NASA and the Private Sector - Page 134

SpaceX, which has launched three rockets this year from Vandenberg Air Force Base and landed all three boosters on an off-shore barge, has built a permanent landing pad at the base to replace ocean recoveries.

The Hawthorne company’s 1.6-acre circular concrete landing pad was recently constructed directly west of its launchpad at Space Launch Complex 4 in the hills outside Lompoc. It could be in operation as early as this year.

While SpaceX hopes to rely on it for most West Coast landings, it also proposed to operate a second Pacific Ocean landing barge 31 miles off the Santa Barbara County coastline to recover boosters diverted from the ground by sensitive base operations.

State environmental reviews approved the proposal, with the caveat that SpaceX do some mitigating preparations to protect ocean life from sonic booms and potential explosions.

Federal regulators, still poring over the company’s Vandenberg landing-license application, declined to release any time line for the process, though most steps in the Federal Aviation Administration’s review are completed. SpaceX officials also have to finish radar-communication system tests to direct the robotic booster to the ground.

On Thursday morning, SpaceX returned its 16th launched booster to its only ground-based landing pad — Landing Zone 1 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida — minutes after delivering the Air Force’s secretive X-37B space plane into orbit. Three of the 16 boosters were brought back from launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base. They were returned to an at-sea barge far off the coast of Baja California.

Thursday’s launch was the company’s 13th orbital delivery of the year, and its 13th consecutive successful launch since an explosion destroyed a rocket on Sept. 1, 2016.

Its next Southern California launch is set for Oct. 4. But that booster will likely return to the barge off Mexico, and then be towed to the Port of Los Angeles for recovery.

Jason Major, a graphic designer and space blogger, watched Thursday’s booster return in Florida from a nearby viewing station.

“While it’s magnificent to watch a rocket soar up into the sky, it’s even more remarkable to see one come down to Earth,” Major said in an email. “It looks like something out of science fiction.”

SpaceX first managed to bring back a booster intact nearly two years ago, following several failures that resulted in exploded 16-story-tall boosters catching fire and falling into the ocean.

Recovering booster rockets is part of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. CEO Elon Musk’s plan to create a fleet of immediately reusable rockets that would make space travel much more affordable.

The decreasing costs of launches are opening up space to new commercial business opportunities for small satellite operators and others.

SpaceX’s long-term goal is to create a path to Mars colonization. But, first, it plans to launch what it calls “the most powerful rocket in the world” later this year. That rocket, the Falcon Heavy, will be able to lift payloads two or three times as heavy as what a Falcon 9 can carry.

But there are several competitors working to best the Falcon Heavy, not the least of which is Amazon.com owner Jeff Bezos’ commercial rocket company, Blue Origin.

Next year, SpaceX intends to launch crewed missions to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Musk recently released photos of SpaceX’s futuristic gumdrop-shaped Dragon crew capsule and matching sleek white-and-black astronaut suit.

A second East Coast landing pad next to Landing Zone 1 is under construction to help land Falcon Heavy’s three boosters. SpaceX also operates an at-sea barge off the Florida coast for landings.

On September 19 2017 00:14 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There appears to be reignited semi covert arms race occuring over the militarisation of space.