My sources tell me the flight is named ZUMA. The flight is extremely critical because a successful one would mean lots of potential future revenue. Launch date is slated for November 15th due to slight slip in testing.
Quote from: reddit user ASTRALsunderMy sources tell me the flight is named ZUMA. The flight is extremely critical because a successful one would mean lots of potential future revenue. Launch date is slated for November 15th due to slight slip in testing.Fact? Right?
Quote from: saliva_sweet on 10/14/2017 06:35 pmQuote from: reddit user ASTRALsunderMy sources tell me the flight is named ZUMA. The flight is extremely critical because a successful one would mean lots of potential future revenue. Launch date is slated for November 15th due to slight slip in testing.Fact? Right?Lots of potential revenue for who? SpaceX? The satellite constellation operator (e.g. Boeing as was speculated up thread)?ZUMA looks and sounds like an acronym.
Quote from: rockets4life97 on 10/14/2017 06:41 pmQuote from: saliva_sweet on 10/14/2017 06:35 pmQuote from: reddit user ASTRALsunderMy sources tell me the flight is named ZUMA. The flight is extremely critical because a successful one would mean lots of potential future revenue. Launch date is slated for November 15th due to slight slip in testing.Fact? Right?Lots of potential revenue for who? SpaceX? The satellite constellation operator (e.g. Boeing as was speculated up thread)?ZUMA looks and sounds like an acronym.ZUMA is a photojournalism news service. Unlikely, but there it is.
Zuma isn't in the m-w dictionary. Zuma Press (the photojournalism company) says that Zuma is Mayan for new day, new solution, new vision. ZThe reddit user ASTRALsunder had another comment where they suggested it might not be a satellite. Possibly some commercial or stunt like the Toshiba Space Chair advertisement where a weather balloon took a chair up near space?
Quote from: rockets4life97 on 10/14/2017 06:41 pmQuote from: saliva_sweet on 10/14/2017 06:35 pmQuote from: reddit user ASTRALsunderMy sources tell me the flight is named ZUMA. The flight is extremely critical because a successful one would mean lots of potential future revenue. Launch date is slated for November 15th due to slight slip in testing.Fact? Right?Lots of potential revenue for who? SpaceX? The satellite constellation operator (e.g. Boeing as was speculated up thread)?ZUMA looks and sounds like an acronym. Perhaps something like the ominous PAN and CLIO (non)acronyms, which turned out as NEMESIS SIGINT sats.http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/nemesis-1.htm
Quote from: saliva_sweet on 10/14/2017 06:35 pmQuote from: reddit user ASTRALsunderMy sources tell me the flight is named ZUMA. The flight is extremely critical because a successful one would mean lots of potential future revenue. Launch date is slated for November 15th due to slight slip in testing.Fact? Right?Perhaps something like the ominous PAN and CLIO (non)acronyms, which turned out as NEMESIS SIGINT sats.http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/nemesis-1.htm
I'm thinking if there are any light geostationary comsats (say 2 to 3.5 tonnes) around that had never had a launch contract announced, or even without their identities known, that might be launching by now. For example, there was that 3 Boeing 702SP order from the US government in 2013 that cannot be pinned down to any known satellite and was once floated around as a candidate for NROL-76 earlier this year. So far none of them seemed to have been launched yet, and if they are launched on F9 one at a time the 1st stage would have easily made an RTLS.
My hypothesis is a "Nemesis 3":Quote from: Skyrocket on 10/14/2017 09:23 pmQuote from: saliva_sweet on 10/14/2017 06:35 pmQuote from: reddit user ASTRALsunderMy sources tell me the flight is named ZUMA. The flight is extremely critical because a successful one would mean lots of potential future revenue. Launch date is slated for November 15th due to slight slip in testing.Fact? Right?Perhaps something like the ominous PAN and CLIO (non)acronyms, which turned out as NEMESIS SIGINT sats.http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/nemesis-1.htmUsing a Boeing 702SP bus, instead of the Lockheed-Martin A2100A:Quote from: Galactic Penguin SST on 10/14/2017 01:42 pmI'm thinking if there are any light geostationary comsats (say 2 to 3.5 tonnes) around that had never had a launch contract announced, or even without their identities known, that might be launching by now. For example, there was that 3 Boeing 702SP order from the US government in 2013 that cannot be pinned down to any known satellite and was once floated around as a candidate for NROL-76 earlier this year. So far none of them seemed to have been launched yet, and if they are launched on F9 one at a time the 1st stage would have easily made an RTLS.Four of the five 702SP's thus far launched have done so on a Falcon 9.
My hypothesis is a "Nemesis 3":
Quote from: zubenelgenubi on 10/14/2017 09:58 pmMy hypothesis is a "Nemesis 3":Saying it's a US Gov sat seems to contradict the statement by /u/ASTRALsunder saying that the operator has revenue targets to hit and shareholders to please:"Yup, critical for the operator in this case. They have revenue targets to hit and shareholders to keep happy." https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/76c3gw/spacex_has_an_approved_license_for_10_nov_launch/doda2gm/
Nov 10th going to be a busy space coverage day with JPSS-1 at VAFB, Cygnus Spacecraft OA-8 on Wallops on the same date.
Quote from: reddit user ASTRALsunderMy sources tell me the flight is named ZUMA. The flight is extremely critical because a successful one would mean lots of potential future revenue. Launch date is slated for November 15th due to slight slip in testing.If that's true, we can exclude a classified payload. Their names don't leak like that. It could be an unclassified US military payload, or a commercial payload for a secretive customer (foreign government or commercial).