Space News thread

[Takeovers]

Building the hype for the upcoming Falcon Heavy launch. It is scheduled for tuesday, 1:30 PM eastern time, 7:30 CET. Harrison Ford, owner and pilot of the Star Wars Millenium Falcon will attend. The Falcon family of rockets has its name from the Millenium Falcon.

A few new photos of the roadster on the payload adapter were released. It shows a SpaceX spacesuit sitting in the drivers seat. The spacesuit that astronauts will wear going to the ISS on the Dragon spacecraft. There are also 2 camera mounts for pictures of the roadster in space.

[Topper]

I saw this and thought it was cool..

https://www.space.com/39565-columbia...-15-years.html

[Luigi]

Anyone got a map/image of what orbit the capsule with the Tesla will take?


Apparently an elliptical mars/sun orbit that will continue for around a billion years.

[Takeovers]

Anyone got a map/image of what orbit the capsule with the Tesla will take?


Apparently an elliptical mars/sun orbit that will continue for around a billion years.

Nothing official. The present understanding is that it will be launched into a Trans Mars Injection trajectory but with Mars not at that point of its orbit when the Tesla gets there. Anyway even if it would get to Mars the electronics and batteries will be long dead so no pictures coming of the event.

Latest info from a press conference yesterday is that the stage will coast 6 hours after reaching orbit and then refire. This is a wide stretch from what has been done before by Falcon stages. It is not easy to keep the propellant for that long. The RP-1(Kerosene) tends to get cold and turn into jelly. This capability would not be needed for the flight to Mars. But it would demonstrate a capability required by some Airforce launches.

A new animation of the mission released yesterday but it seems it contains a number of probably intentional errors. It shows a flyby of Mars and it shows the two sideboosters land back at the Cape simultaneously while latest information is they will space the landings by ~15 seconds.

[Luigi]

It won't actually be the first car sent into space.

[Topper]

3 hours....

[Luigi]

I haven't really been following, when the Tesla is released into Mars/solar orbit, is it going to be inside a capsule, or is it going to be outside, like the pic at the top of the page, with spaceman sitting in the driver's seat?

[Takeovers]

It is going up inside a fairing. Once out of the atmosphere the fairing is dropped and the Tesla is in open space. Still unclear if the Tesla will be released and then shown floating away or stays connected to the second stage.

[Luigi]

The mad b@stard.

[Takeovers]

They did extensive tests in a windtunnel to make sure it holds together during launch. A Heavy is very tricky aerodynamically while flying supersonic in the atmosphere. Here a photo of the wind tunnel model. It is now hanging under the ceiling in the cafeteria of their Hawthorne factory and development center.

[Takeovers]

Launch is delayed. Reason are upper level winds. Ground level weather forecast is very good. But winds at high altitude, like jet streams can destroy the rocket. Weather balloons are used to check. They are waiting for wind to calm down. They may have to scrub for today and try again tomorrow the same time.

[david44]

calm down. They may have to scrub for today and try again tomorrow

seems like marriage, of course the project will help the US with the rod of God

[Takeovers]

Looks like they may be launching in 40 minutes. They have started to load LOX (liquid oxygen). Launch live on YouTube, transmission to be gin in maybe 20 minutes or so. Already 567,000 people waiting to see the live stream by SpaceX.

[aging one]

Elon Musk pulled it off with the Falcon Heavy Lift. Very cool indeed. Confirmed the two side boosters landed back on earth successfully, so far no news on the center rocket that was to land on a barge in the ocean...

SpaceX's big new rocket blasts off, puts sports car in space - SFGate

SpaceX launches Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket - Feb. 6, 2018

[Begbie]

The in car camera.

[Luigi]

Elon Musk: 1
Top Gear: 0


The mad b@stard.

[nidhogg]

The success gives SpaceX momentum to begin developing even larger rockets, which could help fulfill Mr. Musk’s dream of sending people to Mars. To do that, he has described a new-generation rocket called B.F.R. (the B stands for big; the R for rocket) that might be ready to launch in the mid-2020s.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/s...ex-launch.html


LOL.....

[Luigi]

But the return to earth of the central booster was less successful. Mr Musk said that it had crashed into the Atlantic at 300mph, missing the floating landing platform.
He said it hit the water with such force that shrapnel flew onto the droneship's deck and took out two engines.

Sky News

[David48atTD]

This is the bit I like, towards the end of this clip when the Falcon Heavy complete their first landing in perfect unison.

[Luigi]

Amazing footage. Really like something from the future. Big, big respect to this guy.

I think a lot more people will start taking his future plans and dreams a lot more seriously.

[Luigi]

Takeovers, does the ISS ever get any footage of these kind of rockets?

Such as these and the Intercontinental Ballistic missiles that NK fire off? They apparently go around 10 times higher than the ISS.

As it's orbiting the Earth once every 90 minutes, it seems amazing that such things would never come into their field of view.

[Takeovers]

Takeovers, does the ISS ever get any footage of these kind of rockets?

Such as these and the Intercontinental Ballistic missiles that NK fire off? They apparently go around 10 times higher than the ISS.

As it's orbiting the Earth once every 90 minutes, it seems amazing that such things would never come into their field of view.

I have seen footage of vehicles reentering the atmosphere after they were docking at the ISS.

While in space vehicles are hard to see. Just dim moving dots, if at all, except the few seconds they are firing their engines. Interesting pictures happen mostly when in the atmosphere. In that situation from the ground you can see them well, when in the right location. Observers being very near, maybe a few hundred km away, usually nearer.

This launch was a huge success, even with the central core lost. Such things happen when done for the first time. They have the data and know how to avoid it next time.

It is a great outcome that the payload has reached orbit at all. There was a significant risk it would be destroyed in several parts of the flight.

Add to this what they achieved while in orbit. They did 2 things that had not been known in advance. Both aimed at contracts from the Airforce. One was to place the upper stage into a transfer orbit. That was not necessary for the interplanetary mission. They did it to expose the stage and its avionics to the harsh radiation of the Van Allen Belt for several hours. Usually rockets pass the Belt fast and don't loiter there. There was doubt by many, especially the experts, that the SpaceX avionics would survive. Other rockets use specially designed and built radiation hardened electronic components. Those are extremely expensive and much less capable than state of the art off the shelf components. SpaceX uses common components and uses redundancy and the ability to recover from failures without endangering the mission. This flight was a brilliant proof of that concept. Then relight the engines after 6 hours in space. Another capability that is only needed by military payloads going to GEO. All commercial satellites are delivered to a transfer orbit and do the last step to GEO by themselves. Only military satellites rely on the rocket to do it, making the launch extremely expensive. Now the relatively cheap Falcon Heavy can do it. SpaceX can now bid on a whole range of military payloads they could not launch before.

The Tesla roadster has been shot into an orbit reaching way beyond Mars, right into the Asteroid belt. Here a graphic of that orbit.



In other news Hans Königsmann, head of mission assurance of SpaceX, mentioned in a presentation that they now have a launch manifest worth more than $12 billion. Lots of revenue coming in during the next years. They have a high profit margin with their low prices.

[Luigi]

^ Very nice. Cheers for the diagram. Interesting to see it's path.


To answer my own question, rockets seen from the ISS



https://gizmodo.com/a-rocket-launch-...-as-1768409256



The launch of Expedition 39/40's Steve Swanson, Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev as seen from space. Picture captured by NASA's Rick Mastracchio aboard the International Space Station on March 25, 2014. Credit: Rick Mastracchio

[bobo746]

Space car cruises further than expected towards asteroid belt


THE car that Elon Musk’s SpaceX shot into space yesterday has actually overshot its target and is now rocketing towards the asteroid belt beyond Mars’ orbit.
Mr Musk pulled off a coup yesterday when he successfully fired the privately funded Falcon Heavy rocket into space from Florida and proved that it was the world’s most powerful.
The rocket released a red electric convertible sports car, the Tesla Roadster, carrying a mannequin in a space suit dubbed “Starman”, after the David Bowie song.

Elon Musk?s ?space? Tesla headed for asteroid belt: Video

[harrybarracuda]

Space car cruises further than expected towards asteroid belt


THE car that Elon Musk’s SpaceX shot into space yesterday has actually overshot its target and is now rocketing towards the asteroid belt beyond Mars’ orbit.
Mr Musk pulled off a coup yesterday when he successfully fired the privately funded Falcon Heavy rocket into space from Florida and proved that it was the world’s most powerful.
The rocket released a red electric convertible sports car, the Tesla Roadster, carrying a mannequin in a space suit dubbed “Starman”, after the David Bowie song.

Elon Musk?s ?space? Tesla headed for asteroid belt: Video

Has anyone checked to see if his wife is missing?