|
SpaceX Missions Thread
|
|
| HarbingerDawn | Date: Friday, 20.06.2014, 22:19 | Message # 106 |
 Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Weather is currently green, forecast gives a 70% chance of favorable conditions at liftoff time. Update on the webcast side of things, start time is 21:35 UTC, and a good alternate viewing location is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzX_wFm4OH4
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
|
| |
| |
| HarbingerDawn | Date: Friday, 20.06.2014, 23:02 | Message # 107 |
|
Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Launch pushed back to the end of the window to give time to check out some possible leak issues.
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
|
| |
| |
| HarbingerDawn | Date: Friday, 20.06.2014, 23:58 | Message # 108 |
|
Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Launch scrubbed for today.
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
|
| |
| |
| HarbingerDawn | Date: Saturday, 21.06.2014, 17:07 | Message # 109 |
|
Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Another launch attempt is planned for today at 21:46 UTC
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
|
| |
| |
| HarbingerDawn | Date: Saturday, 21.06.2014, 23:53 | Message # 110 |
|
Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Launch scrubbed due to weather.
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
|
| |
| |
| HarbingerDawn | Date: Sunday, 22.06.2014, 19:20 | Message # 111 |
|
Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Another launch attempt today, window opens at 21:30 UTC. Webcast begins at 21:16.
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
|
| |
| |
| HarbingerDawn | Date: Sunday, 22.06.2014, 19:46 | Message # 112 |
|
Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Launch scrubbed again, likely due to weather.
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
|
| |
| |
| SpaceEngineer | Date: Monday, 23.06.2014, 16:00 | Message # 113 |
 Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| So many attempts
|
| |
| |
| HarbingerDawn | Date: Monday, 23.06.2014, 16:20 | Message # 114 |
|
Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Quote SpaceEngineer (  ) So many attempts
Yes  Technical issues and bad weather keep the rocket on the ground.
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
|
| |
| |
| Destructor1701 | Date: Tuesday, 24.06.2014, 03:28 | Message # 115 |
|
Pioneer
Group: Users
Ireland
Messages: 533
Status: Offline
| It was an unspecified issue with the rocket - odds are it was the second-stage helium propellant-pressurisation system.
They rescheduled to tomorrow (Tuesday), but then scrubbed that and took the rocket down to give it a thorough check-over.
Next expected attempt is somewhere in the first week of July!
|
| |
| |
| Aerospacefag | Date: Saturday, 23.08.2014, 13:46 | Message # 116 |
 Pioneer
Group: Users
Russian Federation
Messages: 401
Status: Offline
|
As the saying goes, you cant make an omelette without breaking some eggs. That looks surprisingly trivial - rocket goes up into the sky, rocket blows up into the air - yet pretty spectacular.
I'm not really gloating, but this actually worth posting because I want to point out that failures are the normal part of any development process and not only limited to some "backward technology". Their presence among other more successful results usually indicate that some serious work is going on. I'll be waiting for results of analysis.
|
| |
| |
| Zaddy23 | Date: Sunday, 24.08.2014, 23:37 | Message # 117 |
 Space Pilot
Group: Users
Australia
Messages: 129
Status: Offline
| Aw, that sucks... but as you said; The best way to learn is from mistakes 
Along with fezes and bowties, brown dwarves are cool.
|
| |
| |
| Destructor1701 | Date: Monday, 25.08.2014, 18:36 | Message # 118 |
|
Pioneer
Group: Users
Ireland
Messages: 533
Status: Offline
|
^ Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX at a TEDx talk in October last year, talking about how they were outright hoping to "tunnel one of these vehicles into the ground" for some "spectacular video", because if you're not blowing things up, you're not pushing the technology past its limits, and you're not finding out exactly where those limits lie, and why.
The video of the auto-destruct F9r-Dev1 seems to show the rocket pitching over, almost horizontal... if intentional, that's a pretty extreme test of its limits
In other news, AsiaSat 6 will be making a launch attempt on Wednesday. The weather forecast is so far favourable, with the probability of a violation hovering between 20% and 40% - reasonably good odds for a launch!
We all seemed to lose interest in this thread just before the OrbComm OG2 launch, so I guess it's time to bring us back up to date:
OG2 finally launched on July 14th 2014:
The first stage re-entry went extremely well, and the rocket touched down on the ocean's surface successfully at 0 speed, then cut its engines and fell over... right into a wave which split the tank and caused an explosion. Amazingly, SpaceX still released the re-entry and landing footage from the onboard cameras within a week (The camera cuts out before the explosion, Michael Bay was reported to be inconsolable):
And a few weeks later, they released some amazing footage from a chase-plane, of the rocket descending from the clouds and gently kissing the ocean. Just a reminder: this is a 12-storey (or more) tall rocket falling out of the sky, and this footage plays at one quarter speed:
In the mean time, they had successfully launched AsiaSat 8 on a legless version of the Falcon 9 v1.1, and inserted it into their most precise geosynchronous orbit yet, well exceeding the average precision of their competitors. That launch also set the company record for the fastest pad turn-around at 21 days, 16 hours and 45 minutes - the fastest rocket turn-around in decades, I believe. After all the delays on OG2, that's pretty impressive.
Since then, they've turned the pad around, and AsiaSat 6 is currently sitting on SLC-40 at KSC CCAFS , preparing to launch on Wednesday, 27th of August at 04:50:00 UTC.
Live coverage begins here, 15 minutes before take-off.
SpaceXStats.com is a crazy-useful website.
Edited by Destructor1701 - Wednesday, 27.08.2014, 03:31 |
| |
| |
| HarbingerDawn | Date: Monday, 25.08.2014, 22:28 | Message # 119 |
|
Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Quote Destructor1701 ( ) KSC
CCAFS, not KSC 
All forum users, please read this!
My SE mods and addons
Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
|
| |
| |
| Destructor1701 | Date: Wednesday, 27.08.2014, 03:37 | Message # 120 |
|
Pioneer
Group: Users
Ireland
Messages: 533
Status: Offline
| Pshaw! I think I can identify a Kerbal Space Centre launch when I see one!
Added (27.08.2014, 02:37)
---------------------------------------------
With mere hours to go, AsiaSat 6 Launch scrubbed indefinitely!
No real reason given for the scrub, aside from "Checking the rocket over thoroughly", although it is known that the order came directly from Elon Musk, initially via in-company e-mail to SpaceX staff.
Rumours and conjecture abound as to why, with the two leading candidates being:
1) That Musk has jitters about launching so soon after the F9r Dev1 in-flight auto-destruct, and wants to fully investigate that before launching any similar vehicles.
2) That NASA has given SpaceX two days' notice (as they have said they would) of having reached a decision on the Commercial Crew transportation Program. SpaceX won't know yet whether they've been selected - but the (ropey) logic of the rumour assumes that they don't want to have the rocket encounter any problems that may cast aspersions on SpaceX's technical abilities and spur any last-minute change of mind on NASA's part.
The second one sounds a little ridiculous to me, but those are the ones that lead the pack in terms of credibility.
EDIT: Statement from Mr.Musk now available.
It seems they want to shore up their flight software in the aftermath of the F9r Dev1 incident. No direct link is suspected, as the flight-rocket has more redundancies than the test rocket, but they seemingly want to run through the failure modes for the umpteenth time!
There is some insight into the F9r Dev1 incident - reference to a "blocked sensor port" being responsible.
AsiaSat 6 will be delayed by one or two weeks, thanks to this process.
Edited by Destructor1701 - Wednesday, 27.08.2014, 03:48 |
| |
| |
ENG
New site
United States 
Russian Federation 
Ireland 
Australia 