Kryten

This is a NASA project. The only reason this has happened at this time is that it's a milestone in the CCDEV contract between NASA and SpaceX.

Given the context, I think 'in great shape'='not dead'.

A first mission would be unlikely to be big enough to require an LV that big; I'd expect something on a Falcon 9, or something else in that general class.

DSN is actually available for commercial use; ISRO paid for coverage during MOM orbit insertion. It would probably need some major upgrading to handle the amount of data associated with this kind of mission, and the relay hardware at Mars certainly would.

Also there's simply no fuel left to do that kind of manoeuvring, nevermind powered landing.

Here are the links for the streams: http://livestream.com/spacex/events/4027110 http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ About eight hours to go.

It's called buster, apparently. Doubt that's official, given potential copyright issues.

Given the OP is apparently still around, would they mind changing the title to something like 'general spacex thread'? That's basically what this is at this point.

Exactly. Pushing about capacities to LEO is usually nothing better than ....-waving, especially in this case; the only US LEO payloads with firm orders that are above 10 tons are the KH-11 follow-on sats; which are already booked for Delta IV Heavy.

How many times has anything put 10+ tons into LEO, including dual launch?

It wasn't 50-50 as in 50%, it was 50 heads 50 tails.

Which pretty much proves this isn't actually being done at random. Chance of that is less than 8%.

That's not exactly 'plenty', is it? That's a few purely theoretical payloads.

Like what? When's the last time anybody put a 10+ ton payload into LEO?

As a sanity check, the only (proposed) mission I'm aware of to use a Falcon 9 at Mars is the PADME discovery proposal. No mass has been given as such, but's closely based on the LADEE lunar spacecraft, meaning a wet mass of about 400kg. Intended to enter orbit and have enough propellant left to make multiple Phobos and Deimos flybys and be retired into heliocentric orbit at end-of-mission.

Can't do GEO because the second stage doesn't have enough loiter capability, GTO payload is about 5 tons. Note that that's a 1,800m/s deficit GTO, most other operators quote 1,500m/s.

Mid to late 2030s at the earliest. Would have to beat out MSR for that slot.

Uranus orbiter is being considered for the flagship mission after Europa Clipper; it would require either SLS or a highly convoluted set of gravity assist manoeuvres.

NOAA contract their own craft for basic meteorology, the NASA missions tend to be one-offs focusing on specific scientific questions. Incidentally the USAF also procure and launch their own meteorology craft, the data from which isn't provided to civilian programs-I'd say that's a much better target for cuts.

Going on about private sector vs. government doesn't make any real sense here, NASA usually only provides instruments for the earth sciences craft and is a customer for private industry for the rest. The most recent earth sciences mission had the bus built by Ball and was launched by Mitsubishi, for example.

On a dummy of the upper portion of a rocket, a good bit shorter than a real one. They're having to remove the wires from the lightning towers for it.

It's the LOX tank. Frost protects it.

To be more specific, cryolite is used not to safe energy, but because the aluminum has to be extracted through electrolysis; the temperatures required for doing this with pure alumina would melt any practical electrolysis cell. Even that won't get you anywhere without sufficiently pure alumina to start with; you can't just shove bauxite into an electrolysis cell, and certainly not regolith.

If you just stick regolith into a smelter, all you'll get out the other end is a solid lump of regolith. That's not how any kind of refining process works.

To add to this, there's still considerable debate over whether any functional human pheromones even exist. The whole endeavour was roughly as scientific as the 'men who stare at goats' study.