SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launches after three-year hiatus with secret US sats The most powerful operational rocket flying today – SpaceX's Falcon Heavy – blasted multiple military satellites into orbit on a classified mission for the US Space Force on Tuesday, marking its fourth flight. The 230-foot-tall vehicle launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 0941 ET (1341 UTC). The exact nature of …
But I'm sure all the British folks will have a tiny little violin for me over weather conditions.
It was VERY loud though. Not only the launch, but the double double-sonic-booms of the landing boosters: BOOM-BOOM! BOOM-BOOM! which shook windows all the way over here in Titusville.
In the footage from one of the boosters, you can see the other booster landing: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iop0dwTcdPw
Timed to launch in fog to maintain secrecy? How silly.
Clearly the NSA used jewish space lasers to heat up the Gulf of Mexico, increasing atmospheric moisture which combined with an extra heavy application of chemtrails, generating the necessary fog bank which obscured the flying saucers that escorted the rocket. You'd be able to see through it just fine except the fluoride in your water suppresses sensitivity to certain bandwidths of UV light.
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Remember, the USA has a semi-infinite military budget. However, what they do need is military *capability* for survivability and flexibility in war. For example, if the enemy takes out your entire SBIRS in one go, you need to be able to launch full replacement constellation in days, or preferably hours. Certainly no more than a week.
SLS scrubs launch, needs *two months* to return a minor fix to the launchpad, while anything more than minor needs a *one year delay* to service everything for a go-round. Falcon has proved it can turn around within 3 days after a successful launch. You can have a operational fleet of twenty Falcons with 3-day turnaround, for the cost of one SLS.
And for extra credit, you can launch Falcons from replaceable offshore barges that are no longer a single-point failure target for being the first casualty of any strike large enough to destroy USA satellites. This gives the USA exactly what it needs - a completely survivable space layer, because it can be re-launched as needed.
"SLS scrubs launch, needs *two months* to return a minor fix to the launchpad, while anything more than minor needs a *one year delay* to service everything for a go-round."
What a load of nonsense. It's like comparing the time needed to develop a new car to the time needed to service an existing car.
This has nothing to do with new car vs existing car, it's really that bad for SLS. The rocket is brand-new (and will always be brand-new since the whole thing splats into the ocean after launch). Rolling back the vehicle from the launch pad is a multi-day operation in itself. If it's rolled back lots of stuff like flight-abort-system batteries have to be replaced (because they can't be charged while SLS is on the pad and have a limited lifespan) and then the thing has to be rolled back out to the pad and prepped for launch (requiring a weather window long enough to get safely from VAB to pad and prep for launch)
SLS isn't built for fast launch (or for launch in the first place it seems)
No, it isn’t. You are pointing out that “once the bugs are out”, the probability of a launch scrub reduces strongly. And that’s true. But my point is, *in case of a problem*, SLS has made all sorts of poor design tradeoffs which clearly got bargained during bureaucratic specmanship, but were never acceptable technically and have operational consequences. Those operational flaws are now becoming apparent.
One flaw is the limited provision of power umbilical to payload, so any launch delay has a consequence on the payload readiness. Another is the limited stacking time of the SRBs. And in turn, needing SRBs at all is mainly due to having low thrust-to-weight ratio at liftoff which is a consequence of selecting low-density hydrogen fuel. And then there is selecting a cryogenic fuel, which means you *can’t* fully check fuel integrity without a full cool-down, loading risk of hold untestable into the last minutes before launch. Other launcher programs *just don’t have* that issue. Falcon9 doesn’t have any comparable failure mode where it gets to the launchpad and at the last minute a cryoleak could become apparent.
*None* of these issues go away on the SLS second or 100th launch. The schedule impact of a launch hold is exactly the same as today. Just the probability goes down as it becomes more mature.
"Though I think the launch cost of SLS would mean most (all?) would not consider it to be a viable option."
Nah, that's just the SpaceX fanboys' fantasy - it's total nonsense, counting the total design and build cost of the entire system as the launch cost of the first SLS, while only counting incremental costs for the launch of Falcon Heavy.
Wikipedia does a surprisingly decent job explaining the real difference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Launch_costs
When you note that SLS has double the lift capacity of Falcon Heavy, the launch costs are likely to end up pretty close (as long as a comparable number of each takes place).
The SLS Wiki article SLS is over $1bn per launch, that is excluding all the development and maintenance costs. Falcon heavy fully expended is $150m for 2/3 of the LEO payload capacity. Of course there are missions that can't be done by FH due to fairing size limitations, lack of vertical integration and other capacity limitations.
Except it DOES more or less say that?? For example: "Then, in December 2019, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine shared informally that he disagrees with the $2 billion figure since the marginal cost of an SLS launch should decrease after the first few, and is expected to end up around $800 million to $900 million, although contract negotiations were only just beginning for those later cores.[121]"
So for at least the first few (even excluding cost-overruns incurred after 2019) the costs ARE over 1bn per launch and even IF more of them are built and launched, marginal cost per launch will in future still be close to 1bn.
As for FH cost, citation needed, but I've seen numbers ranging from 100m to 300m. Yesterdays launch was probably more expensive since they were expending the center core, but on average it'll probably get closer to 150m. FH will certainly be cheaper per launch than SLS, even if we exclude development costs for SLS and include them for FH.
Oh and if we're going to use Wikipedia as a source, Wikipedia literally gives $150m per launch for a fully expendable launch (expending both boosters AND center core, meaning yesterdays launch might have been cheaper since it landed the boosters) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy#Launch_prices
Rocketdyne were awarded a contract of 1.79billion dollars to make 18 RS-25 engines.
Each SLS launch will use 4 of those engines just the once, so that's minimum of $400 million sunk,literally in the ocean,cost per launch and we havent accounted for costs of fabricating the core stage, the solid rockets,upper stages, propellant loads for a launch campaign.
And that's minus all the development cost of SLS, so a totally fair comparison to a Falcon heavy launch cost of $300million vs $400 million on just expendable engines.
Rocketdyne were given 1billion just to restart production of RS25 engines not long after theyd been given several hundred million to close down production.
I'll bite though I probably shouldn't.
SLS Block 1 has a 95T LEO capability. FH is around 63T.
Europa Clipper which was due to launch on SLS but has been switched to FH is probably a good use case for comparison. There were 3 factors which were cited,
- FH has enough performance to avoid gravity assist from Venus, something that Delta Heavy would need and the reason why DH couldn't be used.
- There is no capacity from Boeing for supplying the launch capability for a 2025 (at the latest) launch. All SLS capacity is allocated to Airtimes program. FH will take an additional year to get there which means it needs to launch in 2023 (it could launch in 2024 but call it 2023 to allow a performance buffer) but that is something that SpaceX can support.
- There is a potential vibration issue caused by the SRB. Boeing is stating one value but NASA's own wind tunnel testing is coming up with a different value. NASA has other SRB data from the shuttle era which supports their worries as well but didn't factor that into this report. Without actual launch data its impossible to discount the issue.
ARS Tech which is pretty reputable site has a good article on the switch. According to the article a fully expended FH launch is costing around $178m and there is a white house comment that SLS launch is $2bn excluding development in one of the linked articles. I was being pretty generous saying its 'only' a billion as that is what is in wiki.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/spacex-to-launch-the-europa-clipper-mission-for-a-bargain-price/
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/the-white-house-puts-a-price-on-the-sls-rocket-and-its-a-lot/
Don't get me wrong here, I think SLS is the best option for Artemis. Its a direct flight, no messing about transferring crew, no in-flight refuelling, most proven technology and a bunch of other reasons. But as a general non-crew launch vehicle its a bit of a non-starter.
The problem for SLS, and indeed any launcher, is the positive feedback effect on the marginal cost depending on launch numbers. If SLS got five launches per year, you get one cost number……but if the economic cost is even 20% more than market rate, you don’t get five launches per year, you only get the two non-commercial launches subsidised by government. Then, all the development cost has to be paid by those two launches, and suddenly your 20% over-cost is 300% over-cost. And that’s already factored in, two years ago. So now, the unit cost is so high, it’s probably only *one* launch per year.
Whereas, fanboi or not, the commercial reality is that Falcon9 is in a virtuous circle for costs. The underlying technology doesn’t even have to be freakishly cheap. It just has to be *cheap enough* that Starlink is actually profitable in initial service, enough to generate cash for the next launches. And suddenly you turn around, Falcon9 has launched 150, and there seems little barrier to another 600 launches. It almost doesn’t matter what the initial cost advantage is at this point, whether Musk claims of 75% saving are true, or it’s really only 20-30%. With no more development cost to amortise, it’s just very difficult for anyone to catch up with the true marginal launch cost.
You can see this impact elsewhere: Ariane 6 is delayed from 2021 until late 2023 at least, according to ESA [and probably mid-2024 with a more pragmatic view]. We can argue why, but it is definite. Even European ESA programs are now forced to move from Ariane to Falcon. So….where are those EU governmental “guaranteed” 12 launches per year for Ariane 6, that are required to make the budget close? Ariane 6 now *has* to cost 10% more per launch than planned, absolutely independent of future performance, although the gap will of course be subsidised. But if it’s subsidised, that’s money that has to be taken from ESA spacecraft, which means still fewer ESA launches, which means yet more impact to Ariane 6 financials.
Launchers are a horrible business.
…for "peaceful" purposes only?
> "delivering lethal and resilient space capabilities to defend the nation in the contested space domain."
I look forward to similarly neutral, matter of factly coverage when the Chinese, Indians or Russians do the same thing. :/
Remember that "space farce" was set up during the Drumpf years.
All the logos and letterheads had to sound sufficiently masculine in order to stroke the ego of the mango menace.
Changing it all would be an unnecessary cost. Just wait until all the pre-printed paper has been used up, and then quietly replace it with something more sensible.
The main thing to note there is that The Tango-Adjacent Ex-President just split out those capabilities and responsibilities from the Air Force, and gave them the new outfits, funky letterheads, and overly masculine verbiage. Its most likely the same stuff was being pulled under the auspices of the USAF, without all the fanfare.
Why don't they just entangle some stuff together, take one half and fly it into space, make it go round and round the sun very fast until they get some good time dilation and then they can communicate back from the future and nip any upcoming problems in the present in the bud.
Need more coffee...
Shouldn't that be -22.24 kN, ie CN says 'come here', Falcon Heavy obeys. If it knows what's good for it. And yes, I know, physics, but that works differently for action heroes.
I guess this article also goes to show 'why Falcon Heavy?' or 'why Starship?' given the lack of launches would seem to suggest the lack of much of a market to cover the costs of multiple heavy launch platforms. I guess when they're being funded by the Billionaire Boys Club, demonstrating who has the biggest thruster is a goal in itself.
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"even engineers in the US will be using metric"
While they probably want to, they actually can't a lot of the time. It doesn't matter how sensible it is in theory if in practice all the tools, parts, and materials easily available are made to Imperial measurements.
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"...even engineers in the US will be using metric..."
On a lot of US Army projects, it's still inches and feet and pounds. My current project -- modifications to a building on a base (I'm not telling what or where) -- involves lots of digging, concrete work, then installing all sorts of stuff, and almost no one carries around metric tape measures here. We go with what works and what the contract says.
Within those bounds, some of our detailed drawings for designing components will be metric, because why add conversion uncertainty to the most critical things? But this particular project does not have the usual "eventually hand your entire technical data package (TDP) over to the customer" clause, so these drawings remain internal to the company and we can do what we want as long as the project requirements are met. (If there needs to be long-term support or (eventual) modifications, that's a separate task order / contract, and if they mandate a TDP handover, we'll deal with the unit conversions then.)
Other projects -- like modifying ships or vehicles -- you go with what the previous drawings had to maintain consistency, partially to (again) prevent conversion errors. New projects, especially vehicles, are almost always metric.
