is for a hypothetical future launch vehicle, and therefore deserves the conditional future tense.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:29PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:29PM (#634050) Journal

      Apologies for not being versed in the subtleties of English language during (and after) a sleepless night.

      Other than that... I may be tempted to invoke the excuse of SpaceX being the (one and only) Musk enterprise that manages to hit the targets they announce, thus the conditional future has credible chances to actually happen.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 06 2018, @08:15PM (4 children)

    by VLM (445) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @08:15PM (#634068)

    so 3 LEO trips with the same rocket

    Yeah well, you'll be shocked, shocked to hear that booster mfgr always give ridiculous specs for "LEO" such as "with a hurricane acting as a tailwind at launch time". More seriously, the famous example of the Saturn5 is claimed even on wikipedia as 140,000 Kg to 90 mile orbit, well, lets be realistic, unless you're a bar of tungsten you're re-entering pretty soon at that low of an altitude. Also the 5 was spec'd at Florida inclination about 30 degrees.

    Comparing apples to apples I'm not what the corrected figures are for the 63,800 falcon because I'm too lazy to run the math. I'm sure theres some marketing bastard out there spec'ing LEO orbits to a mere 80 miles altitude, heck if all you're trying to do is reach Hawaii from North Korea suborbital, that's more than good enough. Like some dude said in Korean, we aim for Mars Orbit but keep almost hitting Hawaii. Somewhat more seriously, you're not gonna like the crazy ISS orbit the Russians demanded which averages in the low 200 mile range (lets say 250) and inclination of about 52 degrees.

    I'm too lazy to look up the Chilton manual (LOL) for the Falcon Heavy but I'm gonna guess spacex marketing didn't spec LEO as the whacked out inclination and altitude of the ISS, but probably not as wimpy as the Sat5 spec.

    A bad automotive analogy would be something like advertising a car as great for cross country USA road trips while not mentioning the marketing definition of cross country is Seattle to LA vs National Lampoon's definition of cross country was something like NYC to San Fran, so, you know, a couple percent difference here and there.

    I guess in summary I'm saying "yeah maybe 4 or 5 trips thank you marketing department but you are more or less correct in that it'll be a rather small integer"

    A geosynchronous space station would be interesting. Imagine com-sat-ing the hell out of a geosync human staffed space station, cover that darn thing with narrow bean transponders. It has all the advantages of prepping for solar flare proof interplanetary (interstellar?) generation-ships along with the bonus that if you totally F up a lifeboat can re-enter and land in less than an hour (depending on how much fuel you're willing to burn in the lifeboat)

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday February 06 2018, @11:09PM (3 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 06 2018, @11:09PM (#634161) Journal

      A geosynchronous space station would be interesting.

      Oh, yeah, for some values of "interesting".
      One of these values being the following interesting trivia "Did you know the geosync orbit is 35,786 km altitude, in the outer part of the Van Allen Radiation Belt? That's where the high energy (0.1-10MeV) electrons [wikipedia.org] are playing".

      A Bremsstrahlung [wikipedia.org] in the X-Ray spectrum for cascading collisions (most probable) or gamma radiation if the electron is stopped in a single collision.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday February 07 2018, @09:03AM (1 child)

        by deimtee (3272) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @09:03AM (#634339) Journal

        The van allen belt ions are only a problem because the ones that miss you get to go round again. There isn't actually that much in them, and there are serious proposals to actually drain them if we get heavily into space industry.

        --
        If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @09:19PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @09:19PM (#634573)

          I've wondered whether the belts contribute energy to the earth's magnetic field, if so then draining them could be long term catastrophic.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 07 2018, @01:00PM

        by VLM (445) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @01:00PM (#634386)

        I agree the environment isn't as nice as LEO, but bug, feature, whats the difference. I was kinda into the idea of "We're gonna have to make heavily shielded interplanetary shuttles sooner or later, so may as well start by experimenting with them in comfortable close-to-earth geosync orbit"

        In science fiction they usually handle it by everyone goes into a multi layer vault of lead sheet and the main water tank when there's a bad solar flare. Day to day exposure, ... low level chemo drugs in the food?