The launch was postponed several times due to malfunctions and once also due to a boat entering an area that is supposed to be sterile during the launch
On Friday, the Flacon 9 rocket, a new commercial rocket, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is the first test flight in the era of private spacecraft that will be able to launch cargo and possibly even astronauts into space.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was launched yesterday evening (21:45 Israel time) after the launch at the Air Force Base near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "It was a good day for SpaceX," said the company's launch commentator, Robin Rigolt.
The rocket, which is 54 meters high and powered by liquid fuel, carried a prototype of the company's Dragon capsule, which is designed to transport cargo and even passengers into space.
A previous attempt to launch the missile, about an hour earlier, was canceled at the last minute due to a malfunction immediately after the ignition of the rocket's engines. Earlier, a launch attempt was canceled after the telemetry signals, which allow the missile to be tracked remotely, were blocked.
After this matter was taken care of, the Air Force announced that a boat had entered the safe zone in the Atlantic Ocean, right near the launch site and further along the expected path of the missile. The launch was delayed until the boat was removed from the area.
Finally, the launch was smooth. "This is a significant milestone for SpaceX, as a company, because they have invested a lot of time, money, engineering and more. Getting to the test flight is an impressive achievement," said Brett Alexander, president of the Commercial Space Flight Federation - a private industry group."
The Falcon 9 already has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to launch payloads to the space station, and one day astronauts as well. The successful launch adds fuel to hopes that the launcher will be the first private launch vehicle to carry humans into orbit.
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We must break free from the old concepts of a rocket to Mars or an unpowered rocket to Mars.
Until crushed into the atmosphere at the moment a rocket. Outside the atmosphere for starters nuclear engine only with jet effect.
We are literally stuck in the sixties. We are not talking about sail propulsion or gravity propulsion at all.
In total, a nuclear engine capable of generating a jet. This is also sorry "shit". A jet means that the mass of the jet you take with you or collect with a sail 4 km in thin space.
And is that bad? In 67, the prototype developed in the NERVA project (which is a NUCLEAR THEMAL ROCKET propulsion system) reached an ISP of 850 seconds, which is twice the most advanced chemical missiles that exist today, and it is also a 40-year-old technology. With the help of contemporary technology it is possible to reach an ISP of 1000 seconds and more (without giving up the power of the impulse) see yes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Timberwind , and NASA's proposal for a manned mission to Mars using this technology http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20040182399_2004178448.pdf .
Thanks for the link. Very interesting. From what I understood, but in the end the result is 2 times more efficient than a normal missile, the bottom line is it is still a missile, that instead of a controlled explosion we have the boiling of material with the help of a small nuclear reactor.
A rocket will not bring us to Mars immediately, at first it will increase our activity in space, then it will bring us to the moon and finally to Mars...
Regarding those who expect to see government funding for space exploration, forget it, huge expenditure of money, too little ROI,
And yes, the only way to conquer space is to prove the economic viability of it, otherwise we will remain forever on Earth, and this is what the private companies see, when it is economical to drag asteroids into orbit close to Earth and build a space elevator that will bring the minerals down to Earth, there will be someone who will build it.
The technology to fly to Mars has existed for 40 years, see the NERVA project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA .
True, but no rocket technology alone will get us there, and before traveling all the way to Mars, it is advisable to try such technology at shorter distances, see the value of the moon. Which means that you have to start planning and using this technology several years before the trip itself, and now not only are you not going in the direction of developing this technology, but you are investing in a dead end. Of course, I don't blame a private company, it's falling for economic interests, a mission like Mars should be state-funded, preferably a global one that looks beyond the currency, so however blessed the private market that is emerging in the field, it is not able to bring the breakthroughs needed to get there
It will be possible to reach Mars after we start building a space station on the moon
It would be much more convenient to launch missions from the moon rather than from the Earth
I doubt if a missile is capable of getting us to Mars and back.. For the moon it might have been enough, but the amount of fuel needed for that is not practical to raise to leave orbit..
We are not going back, we stick to known and cheap technologies that can get us easily and quickly into space.
The space transit project cost the Americans 500 billion dollars over 40 years,
And all this for a plane that never flew more than 300 kilometers from Earth, with a quarter of the amount with Apollo technology, we would already be on Mars today.
In the end, the basis is the same technology that was used in the 60s. A huge rocket and a capsule at the end of it, what happened to all the thoughts about reusable tools, that are able to take off and land, not to mention some sort of cruising ability... it's like we're going back... (so yes, I'm sure the wiring has progressed and the thing is loaded with computers that are connected by optical fibers but the basis is the same the thing)
Scrabbling
Good luck, a big step for SpaceX, a huge step towards the commercialization of space