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SpaceX receives FAA approval for return to flight [pdf]
- trose 10y agoGreat news! Anyone know when we can expect the next launch? I heard they're going to test the falcon heavy this year.
- Shank 10y agoThe /r/SpaceX subreddit has a good launch manifest here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceX/wiki/launches/manifest https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceX/wiki/launches/manifest
- milansuk 10y agoI can not wait for Q2 2017: Falcon Heavy "demo flight"!
- bargl 10y agoI can't wait for Q2, Intelsat 35e, that's my company woot woot.
- mikeash 10y agoElon said they're shooting for next week, rumor is that it'll be Monday. (Edit: I forgot that it was confirmed by Iridium, the customer, so it's beyond a rumor at this point.) Falcon Heavy is said to be scheduled for a launch in about six months. However, it's been six months away for several years now.
- agildehaus 10y agoThey teased a photo of a FH interstage. I think it's going to be this year: https://www.instagram.com/p/BOkwrgQAmI8/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BOkwrgQAmI8/
- bisby 10y agoFrom twitter: @IridiumComm: Iridium is excited to share we're planned to launch on Monday, Jan 9 at 10:22am PST weather permitting. http://bit.ly/2iZ7mCE http://bit.ly/2iZ7mCE #IridiumNEXT So 3 days from now.
- jxcl 10y agoThis is a great video that explains the current thinking behind the cause of the explosion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBcoTqhAM_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBcoTqhAM_g
- artursapek 10y agoAh Scott Manley, my favorite KSPer. That guy has a talent for explaining things.
- flexie 10y agoWhat is a KSPer?
- bpicolo 10y agohttps://kerbalspaceprogram.com/en/ https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/en/
- MrZongle2 10y agobpicolo has provided the proper link, though the quick answer is "someone who plays the game Kerbal Space Program". The less serious answer is "somebody who routinely experiences the joy of rapid unscheduled disassembly in their virtual creations".
- jxcl 10y agoMy favorite videos of his are not the ones where he shows off new video games, but the ones where he delves into space history and engineering and astrophysics. He's taught me so much!
- trothamel 10y agoIt's mildly interesting that this is only for 7 Iridium-NEXT launches. An eight was recently added, but it will also have a pair of German GRACE-FO satellites attached to it, so it probably makes sense that the FAA would want to approve that one separately.
- searine 10y agoThe next few months are going to be back to back launches. Let's hope Spacex can keep the pace.
- londons_explore 10y agoI hope they have the whole thing super-practiced and can do one per week like a big production line. Big planes, which are of similar complexity, have production lines rolling off one per day, so it's doable with the right processes.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago...one only has to make a similar comparison between Tesla and a variety of auto manufacturing firms to note there is a distinct whiff of under-performance and delays that, by outward appearances, appear to be top-down culturally.
- thelambentonion 10y agoBig planes have an order of magnitude lower complexity than a rocket of the Falcon 9's caliber. That's a somewhat subjective statement, I'm sure, but even if it weren't the case there's so much variation between each Falcon 9 I'd be surprised if they could crank that many out with any reasonable amount of QA.
- NegativeLatency 10y agoBig planes generally have better failure modes as well, and humanity has more experience in producing/operating planes than rockets.
- msl 10y agoThe Soviet Union managed to produce their Soyuz-U rockets at a higher pace than that some four decades ago [1] while achieving a success rate of > 97%. Sure, it's a different rocket with different capabilities, but it was also a long time ago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-U https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-U
- VanillaCafe 10y agoHow wrong is it to think of "carbon composite" as "charcoal"? Because with that conceptualization, it seems like an inherent risk to store liquid oxygen in a charcoal container on a rocket ship.
- hguant 10y agoVery. This is the first thing that pops up when you google 'carbon composite': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fiber_reinforced_polymer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fiber_reinforced_polyme... I had a vision of a massive porous mass of carbon (a la water filters and the like) storing all that lox, but it seems not to be the case.
- schiffern 10y agoCharcoal has a surface area of a few acres per teaspoon (which makes sense when you look at a micrograph, since all the woody cell walls are preserved https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF10i39VQ4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF10i39VQ4w), whereas carbon fiber composites are impregnated with resin. Obviously all it takes is one oxygen/carbon interface to cause an explosion, as we saw. Similar to explosives, the more thoroughly mixed it is the more energetic the reaction. Pouring LOX over charcoal and soaking charcoal in LOX are very different (the first ignites vigorously, the latter explodes like a stick of dynamite). http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2009-09/most-dangerous-way-light-grill http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2009-09/most-dangerous-way...
- azernik 10y agoOn a similar note, all kinds of materials that you wouldn't expect become very flammable with high surface area and/or pure oxygen environments. See e.g. the thermal lance, which is a very powerful cutting tool that works by running oxygen over iron (rust at high speed!). Or the very serious risk of explosions in flour mills due to high amounts of dust suspended in the air.
- freehunter 10y agoYup. Growing up on a farm, it wasn't uncommon to hear of explosions in grain silos from a spark in the dust or barn fires from undried hay bales. That's right, wet hay bales can and will spontaneously combust. It sounds counter-intuitive, but wet hay bales are more dangerous than dry hay bales, because hay actually heats up as it dries. As the hay gets hotter, it starts giving off flammable gas. The heat it is generating combined with the gas it is giving off means they could light on fire at any moment if they've been stored before fully drying. And where is hay commonly stored? In a barn, with an attached grain silo. And that grain silo is sometimes full of fine dust. Which, like flour, can easily explode at the smallest spark or flame.
- ge96 10y agoDamn I didn't know that they were grounded. Glad to hear that they'll be flying again.
- johansch 10y agoI didn't either, despite having read probably 8-10 stories about the event. They must be good at PR.
- Hydraulix989 10y agoMusk runs an airtight PR ship
- JshWright 10y agoThey weren't grounded. They have to get an FAA license for every launch (or, in this case, a bulk license for all of their Iridium launches over the next 18 months). The FAA _could_ have denied them a license, but that's pretty unlikely, as the AMOS-6 event was a 'test anomaly', not something related to flight.
- robryan 10y agoThey were grounded, the FAA was a party to the AMOS-6 investigation. I don't think they would have been given a license until the FAA were satisfied with the results of that investigation.
- JshWright 10y agoMaybe, maybe not. They got the license when they applied for it. They obviously didn't bother applying for the license until they were satisfied with their investigation of AMOS-6. They were never denied a license.
- ge96 10y agoIridium like those Iridium flash satellites with the door-sized solar panels? Ha