YazataSep 16, 2020 09:12 PM (This post was last modified: Sep 17, 2020 06:30 PM by Yazata.)
If you haven't gotten enough Starlinks (and who has?) your wait is over. Another batch is set to launch tomorrow, Thursday Sept 17, at 11:19 AM PDT, 2:19 PM EDT and 18:19 UTC.
Booster will be familiar veteran B 1058 which launched Bob and Doug on their excellent Demo 2 adventure on May 30, then launched a Korean military satellite on July 20, and is now back in action for a SpaceX in-house Starlink mission. Recovery will be at sea on JRTI. (JRTI is already at sea, it left Port Canaveral the other day.)
YazataSep 17, 2020 06:58 PM (This post was last modified: Sep 17, 2020 07:13 PM by Yazata.)
SpaceX hasn't said anything official, but word at Cap Canaveral is that today's Starlink launch has been scrubbed. No visible fueling is happening, and the rocket would have been surrounded by vapor at this point.
Edit: SpaceX has just verified that the mission is scrubbed today due to a "recovery issue". No word on what that means exactly. JRTI might not be cooperating. SpaceX says that the rocket and payload "remain healthy" and they will try again tomorrow.
The problem is that weather is deteriorating at Cape Canaveral and may not cooperate tomorrow.
C CSep 17, 2020 08:20 PM (This post was last modified: Sep 17, 2020 08:35 PM by C C.
Edit Reason: typo
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(Sep 17, 2020 06:58 PM)Yazata Wrote: SpaceX hasn't said anything official, but word at Cap Canaveral is that today's Starlink launch has been scrubbed. No visible fueling is happening, and the rocket would have been surrounded by vapor at this point.
Edit: SpaceX has just verified that the mission is scrubbed today due to a "recovery issue". No word on what that means exactly. JRTI might not be cooperating. SpaceX says that the rocket and payload "remain healthy" and they will try again tomorrow.
The problem is that weather is deteriorating at Cape Canaveral and may not cooperate tomorrow.
Starlink is becoming a monotonous regularity, anyway. The future dread is when the launches of other massive internet constellations from OneWeb, Amazon, Samsung, Boeing, China, etc swell that specific type enterprise to totally dominating the rocket headlines (with respect to whatever space provider they choose to reach orbit).
YazataSep 28, 2020 02:04 AM (This post was last modified: Sep 28, 2020 02:54 AM by Yazata.)
More Starlinks!!
The mission above, which turned out to have been scrubbed due to storms in the booster recovery area, is being readied to go tomorrow Sept 28 at 14:22 UTC, 10:22 AM EDT, 7:22 AM PDT.
Booster is still B 1058, Bob and Doug's excellent ride. But this time, it's to land on OCISLY instead of JRTI. JRTI is the better ASDS ("autonomous spaceport drone ship", that's what SpaceX calls them) since its refit and upgrade, but it's going to be busy with a GPS satellite set to launch late Tuesday night. (More on that soon in the Launch Stuff thread.)
(There's a third ASDS under construction in Louisiana that's supposedly rather different than the first two. And Elon is looking at the idea of refitting retired offshore oil drilling rigs for launching and landing Starships and Superheavys, but that's another story.)
All the details of tomorrow morning's Starlink launch is here
B 1058 nailing it's third landing. This was Bob and Doug's ride and getting it back this morning was SpaceX's 61'st successful booster recovery. With the exception of Blue's little suborbital New Shephard, no other rocket has managed it even once, even rockets with the resources of entire countries behind them.
SpaceX's secret weapon is Lars Blackmore. Lars is the guy who designed the Falcon 9 landing system and tested it on the Grasshopper. Rockets just aren't designed to fly in reverse and there's all kinds of chaotic instabilities. It takes a real control algorithm to overcome that which is where Lars comes in. Now he's currently in charge of reentry and landing for Starship. Not just on Earth, but on Mars and other planets too, with all varieties of atmospheres. The plan is to open up the whole Solar System. (This is what happens when Science Fiction nuts rather than government bureaucrats are in charge of a space program.) Bachelors from Cambridge, PhD from MIT, worked at NASA JPL before he defected to SpaceX.
Gwynne has a JPL connection too. Her husband Robert Shotwell is Chief engineer for JPL's Astronomy, Physics and Space Technology Directorate. I think that he was in charge of Mars programs before that. He's a Mars lander guy. (I believe that JPL is still the only place that's successfully built a Mars lander. And as somebody said, Mars is the only planet currently known that's inhabited entirely by robots.)
One wonders what kind of synergies there are between SpaceX and JPL. Each could be very helpful to the other, but there must be all kinds of proprietary information and non-disclosure agreements and stuff. Remember that SpaceX has poached NASA's former head of human spaceflight too.
Lars has said it himself - There used to be a kind of visionary excitement at NASA in the 1960's during the Apollo Program. SpaceX is where that spirit is now. A place where dreams can become reality.
Yazata Wrote:SpaceX's secret weapon is Lars Blackmore. Lars is the guy who designed the Falcon 9 landing system and tested it on the Grasshopper. Rockets just aren't designed to fly in reverse and there's all kinds of chaotic instabilities. It takes a real control algorithm to overcome that which is where Lars comes in.
When I see those rockets reverse home I see pure engineering magic in the rocket engines and out of this world stunning software controlling them.
YazataNov 23, 2020 03:02 AM (This post was last modified: Nov 23, 2020 03:58 AM by Yazata.)
More Starlinks set to go in an hour.
The interesting thing about this one is that the Falcon 9 booster, B1049, is back for its seventh flight. If it succeeds this time, it will be a new reuse record as well as the 100th successful Falcon 9 orbital launch. B1049 previously launched two communications satellites for other customers, plus four batches of Starlinks for SpaceX. Here it is back for its fifth Starlink launch. Landing will be at sea on OCISLY.
When SpaceX originally said that their Block 5 Falcon 9's are designed for ten flights without major refurbishment, I thought 'Yeah, right'. But here's B1049 going for seven. Ten doesn't seem so out-of-the-question any more.
They say that rocket and payload are healthy and that they want more time for data reviews. (Which suggests that something may not be entirely healthy.)
They plan to go again tomorrow at the same time, if weather cooperates. (Weather is great at the Cape but kinda iffy at the recovery area where OCISLY is.)
Aug 7, 2020 06:26 AM
(This post was last modified: Aug 7, 2020 06:54 AM by Yazata.)
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