Falcon Surprise, SpaceX Says Something Big is Coming |
Falcon Surprise, SpaceX Says Something Big is Coming |
Apr 5 2011, 04:01 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1018 Joined: 29-November 05 From: Seattle, WA, USA Member No.: 590 |
From SpaceX about two hours ago.
QUOTE Something Big is Coming 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.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 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. --Greg This post has been edited by Astro0: Apr 5 2011, 04:31 AM
Reason for edit: Edited to fix formatting problems
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Apr 11 2011, 01:56 PM
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14431 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
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. |
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