The thread for space cadets!

[Thorgalaeg]

when you are in command of an alien fleet bent on an invasion of Earth , it's really simple . You go and break Will Smith's leg , whoops you have already won .

I still wonder how did "The Fly" guy connect his portatil to the alien computer to upload the virus. It is not possible! Aliens oibviously use an USB version we dont yet know. Maybe 3.2 o even 3.3!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Blue Origin Flies — and Lands — New Shepard Suborbital Spacecraft

WASHINGTON — Blue Origin announced Nov. 24 that it launched its New Shepard suborbital vehicle on a second test flight, flying to the edge of space and successfully landing both sections of the vehicle.

New Shepard launched from the company’s West Texas test site at 12:21 p.m. Eastern time Nov. 23, reaching a peak altitude of 100.5 kilometers and top speed of Mach 3.72. The vehicle’s unoccupied crew capsule separated and parachuted to a landing, while its propulsion module made a powered vertical landing.

The test was similar to one flown in April, where the vehicle reached a peak altitude of more than 93 kilometers. On that earlier test, however, a hydraulic problem with the propulsion module prevented it from making a controlled landing.

“This flight validates our vehicle architecture and design,” Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said in a statement accompanying the announcement of the flight. That includes fins and drag brakes that steer and slow down the propulsion module before its main engine reignites for the final landing sequence.

For more of the story, follow the link in the title.

Link to video.
What an awesome accomplishment!

They expect to start flying tourists next year - I really hope they can stick to that. The industry really needs this shot in the arm right now.

 

[trader/warrior]

That is seriously impressive. And I thought my suicide burns in KSP were unrealistic. Crazy how they can pull off those landings. The whole craft looks so small and sleek for what it does too.

I hope some millionaire sponsors a bunch of space denialists to take a ride in that thing, I've been reading too many youtube comment sections on space videos lately.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Awesome!

Curiously i built a similar rocket to do exactly the same with tourists in KSP, launch them vertically into space and then fall down, like an elevator. I uses a single stage rocket though, it seems in real world parachutes are not big enough to land the capsule plus the rocket all along.

 

[Cutlass]

May be of interest here, bet your town public library doesn't have this.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Awesome!

Curiously i built a similar rocket to do exactly the same with tourists in KSP, launch them vertically into space and then fall down, like an elevator. I uses a single stage rocket though, it seems in real world parachutes are not big enough to land the capsule plus the rocket all along.

Yeah pretty much. The rocket in particular is just too massive and even if you could bring along a parachute big enough to slow it down it would be so large as to be a massive dead weight during flight that kills performance and also would not guarantee that the rocket wouldn't tip over and land sideways.
________________

When I first wrote the post on Blue Origin, I had included a sentence about how there would be butthurt people at SpaceX but I deleted it out of respect for my former colleagues. SpaceX has been trying to do much the same thing and in fact the Grasshopper/Falcon 9RDev flights successfully took off and landed and their orbital missions have come very, very close to landing. And truth be told, what SpaceX has been trying to pull off is much harder than what Blue Origin just did.

Even still, the Blue Origin achievement is impressive and should be celebrated and I also didn't want to put down anyone at SpaceX. Then Elon Musk went on twitter and congratulated Blue Origin while simultaneously taking a swipe at them because SpaceX's landings are more challenging. Lame.

May be of interest here, bet your town public library doesn't have this.

It doesn't! Is that a permanent installation? Very cool.

 

[trader/warrior]

When I first wrote the post on Blue Origin, I had included a sentence about how there would be butthurt people at SpaceX but I deleted it out of respect for my former colleagues. SpaceX has been trying to do much the same thing and in fact the Grasshopper/Falcon 9RDev flights successfully took off and landed and their orbital missions have come very, very close to landing. And truth be told, what SpaceX has been trying to pull off is much harder than what Blue Origin just did.

Even still, the Blue Origin achievement is impressive and should be celebrated and I also didn't want to put down anyone at SpaceX. Then Elon Musk went on twitter and congratulated Blue Origin while simultaneously taking a swipe at them because SpaceX's landings are more challenging. Lame.

I noticed a lot of snarky comments around the web from both sides. Seems brand loyalty has already become a thing in the space industry, even though most of us are on the outside looking in with no influence or stake in it.

What SpaceX is doing is on a completely different level, but even if they had already done a successfull VTVL spaceflight, Blue Origin should still have recieved their share of attention for pulling off their concept. To me, the simple goals New Shepard has is part of what makes it exciting, they have already demonstrated everything they need to start firing tourists off into space (well, a dip into space at least) with a relatively simple and safe method. Seeing that piddly little rocket made by a relatively small company take off with a crew capsule and safely return from space makes the time when it is done routinely in a cheap way seem that much closer.

 

[Cutlass]

It doesn't! Is that a permanent installation? Very cool.

Yeah. There's only 2 of those. The other is in the Smithsonian. They built a picture window on the side of the building to show it off. It was designed by a guy named Hobbs.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Orbital ATK is set to launch a Cygnus cargo tug to the ISS today on a ULA Atlas V rocket at 5:33 pm EST. The live-feed link is here: http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html

They tried to launch yesterday but it was scrubbed for weather. Today's 30-minute window only has a 30% chance of having favorable weather conditions which sucks, but it's worth tuning in to see anyhow.

_____________

After the Dec 2014 failure of the the Orbital ATK Antares launch vehicle (also carrying a Cygnus), Orbital ATK contracted with ULA to buy a couple of Atlas V's to launch Cygnus spacecraft to meet their obligations to supply the ISS while they re-engine the Antares to take newer, Russian RD-181 engines. The engines they previously used were refurbished 40+ year old NK-33 engines and they were the cause of the failure.

You read that correctly - they were previously using engines left over from the failed Soviet lunar program that were sitting in a warehouse for decades when the designer of the engines refused to scrap them when the program was cancelled. The story of how the engines wound up in US hands is pretty remarkable and can be found in the awesome documentary 'The Engines That Came in From the Cold' (available on youtube).

 

[Kaitzilla]

Here's another video of the Blue Origin rocket like the one Hobbsyoyo linked earlier.


Link to video.


Crazy it fell 10,000 feet in 11 seconds. That's ugh, 620 mph.
Did it punch through a cloud or something at 25,000 feet? (0:13)

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The launch that I linked to was delayed several times. They are going to try again in about 30 minutes. Link:
http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html

 

[dutchfire]

Did you see the photos of Pluto? http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-returns-first-of-the-best-images-of-pluto/

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah they were pretty awesome and more are soon to follow.

The launch went by the books. Go Cygnus!

(good thing it went well because the astronauts on the ISS were running out of toilet paper [not a joke])

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Russia’s Space Ambitions Eclipsed by Budget Reality?

Russia’s space agency is facing another cut to its long-term budget plan, according to Roscosmos Director-General Ikor Komarov.

Komarov said in a statement Roscosmos released this week that the agency now expects to get 1.5 trillion rubles ($22.5 billion) from 2016 through 2025, less than half of its original plan for that period.

Komarov didn’t state what that reduced budget meant for ambitious Russian space exploration plans announced in recent months, including concepts for a new space station or human missions to the Moon. [Moscow Times]

The Russians have been talking a big game about building their own space station and lunar base in the 2020's but when it came down to it, their priorities were elsewhere.


In other news-

The Russians faced another launch failure when the upper stage of a Soyuz 2-1v failed to separate from the payload (a spy satellite).

The ESA successfully launched the Vega small satellite launcher for the 6th time which successfully concludes the demonstration phase of operations for the rocket.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

SpaceX successfully deployed 11 satellites to orbit and landed the first stage of the rocket back at the launch pad. That was one hell of a return to flight.

I'll post videos tomorrow.

 

[Glassfan]

These guys are doing so much better that I gave them credit for a couple of years ago.

 

[trader/warrior]

Cool gif of deploying satellites.

Those things are more impressive than I would have thought:

 

[Michkov]

Did they launch the rocket from some other site than Canaveral or just fly the 1st stage back? If the later do you know the horizontal speed it was going out?

 

[warpus]

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Link to video.They not only nailed the landing but also this was the first flight of their new, uprated 'full thrust' vehicle which is larger and more powerful than the previously used Falcon 9 v1.1.

It's almost unheard of for a first flight to go perfectly for any rocket variant by any company - much less to stick the landing of the first stage.

Did they launch the rocket from some other site than Canaveral or just fly the 1st stage back? If the later do you know the horizontal speed it was going out?

They took off from Cape Canaveral and landed the first stage back at Cape Canaveral on a landing pad a few miles from the launch pad.

I don't know the horizontal velocity of the rocket at burn out but I believe the absolute velocity it was traveling at MECO (main engine cut off) was about 1000 m/s.

____________________

Of note: Jeff Bezos gave SpaceX a backhanded compliment after the feat; returning the favor of Musk's previous backhanded compliment to Blue Origin.