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Kryten

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Everything posted by Kryten

  1. Kryten
    Retrorockets kick up a lot of dust, you see the same on Soyuz landings. Makes it look harder than it is. Only happened because they were down one drogue as part of the test.
  2. Kryten
    It definitely does gimbal, you can see it if you look at vids of NS landing.
  3. Kryten
    This is a very deep-throttle engine, minimum vehicle T/W is somewhere below 1. It's demonstrated the ability to hover.
  4. Kryten
    Bit of delay apparently due to high temperatures, liftoff now planned for about 14:35UTC.
  5. Kryten
    About twenty minutes. EDIT: The webcast is now live.
  6. Kryten
    The stream is now up Blue's YT channel, the actual webcast should start in about ten minutes.
  7. Kryten
    ESA doesn't have a single central budget the same way NASA or Roscosmos does. There is a central budget that's used for non-optional programmes like Copernicus, but many ESA programmes are funded on an optional basis with contributions from member states. This includes most planetary missions, including Exomars, which is why it's having budget trouble.
  8. Kryten
    The source for that is Pravda, it's about as reliable as the World Weekly News... so, are you interested in the everglades real estate?
  9. Kryten
    Next NS flight is on Sunday at 14:15 UTC, delayed from Friday. Capsule will have one out of three drogue and main chutes deliberately fail, and will have three more pathfinder experiments onboard (1 2 3). Launch and landing are to be streamed live at http://www.blueorigin.com starting 13:45 UTC. In other news, Bezos had a couple talks over the last few things, and gave out a few tidbits about Blue's operations. They now have about 700 people, and the ticket price for NS flights is to start at SS2 ticket range ($250-300K) and go down.
  10. Kryten
    Launch providers get detailed plans, and they put payloads through extensive testing to find the exact mass distribution; there's no way you could attach something without it being noticed. If you believe this, then I've got some prime real estate in the florida everglades you might be interested in.
  11. Kryten
    We have confirmation of mission success; http://www.ulalaunch.com/ula-successfully-launches-nrol37.aspx?title=United+Launch+Alliance+Successfully+Launches+NROL-37+Payload+for+the+National+Reconnaissance+Office&Category=News
  12. Kryten
    It would be pretty much solely for polar or near-polar orbits, with a dogleg manouver to keep flight over the ocean.
  13. Kryten
    That's the situation after Challenger. Before, it was supposed to available to anyone. It wasn't supposed to be just another launch vehicle, it was supposed to revolutionise the industry through reuse; that's simply not something it could have done if it was restricted to a few US gov. payloads. There were real commercial launches, and there were advanced plans for foreign government payloads.
  14. Kryten
    I'm pretty sure they're just trying to keep it simple and non-controversial after the NROL-39 patch kerfuffle. If you've not seen it;
  15. Kryten
    It's a GSO direct insertion mission, there's over five hour to the actual end.
  16. Kryten
    The goal of shuttle before challenger was for it launch every US payload-USAF, NASA, NOAA, commercial-so that's not really true.
  17. Kryten
    They didn't get a service for the development funding. Development and actual service procurement were separate programmes.
  18. Kryten
    This question makes no sense at all, NASA does procure launches out of Vandenberg.
  19. Kryten
    Again, the point of the next design is to design for minimal fixed costs; it's solid segments and infrastructure that are to be common with later SLS versions, strap-ons common to Atlas V/Vulcan, and a liquid upper stage that's mostly or entirely outsourced to Blue Origin. That should allow them to take the finicky gov payloads Falcon can't do, without needing the extensive extra commercial business Vulcan would need. That's why OrbATK are still hesitant on moving forward with it; it's basically a back-up in case of Vulcan programme failure.
  20. Kryten
    Trying to design something that only works at high launch rates in a market segment that's already completely saturated is not a good idea, and Orbital seem to be the only provider that really grasps this. For the lower EELV class they had Proton, Delta IV, Atlas V, Ariane 5 upper slot, Falcon 9, H-II, and Zenit to contend with. Going into that segment with an all-liquid relatively high fixed costs LV, without the extensive government support of most of those, would be suicide.
  21. Kryten
    Solid upper stages aren't uncommon, and used to be extremely common. Almost all Deltas used them, a lot of early Atlas' and Titans, even the space shuttle. For Antares specifically, what matters is the relatively low fixed costs of a solid stage; there's no way they would have been able to be profitable for the relatively small flight rate of Cygnus missions off a similarly sized rocket with a liquid upper stage.
  22. Kryten
    How about Rockot? And limit for Dnepr isn't the amount of launchers, it's the requirement for test launches of R36M2 missiles, 2 or 3 a year IIRC. Russian gov aren't letting Kosmotras do any more than this minimum currently due to the geopolitical situation.
  23. Kryten
    It's not 'super-cryogenic' it's just below the lox boiling point. The liquid hydrogen in e.g. the Delta IV is still much colder.
  24. Kryten
    I'm not fond of it, at least in terms of looks. With Zenit having probably flown it's last, Antares is probably the plainest orbital rocket flying.
  25. Kryten
    Again, this is a booster programme. It has no real similarity to X-20.
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