Falcon 9 and Taurus II for Planetary Missions |
Falcon 9 and Taurus II for Planetary Missions |
Jul 30 2010, 12:18 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 293 Joined: 29-August 06 From: Columbia, MD Member No.: 1083 |
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100518/full/465276a.html
NASA hopes to certify Falcon 9 or Taurus II (or another commerical rocket) by the end of 2013 for planetary missions. Falcon 9's successful first launch helps that process. Hopefully, they will fill the perfect-sized shoes that are empty once Delta II is finished after launching GRAIL next year. Perhaps the next Discovery mission, with a launch date in 2016ish, will be able to intiate the planetary program to these new launch vehicles. Does anyone know of proposed Discovery missions that are baselining to Falcon 9 or Taurus II? The ones proposed to the outer solar system like IVO, TiME, or AVIATR still need an Atlas V or Delta IV I'm sure. |
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Nov 18 2012, 04:55 PM
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14432 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Four flights, one still to fly, one playing Grasshopper in Texas? Would that be 6?
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Nov 18 2012, 05:16 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3648 Joined: 1-October 05 From: Croatia Member No.: 523 |
No idea if that's counted in the total. I was under the impression that Grashopper uses a special, "run tank" that was originally used for multi-engine qualification test runs in 2008 before first flight hardware was built.
I'm personally somewhat skeptical about that six-core-total claim, but then I'm also a bit skeptical that NASA would switch versions that easily, in light of them recently getting burned twice (with Taurus). The NASA LSP press release was pretty specific about v1.0 and that currently is the only vehicle configuration that has a demonstrated success record of at least 3 flights in a row. Given that Jason-3 is slated to launch in 2014 it's possible, but not at all a sure bet that v1.1 will accumulate at least 3 (succesful) flights by then. -------------------- |
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