Wow, another launch. How is SpaceX going to do this many launches in the next 4-5 years?
Their plan includes sending 50 Merlin engines to the launch site this year and 80 in 2013. (*Target date indicates hardware arrival at launch site) It boggles the mind, even before considering that some of these will be Merlin 1d's, which have yet to complete development.
How they get the 3.2t satellite to 95 degrees East GEO?!
Quote from: apace on 03/14/2011 01:57 pmHow they get the 3.2t satellite to 95 degrees East GEO?!Mr. Musk has said that the current block-I Falcon-9 should be able to launch 4t to GEO, 3t through TLI and 2t to Mars. I might be wrong, but generally GEO payloads are capable of performing their own plane change manoeuvres, the LV only has to get them into GTO.
I might be wrong, but generally GEO payloads are capable of performing their own plane change manoeuvres, the LV only has to get them into GTO.
Quote from: Ben the Space Brit on 03/14/2011 03:13 pmI might be wrong, but generally GEO payloads are capable of performing their own plane change manoeuvres, the LV only has to get them into GTO.It is worth noting that Atlas/Centaur launches often do part of the plane change for the payload. Any extra US performance can be applied towards the plane change.
[Vent \on]Elon and SpaceX have done a wonderful job in putting payloads into orbit from a clean slate start. I got that. What I am not happy about is that SpaceX starts off with fairly incredible performance claims for its new systems, followed by a later disclosure that the stated performance is for some future variant. At the same time, Elon is basically leapfrogging his development programs, so that Falcon 1, after a couple of successes, is basically discarded, and F9 is likely to be quickly superseded by the Heavy, followed by the single engine variant. What happens in all that leapfrogging is that the advanced variants never come to pass, so the incredible performance claimed earlier is never actually achieved. This means that commercial customers really can't depend on the claimed parameters of any one system - so a customer who buys an F9 launch may have to eventually fly on Falcon F9 Heavy. This is not a good practice in the commercial realm, despite the success of IBM earlier in generating similar FUD, it is eventually self-defeating behavior. [vent \off]
So you're saying SES - which apparently is very conservative - bought into this performance hype, being oblivious F9 Block 2 could never meet those numbers?
Predicted performance figures are often not reached right away, and it shouldn't (and wasn't, if you read some of the older posts around here) be surprising.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 03/14/2011 05:29 pmPredicted performance figures are often not reached right away, and it shouldn't (and wasn't, if you read some of the older posts around here) be surprising.No one is suggesting that performance figures should be met right away. But, they should be met Some Day. In the case of SpaceX, specific performance values are never met, they are "leapfrogged".
the Block 1 Falcon 9 does not put anywhere close to the nominal 10 tons into LEO