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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Private Missions _ Falcon Surprise

Posted by: Greg Hullender Apr 5 2011, 04:01 AM

From SpaceX about two hours ago.

QUOTE
Something Big is Coming
ElonMusk Holding Press Conference on Tuesday, April 5th
Elon Musk,CEO and Chief Technical Officer of SpaceX, will hold a press conference on Tuesday, April 5th at 11:20am EST to discuss SpaceX's latest venture.
Get a sneakpeak of the discussion on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th6HQ9RtVCE.The
The press conference will be webcast live at: http://www.visualwebcaster.com/spacex. The press conference will also be accessible via the home page ofSpaceX.com by clicking the main banner. If you are unable to watch live, the press conference will be archived at http://www.visualwebcaster.com/spacex for future viewing.
Judging from the video (and the fact that the Falcon 9 Heavy Maiden Launch showed up on their mainifest a month or two ago) I'm guessing this'll be the F9H announcement. But, given the fanfare, it could be anything.

--Greg

Posted by: Syrinx Apr 5 2011, 04:35 AM

I've taken all the fanfare to mean that SpaceX hired a new Chief of Marketing, who has promptly turned it up to 10.

Posted by: Eluchil Apr 5 2011, 06:23 PM

QUOTE
I'm guessing this'll be the F9H announcement.


Looks like Greg was right. http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20110405/BREAKINGNEWS/110405013/SpaceX-unveils-plans-Falcon-heavy-lift-rocket

Posted by: Norm Hartnett Apr 5 2011, 11:49 PM

If Space X gets this thing off the ground (and they have come close on all their other vehicle predictions) the Falcon Heavy (FH) will have a huge impact on the launch market since it is advertised to reach the mythic $1000/lb to LEO. How much that would impact interplanetary science launch costs remains to be seen.

Edit; Elon did say that a single FH launch could handle the entire Mars sample return mission. The Falcon Heavy has enough power to reach Mars with a 30,000-pound payload with a launch cost of around $100 million. unsure.gif

Posted by: Greg Hullender Apr 6 2011, 02:37 AM

Spaceflight Now says NASA is eager to certify the regular Falcon 9 for unmanned space probes.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1104/04launchcosts/

Posted by: Greg Hullender Apr 6 2011, 04:43 AM

Anyone have any idea why the maiden launch for FH would be from Vandenberg? Ideal for a polar launch, of course, but why do that?

Posted by: djellison Apr 6 2011, 05:30 AM

Pad ready quicker? Less conflicts on the range? Closer to Hawthorne? I can think of lots of reasons.

Posted by: stevesliva Apr 6 2011, 05:37 AM

Beats me.

Because there is a brand new space launch complex there for the Delta IV heavy that probably won't be doing very much?

edit: Actually, looks like they'll be using the Titan IV SLC-4 that the air force should've kept around a little longer. Might just allow more multitasking.

Posted by: SFJCody Apr 6 2011, 01:08 PM

I wonder what could be done with a little New Horizons size spacecraft + kick stage on a monster launch vehicle like that. Flybys of Eris or Sedna? laugh.gif

Posted by: AndyG Apr 6 2011, 01:44 PM

~12 tonnes in low Mars orbit would be rather entertaining, too! rolleyes.gif

Posted by: ugordan Apr 6 2011, 04:33 PM

QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Apr 6 2011, 06:43 AM) *
Anyone have any idea why the maiden launch for FH would be from Vandenberg? Ideal for a polar launch, of course, but why do that?

Because the pad at the Cape doesn't support the Heavy and would need a new integration hangar, new ground support equipment, additional propellant tanks, etc. All that would interfere with the planned COTS/CRS launches and I think neither SpaceX nor NASA want that. They plan on adding support for the Heavy there in late 2013/early 2014.

Also, the Air Force kind of gave them a requirement that to be eligible for EELV program contracts, they would need a west coast pad for polar launches and a vehicle more capable than the standard Falcon 9. So they're attempting to kill two birds with one stone.

Posted by: ugordan Apr 6 2011, 04:34 PM

QUOTE (AndyG @ Apr 6 2011, 03:44 PM) *
~12 tonnes in low Mars orbit would be rather entertaining, too! rolleyes.gif

12 tons to TMI and 12 tons in Mars orbit are two different things.

Posted by: AndyG Apr 6 2011, 06:46 PM

QUOTE (ugordan @ Apr 6 2011, 05:34 PM) *
12 tons to TMI and 12 tons in Mars orbit are two different things.

Oh, agreed.

If the Earth-orbited 52 tonne figure is correct and the back of my envelope is working, ~6.2km/s takes you from LEO to LMO, and that delta V gives you a 12T final mass with a LH/LOX rocket of specific impulse ~450.

Andy

Posted by: ugordan Apr 6 2011, 07:09 PM

I wouldn't count on Falcon Heavy having anything near those 53 mt in the near future. The current 1st stage tank size simply doesn't support that kind of propellant load. Wer'e talking 1450 tons liftoff mass compared to 310 t of current Falcon 9.

It seems obvious an upgrade path at one point would be to stretch the tank by as much as 40 or 50% to take advantage of the upgraded Merlin engine thrust. The CGI video shows a Falcon Heavy with current tank sizes and I'd wager that one would put in the ballpark of previous Falcon 9 Heavy estimates - about 30 tons to LEO. Tanks stretched by that much would look unnaturally skinny for F9's diameter.

Posted by: stevesliva Apr 6 2011, 09:37 PM

QUOTE (ugordan @ Apr 6 2011, 03:09 PM) *
I wouldn't count on Falcon Heavy having anything near those 53 mt in the near future. The current 1st stage tank size simply doesn't support that kind of propellant load. Wer'e talking 1450 tons liftoff mass compared to 310 t of current Falcon 9.


I know you follow this stuff closer than I do, but I saw something mention that the center 1st stage tank would stay full due to connections to the strap-ons. Is that where the figure comes from?

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Apr 6 2011, 10:04 PM

QUOTE (ugordan @ Apr 6 2011, 11:09 AM) *
Tanks stretched by that much would look unnaturally skinny for F9's diameter.

I'm sure those sections will be encouraged to wear horizontal stripes.

Posted by: ugordan Apr 6 2011, 10:09 PM

QUOTE (stevesliva @ Apr 6 2011, 11:37 PM) *
Is that where the figure comes from?

No, that would only partially account for it. The press release stated that propellant crossfeed could be turned off for payloads less than about 45 tons suggesting the crossfeed accounts for "only" a 8 ton boost. There's really no way of approaching that 45 ton figure without stretched tanks first, even with tanks having one of the best propellant mass fractions in the world.

Falcon 9 is supposed to be able to boost 10 tons. 3 identical cores can obviously only make that 30-ish tons.
Parallel with this Falcon Heavy announcement, there was a brief mention of an upgraded Falcon 9 as well, also 14 meters taller, weighing 480 tons and being able to lift 16 tons. 3*16 is close to the above figure of 45 tons without crossfeed. So that about checks out. The vastly higher thrust on Merlin 1d is basically unused with the current tanks, in fact the engines might actually have to be derated in order for "non-upgraded" Falcon 9's not to jump off the pad and use up all the propellant too soon.

Previously the engine upgrade was targeted at 125 klbf, they could actually reduce the number of these new 140 klbf engines on Falcon 9 down to 8 and have the same performance as before.

Posted by: algorimancer Apr 7 2011, 03:31 PM

Launch costs of <$1000/lb. encourage the notion of an UMSF craft. I would think that we could come up with enough donations to launch a 100-500 lb spacecraft, building on the notion of the CubeSat program. Given a piggyback beyond LEO, adding an ion drive and perhaps a magsail (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Magnetic_sail), an asteroid (perhaps 16 Psyche or 15 Eunomia?) flyby or even rendevous/landing might be entirely feasible, given a bit of creativity. I would envision 5 years to launch, followed by a 5 year mission.

Posted by: djellison Apr 7 2011, 03:48 PM

QUOTE (algorimancer @ Apr 7 2011, 08:31 AM) *
Launch costs of <$1000/lb. encourage the notion of an UMSF craft. I would think that we could come up with enough donations to launch a 100-500 lb spacecraft, building on the notion of the CubeSat program.


The most expensive part has never been the launch. Build a spacecraft, testing it, the ground systems required to use it - that's the expensive part with spacecraft, typically.

Posted by: Syrinx Apr 7 2011, 06:28 PM

You know the old saying. In for $1000, in for a pound. Heh.

I would like to entertain the idea of a "UMSF" craft. I'd be in for a few pounds. Integration, testing, comms, all that business is definitely a concern.

Posted by: algorimancer Apr 11 2011, 12:45 PM

QUOTE (Syrinx @ Apr 7 2011, 01:28 PM) *
...
I would like to entertain the idea of a "UMSF" craft. I'd be in for a few pounds.


I too would easily be in for a few pounds, especially over a 5+ year time frame.

It has been my experience that much of the expense of this sort of endeavor is personnel. In the case of an UMSF craft, I would expect that most of this would be volunteered time. Also, I note that rather a lot of the relevant professionals are members of this site. It would certainly be of interest to work-up a reference design and costs. Are ion drives prohibitively expensive? Would we need to buy time on the DSN, or could comms be more improvised (pulsed laser, for instance)? This could be an opportunity to test some new technology. Then there's also the possibility of commercial sponsors.

Posted by: djellison Apr 11 2011, 01:56 PM

I repeat - you are catastrophically underestimating the costs, complexity and challenges involved.

The very very smallest and simplest spacecraft you can possibly put together is a 1U cubesat - which is a $50-100,000 investment. Moreover, getting it off the ground is about the same. And that has no payload, no ground stations, no actual 'use'.

A literal build-to-print 3U cubesat is $250k. ( google 'Cubesat Kit' for an actual price list ) Plus - the international nature of UMSF renders ITAR a significant hurdle that would almost certainly bring things to a halt if money were no object.

DSN time? It's tens of thousands of dollars..PER HOUR. An Ion engine? Hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Pulsed laser communications? You're now talking about a large and powerfull 3-axis stabilised spacecraft with significant power ( 10's of millions ) and multiple large apature ground stations ( 10's of millions )

If you want to have some sort of involvement in an actual spacecraft or spacecraft analogous project.... then these are actual options

Contribute to the Planetary Society Lightsail project ( https://planetary.org/join/donate/K09ls1w )
Find a local university that's conducting a CubeSat project, and offer your talents, time and expertise.
Get involved in a high-altitude balloon flight. I don't thing there's a country in the western world where some radio-hams or soldering-iron wielding tech heads are not building them and launching them monthly.
Heck - my latest solo project is a small R/C plane with an autopilot and I'm having great fun.

We're not building a spacecraft here. I'm serious.

Syrinx, algorimancer.... I'm telling you as a UMSF regular...and now as an Admin.... you're talking fiction, stop it.

Posted by: algorimancer Apr 11 2011, 05:11 PM

As I see it, you're prematurely squelching a (relevant) discussion before it can even get underway. But you're the administrator, so I'll drop it.

Posted by: djellison Apr 11 2011, 08:27 PM

QUOTE (algorimancer @ Apr 11 2011, 10:11 AM) *
, you're prematurely squelching a (relevant) discussion


I'm squelching a discussion on this forum between two guys who are dangerously and embarrassingly uninformed regarding the costs and complexities of building a spacecraft. Furthermore - it has near zero relevance to this thread. What I HAVE done is give you suggestions of how you might participate or contribute to space or space analogous projects.

There is nothing stopping you opening up a forum, yahoo group, whatever... to continue that discussion. Indeed, I would encourage you to do so.


Posted by: Greg Hullender Apr 13 2011, 01:38 AM

Something I've always liked about UMSF is that it doesn't allow discussions that are too detached from reality. I had wondered if that would continue under new management. Glad to see it.

--Greg

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