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Scenes from the crash site. Starship SN10 landed, but shortly after experienced a RUD. This is the aftermath of that rapid unscheduled disassembly. Check out the mangled Raptor Engine in the 4th pic!
Starships - three unique side-by-side cool clips from Mary, syncing the moment of Raptors' ignition prior to landing.
@NASASpaceflight
@SpaceX
@BocaChicaGal
https://youtube.com/watch?v=sDTZa-tm3A8
The notion of reusing rockets finally went mainstream in 2020. As the year progressed, it became clear that SpaceX launch customers have gotten a lot more comfortable with flying on used, or "flight-proven," first stages of the Falcon 9 rocket. One commercial customer, Sirius, launched its XM-7 satellite on the seventh flight of a Falcon 9 booster in December. Also, the first national security payload flew on a reused booster last month when the US National Reconnaissance Office launched its NROL-108 mission on the fifth flight of a Falcon 9 first stage.
NASA, too, agreed to fly future crewed missions to the International Space Station—beginning with the Crew-2 spaceflight in the spring of 2021—on used Falcon 9 rockets. And the US Space Force said it would launch its GPS III satellites on used boosters in the future as well. These are among the highest-value missions the United States has. //
NASA deserves credit for pioneering work in reusable spaceflight. The space shuttle was the world's first partially reusable launch system, with the orbiter and solid rocket boosters capable of multiple flights after significant refurbishment. But it wasn't cheap—the best independent estimate of the shuttle's cost over the lifetime of the program is about $1.5 billion per launch.
Starship/Super Heavy is SpaceX’s next-generation super heavy-lift reusable launch vehicle. The first stage, known as Super Heavy, will produce 71.2 MN of thrust, compared to the Saturn V’s 34 MN of thrust. This will make it the most powerful rocket ever made. When it’s operational, Starship will liftoff from either Boca Chica, Texas; Cape Canaveral, Florida; or an offshore launch platform.
Starship is SpaceX’s plan to colonize Mars and dramatically bring down the cost of space travel. With an estimated eventual cost of $2 million per flight, Starship will be one of the cheapest orbital rockets ever, especially on a cost-per-kilogram basis. Starship will be able to carry 100 tonnes to just about anywhere, due to orbital refuelling.
Although Russia's newest spaceport is located in the far eastern part of the country, it still lies several hundred kilometers from the Pacific Ocean.
This means that as Soyuz rockets climb into space from this location, they drop their stages onto the sparsely populated Yakutia region below. With the Soyuz rocket, there are four boosters that serve as the rocket's "first stage," and these drop away about two minutes after liftoff. Then, the "Blok A" second stage drops away later in the flight. //
as he shared photos and video of these operations on Twitter and Facebook, the chief of Russia's space program, Dmitry Rogozin, could not help but take what he perceived to be a swipe at SpaceX. In his comments, Rogozin referenced Boca Chica, where SpaceX is building a prototype of its Starship Mars rocket, and wondered whether SpaceX would be capable of working in as harsh conditions as his hardy Russian experts.
"This is not Boca Chica. This is Yakutia, and in winter. The team in the area of the fall of the second stage of the One Web mission was deployed two days before yesterday's launch. Temperature - minus 52°," Rogozin wrote on Facebook. "I wonder if gentle SpaceX is able to work in such conditions?" //
The irony, as noted by some users in response to Rogozin, is that "gentle" SpaceX engineers do not need to brave inclement weather to recover their rocket stages. They have built a smarter rocket. SpaceX designed the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage to return to land or set itself down on an autonomous drone ship for future reuse. And its second stage can be commanded to reenter the atmosphere and burn up. //
Rogozin has had a difficult year. As the Falcon 9 has continued to draw commercial launch business away from Russia's Proton rocket, SpaceX's Crew Dragon has also ended NASA's need to buy seats on the Soyuz vehicle for its astronauts to reach the International Space Station.
nimelennarArs Scholae Palatinaeet Subscriptorreplyabout 5 hours agoignore user
Barleyman wrote:
"Technically speaking, it landed".
It's just a little disassembled; it's still good! It's still good! //
trimetaArs Praefectuset Subscriptorreplyabout 5 hours agoReader Favignore user
khebeln wrote:
show nested quotes
Wikipedia: Triethylborane is strongly pyrophoric, igniting spontaneously in air, burning with an apple-green flame characteristic for boron compounds. Thus, it must be handled and stored in nitrogen or argon
The Raptor engine does not use TEB (or TEA, for that matter); it's spark ignition. So the only substance around that burns green is the copper which lines the ignition plate. If that's burning, the engine has ceased to be "reusable."
One other note, in addition to low pressure in the methane header tank leading to an oxygen-rich environment looking for something to burn, don't forget that that same methane is used to actively cool the chamber. So you've got hot oxygen and hot copper. Leading to hot green exhaust. //
hamjudo2000Smack-Fu Master, in trainingreplyabout 5 hours agoNew PosterReader Favignore user
This test not only demonstrated that most things worked right, it also freed up a parking place for another StarShip.
Starman — the dummy riding a cherry-red Tesla Roadster through space — has made his closest approach ever to Mars.
On Wednesday Russia's state space corporation, Roscosmos, unveiled plans to develop a new "Amur" rocket.
The booster will be powered by new and as yet undeveloped rocket engines that burn methane. Just as significantly, for the first time, Russia is seeking to build a reusable first stage. And Roscosmos is targeting a low price of just $22 million for a launch on Amur, which is advertised as being capable of delivering 10.5 tons to low-Earth orbit.
"We would like our rocket to be reliable, like a Kalashnikov assault rifle," said Alexander Bloshenko, executive director of Roscosmos for Advanced Programs and Science.
What is perhaps most striking about the Amur rocket design, however, is how much it resembles a smaller version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which can lift about twice as much payload into orbit.
'Challenger: The Final Flight' successfully tackles the anticipation, tragedy, and recovery involving the defining national event of a generation. //
“It was a totally clear sky…it was ‘Mars to CAVU,’ as we used to say, ‘clear and visibility unlimited.’ It was just a beautiful day,” recounts William Harwood, the longtime Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International. “It was just very cold.”
On Jan. 28, 1986, after crews had finished scrapping off hundreds of giant icicles that had formed the night before, and following two days of scrubbed launches, the 25th flight of the United States Space Shuttle Program was finally cleared to go.
Onboard the shuttle Challenger were astronauts Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judy Resnik, Francis Richard Scobee, Michael Smith, payload specialist Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe — a social studies teacher hailing from Concord High School in New Hampshire and set to be the first civilian in space.
Unknown to the crew of the Challenger, it would be the last mission of the spacecraft. Just 73 seconds into the flight, at an altitude of approximately 46,000 feet, it was over.
They were all gone.
Comprising four episodes and a combined three hours, Netflix’s new documentary, “Challenger: The Final Flight,” successfully tackles the anticipation, tragedy, and recovery involving one of the defining events of national mourning between the assassination of J.F.K. and 9/11.
In a period where much of the output from Hollywood is either uninspired or, conversely, overburdened — and frequently ruined — by the desire to shock audiences by being overly brazen or bizarre, in many respects, what Abrams and his team have produced feels akin to their source material: the product of a bygone era.
True, the cinematography benefits from the latest digital technology, and the score feels more nuanced and authentic than something that would have been composed a generation earlier, but everything else about the production feels refreshingly familiar, albeit with a 2020 up-gloss. //
Ultimately, “Challenger: The Final Fight” is an incredibly pro-life documentary; not in the sense of being anti-abortion, but in the authentic and moving ways it pays tribute to the seven lives that were lost that cold January day 34 years ago. At the end of the miniseries, few viewers will be lamenting the $3.2 billion cost of the disaster — they’ll be left saddened, sore, and shaking their heads at the wholly unnecessary deaths of the brave Americans who boarded the final flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
The Europa Clipper is poised to be one of the most important vessels in the history of exploration — if only government largesse would get out of the way. //
There’s only one problem: today, it’s illegal for it to be taken to space via any existing launch vehicle. The Europa Clipper has been dosed with a poison pill of pork which has endangered the entire mission. //
While a swelling trend of privatization is sweeping space exploration and leading to billions in savings, the Clipper has been legally forbidden from being launched on a private rocket. Quietly slipped into page 129 of a bloated omnibus spending bill from 2016 is a legal requirement that the Clipper can only take to space if it is on the Space Launch System.
The Space Launch System, or SLS, is a $28 billion government rocket program intended to replace the extinct shuttle program. It’s now billions over budget, and after nearly a decade of development still only exists in the imaginations of artists and politicians.
No other NASA mission in history has been forbidden by force of law from using a private rocket. The negative consequences of this law, however, are immense.
“At some point, commercial entities are going to catch up.”
More than 20 years after its introduction, the EmDrive is still being tested in labs around the world, including DARPA. But the controversial thruster's do-or-die moment is quickly approaching.
Most of China's launch fleet is powered by hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has lifted the lid on why reusing Falcon 9 boosters makes economic sense in the long term. //
This week, NASASpaceflight reporter Michael Baylor explained on Twitter that United Launch Alliance, another player in the new space race, has claimed that a company needs to reuse a rocket 10 times for the economics to make sense. SpaceX, Baylor noted, is up to six landings with a single booster.
In response, Musk wrote:
"Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with 3." //
In 2018, ahead of a Falcon 9 Block 5 launch, Musk broke down the costs again. The boost stage, he stated, costs around 60 percent of the total costs, with the upper stage 20 percent, the fairing 10 percent, and the final 10 percent associated with the launch itself. This, CNBC noted, would instead place the cost of a booster at around $37 million. //
In terms of the marginal costs, the costs associated with producing just one extra rocket, Musk also recently shed some further light on the figures. In an interview with Aviation Week in May, Musk listed the marginal cost of a Falcon 9 at $15 million in the best case. He also listed the cost of refurbishing a booster at $1 million. This would fit with Musk's most recent claim that the costs of refurbishment make up less than 10 percent of the booster costs. //
"I don’t want be cavalier, but there isn’t an obvious limit. 100+ flights are possible. Some parts will need to be replaced or upgraded. Cleaning all 9 Merlin [Falcon 9 engine] turbines is difficult. Raptor [the engine for the upcoming Starship] is way easier in this regard, despite being a far more complex engine." //
SpaceX's rocket reusability program is a long-term investment, and it can be hard to quantify the overall savings due to the myriad of factors at play. Musk noted in March 2017 that the company had spent over $1 billion in reusable launch technologies, which meant the firm also needs to recoup the development costs from the reuse program rather than directly passing on those savings to the consumer.
The Starship, SpaceX's under-construction ship destined for the moon and Mars, has taken its first flight.
Why is it the most energy efficient to change orbit inclination while crossing the equator?
Specifically, it's most efficient to do a plane change at one of the two "nodes" where the origin orbital plane intersects the destination plane. ANASIS-II is destined for geostationary orbit, so its destination plane is the plane of the equator.
Any orbit around a single massive body lies in a single plane. It should be clear that you can't enter an equatorial-plane orbit at any point except a point directly over the equator. Coming from any non-equatorial orbit, there are two points on the orbit where the planes intersect. If you try and do a burn to enter a particular destination orbit from anywhere else, you just push the intersection point a little further around the orbit.
(It's super easy to demonstrate this in Kerbal Space Program, but kind of hard to put into words!) //
A great aid to intuition is to remember one principle about orbit changes: if the engine is off, the orbiter always returns to same point one orbit later.
So for any orbit change, if you want to do only a short burn, it has to be at a point that is common for both the current orbit and the destination orbit. This applies to inclination changes, altitude changes and basically any orbit change. If the orbits do not have a common point, the change requires two burns and an intermediate orbit, such as Hohmann transfer orbit.
Like Russell's answer details, for a geostationary target orbit those common points are always above equator. For e.g. polar target orbit, the points would be somewhere else.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster is on track to smash an orbital-class rocket reuse record set by a NASA Space Shuttle orbiter in 1985 – and in more ways than one. On July 11th, SpaceX announced that Falcon 9 booster B1058 had successfully completed a static fire ignition test a few days prior to its … //
Michael Baylor
@nextspaceflight
If Falcon 9 first stage B1058-2 launches before July 23, it would beat the current record turnaround time of an orbital class rocket. The record is currently 54 days between Shuttle Atlantis' STS-51-J and STS-61-B missions.
NASA will allow SpaceX to reuse Crew Dragon spacecraft and the Falcon 9 first stages for launching them as soon as next year. //
SpaceNews.com
NASA to allow reuse of Crew Dragon spacecraft and boosters
by Jeff Foust — June 16, 2020
Demo-2 booster on droneship
The Falcon 9 first stage that launched the Demo-2 mission returning to Port Canaveral, Florida, after a droneship landing. While the booster for the Demo-2 mission was new, NASA will allow SpaceX to use previously flown boosters and Crew Dragon spacecraft on ISS missions starting next year. Credit: SpaceX
WASHINGTON — NASA will allow SpaceX to reuse Crew Dragon spacecraft and the Falcon 9 first stages for launching them as soon as next year.
A modification to the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract NASA has with SpaceX, published last month, will allow SpaceX to reuse both the Falcon 9 first stage and Crew Dragon spacecraft starting with the second operational mission of the spacecraft, known as Post-Certification Mission (PCM) 2 or Crew-2. That change was described as part of a “bilateral modification” that also formally extended the length of the Demo-2 mission from two weeks to as long as 119 days.
The move is a change for SpaceX, as the company originally planned to use a new Crew Dragon spacecraft on each of its commercial crew missions for NASA. That stood in contrast to Boeing, which will refurbish its CST-100 Starliner crew modules between flights.
Company officials earlier this year, though, hinted that they were now considering reusing Crew Dragon vehicles on NASA flights. “We intend for Crew Dragon to also be fully reusable,” said Benji Reed, director of crew mission management at SpaceX, during a briefing about a month before the launch of the Demo-2 mission. The Crew Dragon flying the Demo-2 mission, he said, would be reused, but didn’t say at the time if the spacecraft would be reused on a NASA or non-NASA mission.
NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz said in response to SpaceNews questions about the contract modification that SpaceX approached NASA about allowing the reuse of spacecraft and boosters on later missions.
“In this case, SpaceX has proposed to reuse future Falcon 9 and/or Crew Dragon systems or components for NASA missions to the International Space Station because they believe it will be beneficial from a safety and/or cost standpoint,” she said. “NASA performed an in-depth review and determined that the terms of the overall contract modification were in the best interests of the government.”
The Demo-2 mission used both a new Crew Dragon spacecraft and new Falcon 9 rocket. The same will be true for the first operational mission, Crew-1 or PCM-1, scheduled for no earlier than Aug. 30. PCM-2 would launch some time in 2021, Schierholz said.
The reuse of a Falcon 9 booster or Crew Dragon spacecraft on any NASA mission will require a “delta-certification” review by NASA, she said, and NASA won’t allow any vehicles that are “flight leaders” in terms of service life be used for those missions. SpaceX has tended to test the limits of Falcon 9 booster reuse on its own Starlink launches, including a June 3 launch that marked the fifth launch and landing of the same booster.
SpaceX and NASA took a gradual approach to the reuse of the original cargo version of the Dragon spacecraft for missions under the company’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA. SpaceX won approval to start reusing Dragon spacecraft with the CRS-11 mission in 2017. Eight of the subsequent nine flights used previously flown capsules, with three capsules ultimately making three flights each.
SpaceX started reusing Falcon 9 boosters on CRS missions with CRS-13 in December 2017, which was the fourth Falcon 9 launch overall to use a reflown booster. Four of the seven CRS missions that followed also used boosters making their second flight.
SpaceX successfully launched its first Starlink rideshare mission into orbit today (June 13), lofting 58 Starlink internet satellites along with three Earth-observation satellites before nailing a rocket landing at sea.
After SpaceX's eighth Starlink internet satellite launch, the company released a video of its Falcon 9 rocket jettisoning two $3 million fairings. //
SpaceX on June 3 launched its eighth batch of internet-beaming Starlink satellites into orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket.
On Tuesday, the rocket company released a new video showing the rocket deploying its clamshell-like fairing, or nose cone, while traveling at about 8,150 mph.
The video shows two fairing halves flying apart and the rocket's upper or second stage propelling a stack of 60 Starlink spacecraft toward orbit.
SpaceX is learning to use boats to recover and later reuse its carbon-fiber fairing halves, each of which costs about $3 million to build. It's also working on a potentially revolutionary new rocket system called Starship.