Fire, noise, and potential explosions?

And math and shiat?

Rocketry is like NASCAR for nerds.

*And I am all for it.

Sweet, I'm rooting for the explosion.

An Aluminum Falcon?

25% success rate? yeah, that's basically a planned explosion..

//hoping no one gets hurt, but awaiting the fireworks..

now, this sounds like something to make time for!

Well they've got NASA's odds beat

Today's second chance at rocket failure brought to you by SpaceX. Their Falcon 1 (25% success rate) launches today. Webcast begins at 7:40pm EDT. LGT stream

Wouldn't 3:40pm PDT be 6:40pm EDT?

TheYeti: Rocketry is like NASCAR for nerds.

True words, man, true words.

I interviewed with SpaceX. They didn't like me, so out of spite, I'm rooting for the explosion.

I'm kidding, of course, if the private sector could take over LEO and GTO operations, it would free up NASA to get back to working on the really hard stuff, like space colonization.

at work - i wonder what the bookies have on this

So is it one or two stage D engines?

Waiting for their crap media player to load isn't really explaining this project to me.

They may have a 25% success rate, but the box score says they're currently on a 1 launch success streak!

Man why do they keep screwing up? Not like this is rocket . . . ooh wait

APPROVES
http://tinyurl.com/n9p9gv
(copy and paste)

Nothing quite like a bunch of fat couch typers cheering against technology and those who take risks in the name of science.

groininjury: Well they've got NASA's odds beat

How many rockets have they lost lately? Because they have, like, hundreds if not thousands of successful launches for various rockets.

ktvegas: Nothing quite like a bunch of fat couch typers cheering against technology and those who take risks in the name of science.

Welcome to Fark

Today's second chance at rocket failure brought to you by SpaceX. Their Falcon 1 (25% success rate) launches today. Webcast Webcrash begins at 7:40pm EDT. LGT stream


/ftfa

This is relevant to my interests. I'm currently researching a subsonic ion pulse drive that will allow me to break the sound barrier while sorting particles of time- to be flawlessly discerning snark, troll, and irony in Fark threads, all while blaming the libs.

/mmm rocketry

There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.

The Right Stuff.

I'm pretty psyched that SpaceX exists and has put the Falcon 1 into orbit before. I'll be much more excited once they've gotten the Falcon 9 off the ground though. That's the one that can do some real work up there.

Thus far, it looks like private space industry is starting to gather steam.
We got SpaceX working on orbital launches to put satellites into space on the cheap.
We got Richard Branson's company offering suborbital space flight to civilians.
And then there's the Bigelow Aerospace space hotel which looks like it might actually get made some day.

I'm hoping that sometime before I die it becomes affordable for average Joes to take a space holiday.

Antimatter: groininjury: Well they've got NASA's odds beat

How many rockets have they lost lately? Because they have, like, hundreds if not thousands of successful launches for various rockets.

Not a lot of comfort there if you pay NASA to get your $1B satellite into orbit and they have to blow it up 'cause it's gone horribly off course.

I'd heard that for a while there, insurers were steering commercial interests away from NASA and over to France since the French had a better success rate with satellites.

PianoJosh: I interviewed with SpaceX. They didn't like me, so out of spite, I'm rooting for the explosion.

I'm kidding, of course, if the private sector could take over LEO and GTO operations, it would free up NASA to get back to working on the really hard stuff, like space colonization.

So that in 50 years we can have ten scientists rotating in and out of a base on the moon? Mehhh. Private companies will probably take the lead on that too.

NASA hasn't launch commercial satellites for a long time. And its science satellites go up on commercial launch vehicles (Atlas, Delta, Pegasus, etc)

UtileDysfunktion: Not a lot of comfort there if you pay NASA to get your $1B satellite into orbit and they have to blow it up 'cause it's gone horribly off course.

NASA does not do that. The Air Force runs the test range and makes the call, usually very quickly, if the launch vehicle is a danger to the range or the population around it. If they send destruct to a vehicle, guess what, it wasn't going to make orbit anyway.

You are also wrong on the stats. Here are the two most popular vehicles for satellite launches:

Ariane4: 93% success rate
Delta: 95% success rate

Both % are from totals of hundreds of launches over the last couple decades.

So about as successful as the missile defense system that we are paying for?

YixilTesiphon: PianoJosh: I interviewed with SpaceX. They didn't like me, so out of spite, I'm rooting for the explosion.

I'm kidding, of course, if the private sector could take over LEO and GTO operations, it would free up NASA to get back to working on the really hard stuff, like space colonization.

So that in 50 years we can have ten scientists rotating in and out of a base on the moon? Mehhh. Private companies will probably take the lead on that too.

I'm sure they will, but NASA be handling it for the near future. Ideally, the model will be that NASA will be working on the frontier type operations, and as they determine the basic model for how things work, the private sector will take over, and NASA will move on.

So, once the moon base thing is sort of figured out, private industry takes over, and NASA starts working on Mars. Eventually, private takes that over too, and NASA can start working on Europa, rinse and repeat.

Eventually, the private industry will mature to the point that NASA will be redundant. Then, who knows. A sort of space exploration singularity.

eqtworld: XMark: We got Richard Branson's company offering suborbital space flight to civilians.

really? How much does it cost and how many flights have they launched with passengers?

Starting around $200,000 at the moment so basically only rich people can order them now. They haven't launched anyone into space yet, but will within the next couple of years.

It's not super impressive though, their spaceship only goes about 100KM up, well below low Earth Orbit. High enough to see the curvature of the Earth though, and that's the officially recognized boundary of space.

Personally, I don't count anything under LEO as "space" but that's just me. It's a good first step in any case.

Actually I'd commend SpaceX for their 25% success rate, seeing as how they've only tried 4 times.

eqtworld: I'm going to win this prize (new window)

10,000lb seems a little light on the prize money, considering all the time and money spent on testing wouldn't you think?

Putting a satellite into orbit on your fourth try is rather impressive. Most posters here probably have a poorer record lighting their crack pipes.

Bacontastesgood: UtileDysfunktion: Not a lot of comfort there if you pay NASA to get your $1B satellite into orbit and they have to blow it up 'cause it's gone horribly off course.

NASA does not do that. The Air Force runs the test range and makes the call, usually very quickly, if the launch vehicle is a danger to the range or the population around it. If they send destruct to a vehicle, guess what, it wasn't going to make orbit anyway.

You are also wrong on the stats. Here are the two most popular vehicles for satellite launches:

Ariane4: 93% success rate
Delta: 95% success rate

Both % are from totals of hundreds of launches over the last couple decades.

I will readily admit to not following the space program closely, but I may not be wrong here:

As I recall, in recent years, a NASA rocket (probably an Atlas) carrying a commercial satellite payload had to be destroyed because it was going astray. "Horribly off course" implies that it was never going to make it to orbit. Also as I recall, this was just one of a string of commercial launch failures (again, this was a few years ago).

Insurers might have been looking at recent success-to-failure ratios rather than using figures from over decades. If I were in my seventies or eighties and started having a string of auto accidents, I doubt my insurance company would look to see what my lifetime average was before canceling my policy.

pag1107: Actually I'd commend SpaceX for their 25% success rate, seeing as how they've only tried 4 times.

Remember kids, rocket science is real hard science. Look at the first five or ten launches of a particular rocket design and you'll see similar failure rates.

oh geez no one is gonna read this far anyway

well I do know of one rocket this past saturday that i would have bet money on failing. no the videos are not up yet, here is a pre launch pic



yes it flew. i'll be doing a presentation on it at oshkosh under the name "homebuilt rocketships" this is the 1/6th scale prototype, with a 1/2 scale next year and a full the year after that.....

then manned flights

What the hell is an aluminum falcon?

Fantastic! Thanks submitter. Two launch attempts within 10 minutes of each other (Endeavour and Falcon).

OK, guess I will be hanging around the computer for the next couple hours.

Also, they put one of the launch cameras ON BOARD the rocket. The last launch had some fantastic views from that angle.

eqtworld: There's a shuttle launch tonight too

Link (new window)

That's just farking weird! I LOVE it!

UtileDysfunktion: I will readily admit to not following the space program closely, but I may not be wrong here:

As I recall, in recent years, a NASA rocket (probably an Atlas) carrying a commercial satellite payload had to be destroyed because it was going astray. "Horribly off course" implies that it was never going to make it to orbit. Also as I recall, this was just one of a string of commercial launch failures (again, this was a few years ago).

Insurers might have been looking at recent success-to-failure ratios rather than using figures from over decades. If I were in my seventies or eighties and started having a string of auto accidents, I doubt my insurance company would look to see what my lifetime average was before canceling my policy.


You are getting even further from reality now:

Atlas III and V vehicles have a 100% success rate. So, the specific vehicle you mentioned, over a decade. Insurers are not stupid.

Look, just admit you heard or read something and either got it wrong or the source was full of crap. NASA* doesn't do as much commercial satellite stuff anymore because they are damn expensive, not because their rockets are blowing up too often.

I will also point out that the space shuttle has a 98% success rate, so the Delta % I quoted is about the worst commercial stuff that NASA does.

*By the convention "NASA" I assume that we are talking about the complex of Boeing, Rocketdyne, LockMart, etc vehicles launched at KSC.

Tater1337: this is the 1/6th scale prototype, with a 1/2 scale next year and a full the year after that.....

Nice. I've never built anything that big but I've seen some cool launches.

/not a rocket scientist
//but I play one on the weekends

Hnakrapunt: Telcom... isn't that the satellite thats raining debris all over Europe?

Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?

Am I alone in believing that NASA should never have dropped the Delta Clipper project?

Looks like they changed the time again, pushing it back another 3 hrs.

Their website is showing a broadcast time of 6:40pm pacific, or maybe I'm just reading it wrong. anyone know whats going on?

It now says webcast pending. Maybe 6:40PDT was a typo.

An Orion launch from the ground would burn a farking hole in the atmosphere. We need to develop a space elevator first so we can build Orion ships in orbit.

Travlar: Their website is showing a broadcast time of 6:40pm pacific, or maybe I'm just reading it wrong. anyone know whats going on?

It is delayed by 3 hours due to weather.