NASA and the Private Sector - Page 149

On January 18 2018 00:49 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
I believe LegalLord called it.

On January 18 2018 02:33 LegalLord wrote:
You don't launch until you're ready, of course. The cost of failure is worse than most possible other bad happenstances and this case isn't one of those exceptions.

But at this rate there won't be much of a point to CCrew as it'll start flying right in time for the ISS to deorbit. So much for all those blue-sky predictions about how great commercial space is and about how that's going to keep delays down. Turns out it's all the same.

It could double as a Star Wars grappling fighter-ship or an ocean-going Transformers’ Rescue Bot.

A strange-looking SpaceX ship parked on the Los Angeles waterfront has four articulated arms almost as long as the boat deck itself, reaching upward like a giant claw.

“We do see a lot of bizarre stuff (on the waterfront) but that’s gotta be one of the stranger things around here,” said Steve Gilbert, yard foreman for neighboring U.S. Water Taxi & Port Services. “When it first pulled in, it didn’t have the arms and we just thought it was going to carry supplies.”

SpaceX leases land and adjacent berthing areas from the Port of Los Angeles for its West Coast rocket-recovery operations along Miner and 22 streets in San Pedro. The leasehold is used to offload recovered Falcon 9 rocket parts and Dragon spacecraft, remove any leftover fuel or other hazardous materials, and prepare the equipment for transport.

The 205-foot-long vessel, named Mr. Steven, arrived at the site in late December. It’s now parked behind Marmac 303, a robotic barge — called an “autonomous spaceport drone ship” by SpaceX — used to land and carry the Hawthorne company’s rocket boosters and spacecraft returning from orbital missions.

The modified claw-like ship is being used to salvage rocket nose-cones, or fairings, that are guided back to specific locations on Earth after missions, according to a Port of Los Angeles report.

“Mr. Steven (is) dedicated to recovering the fairing portion of rockets, which protect the spacecraft and reduce drag during flight,” states the report, which was issued when SpaceX requested permission to expand its leased waterfront area.

It’s not clear how the fairings will be picked up by the boat. But SpaceX fans speculated on a Reddit.com forum that the arms are used to hold a net that collects and cradles the fairing halves.

Fairings protect payloads at the top of rockets, and they break in half and are released when satellites are delivered in orbit. SpaceX has attached thrusters to direct them back to specific locations on Earth. A parachute allows the fairing pieces to fall without being destroyed.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he intends to make all SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets almost immediately reusable to drastically lower launch costs. The company has successfully brought back 20 Falcon 9 boosters, and reflown several of them. It’s also reflown two Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station.

But it has struggled to reuse fairings.

Musk announced in March 2017, when the first preflown rocket booster was launched for a second time, that the rocket’s fairing had been delivered safely back to the Atlantic Ocean and recovered. But, since then, no progress has been announced.

The new fairing-retrieving ship arrived at the Port of Los Angeles in December, after SpaceX secured approval to expand its 4.6-acre leasehold by about 35,000 square feet — mostly to install a “submerged land parcel” for the vessel.

Added land also was provided for SpaceX to park shipping containers and store rocket equipment out of public view, according to a Port of Los Angeles report. A rocket-support pedestal, office trailer, guard shack and portable restrooms also are at the site.

“SpaceX’s premises are utilized to berth vessels that recover expended rockets and capsules from over 100 miles offshore and return the respective equipment for land-based transportation to various locations,” the port report states.

“The extended area will allow a better layout for its operations and allow SpaceX to remove equipment on top of their sea vans (shipping containers) as much as possible, and better contain their equipment behind the perimeter fencing, away from public view.”

Late last year, SpaceX also obtained approval to erect a 20,000-square-foot storage tent behind a fence on Terminal Island, an industrial island between San Pedro and Long Beach.

Now, the US Air Force seems to be backing the rocket company up. "Based on the data available, our team did not identify any information that would change SpaceX's Falcon 9 certification status," Lieutenant General John Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, told Bloomberg News. This qualified conclusion came after a preliminary review of data from the Zuma launch. That's according to Thompson, who said the Air Force will continue to review data from all launches.

On January 23 2018 14:57 lestye wrote:
Where do you guys stand on the Moon vs. Mars debate? Apparently there are a lot of smart people who think the moon is an absolute waste of time and resources.

Watched this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne7MLSVKSf4

and he kinda convinces me that the moon would be pretty cool. But I havent seen any good counterpoints why.

Logically speaking, like with how far and advanced these start up companies are doing, maybe it makes sense for the US and Russia to focus their expertise on Mars, and let private industry/smaller space agencies focus on the moon. Even if resource-wise, the moon would be a complete bust, space tourism will always be a valuable option.