Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[Camacha]

17 hours ago, fredinno said:

That's a landing,not a launch

If you want to play the pedantic game, I am your man

[KSK]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

Well, the Atlas V Heavy was said to already use 98% of the same stuff as Atlas V Medium...

OSC needed new engines, so obviously that would take longer.

Delta IV would seem to be a better comparison and there was still a two year gap between first flight of the Delta IV Medium and the Delta IV Heavy. But again, it's a largely pointless comparison since we're talking about different sized companies with different agendas, customers and business models.

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, sgt_flyer said:

guess it'll depend on how long the customers can wait before a satellite is launched depending on the launcher's price. you can't charge for the services of your satellite if it's still grounded - but you still paid a large sum upfront for building the satellite, so the sooner it's in position, the sooner you profit from the investment.

 

 

 

Foward thinking may be prevalent in operations, it's usually missing in procurement. They get judged by dollars saved, not income earned.

 

[Frybert]

Making a correction to an earlier post, Tuesday is NOT confirmed. My local paper jumped the gun, sorry folks.

[Kerbart]

Could be, but as of now, Monday 2/29 18:26 ESD, the SpaceX website says “1d 0h 8m 43s” until launch...

 

[fredinno]

6 hours ago, Camacha said:

If you want to play the pedantic game, I am your man

That's a modded oil platform, not a boat.

5 hours ago, KSK said:

Delta IV would seem to be a better comparison and there was still a two year gap between first flight of the Delta IV Medium and the Delta IV Heavy. But again, it's a largely pointless comparison since we're talking about different sized companies with different agendas, customers and business models.

http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/falconH.html

Apparently they are taking 4-5 years- FH was announced in 2011, and had its first order in 2012.

[Frybert]

Ok, flight is once again confirmed for Tuesday.

[DerekL1963]

12 hours ago, Kerbart said:

12 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

 SpaceX already has a poor track record for meeting their schedule commitments, and no matter how cheap that's only going to be tolerated for so long.

I'm not so sure about that. I work in the transportation sector (albeit not spaceflight) and despite how much customers have their mouth full about “supply chain management” and “on time delivery,” they seem to be very eager to drop all that if it means shaving off $0.02 of transport cost per product for something that sells for $50 in a retail store (and no, this is not an exaggeration, sadly).

In a business environment where “proven” bottom line savings are given much more significance than “vague” statements as long term viability or network impact (as much as you’d have highly accurate calculations of those) that price tag will remain a huge selling point.

Do you work in a sector where the thing being delivered costs a fair fraction of a billion dollars and represents tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per annum?  If not, then (no offense) your experience is less than irrelevant because it's nothing like the situation we're discussing.  This isn't a package of action figures for Toys 'r Us where it doesn't matter if it gets there on the 2nd or the 5th so long as it's there before the movie opens on the 9th.  It's a piece of infrastructure that cost a great deal of money upfront, and it costing more money every minute it's sitting on the ground racking up interest charges and leasing payments and not selling any bandwidth.

SES may accept the delay, but I suspect not for an indefinite period of time - and they're not SpaceX's only current or potential customer.

[Streetwind]

I can only speculate, but it's possible that this is a final boiloff venting event.

Like, a typical vehicle is fueled up, and then leaks gaseous oxygen as it sits on the pad, with the fuel line keeping the tank topped off. Eventually, the valves are closed as the launch sequence progresses through terminal countdown and the plumes stop.

The F9 v1.2/"full thrust" uses supercooled LOX, much colder than usual in order to increase the density. This makes fueling a much more difficult process. For starters, you can't have the vehicle remain sitting on the pad for an extended amount of time - the fuel will just warm up too much. This was one of the reasons they cited for scrubbing after the dumb boat halted the countdown for a while.

It's possible that for reasons related to the supercooled LOX, they don't just leave the valves open during the launch process. For starters, LOX loading only starts ~35 minutes before liftoff, as opposed to two hours for typical launch vehicles; and because the stuff is so much colder, it has less vapor pressure to begin with. Maybe it makes sense to keep the valves closed longer/sooner? And then, just before takeoff, you do one big venting event where you inject one last spurt of fuel to top off everything, resulting in the big puff you saw.

[Lukaszenko]

Perhaps SES is irritated that SpaceX is constantly delaying launches, or perhaps they are happy that their cargo is being handled with such extreme care. I suspect, particularly in the world of rocket launches, that it’s the latter. What’s a couple days, especially when their launch has already been delayed by months, and yet SpaceX is forgoing reusability to make up for it.

I know it’s not a good comparison, but this forum has been waiting patiently for what seems like close to a year of delayed launches (1.1) as well, and the general consensus seems to be “take your time, to make it right”.  

[Scotius]

According to the website there is about 3 hours to the launch. Fingers crossed

[StarStreak2109]

Good luck to them!

[Vanamonde]

SpaceX threads merged. 

[KerbonautInTraining]

So if I understand this correctly, Falcon 9 will send the satellite as high as it damn well can, and the sat's onboard propulsion will finish the insertion into GTO and then into GEO?

How far will the upper stage be able to send the satellite? Just above LEO? 90% of the way to geo transfer orbit?

[sgt_flyer]

49 minutes ago, KerbonautInTraining said:

So if I understand this correctly, Falcon 9 will send the satellite as high as it damn well can, and the sat's onboard propulsion will finish the insertion into GTO and then into GEO?

How far will the upper stage be able to send the satellite? Just above LEO? 90% of the way to geo transfer orbit?

nah, it will get into a proper gto orbit, then do a second burn later to raise the periapsis as much as they can, to 'kickstart' the satellite's orbit raising, cutting short at least a month of small burns from the satellite's rcs systems to get it into it's final position. (and ultimately giving the satellite a longer service life before it's retired, as it will have more fuel in the end for orbital corrections)

if you look at the previous launch attempts videos, you can see 'SECO' and 'SECO2' on the timeline - so two burns for the upper stage. (GTO launches need only 1 burn from the upper stage)

the original plan was to just send it on GTO, before all the delays. when they switched to F9 full thrust, they proposed this to alleviate the problems the delay caused to the customer. (on which the customer praised spaceX, because it demonstrated spaceX willing to go for more flexibility on their launch protocols, compared to other launch provider who are much less willing to deviate from the original mission profile)

 

edit : here's the article on SES praising spaceX willingness to sacrifice recovery in order to cut short the satellite's time needed for orbit raising.

http://spacenews.com/ses-applauds-spacexs-willingness-to-sacrifice-falcon-9-first-stage-recovery-for-main-satelilte-mission/

Edited March 1, 2016 by sgt_flyer

[EladDv]

Oh COME ON! seriously now i am starting to suspect the universe is working against that launch!

Edited March 1, 2016 by EladDv

[sgt_flyer]

23 minutes ago, EladDv said:

Oh COME ON! seriously now i am starting to suspect the universe is working against that launch!

yup, the universe was surely bribed by the other launch providers  #conspiracy ^^!

Edited March 1, 2016 by sgt_flyer

[Kerbal01]

This is going to take years to get off the ground.

[fredinno]

32 minutes ago, sgt_flyer said:

nah, it will get into a proper gto orbit, then do a second burn later to raise the periapsis as much as they can, to 'kickstart' the satellite's orbit raising, cutting short at least a month of small burns from the satellite's rcs systems to get it into it's final position. (and ultimately giving the satellite a longer service life before it's retired, as it will have more fuel in the end for orbital corrections)

if you look at the previous launch attempts videos, you can see 'SECO' and 'SECO2' on the timeline - so two burns for the upper stage. (GTO launches need only 1 burn from the upper stage)

the original plan was to just send it on GTO, before all the delays. when they switched to F9 full thrust, they proposed this to alleviate the problems the delay caused to the customer. (on which the customer praised spaceX, because it demonstrated spaceX willing to go for more flexibility on their launch protocols, compared to other launch provider who are much less willing to deviate from the original mission profile)

 

edit : here's the article on SES praising spaceX willingness to sacrifice recovery in order to cut short the satellite's time needed for orbit raising.

http://spacenews.com/ses-applauds-spacexs-willingness-to-sacrifice-falcon-9-first-stage-recovery-for-main-satelilte-mission/

Hmm, couldn't SpaceX give them a full boost by using a STAR motor?

31 minutes ago, EladDv said:

Oh COME ON! seriously now i am starting to suspect the universe is working against that launch!

This pretty much shows why you really need to launch on the day in which you can, and minimize delays like these. Maybe SpaceX can add insulation to F91.1FT to prevent this from getting too bad?

[Motokid600]

9 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Hmm, couldn't SpaceX give them a full boost by using a STAR motor?

This pretty much shows why you really need to launch on the day in which you can, and minimize delays like these. Maybe SpaceX can add insulation to F91.1FT to prevent this from getting too bad?

Itd be great if they could implement some kind of insulated blanket that comes off at liftoff.

[sgt_flyer]

16 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Hmm, couldn't SpaceX give them a full boost by using a STAR motor?

it would need a redesign of the payload adaptator of the upper stage, + another adaptator between the payload and the star engine.

still, it indeed remains a problem with the Falcon 9 - as it's only a two stage kerolox rocket, performance really suffers on GTO launches. (any fregat like third stage could help, but it would increase the rocket's cost as it would have much less commonality with the rest of the rocket)

Edited March 1, 2016 by sgt_flyer

[Dfthu]

On the space X website, on the webcast page it says there still launching tonight. They need to fix that.

[NovaSilisko]

70 m/s wind shear, by the way, is about the same as suddenly finding yourself in a category 4/5 hurricane on the way up.

[KerbonautInTraining]

4 minutes ago, NovaSilisko said:

70 m/s wind shear, by the way, is about the same as suddenly finding yourself in a category 4/5 hurricane on the way up.

But the air is super thin right?

Unless 70 m/s is a measure of equivalent dynamic pressure, in which case, yeah the rocket would be toast.

[NovaSilisko]

True, there's not as much pressure. The atmosphere at that altitude is still 26% of that at sea level.

The main issue arises from any torque that might be put on the rocket - if it was a uniform force across the entire rocket it would be fine, but nature is never that clean. Differential force on one part of the rocket versus another produces a torque for which the guidance system has to correct, and given these altitudes are very rough on the rocket already, a sharp gust can overwhelm it. And, if you've ever used FAR in KSP, you know what happens when you tip too far out of the windstream...

Falcon is a robust vehicle and. perhaps. could take it. But given the choices are "risk screwing up everything" and "sit tight for a few days longer", I'll choose the second. I trust SpaceX knows their vehicle better than we do, and knows its limits.

 

50 minutes ago, sgt_flyer said:

still, it indeed remains a problem with the Falcon 9 - as it's only a two stage kerolox rocket, performance really suffers on GTO launches. (any fregat like third stage could help, but it would increase the rocket's cost as it would have much less commonality with the rest of the rocket)

There have been hints (the notion showed up in documents from the Air Force) that Falcon Heavy will be getting a high-energy upper stage, with some flavor of Raptor engine powering it. Hopefully something comes of that.

Edited March 1, 2016 by NovaSilisko