SpaceX News

[choff]

Had a speculative wild@$$ thought today, probably can't start a POPS cycle in a Polywell, how about small bubble cavitation in the plasma center using microwaves?

[Giorgio]

Had a speculative wild@$$ thought today, probably can't start a POPS cycle in a Polywell, how about small bubble cavitation in the plasma center using microwaves?

If you are referring to the Acoustic Cavitation effect (Sonofusion) of ORNL fame of early 2000, no one was able to ever replicate its results and the whole research was in the end invalidated.

If you are referring to Sonoluminescence, the effect has been determined to be due to thermal or electrical ionization of noble gases during the collapse of the bubble. There is quite a lot of literature available about it.

Neither of the 2 unfortunately can be of any help to facilitate a fusion process.

[choff]

Dang!

[paperburn1]

Dang!

I know right... If it was not for physics and law enforcement I would be unstoppable

[ltgbrown]

It has been awhile, but they just landed their 47th booster (this makes two in row at sea)!

https://www.space.com/spacex-falcon-9-j ... ccess.html

They are also forecasting more satellites being launched in the next decade than all the years up to now. And SpaceX will be the operator of the largest satellite constellation in just a few months and if launch schedules remain even remotely as scheduled, for the next many years!

[krenshala]

47th booster landing, and the third landing of that particular booster (B1056).

[williatw]

SpaceX makes history, launches NASA astronauts into space from US soil for the first time since 2011


The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches into space from Kennedy Space Center with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft on May 30, 2020.

SpaceX has launched NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on their historic Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission is the first time that astronauts have launched from American soil since the final Space Shuttle flight in 2011.

Hurley and Behnken blasted off from Kennedy Space Center’s historic launch pad 39A, which was also used for the Apollo and space shuttle programs, at 3:22 p.m. ET Saturday. An attempt on Wednesday was scrubbed due to weather conditions.

The launch is the first time a private company, rather than a national government, has sent astronauts into orbit.

There were concerns that bad weather would force Saturday's launch to be scrubbed, but the mission was able to proceed as planned. President Trump and Vice President Pence, who is chairman of the National Space Council, watched the launch from Kennedy Space Center.
Speaking at Kennedy Space Center following the launch, Trump praised America's "bold and triumphant return to the stars."

"With this launch, the decades of lost years and little action are officially over," he said. The names of Hurley and Behnken, he added, will stand in the history books alongside the likes of Mercury and Gemini astronaut Gus Grissom.

"We have liftoff! Congratulations @Astro_Doug, @AstroBehnken, @NASA and @SpaceX!" tweeted Pence.


Launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Hurley and Behnken are traveling to the International Space Station in a Crew Dragon spacecraft built by the space company.

After a short journey into orbit, Crew Dragon began its 19-hour journey to the orbiting space lab. Autonomous docking with the International Space Station is expected at 10:29 a.m. EDT on Sunday. The duration of the astronauts’ stay on the orbiting space lab is yet to be determined.

NASA’S DEMO-2 LAUNCH WITH SPACEX IS 'SHOT OF INSPIRATION' AMID CORONAVIRUS: FORMER ASTRONAUT MIKE MASSIMINO

After separation, the Falcon 9 booster successfully returned to Earth, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.



NASA astronauts Bob Behnken (R) and Doug Hurley sit in a Tesla vehicle after walking out of the Operations and Checkout Building on their way to the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft on launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on May 30, 2020 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"Today was just an amazing day," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said shortly after the launch. "I can breathe a sigh of relief but I can also tell you that I'm not going to celebrate until Bob and Doug are home safely."

Bridenstine said he was praying for the astronauts during the liftoff. "I have heard that rumble [of a rocket launch] before, but it's a whole different feeling when you've got your own team on that rocket."

Under normal circumstances, large crowds would have been expected to witness the historic launch but, citing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic, NASA urged people to stay away.


A SpaceX Falcon 9, with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken in the Crew Dragon capsule, sits on Launch Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Saturday, May 30, 2020.

STS-135, the last space shuttle mission, launched from Kennedy Space Center on July 8, 2011. The space shuttle Atlantis carried four NASA astronauts on the mission to resupply the ISS, as well as an experiment for robotically refueling satellites in space.



Since then, the U.S. has relied on Russian Soyuz rockets launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to get astronauts into space. Russia charges the U.S. about $75 million to send an astronaut into space.


NASA recently agreed to pay Russian space agency Roscosmos $90 million for one final seat on one of its Soyuz rockets.

https://www.foxnews.com/science/spacex- ... astronauts


America is Back! Hopefully this time for good; go Trump...(nice speech he gave think he actually means it!)

Nice looking spacesuits too. I wonder if Musk has had any communication with MIT’s Dava Newman of Space activity suit fame?

“Dava Newman: Space Suit of the Future”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEaX2DAjol8



https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/4702743 ... login=true

Now that is a true Golden-Age Science Fiction spacesuit.

[williatw]

Elon Musk says SpaceX’s Starship rocket will launch ‘hundreds of missions’ before flying people
Published Tue, Sep 1 202010:56 AM EDT

“I want to emphasize that this is a very hard and dangerous, difficult thing, not for the faint of heart,” he added. “Good chance you’ll die, it’s going to be tough going, but it will be pretty glorious if it works out.”

Sounds like something Robert Heinlein would have said; also similar in tone to something Ernest Shackleton said in his ad asking for volunteers:

Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.

http://discerninghistory.com/2013/05/sh ... s-journey/




Shackleton

Key Points

SpaceX is developing its next-generation Starship rocket to launch cargo or as many as 100 people at a time to the Moon or Mars.
But CEO Elon Musk said the rocket has many milestones to go before it launches passengers.
“We’ve got to first make the thing work; automatically deliver satellites and do hundreds of missions with satellites before we put people on board,” Musk said at a virtual conference on Monday.


SpaceX is developing its next-generation Starship rocket to one day launch dozens of people to space, but CEO Elon Musk emphasized that the rocket has many milestones to go before it can take passengers.

“We’ve got to first make the thing work; automatically deliver satellites and do hundreds of missions with satellites before we put people on board,” Musk said, speaking Monday at the virtual “Humans to Mars” conference.

Starship represents the company’s top priority, as Musk wants to build a fully reusable rocket system that can launch cargo or as many as 100 people at a time. While SpaceX’s current Falcon fleet of rockets is partially reusable, as the company can land and reuse the rocket’s boosters, Musk hopes Starship transforms space travel into something more akin to commercial air travel.

The rocket’s enormous size would also make it capable of launching several times as much cargo at once — for comparison, while SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets can send as many as 60 Starlink satellites at a time, SpaceX says Starship will be able to launch 400 Starlink satellites at a time.

The company has rapidly built up its facility in Boca Chica, Texas, where it has now conducted short flight tests of early Starship prototypes. But the Starship development program has suffered several explosive setbacks in the past year. Musk recently shifted the company’s focus to Starship, saying in June that progress on the rocket must accelerate “dramatically and immediately” – and three months later, Musk’s urgency appears to be getting results.

“We’re making good progress,” Musk said. “The thing that really impedes progress on Starship is the production system ... A year ago there was nothing there and now we’ve got quite a lot of production capability. So we’re rapidly making more and more ships.”


SpaceX’s first Starship prototype under construction near Boca Chica, Texas in 2019

When Musk unveiled the Starship prototype in September 2019, he was hopeful that SpaceX could get the rocket to orbit by March of this year – and even flying people in 2020. But his tone has shifted since then, as he warned Monday that the first Starship launches to orbit “might not work,” saying that SpaceX is in “uncharted territory.” He now expects Starship’s first orbital flight test won’t come until next year.

“Nobody has ever made a fully reusable, orbital rocket,” Musk said.

He also said that SpaceX has not done much work yet on the design of the cabin or interior of Starship for passengers. Notably, Musk highlighted that SpaceX has experience making “a complex life support system that can deal with a wide range of environments,” as the company’s Crew Dragon capsule successfully transported a pair of NASA astronauts to-and-from the International Space Station on a mission this summer.

Getting to Mars

An artist’s rendering shows SpaceX’s Starship rocket launching on top of its Super Heavy booster.
SpaceX

Work at the Boca Chica facility is continuing toward Starship’s next flight test, with Musk saying the company will begin construction of the first Super Heavy booster prototype “this week.” Super Heavy is the large bottom half of Starship rocket, which has most of the engines and is used during for the beginning of a launch.

SpaceX has continued to raise private funding for its programs, with the company most recently seeking nearly $2.1 billion in an equity round of investment. SpaceX’s equity fundraising in the past two years totals about $3.75 billion, with its valuation reportedly climbing to $46 billion.

In the near term, SpaceX plans for Starship to fly missions to low Earth orbit and then to the Moon. But Mars remains Musk’s long-term goal. The company will reach the red planet “given enough time,” Musk said, but “the question is: How long it will it take us?”

“And getting to Mars, I think, is not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is building a base, building a city on Mars that is self-sustaining,” Musk said. “We’re going to build a propellant plant, an initial Mars base – Mars Base Alpha – and then get it to the point where it’s self-sustaining.”

“I want to emphasize that this is a very hard and dangerous, difficult thing, not for the faint of heart,” he added. “Good chance you’ll die, it’s going to be tough going, but it will be pretty glorious if it works out.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/01/elon-mu ... eople.html

[Giorgio]

Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.

Those were times when men could actually use their own lives for the benefit of mankind and getting recognition for it.
Now anyone publishing such an advertisement would probably end up in jail for endangering human lives

We advanced so much in the last century that we actually ended up going backward from the right direction...... go wonder.

[Betruger]

Sophistry is the root of it, not "better times". As it was then, for other matters.

[KitemanSA]

IFT 2 awaiting FAA approval.

[KitemanSA]

Recent video says that all the currently needed actions from the incident report have been completed and the FAA is awaiting SpaceX request for modification of their prior single use launch license.

[ladajo]

Word is they could launch IFT-2 next week.
Full Wet Dress Rehearsal completed, and they unstacked today, in likely preparation to install Flight Termination charges.
Also, the air and maritime notices have been updated for launch event window from 1 November through 6 November.
The sooner SpaceX gets the fully reusable 150 Tons to LEO system functioning, the sooner more pressure builds for improved high density energy needs to support space operations.

[ladajo]

SpaceX seems to be positioned to launch as soon as they get the admin approval. The FAA has completed the safety review, and now the final hurdle appears to be Fish & Wildlife Review. With paper in hand, all SpaceX needs to do to launch is install/activiate the Flight Termination System (<1 day), stack the vehicle (<1 hour), then shift into launch operations. Another clue for imminent launch besides any announcement or FTS install is NASA's imaging aircraft's schedule. The NASA WB-57 schedule currently has a placeholder for 1st until 9th of November.

https://airbornescience.nasa.gov/aircra ... %2B20%2B36

[ladajo]

As of today, paperwork and notices lining up for launch as soon as 13th (Monday). Realistically, could be anytime next week. Still waiting on Fish & Wildlife.