Tesla Roadster - Falcon Heavy - Kennedy LC-39A - 06.02.2018, 18:30 UTC

Автор Oleg, 03.11.2017 10:19:55

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igel

ЦитироватьСтарый пишет:
Если взорвут исторический стартовый комплекс то будет жалко.  :(
"Сам сломаю, сам и починю" (с)

Apollo13

Посадка центра в 3 включения типа пусков Иридиумов.

В итоге по сути это демонстрация прямого выведения на ГСО для военных.

АниКей

Цитироватьtass.ru Илон Маск оценил шансы на успех первого запуска сверхтяжелой ракеты Falcon Heavy в 50%
 
НЬЮ-ЙОРК, 6 февраля. /Корр. ТАСС Иван Пильщиков/. Глава американской компании SpaceX Илон Маск полагает, что шансы на полный успех первого запуска новой сверхтяжелой ракеты Falcon Heavy, запланированного на вторник, составляют около 50%. Об этом предприниматель заявил в опубликованном в понедельник интервью американскому сетевому изданию Ars Technica, специализирующемуся на новостях техники.
Цитировать"Много что может пойти не так", - констатировал Маск. "Я бы хотел подчеркнуть, что шансы на успех не являются чрезвычайно высокими", - пояснил он. Предприниматель отметил, что "настроен очень оптимистично", хотя и признал, что "оптимизм на самом деле не является обоснованным". "Мне кажется, что шансы на наш успех составляют два из трех, но на самом деле у нас 50 на 50", - указал он.
Как рассказал Маск, особые опасения у него вызывает возможность того, что ускорители ракеты могут оказать нежелательное воздействие друг на друга. Предприниматель не исключил, что это может привести к поломке.
Старт Falcon Heavy с мыса Канаверал намечен на 13:30 по времени восточного побережья США (21:30 мск). Два боковых сегмента ракеты-носителя должны совершить посадку на мысе Канаверал для повторного использования, а первая ступень центрального сегмента должна опуститься на платформу в Атлантическом океане.
А кто не чтит цитат — тот ренегат и гад!

Зловредный

Цитироватьtnt22 пишет:
Цитировать15 мин. назад

Musk: if we wanted to, we could add to more side boosters, make it Falcon Super Heavy.
Не надо. Получится Ангара.
Гробос-Фунт

Astro Cat

ЦитироватьЗловредный пишет:
Не надо. Получится Ангара.
Получится многоразовый Союз-5 или что вернее - СТК.

KBOB

#345
ЦитироватьЗловредный пишет:
Цитироватьtnt22 пишет:
Цитировать15 мин. назад

Musk: if we wanted to, we could add to more side boosters, make it Falcon Super Heavy.
Не надо. Получится Ангара.
Интересно он бустеры будет добавлять как в пан-флейте или как на Delta-III?
Россия больше чем Плутон.

Solar Sailor

ЦитироватьKBOB пишет:
Интересно он бустеры будет добавлять как в пан-флейте или как на Delta-III?
Как в OTRAG!


Tiamat

#348
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk338VXcb24

Новая анимация пуска от Spacex.
Песенка и андроид за рулем теслы возле Марса позабавили.

АниКей

ЦитироватьСегодня вечером пометка «вы находитесь здесь» в известном «списке SpaceX-скептика» может сдвинуться еще на одну позицию вниз: на сегодня запланирован первый запуск Falcon Heavy, сверхтяжелой ракеты компании SpaceX.
 



...

Если все пойдет согласно расчетам, Falcon Heavy взлетит в 21:30 по московскому времени (трансляцию можно удет смотреть, например, на сайте SpaceX), а «Попмеханика» будет вести трансляцию на сайте и в соцсетях. Все три первых ступени будут возвращены: две боковые сядут на посадочны площадки во Флориде. а центральный блок — на морскую платформу. Существует также вероятность, что SpaceX попытается посадить вторую ступень, но не для повторного использования, а для сбора данных и отработки технологии.
Как и в других тестовых запусках, полезная нагрузка в запуске Falcon Heavy будет играть декоративную роль: на орбите окажется автомобиль Tesla Roadster вишневого цвета, в салоне которого будет играть песня Space Oddity Дэвида Боуи. Как это будет выглядеть, рассказывает ролик, который сделали в SpaceX заранее: он показывает полет Falcon Heavy под другую песню Боуи — Life on Mars.
   
 https://www.popmech.ru/technologies/news-409122-spacex-sdelala-klip-o-zapuske-falcon-heavy-na-pesnyu-devida-boui/
А кто не чтит цитат — тот ренегат и гад!

testest2

законспирированный рептилоид

Анатолий Ревзин

Кто бы напомнил - кто автор?!!!!

tnt22

#352
http://spaceflight101.com/falcon-heavy-launch-preview/
ЦитироватьPreview: SpaceX Set to Debut Falcon Heavy Rocket via Long-Awaited Shakedown Flight
February 6, 2018


Photo: SpaceX
A decade-long journey to the launch pad could end on Tuesday for SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket with the long-awaited maiden launch of the tri-core rocket. With a commercial launch license fr om the FAA in hand, a clean Launch Readiness Review and fair weather forecast, SpaceX wheeled the monster rocket up the ramp to Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center Sunday night and placed it in its vertical launch position for liftoff on Tuesday during a two-and-a-half-hour window opening at 18:30 UTC, 1:30 p.m. local time.
Спойлер
>> Live Launch Coverage

Falcon Heavy completed a critical test firing of its 27 Merlin engines on January 24th, delivering critical data on the performance of the powerplants and the structural interplay between the three Falcon 9 cores operating in unison to push Falcon Heavy toward space. A final regulatory hurdle was cleared on February 2nd when the Federal Aviation Administration issued a commercial launch license to SpaceX for "transporting the modified Tesla Roadster (mass simulator) to a hyperbolic orbit."


Falcon Heavy Static Fire Test – Photo: SpaceX
SpaceX went through a rigorous review process after the January 24 test firing to ensure the real-world data obtained fr om a plethora of sensors on the vehicle compared favorably to simulations and models developed by the company. The final Launch Readiness Review was held on Sunday and confirmed all was ready for the long-awaited mission – allowing Falcon Heavy to return to the storied Kennedy Space Center launch pad that hosted all Apollo missions to the lunar surface and the majority of Space Shuttle flights.

Like the early flights of the Saturn V in the 1960s, Falcon Heavy's debut will be dicey business. "There's a lot of risk associated with Falcon Heavy, a real good chance that that vehicle does not make it to orbit," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said at a conference in 2017. "I want to make sure to set expectations accordingly. I hope it makes it far enough beyond the pad so that it does not cause pad damage. I would consider even that a win, to be honest."

In remarks to the press on Monday, Musk reaffirmed his 50-50 estimation of chances for a successful flight and Falcon Heavy not making it into orbit.


Falcon Heavy's Inaugural Payload – Photo: SpaceX
If all goes according to plan, Tuesday's launch should make for some spectacular viewing and thousands are expected to descend on Florida's Space Coast to witness Falcon Heavy take flight and experience the ground-shaking thrust as it rockets into the sky.

SpaceX plans to recover all three boosters on the Falcon Heavy rocket – the two side-mounted cores, both previously flown as individual Falcon 9 rockets, will make a rocket-powered U-turn to fly back to Cape Canaveral and land around 15 seconds apart on two concrete pads within SpaceX's Landing Zone while the reinforced central core continues pushing the rocket and heads for a landing on the OCISLY Drone Ship positioned downrange fr om the launch pad.

Falcon Heavy, when leaving the launch pad with a thrust of over 2,100 metric ton-force, will be the most powerful rocket of the current millennium, capable of sending nearly 64 metric tons into a Low Earth Orbit or dispatching over 16 metric tons toward Mars. "Only the Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973, delivered more payload to orbit," SpaceX said in a carefully worded statement to exclude Russia's Buran/Polyus mission that lifted 80,000kg in 1987 but failed to make a stable orbit.


Photo: SpaceX
SpaceX offers a Falcon Heavy launch for a starting price of $90 million, coming at twice the performance and around a third of the cost of its main competitor, the Delta IV Heavy which can haul up to 29 metric tons into orbit owed in part to its use of the more energetic Liquid Oxygen / Liquid Hydrogen propellant combination. NASA's upcoming monster rocket, the Space Launch System, will be capable of boosting up to 70 metric tons into orbit in its initial version launching in late 2019 or 2020.

Falcon Heavy weighs in at 1,420 metric tons, stands 70 meters tall, has a span of 12.2 meters from side to side and comprises three 3.66-meter cores strapped together and a standard Falcon 9 second stage sitting atop, responsible for the final boost into orbit. All three cores are fully equipped for re-use, featuring grid fins for steering while flying through the atmosphere and four fold-out landing legs.

The inaugural Falcon Heavy launch vehicle features two previously-flown Falcon 9 stages as side boosters – having helped push a Dragon and Thaicom communications satellite into orbit – while the core stage is brand new and incorporates a number of reinforcements on its airframe to deal with the loads transferred from the side boosters.


Photo: SpaceX
Much effort was put into modeling Falcon Heavy's flight environments, but as Elon Musk stated, there is a long list of items that are "impossible to test on the ground." Particular focus was on vehicle dynamics as the rocket has to deal with a tripling of the acoustic and vibration environment of Falcon 9, the loads experienced in flight will be vastly different from Falcon 9 in critical areas such as MaxQ and the trans-sonic flight regime, and the separation of the two side boosters was a completely new area for SpaceX.

"This is one of those things that's really difficult to test on the ground," Musk said last year. "We can fire the engines on the ground and we can try to simulate the dynamics of having 27 instead of nine booster engines, and the airflow as it goes through transonic. It's going to see heavy transonic buffet. How does it behave at Max-Q?" These and other open questions can only be answered by a test flight.

The sheer thrust generated by Falcon Heavy's 27 Merlin 1D main engines puts the vehicle on the very top of the list of vehicle's currently in operation, generating a launch thrust near 21 Meganewtons – surpassing Europe's Ariane 5 that develops a liftoff thrust of 15 Meganewtons, Delta IV Heavy & its three RS-68A engines that create a launch thrust of 9.4 MN, and China's new Long March 5 rocket with a peak thrust of 10.6 MN. On the all-time list, Falcon Heavy will rank fourth, only surpassed by the Soviet N1 moon rocket that never flew successfully, the Apollo-era Saturn V, Russia's Energia and the Space Shuttle with its Solid Rocket Booster assistance.

>> Falcon Heavy Launch Vehicle Overview

Given the nature of the test flight and the energy possessed by the Falcon Heavy at liftoff, SpaceX was required to obtain additional insurance. According to the commercial launch license issued by the FAA, SpaceX must hold $110 million in third party liability insurance or otherwise demonstrate financial responsibility to cover property damages from a potential mishap. Additionally, the company holds $100 million in government property insurance and a $72 million policy to cover claims incurred during pre-flight operations at the Kennedy Space Center.


Photo: SpaceX
Internal documentation sent out to the NASA workforce at the center informed teams that personnel is to shelter in place in case of an anomaly and avoid being next to glass windows and doors. The Launch Hazard Area enforced by the U.S. Air Force has been set up to keep the public safe in the event of an accident in the early flight phase and navigational warnings issued for the rocket's flight corridor define a much larger hazard area than for a run-of-the-mill F9 mission with restricted areas stretching over 900 Kilometers into the Atlantic Ocean.

Instead of a boilerplate mass simulator, Falcon Heavy will carry a more colorful payload on Tuesday: Elon Musk's used Tesla Roadster. If all goes well, the 1,300-Kilogram automobile will be injected into a hyperbolic escape trajectory, taking it into an elliptical orbit around the sun venturing out as far as the orbit of Mars but not actually coming close to Earth's neighboring planet to comply with planetary protection guidelines.


Photo: SpaceX / Elon Musk
The 2009 midnight cherry Roadster has been specially prepared for space travel and is "driven" by "Starman" – a mannequin dressed in a SpaceX space suit astronauts launching on the company's Dragon spacecraft will wear. According to Elon Musk, the Roadster will be playing David Bowie's Space Oddity while riding uphill and its glove compartment contains a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy along with a towel and a sign saying 'Don't Panic.'

Launching esoteric payloads on their test flight missions is nothing new for SpaceX. The debut mission of the company's Dragon spacecraft in 2010 flew a wheel of cheese to orbit and back in homage to a Monty Python comedy sketch. Lifting the Tesla into heliocentric orbit will not come close to exhausting Falcon Heavy's lift capability and its launch could be easily handled by a Falcon 9.

"I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future," Musk Tweeted in December.

Getting Falcon Heavy off the ground has been a lengthy endeavor. When he first presented the rocket to the public in 2011, Elon Musk said the inaugural mission would occur as early as 2013. In hindsight, Musk characterizes his expectation and the company's initial design approach as 'naive' as development work turned out to be much more complex than "simply strapping three Falcon 9 cores together."


Photo: SpaceX
SpaceX slowed the development of Falcon Heavy to focus on improvements of the company's Falcon 9 workhorse, including groundbreaking work in the area of re-usability.

Technical problems that destroyed a pair of Falcon 9s in 2015 and 2016 put Falcon Heavy on the backburner once again as SpaceX focused all technical resources on returning Falcon 9 to flight. With Falcon 9 enjoying its busiest and most successful year to date in 2017, SpaceX could put the finishing touches on the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle and ready the ground infrastructure at Cape Canaveral to support the tri-core rocket.

However, achieving liftoff is still another challenge to be met as SpaceX was so far only able to run through one countdown-to-ignition on the Falcon Heavy and there are a number of milestones that have to be checked off to allow the vehicle to rumble off – including a complex ignition sequence to get all 27 Merlins up and running. Weather is another factor that could come into the way of launch, though odds appear in SpaceX's favor with an 80% chance of favorable conditions during the 2.5-hour window.

The main weather concerns for Tuesday are liftoff winds and a slight chance of low-level clouds arriving from the ocean. Upper level winds will be from the west at 90 knots, 40,000 feet in altitude – slightly sporty but within the allowable range for Falcon 9 missions. In case of a 24-hour launch delay, odds of acceptable weather drop to 70%.
[свернуть]
 
Countdown & Launch Sequence
Спойлер

Photo: SpaceX
As Falcon Heavy draws extensive heritage from the single-core Falcon 9 rocket, its countdown is set up in a similar fashion with the obvious changes of tanking two additional cores and completing avionics checks on two more boosters. Countdown operations kick into gear around ten hours before the opening of the day's launch window when Falcon Heavy will be powered up to enter a multi-hour checkout sequence – overseen by two Launch Control Rooms at the Cape and engineering support at SpaceX HQ in Hawthorne, California.

Checkouts completed over the early countdown phase are focused on the avionics on the rocket's three boosters and the second stage, communication checks will be performed for all the stages and the team will check out the rocket's Autonomous Flight Safety System that would come into play should the triple-core vehicle veer off course or encounter any serious problems on the way up. While Falcon Heavy is undergoing checkouts, teams at the launch pad will make the final physical reconfigurations to put all ground systems into the proper configuration for flight.


Photo: SpaceX
The launch pad will be cleared by L-2 hours and Falcon Heavy will move through a second round of RF link checks and AFTS verifications as well as Hold Fire Checks with the Eastern Range's Morrell Operations Center. A possible hold point at L-105 minutes could be used to defer T-0 later into the window in case additional work is needed to prepare for tanking.

Propellant loading, although involving nearly three times the propellant mass of Falcon 9, only stretches the timeline in place for F9 by 15 minutes due to the use of densified Liquid Oxygen and Rocket Propellant 1 that can only remain in the rocket's tanks for so long before warming excessively and resulting a decline of launch vehicle performance. The SpaceX team will move through polling at around T-88 minutes and the automated countdown sequencer assumes control of the complex tanking operation at T-85 minutes.

Propellant loading starts with loading some 400 metric tons of Rocket Propellant 1, chilled to -7°C, into the three boosters via interfaces in the launch mount at the base of the rocket and into the second stage through the Strongback structure. Densified Liquid Oxygen, chilled to -207°C, will begin flowing into the three cores at T-45 minutes followed by the second stage at T-20 minutes to feed around 940 metric tons to the vehicle. As with Falcon 9, propellant loading is a carefully controlled sequence with lots of throttling in the flow rates – especially for LOX which is expected to close out on the boosters at T-3 and the second stage at T-2 minutes to ensure the vehicle achieves the maximum possible flight mass.

The pace of countdown events will kick into high gear at the T-9-minute mark when the ground- and vehicle-based TEA-TEB ignition system will be primed to inject a self-igniting mixture into the 27 engines to initiate the combustion process. Hydraulics will step up to flight pressure via ground pressurization for a final test of the engine trim valves that set the propellant mixture and the second stage's thrust vector control actuators that move the MVac nozzle to control the stage's orientation.

>> Countdown Timeline


Image: SpaceX
Pre-valves to the Merlin engines will open at T-7 minutes to begin the process of chilling down their turbomachinery using the supercold Liquid Oxygen to ensure a clean ignition can be achieved. Falcon Heavy will top up its RP-1 tanks at T-6 minutes and the transition to internal power will begin shortly thereafter. Tanks will enter initial pressurization to add stability to the stack while the Strongback cradles open up and the large structure retracts by 1.5 degrees and is primed for a rapid kickback at the moment of hold-down release.

The AFTS will switch to its own internal power source at T-3 minutes and go through its arming process by T-1 minute. As propellant loading closes out, Falcon Heavy will be isolated from ground systems inside T-2 minutes; gas close outs will occur half a minute later as Helium loading on the boosters and upper stage ends.


Image: SpaceX
Falcon Heavy will take control from ground computers at T-1 minute and enter final tank pressurization in preparation for takeoff. A final GO will be voiced from the Launch Director at T-45 seconds and the hands-off point for a human-commanded abort comes at T-10 seconds. Ignition will be commanded at T-5 seconds in a complex sequence that only ignites two engines at a time followed by another pair a few milliseconds later. This staggered ignition sequence is designed to avoid thrust-torques which – in a worst-case scenario – could rip the vehicle apart on the launch pad.

Falcon Heavy's computers will monitor the start-up and health of all 27 engines and permit the vehicle to lift off once all are verified to be at their 92% thrust setting chosen for this mission – giving the vehicle a launch thrust of 2,140 metric-ton-force. Rising from the historic LC-39A launch pad upon release of eight hold-down clamps, Falcon Heavy will climb vertically for just 15 seconds before entering its pitch and roll maneuvers that will align the vehicle with a launch azimuth almost straight to the east, aiming for a parking orbit inclination of 29 degrees.

>> Flight Profile


Image: SpaceX
As the vehicle climbs away from Florida's Space Coast, the central core will throttle its engines down in order to save propellants – a similar procedure is used by the Delta IV Heavy that reduces thrust on its central RS-68A to 57% of rated performance a minute into the flight in order to burn for another minute and a half after the boosters separate.

Just 66 seconds into the flight, Falcon Heavy will pass Maximum Dynamic Pressure wh ere the used airframes on the two boosters and the reinforced structure of the central core will have to withstand the maximum stress as they make their way through the dense atmosphere. Given this mission's profile, peak stress should be less than for a Falcon 9 rocket heading to Geostationary Transfer Orbit, Elon Musk said.

The most critical event of the flight – aside from making it off the ground – will come two minutes and 29 seconds into the flight when the two boosters will shut down their nine engines and separate from the still-firing core four seconds after BECO. The two former Falcon 9 first stages will separate at the same time using non-pyrotechnic separation hardware and employing their cold gas attitude control systems to create a safe separation from the core.


Image: SpaceX
Separation of the two side cores will mark the beginning of near-simultaneous space acrobatics as the two will begin their return sequence to Cape Canaveral's Landing Zones 1 and 2 wh ere they are expected to land just 150 meters apart on two concrete landing pads. After separation, the thrust struts connecting the boosters to the core stage will retract into protective compartments on all three cores to keep them out of the harsh re-entry environment and so allow for post-flight inspections and re-use of the hardware.

Relying on their Nitrogen thrusters, the two side cores will maneuver into an engines-first orientation immediately after separation since every second takes them further away from the coast. It is understood that their return sequence will be staggered by a few seconds with one booster holding off on the boostback burn to create a safe separation distance between the two as they make their way toward landing.


Iimage: SpaceX
Firing up three Merlin 1D engines around T+2 minutes and 50 seconds, the two boosters will reverse course to head back toward Cape Canaveral. The boostback burn is followed by three minutes of passive flight outside the atmosphere during which the boosters will deploy their four actuated grid fins and maneuver into the proper orientation for atmospheric entry. A brief Entry Burn of around 17 seconds starting at T+6:41 will allow each booster to hit the brakes prior to re-entry to lessen the aerodynamic and heat loads experienced when encountering the dense atmosphere at a speed upwards of Mach 3.

Flying through the atmosphere without engine power for nearly a minute, the 48-meter tall boosters will be slowed to subsonic speed and use their grid fins to adjust their angle of attack and steer toward Landing Zones 1 and 2 at the former Space Launch Complex 13 some 15 Kilometers south of LC-39A.


Image: SpaceX
Half a minute before the anticipated touchdown, each booster will fire up its center engine to begin the process of arresting its vertical speed to come to a gentle touchdown on four fold-out landing legs that deploy in the final seconds of their return to Terra Firma, expected at T+7 minutes and 58 seconds. Residents and spectators have been informed by SpaceX that the planned return of the boosters will result in a pair of sonic booms.

While the boosters go through the motions to head back to Earth, what is left hurdling toward orbit is essentially a partially-fueled Falcon 9 rocket. The central core will throttle its engines up after separation of the outer cores and fire for another 31 seconds to accelerate the vehicle. MECO is planned at T+3 minutes and 4 seconds, to be followed three seconds later by stage separation via four pneumatic pushers to send the two stages on their separate ways – the second stage immediately heads into start-up to proceed into a Parking Orbit while the Core Stage, Booster 1033, begins its high-energy return.


Image: SpaceX

Image: SpaceX
Because of the additional energy provided by the outer cores, the central booster is looking at a much higher energy than Falcon 9 first stages performing Geostationary Transfer Orbit missions. Using its cold gas thrusters, the core will maneuver into position for a partial boostback maneuver taking advantage of this mission's performance margins to lim it the booster's downrange travel distance and place the landing location closer to shore.

B1033 will re-light at T+6 minutes and 47 seconds on the three-engine Entry Burn to slow itself down and create a survivable re-entry toward SpaceX's 'Of Course I Still Love You' Drone Ship that will be holding position around 345 Kilometers from Cape Canaveral to catch its first Falcon Heavy core with touchdown anticipated at T+8 minutes and 19 seconds.

The second stage will split open and drop its payload fairing three minutes and 49 seconds into the flight to shed no-longer-needed weight on its way into orbit, revealing the Roadster for the rest of its journey to depart the clutches of Earth's gravity. Shutdown of the 95,000-Kilogram-force MVac engine is expected eight minutes and 31 seconds after launch, marking the start of a coast phase in a Low Earth Parking Orbit of around 200 Kilometers.


Image: SpaceX
In addition to demonstrating three-core flight environments, Tuesday's Falcon Heavy mission also sets out to qualify the Falcon 9 second stage for direct Geostationary missions – an important step for SpaceX to be able to compete for all U.S. Air Force Missions including those requiring a direct injection. This type of mission profile would require the second stage to complete extended coast phases of 6+ hours, a feat not yet demonstrated by SpaceX and the Falcon Heavy mission was seen as a good opportunity.

The second burn is expected to start at T+28 minutes and 22 seconds and last around 30 seconds to accelerate the vehicle into an elliptical Transfer Orbit with a period of around six hours to enable the long-duration coast test on the second stage while also setting up the proper location for the Earth Departure Maneuver. SpaceX did not disclose the exact timing of the mission's third burn and no target orbit parameters were provided


Credit: SpaceX
Firing up the MVac engine, the second stage will be tasked with accelerating the Tesla to a speed of 11 Kilometers per second, placing it into an elliptical orbit around the sun varying between the distance of Earth and the orbit of Mars, but not interfering with the planet for several hundred million years.

The primary objective of Tuesday's mission is validating Falcon Heavy's overall performance and collecting real-world data to feed into models to refine the vehicle's design before it can reach an operational stage. Data collected on Tuesday will be analyzed carefully by SpaceX in the weeks to come to identify any departures from existing simulations and highlight any potential weak points that have to be addressed prior to operational missions.

SpaceX currently has two more Falcon Heavy missions on the 2018 manifest – the U.S. Air Force Space Test Program 2 mission that will give the vehicle full EELV certification and the commercial launch of Arabsat 6A for Saudi Arabia.
[свернуть]

tnt22

#353
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/02/05/first-falcon-heavy-launch-blends-spacex-style-raw-power-and-the-unknown/
ЦитироватьFirst Falcon Heavy launch blends SpaceX style, raw power and the unknown
February 5, 2018 Stephen Clark


SpaceX's first Falcon Heavy rocket at pad 39A. Credit: SpaceX

The electric sports car shrouded inside the nose of the first Falcon Heavy rocket may conjure notions of a flight of fancy, but SpaceX founder Elon Musk says the powerful new launcher awaiting blastoff Tuesday fr om Florida's Space Coast has a lot to prove.
Спойлер
The towering Falcon Heavy, measuring 229 feet (70 meters) tall and 40 feet (12 meters) abreast, sat atop launch pad 39A Monday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the eve of its oft-delayed, high-stakes maiden flight.

The Falcon Heavy cuts an imposing figure on the Cape Canaveral landscape, where it awaits liftoff fr om the same launch pad used by the Apollo 11 moon landing flight and numerous space shuttle missions.

It's not the biggest rocket in the world — rival United Launch Alliance's Delta 4-Heavy is taller and wider — but the Falcon Heavy's 27 main engines pack a heavier punch.

Launch is scheduled during a two-and-a-half hour window Tuesday opening at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT).

For the Falcon Heavy's first payload, Musk picked one of his used Tesla Roadsters to shoot into space, not the more typical dummy satellite often carried on test flights.

"It's just for fun," Musk said Monday in an interview with CBS News. "A lot of people didn't understand, what's the purpose of sending a car to Mars? There's no point, obviously, it's just for fun and to get the public excited.

"Normally, when a new rocket is tested they put something really boring on like a block of concrete or a chunk of steel or something," Musk told CBS News. "All that's pretty boring. What's the most fun thing we could put on because this is just a test flight? We're not going to put any valuable satellites on board. So, the car is just the most fun thing we could think of."

Musk released an animation of the Falcon Heavy launch Monday, showing the cherry red electric sports car coasting into the cosmos after its shot into interplanetary space. A spacesuit-clad figure is in the driver's seat, one arm hanging out the window and the other on the Roadster's steering wheel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk338VXcb24
(video 3:26)

The billionaire shared photos of the figure, which he dubbed "Starman" in apparent reference to the famous David Bowie tune, on Instagram before the automobile's encapsulation inside the Falcon Heavy's payload fairing.

Musk announced the Falcon Heavy's cargo in December, capitalizing on an opportunity for cross-brand marketing between SpaceX and Tesla, his two primary companies.

"I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future," Musk tweeted in December.

Musk said the midnight cherry red Tesla Roadster, which sells for $200,000 brand new, will be playing David Bowie's iconic hit "Space Oddity" as it soars into the cosmos.

The Falcon Heavy will dispatch the Roadster — weighing around 2,760 pounds (1,250 kilograms) on the street — with enough velocity to escape Earth's gravitational bonds, reaching a maximum speed of around 7 miles per second (11 kilometers per second; 24,600 mph).

The sports car will go into a "precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun," SpaceX officials wrote in the mission's press kit. The orbit will stretch beyond Mars' average distance fr om the sun.

"We expect it'll get about 400 million kilometers away from Earth, maybe 250 to 270 million miles, and be doing 11 kilometers per second," Musk told reporters Monday. "It's going to be in a precessing elliptical orbit, with one part of the ellipse being at Earth orbit the other part being at Mars orbit, so it'll essentially be an Earth-Mars cycler.

"We estimate it'll be in that orbit for several hundred million years, maybe in excess of a billion years. At times, it will come extremely close to Mars, and there's a tiny, tiny chance that it will hit Mars," he said.

Asked if SpaceX has quantified the chance of the Roadster impacting Mars, Musk replied: "Extremely tiny. I wouldn't hold your breath."


Credit: SpaceX

The Tesla Roadster's weight and dimensions fall well under the Falcon Heavy's capacity, and would not stress the lift capability of SpaceX's smaller, single-core Falcon 9 rocket or Atlas, Delta and Ariane boosters operated by rivals United Launch Alliance and Arianespace.

The iconography surrounding Tuesday's test launch has captured attention, but star of the show will be the Falcon Heavy itself, set to become the world's most powerful launcher currently in service.

Comprised of three rocket booster cores derived from SpaceX's operational Falcon 9 rocket, plus a single-engine upper stage, the Falcon Heavy can generate 5.1 million pounds of thrust in future configurations. On Tuesday's demo flight, the average thrust from the Falcon Heavy's 27 kerosene-fueled Merlin 1D engines will be throttled back to 92 percent power, equivalent to roughly 4.7 million pounds, Musk said.

That will surpass the European Ariane 5 launcher, the world's leader in liftoff power at 2.9 million pound of thrust from two segmented solid rocket boosters and a core engine. SpaceX's new rocket will produce more thrust than any launch vehicle since the space shuttle, and its power at liftoff — approximately the same thrust as 18 Boeing 747 jumbo jets — will come in fourth among rockets all time, after the Soviet Union's N1 moon rocket, which never had a fully successful flight, NASA's Saturn 5 launcher that carried astronauts to the moon, Russia's 1980s-era Energia rocket and the space shuttle.

The Falcon Heavy will also be able to carry more payload into orbit than any other rocket in the world — and the most by any launcher since the Saturn 5 — a more important measure of the rocket's lifting capacity.

The Delta 4-Heavy rocket, the most capable rocket in service today in terms of lift capacity, can haul up to 62,540 pounds (28,370 kilograms) to a low-altitude orbit approximately 120 miles (200 kilometers) above Earth when launched to the east from Cape Canaveral, according to a launch vehicle data sheet published by ULA.

NASA's planned Space Launch System, set for a maiden flight in late 2019 or early 2020, will carry more than 154,000 pounds (70,000 kilograms) to low Earth orbit and produce a maximum thrust of 8.8 million pounds. A souped-up model of the SLS with an enlarged upper stage launching in the early 2020s could haul more than 230,000 pounds (105 metric tons) to low Earth orbit.

The SLS is being designed with surplus space shuttle engine and booster components, and the space agency intends to use the multibillion-dollar mega-rocket to send astronaut crews to the moon, and eventually beyond.


Credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight Now

When its first stage boosters are not recovered, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy will be capable of delivering up to 140,660 pounds (63,800 kilograms) to low Earth orbit when launched to the east from Florida's Space Coast, wh ere rockets get a velocity boost from Earth's rotation.

But SpaceX intends to land all three first stage boosters on the Falcon Heavy, eating into the rocket's propellant reserves and reducing the weight it can loft into orbit.

A Falcon Heavy rocket flight sells commercially for around $90 million, according to SpaceX's website. But a mission for NASA or the U.S. military, which levy additional requirements on their launch providers, is expected to go for $150 million or more.

A mission using ULA's Delta 4-Heavy rocket costs at least twice that. A Delta 4-Heavy launch contract for NASA's Parker Solar Probe awarded in 2015 was valued at $389 million.

Musk predicted the first Falcon Heavy has a 50 to 70 percent chance of full success, but the final outcome of Tuesday's test flight will only be known more than six hours after liftoff.

"There's so much that can go wrong here," Musk told CBS News. "There are a lot of experts out there saying there's no way you can do 27 engines, all at the same time, and not have something go wrong.

"You've got the booster-to-booster interaction, acoustics and vibration that haven't been seen from any man-made device in a long time," Musk said.

The Soviet-era N1 rocket had 30 engines, but Russian engineers had trouble getting all of the powerplants to work in unison. Engine vibrations, turbopump failures and fuel leaks led to four failed launch attempts.

By comparison, the Saturn 5 had five larger first stage engines.

Built at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, the Falcon Heavy will encounter intense structural loads as it climbs to the east from the Kennedy Space Center and exceeds the speed of sound. The moment of maximum aerodynamic pressure, known as Max-Q, will be a major stress point.

The Falcon Heavy's core stage was manufactured specifically for the test flight. Engineers stiffened the center core to take the loads of a Falcon Heavy launch.

The two side boosters were refurbished and modified after launching two earlier Falcon 9 flights, sending the Thaicom 8 communications satellite and a space station-bound cargo capsule toward orbit in May and July of 2016.

"Around Max-Q, that's wh ere the force on the rocket is the greatest, and that's possibly wh ere it could fail as well," Musk said. "We're a bit worried about ice potentially falling off the upper stage onto the nose cones of the side boosters. That could be coming like a cannon ball through the nose cones."


Artist's illustration of the Falcon Heavy's two side-mounted boosters separating from the rocket's core stage a few minutes after liftoff. Credit: SpaceX

The Falcon Heavy's twin boosters will cut off their engines and fall away from the rocket around two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, a separation sequence that has also never been tested in flight. The core stage, operating a lower throttle setting to conserve propellant and burn longer, will continue firing its nine engines until T+plus 3 minutes, 4 seconds.

"If it clears the pad and hopefully makes it throgh transonic and Max-Q, and the boosters are able to separate, it's a more normal regime," Musk said. "It becomes like a Falcon 9 at that point."

The upper stage's single Merlin engine will fire three times on Tuesday's mission, continuing the demo flight's experiments well after liftoff.

Meanwhile, the Falcon Heavy's two strap-on boosters will flip around to fly tail-first with the aid of cold-gas nitrogen thrusters. Some of the engines on each booster will reignite for "boostback" and "entry" maneuvers to aim for two adjacent touchdown zones at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station around 9 miles (13 kilometers) south of pad 39A.

Like the Falcon 9's first stage, the boosters will unfurl grid fins for added stability.

Twin sonic booms will crack across the spaceport as the boosters return to Cape Canaveral for staggered landings, slowed with the help of rocket thrust.

The rocket's center core will head for touchdown on SpaceX's drone ship positioned downrange in the Atlantic Ocean, with landing expected at T+plus 8 minutes, 19 seconds, approximately 20 seconds after the boosters arrive back on the ground at Cape Canaveral.

The second stage engine will shut down to conclude its first burn at around T+plus 8 minutes, 31 seconds. Another 30-second firing is programmed to start at T+plus 28 minutes, 22 seconds, to send the upper stage, its Tesla cargo and "Starman" into an orbit that ranges to a peak altitude tens of thousands of miles above Earth.


A side-by-side comparison of the Falcon Heavy with other current launchers. The illustration is shown approximately to scale. Credit: SpaceX

But the mission will not be over.

The rocket will keep flying, soaring through the Van Allen radiation belts before its engine reignites around six hours later for a departure maneuver into interplanetary space.

Musk said the extreme cold and radiation will present hazards during the six-hour coast, which is twice as long as any profile followed by a Falcon 9 rocket in the past.

"Even once we reach orbit we've got a very long coast, we've got a six-hour coast before restart, which is twice as long as we've ever coasted a stage, so we could see the fuel potentially freeze, because it's out there in deep space, and when it's not facing the sun it's at three degrees above absolute zero," Musk told CBS News. "So it could easily freeze, or the liquid oxygen could boil off, so there's a lot that could go wrong."

The upper stage "will actually be in a far worse radiation environment than deep space for several hours, survive that, and then re-light for the trans-Mars injection," he said.

Long-duration upper stage flight profiles are required for the most demanding U.S. military launch missions, such as the placement of satellites directly into geostationary orbit, a circular perch more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. Multiple, perfectly-timed engine burns are needed to move from an initial low-altitude inclined parking orbit into such a high-altitude equatorial position.

The lengthy upper stage flight Tuesday will try to demonstrate the Falcon rocket family's capability to pull off such a feat, showcasing the performance to the Air Force and other prospective customers.

Musk said the upper stage carries additional battery power and pressurant gas for the extra operating time in space.

Musk unveiled the Falcon Heavy rocket in 2011, and proclaimed then the launcher would be ready for blastoff in 2013. SpaceX said it slowed development of the Falcon Heavy to focus on other projects, including the recovery of Falcon 9 rocket stages for reuse, and to resolve technical problems that destroyed two Falcon 9 rockets in 2015 and 2016, one in flight and another on the launch pad.

Musk announced in September his updated vision for settling Mars — SpaceX's ultimate mission — and announced that his company is working on a giant new rocket dubbed the BFR that could send cargo and crew ships to the red planet, or perhaps the moon if a lunar base becomes reality.

SpaceX developed the Falcon Heavy to lift heavier payloads into space than the company's Falcon 9 rocket, and to compete with other heavy-lifters for contracts to haul massive spacecraft for the U.S. military and NASA. The Falcon Heavy may also find a niche in deploying large commercial satellites, or launching clusters of smaller spacecraft to support the build-out of planned broadband communications networks.

"This rocket's great for a lot of reasons," Musk told CBS News. "It's something that I think inspires the public. I've been asked, is this like Apollo? I'd say it's not Apollo, but it's arguably a prelude to a new Apollo, and it's going to be the only heavy to super-heavy lift rocket in the world. This will be more than twice the thrust and capability of any other rocket currently flying. And if it reaches orbit, it will have the most payload of any rocket since the Saturn 5.

"You could actually send people back to the moon with the Falcon Heavy. You could, with orbital refueling, send people to Mars," he said. "We think probably our next design, the BFR, is going to be ideal for interplanetary colonization and for establishing a large base on the moon and a city on Mars," he said. "But this is a prelude to that. This is going to teach us a lot about what's necessary to have a huge booster with a crazy number of engines.

"We finally have a major advancement in rocketry ... I'm not sure whether this will be lost on people, whether they'll appreciate it," he said. "I hope they do, because the era of the very large rocket went away with Saturn 5 and with the space shuttle. I find it odd that the Falcon Heavy is twice the thrust of anything from Russia, China, Boeing, Lockheed or Europe. And I hope it encourages them to raise their sights."

Going into Tuesday's test flight, only three Falcon Heavy missions are confirmed in SpaceX's backlog after the test launch: Two for commercial telecom companies Arabsat and ViaSat, and one for the Air Force. Another company, Inmarsat, has an option to launch a future satellite on a Falcon Heavy.

Some customers that reserved launches on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket switched their satellites to the smaller Falcon 9, which benefited from multiple thrust and performance upgrades to carry some payloads that originally required the triple-core rocket.

Inmarsat and Intelsat had planned launches on the Falcon Heavy, but both ended up flying their satellites on the Falcon 9. The ViaSat 2 satellite built to provide high-speed Internet access across the United States was supposed to launch on a Falcon Heavy, but the firm move its launch to a European Ariane 5 rocket, citing schedule worries. ViaSat retained its contract with SpaceX to launch a future satellite on a Falcon Heavy.

Musk told CBS News he was "giddy" on the eve of the Falcon Heavy's first blastoff.

"I thought for sure something would delay us, we could have some issue we discovered on the rocket or maybe bad weather," Musk said in a conference call with reporters Monday afternoon. "But the weather's looking good, the rocket's looking good, so it should be an exciting day. I'm looking forward to it.

"We'll have a good time no matter what happens. It's guaranteed to be exciting, one way or another. It's either going to be an exciting success or an exciting failure. One big boom! I'd say tune in, it's going to be worth your time."

But he's hopeful for success.

"We've done everything we can," Musk said. "I'm sure we've done everything we could do to maximize the chances of success of this mission. I think once you've done everything you can think of and it still goes wrong, well, there's nothing you could have done. But I feel at peace with that."
[свернуть]

OlegIn

Почему зачеркнуто про Луну? У Спейсов есть же планы облета Луны с туристами на борту.

testest2

ЦитироватьOlegIn пишет:
Почему зачеркнуто про Луну? У Спейсов есть же планы облета Луны с туристами на борту.
Вчера Маск от него отказался.
законспирированный рептилоид

Oleg

#356
Цитироватьtestest пишет:
OlegIn пишет:
Почему зачеркнуто про Луну? У Спейсов есть же планы облета Луны с туристами на борту.
Вчера Маск от него отказался.
Якобы работы по BFR настолько продвинулись, что нет смысла сертифицировать FH на пилотируемые корабли.
Не реалистично звучит.
Похоже Маск действительно не уверен в своем детище FH, и ждет он проблемы от неконтролируемого воздействия бустеров друг на друга. 

Чебурашка

Пилотируемый облёт Луны переходит дорогу насовскому Ориону ;)

testest2

Никому он не переходит дорогу. SpaceX просто не хочет с возиться с лунным "Драконом" точно так же, как в прошлом году перехотела возиться с марсианским.
законспирированный рептилоид

tnt22

Цитировать02/06/2018 18:15 Stephen Clark

Good morning fr om NASA's Kennedy Space Center, where the countdown clock is ticking toward the opening of today's Falcon Heavy launch window at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT).



This view comes from the KSC Press Site around three miles from launch pad 39A, wh ere reporters and photographers are gathering to cover today's Falcon Heavy test flight.

The Falcon Heavy countdown is a bit different than a standard Falcon 9 countdown, but the major pre-launch steps are much the same.

Filling of the Falcon Heavy with super-chilled, densified RP-1 and liquid oxygen propellants will begin somewhat earlier in the countdown than for a standard Falcon 9 rocket.

RP-1 kerosene fuel will begin loading into the Falcon Heavy rocket first, beginning at 12:05 p.m. EST (1705 GMT), followed by liquid oxygen at 12:45 p.m. EST (1745 GMT).