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The 6 ton news has been leaked some time ago on Hobbyspace..
It's quite obvius those two have talked things through...
3 strikes and they're out... Meaning they can 'afford' 2 botched launches in the tryout phase.. If there would be 3 consecutive unsuccessful launch attempts it's over, according to Musk.
Boy... Images of the first several botched US launch attempts flashing through my mind's eye... Sure is a big gamble, this industry.
But... Who Dares, Wins!
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I think that the launch market will not be so kind to Musk & co. to allow them three launch attempts. I feel that Falcon I will be sunk if it fails on its first flight, because Musk has spent so much on unconventional designs to squeeze performance out of his rocket.
Even for an industry giant like Boeing, two consecutive failures were enough to sink the Delta III. Even a successful test flight after the failures could not woo any potential buyers. The only silver lining here is that the new SRB's for Delta III were put on the Delta II, while the Delta III upper stage was used on the Delta IV.
Falcon V is now expected to deliver 6.02 tonnes to a 200 km orbit and 5.45 tonnes to a 400 km ISS orbit. The payload to a 400 km orbit at 28.5 degrees should fall somewhere in between, owing to the earth's extra rotation at the lower longitudes of Cape Canaveral versus ISS. By contrast, Soyuz weighs 7.22 tonnes and flies to an ISS orbit. Unless somebody can radically reduce the weight of the spacecraft, it's looking less likely that Falcon V will be used for either the Bigelow Prize or the proposed Rohrabacher prize.
Of course, the Falcon pad is at Vandenberg, so it looks like there will be only polar launches until something is built at Canaveral.
Who needs Michael Griffin when you can have Peter Griffin? Catch "Family Guy" Sunday nights on FOX.
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There are several positive factors to keep in mind, however, when talking about Spacex. In addition to their pad at Vandenburg there is another that's at least in the planning stages that will allow launches out of the Marshall Islands almost smack on the equator. IIRC, Spacex plans to use the Vandenburg pad for all polar launches, the Marshall Islands for equatorial launches of the Falcon I, and a pad at Cape Canaveral for near-equatorial and GEO launches of the Falcon V. So if they get that far, they won't be deficient in the launch area department.
Spacex's first launches will not quite be the same as the first American and Soviet rocket launches in the same sense that the spaceshipone program had a big advantage over the X-15 program, it has the advantage of experience. The people who designed the Redstones, Atlases, and Vostoks were writing the textbooks on building launch vehicles at the same time. Nobody knew how to accomplish things and much of rocket development was trial-and-error. By contrast, Spacex has had a vast wealth of knowledge on rocket design availible to them, and is in no hurry to launch unlike those in the space race.
One also has to factor in that, assuming Musk isn't simply tooting his engineers' horns, the Falcon is an exceptionally well-designed rocket. The engines have been relentlessly tested for reliability and are some of the best-performing rockets ever made. IMHO, the first Falcon I flight has a pretty good chance of succeding. Even if it doesn't, I would wager that the odds of losing three in a row aren't as good as you'd think.
It's not going to be a walk in the park of course, for a wealth of reasons that have already been mentioned. You have to admit, though, Spacex is astronomically farther ahead than companies like Rotary Rocket or Kistler ever got, and the odds of them making it to orbit are pretty good. It's wise to be hesitant before saying that we have a revolution on our hands, but it's looking more and more like that every day.
Another thing to keep in mind; Soyuzes and Geminis are/were not designed for space tourism. They have many features that could be downsized or completely elimanted in order to up the passenger carrying capacity. Additionally, they're OLD. Materials science and other developments have come quite a long way since the 1960s when they were designed, and likely thousands of pounds of mass could be eliminated with the use of better technology.
A mind is like a parachute- it works best when open.
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Not much of any sort of an update but it is question and answer session...
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science … l-16798533
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Pg 1 artifacts and shifting are fixed....
We are talking about using the inflateables for a deep space habitat but we are questioning how robust one will be for micrometeor impacts......
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