Falcon 9 Launch & Recovery Operations Options

[Greg Hullender]

SpaceX just sent a press release with an update on the Falcon 9. They successfully did a 5-engine test. They also mentioned the next Falcon 1 attempt will be late June "or July," presumably meaning "late June or early July," but you never know. :-)

Here's the full text. This isn't on their web page yet, the last I looked:

McGregor TX – Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) conducted the first five-engine firing of its Falcon 9 medium to heavy lift rocket at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on Thursday, May 29. At full power the engines generated almost half a million pounds of force, and consumed 1,750 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second. This five engine test again sets the record as the most powerful test yet on the towering 235-foot tall test stand.
The test of the five Merlin 1C engines, arranged in a cross pattern like the Saturn V moon rocket, is the last step before firing the full complement of nine engines, scheduled for this summer. With all engines operating, the Falcon 9 generates over one million pounds of thrust in vacuum - four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft.
“This is the first time that we’ve added more than one engine at a time, and all phases of integration and testing went smoothly,” said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. “As with previous tests, we saw no unexpected interactions between the engines, and are on schedule for adding four more engines.”
The first Falcon 9 will arrive at the SpaceX launch site at Cape Canaveral by the end of 2008. The next flight of SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 1 rocket is scheduled for late June or July of 2008.

[climber]

New Update: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=30220
Nice looking rocket BTW, very "clean" d the Dragon looks much bigger than I thought. Edited: using Ugordan link (thanks) I suspect part of what I though was the Dragon could be it's fairing instead.
Trouble here is that we could fall into the Manned spacefligth side is we don't care enought but well, so far so good.
Less than 3 months to "see" the maiden flight of a new rocket, I can't wait to watch this.

[Greg Hullender]

Trouble here is that we could fall into the M****d s*********t side

We ought to be able to safely discuss everything else about the Falcon 9 -- everything we're actually interested in -- with little or no loss. We just can't talk about those kinds of applications for it.

I still maintain that the Falcon 9 is very exciting for UMSF because it promises to eventually make big changes to the cost equation for missions we care about deeply. If Elon finds other uses for it -- hey, that's great. I figure I'll read about them somewhere else.

--Greg (I'll admit I don't want to fly in it if I have to be unmanned first!) :-)