Scott Manley did a great analysis of the launch. The nozzle came off but the vehicle heroically still made it to its orbit.
I’ll have to watch that later today.
Modern control systems are great, anyway. They easily compensated for the thrust loss. Both the first and second stage burns had to go longer, though. It wouldn’t have made orbit if it were a large payload right at the margins.
It’s one thing for something like Starship to lose a couple of engines… but this seems a bit worse. It was a non-trivial loss of performance even if it still made orbit. Not sure why they seem so optimistic about certification. If it had been some heavy NSA bird, it would have been a loss of mission.
Basically, rocketry is working you way down the long, long list of ways your rocket can commit suicide and trying your best to forestall them, until it has to really work to find an outlier you overlooked. Sort of like monitoring detainees in prison or psychiatric hospital on suicide watch.
This idea isn’t new, but nevertheless seems like a real… longshot:
I like the cut of their jib, though:
This is why we are focused on kinetic launch. The lowest possible cost for putting mass to orbit with simple and reliable technology - guns.
It worked for Georges Méliès, after all.
But not so great for Gerald Bull:
These Longshot guys should probably make sure they only buy walkie-talkies from legitimate sources…
Hey, hey, HEY!! Be careful where you point that thing; it might be loaded.
Mr. Barbicane at the Baltimore Gun Club approves.
Europa Clipper launches:
Looks successful so far.
As a reminder, Europa Clipper was originally intended to fly on the SLS rocket. In fact, it had been legally mandated by Congress to launch on SLS.
However, it turned out there wasn’t going to be an SLS available. And if there was, the solid rocket boosters would have shaken the probe to bits.
So they opened up the competition to other rockets, which basically meant Falcon Heavy. The trip will be a tad slower since SLS is more powerful than Falcon Heavy, but as an upside the SpaceX launch saved 2 billion dollars. $200M vs. $2.2B, roughly.
It’s a fully expendable launch so they can get every last bit of performance. A worthy cause.
Just 23 years behind schedule! (I refer to the fictional probe to Europa in the 1960s book and film 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
I gather that this isn’t a coincidence – that, even in the mid-60s, we knew (or strongly suspected?) that Europa contained lots of liquid water. How did we know that, then? Spectral signatures taken with big (Earth-surface) telescopes of the era?
Did they use stages that were getting long in the tooth anyway and so were flagged for being expended?
Probably just in time for Boeing to insist they need an extra 2 billion in funding…
Center core was all new. They have a lot of structural changes so they can’t be reused from Falcon 9 missions. And as of yet, they’ve never recovered a center core. Mostly they’re deliberately expended anyway since Falcon Heavy missions tend to have extreme requirements.
The side boosters had 6 flights each. So not nearly at life leader levels, which is currently at 23 flights. Six flights might well be at peak reliability. Well out of the first part of the bathtub curve, while not entering the later part. But in any case, they still got a good amount of use.
And to think that we may be just a couple of years away from Starship being cheaper per flight than Falcon 9 or Heavy, as well as having more payload.
I believe nothing was known about water on Europa until the Voyager missions that flew by Jupiter in 1979. Clarke didn’t write anything about exploring a water-rich Europa until he wrote the sequel, 2010 in 1982. Of course he used all the latest scientific knowledge available at that time.
Got it - thanks!
Iirc it was theorized in the 60s or 70s that the moons of Jupiter could be heated by tidal interactions, but it wasnt confirmed until the flybys.
So, as of a couple hours ago, SpaceX has launched 6 rockets in less than 7 days. One Starship, one Falcon Heavy, and four Falcon 9s. Five of those had recovered boosters. Three of the Falcon 9 flights were for Starlink, with the last one for OneWeb… which is Starlink’s competitor (they switched to SpaceX after Russia invaded Ukraine and seized their satellites).
Getting really damn close to A Rocket a Day. But what’s funny about that proposal is that they only suggested a payload of 2000 kg, 365 days a year. 730 metric tons. But SpaceX already put 1200 tons into orbit just in 2023, and will easily beat that this year (may have already beaten that).
SpaceX did just win a contract for 8 launches for the Space Force:
<$100M each. Actually, I find this one somewhat unfortunate. This was the Space Force “Lane 1” program, which was intended for higher-risk providers that had not yet met the full NSSL certification. I.e., something intended to support new entrants. It would have been nice to see Rocket Lab or someone else appear here. But only SpaceX and ULA showed up, and I guess ULA’s bid was uncompetitive since they awarded the whole thing to SpaceX.
There will be more rounds and I hope even Blue Origin wins a few, just to kick their butts into gear. For now, the steamroller continues…
Not exactly “exploration”, but a couple of days ago I saw reports of contact being lost with a large communications satellite in geosynch that experienced an anomaly and was likely unrecoverable. Now updates say that the “anomaly” was “separating into dozens of pieces” and the likelihood of recovery has gone way down.
Yeah, Jonathan McDowell reported that a couple of days ago:
We are working closely with Boeing, the satellite manufacturer, to address the situation
Does Boeing have any division that isn’t completely FUBAR?
Possibly struck from board of directors’ minutes:
“Shut up and hand over your tithes, peasants! This is OUR country! We are the GODS!”