The thread for space cadets!

[Perfection]

Nope, it's never coming back. Here it is on the payload attachment fitting.

Is other than this ridiculous stunt does Tesla and Space X actually work together much?

 

[Samez]

Space x seems to have triggered UFO alarm over the westcoast with their latest launch -
TBH it looks really amazing...

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Is other than this ridiculous stunt does Tesla and Space X actually work together much?

Yes they do. The Tesla design center used to be where I sat in the Hawthorne facotry of SpaceX and eventually moved into a hangar next door. They share personnel on a few projects, mainly things like this that Elon wants to do that are oddball one-off things. They collaborated on the Hyperloop competitions and the Boring Company. I don't think they ever share much in the way of capital or facilities (anymore on the latter) but some personnel do get cross-pollinated.

Space x seems to have triggered UFO alarm over the westcoast with their latest launch -
TBH it looks really amazing...

Nice video! It was an evening polar launch out of Vandy (Vandenberg AFB) so it climbed into sunlight which lit it up for everyone to see in the dark along the coast. I had a friend all the way in AZ see it.

 

[trader/warrior]

Publicity stunt.

*facepalm*

I mean, it's a demo mission which for most new launch systems simply have mass simulators. The SpaceX Dragon capsule carried a wheel of cheese into orbit on its first flight. Would it be better if they carried a block of concrete or something?

 

[Cutlass]

I mean, it's a demo mission which for most new launch systems simply have mass simulators. The SpaceX Dragon capsule carried a wheel of cheese into orbit on its first flight. Would it be better if they carried a block of concrete or something?

would have cost maybe half a million dollars less.

 

[Takhisis]

Sand is at enough of a premium that there is a black market on it already, so a Tesla might actually come in cheap.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

would have cost maybe half a million dollars less.

Musk donated his own personal Roadster so I assume that was free. They would have had to customize the PAF for any given payload so that wasn't a new cost either.

 

[Takhisis]

I still think it would have cost him less if he'd bought a few bags of cement.

 

[Samez]

Sure but media reception would have been way less. It is more of an addcampaign for both the companies, than a scientific neccessity.

 

[Cutlass]

I still think it should have been brought back to Earth, to see how it held up.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Falcons are some of the most instrumented rockets ever launched. They will learn all they need to know from the many sensors onboard.

SpaceX has also never done an interplanetary launch (if you discount their launch of a probe to a Lagrange point) so this will also be a whole new trajectory for them to fly which precludes returning it to Earth.

 

[Cutlass]

Russian satellite lost after being set to launch from wrong spaceport
Deputy prime minister admits programmers gave the $45m device coordinates for Baikonur rather than Vostochny cosmodrome

Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Wednesday the loss of a 2.6bn-rouble ($45m) satellite launched last month was due to an embarrassing programming error.

Russian space agency Roscosmos said last month it had lost contact with the newly launched weather satellite – the Meteor-M – after it blasted off from Russia’s new Vostochny cosmodrome in the country’s far east.

Speaking to Rossiya 24 state TV channel, Rogozin said the failure had been caused by human error. The rocket carrying the satellites had been programmed with the wrong coordinates, he said, saying it had been given bearings for take-off from a different cosmodrome – Baikonur – which Moscow leases from Kazakhstan.

“The rocket was really programmed as if it was taking off from Baikonur,” said Rogozin. “They didn’t get the coordinates right.”

The rocket was carrying 18 smaller satellites belonging to scientific, research and commercial companies from Russia, Norway, Sweden, the US, Japan, Canada and Germany.

The Vostochny spaceport, laid out in the thick taiga forest of the Amur region, is the first civilian rocket launch site in Russia.

In April last year, after delays and massive costs overruns, Russia launched its first rocket from Vostochny, a day after a technical glitch forced an embarrassing postponement of the event in the presence of the president, Vladimir Putin.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/28/russian-satellite-lost-wrong-spaceport-meteor-m


So is this as idiotic as sending a mission to Mars with both metric and imperial measurements mixed up?

 

[uppi]

So is this as idiotic as sending a mission to Mars with both metric and imperial measurements mixed up?

Slightly less, because different coordinate sets are necessary, whereas using imperial units is just stupid. But yeah, that is the same class of idiotic errors.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

What Uppi said.

Also the Russians just launched Angola's first satellite (which Russia built). It malfunctioned after separation from the launch vehicle and is assumed lost.

I'm worried about launching astronauts on Russian hardware at this point.

 

[red_elk]

Deputy prime minister admits programmers gave the $45m device coordinates for Baikonur rather than Vostochny cosmodrome

According to investigation, the reason was different - programming error in upper stage booster.
It incorrectly determined direction of rotation, and started rotation maneuver in 358 degrees instead of just 2.
Rockets which started from Baikonur had the same error, but it didn't manifest itself because of different coordinates.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/11/30/guidance-error-reportedly-led-to-russian-launch-failure/

 

[Broken_Erika]

What Uppi said.

Also the Russians just launched Angola's first satellite (which Russia built). It malfunctioned after separation from the launch vehicle and is assumed lost.

I'm worried about launching astronauts on Russian hardware at this point.

Yea, you end up with several dead astronauts because someone forgot to install the life support system, or forgot to bolt the crew capsule's hatch hinges...
Probably some political appointee's who have no experience or are just plain stupid who have high level positions just because they donated to the All-Russia Party...

 

[trader/warrior]

It's up!

Spoiler :

The raising https://streamable.com/193ub

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The Russians are reporting they have regained contact with AngoSat but give no further details. I assume it is stuck in a geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) which means it has days or weeks to execute a burn to get into geostationary orbit (GEO). GTO orbits tend to have very low periapsis because it's an efficient way to launch into GEO but this means they scrape the atmosphere on every go around and have to burn out of the transfer orbit pretty quickly.

 

[Broken_Erika]

It's up!

Spoiler :

The raising https://streamable.com/193ub

[Insert Austin Powers 2 Reference Here]

 

[Takhisis]

[Insert Austin Powers 2 Reference Here]

A reference? Sir, that's like…