Oh neither do I. It's incredibly irresponsible.
But treating this as a mistake, or as carelessness, is letting the Chinese government and space agency off the hook.
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SpaceX |OT| Reusable Rockets - To Mars!
- Thread starter Crispy75
- Start date
But treating this as a mistake, or as carelessness, is letting the Chinese government and space agency off the hook.
I'm certainly sensitive to the nature of the current Chinese regime. However we've already had one major diversion of the thread on the subject of whether or not Spacex is owned by a horrible person. Let's keep these excursions to a minimum.
The hype is ridiculous. A bunch of billionaires investing in a non-existing market because it gives them a hard-on.
Not much. It's just another bubble like in the 90s. Everybody back then thought LEO sat constellations would be the next big thing.
Only nowadays it's combined with even more ridiculous dreams about Mars colonization. It's all kind of surreal.
Care to elaborate?
Right now launch providers are servicing well stablished markets. The launch rate has been steadly climbing for the last fear years but not more than 3 o 4 flights a year. I hardly see any bubble in this sector.
OP
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The LEO constellation thing is back on the agenda, cos the market for "data anywhere" is orders of magnitude larger than it was in the 90s. If SpaceX manage to capture just a fraction of the world market for internet provision, they'll be able to fund their Mars programme no bother.
No. A new NET (no earlier than) date will be released after the static fire actually happens. But since this is the first time around for the Falcon Heavy, there may yet be more things to discover about tying three liquid rockets together that pushes the schedule back.
LEO sat constellations are a thing. I would have thought that was evident with the missions like Iridium that SpaceX are delivering.
The mini documentaries in the webcasts goes to great length to show the amazing practicality of these systems. It's no pipe dream.
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They mean LEO comms constellations like Iridium and Orbcomm, both of which were born in the 90s and are currently upgrading their fleets. In 2017, SpaceX launched 4 batches of Iridum NEXT satellites and they've previously launched satellites for Orbcomm as well.
Those networks are low bandwidth systems for things like satellite phones, maritime communications, remote data collection etc.
The real step change will come with the general-purpose constellations planned by SpaceX (under the Starlink name) and Oneweb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb_satellite_constellation
These will consist of hundreds or *thousands* of individual satellites, networked together with line-of-sight laser links. The idea is that you can set up a pizza-box-sized antenna anywhere in the world and get true broadband bandwidth and latency, cheaper than a cable connection. The potential market is gigantic.
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why?
In the mid 2000s we had around 50-60 launches a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_in_spaceflight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_in_spaceflight
In the last few years around 90.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_in_spaceflight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_in_spaceflight
90-55 = 35/10 years = 3.5~ per year.
I'm talking about the whole industry. You can't say there is a bubble because of the performance of one company Y/Y, but of the evolution of the whole industry during the last decade. You need to study long term trends.
Edit: I was trying to explain him why i don't see a bubble in this sector, that's why i was talking about the trend in the industry, not about a specific year or company. Surely you can pick Y/Y differences and see a spike of 20 more launches.
English is not my first language, i apologize for any misunderstanding.
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It's not going towards Mars. It's going to a sun-centric orbit that gets out as far as Mars' orbit, but doesn't intersect with it. More of a "see, we can get it this far" rather than actually getting it to a specific place. Which is sensible, because a)Anything that might land/crash on Mars has to be rigorously disinfected before flight to avoid contamination of Mars with Earthly microbes* and b)If it's in a stable, non-crashing orbit, someone can go and collect it again, some far day in the future :)
All of which is to say that it doesn't matter when they launch.
*This issue is going to have to be dealt with before any serious Mars exploration.colonisation plans are put into effect
That's a bummer.
Although I'm not surprised to see musk misleading me again. That's it final straw I'm through with musk!
Yes, or rather, a Hohmann transfer orbit of the kind that would be used to get a vehicle from Earth to Mars. The perihelion has to be near Earth's orbit, the aphelion near the orbit of Mars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit
Thanks but it's jinxed.
We are now operating on valve time.
Also Florida Today, with a closer view of the beast:
https://livestream.com/accounts/20522137/spacexfalconheavytest
The window for the static fire opens in 10 minutes, fueling is underway.
https://livestream.com/accounts/20522137/spacexfalconheavytest
The window for the static fire opens in 10 minutes, fueling is underway.
Difficult to say, hopefully SpaceX will release an epic closeup video soon! (And a bit of slo-mo would be awesome)