mbender
Well-known member
The drone ship was having trouble station-keeping on its own Lagrange point! ;-)
Somewhere around here...not sure exactly yet...The facility should be operational by 2016, SpaceX representatives said.
Missed it, but ISTR that the Pacific (i.e. Vandenberg) is used for high inclination (polar) orbits, as they can launch to the south and not worry about hitting anything with a large population if there's a malfunction shortly after launch - Cuba/Bahamas/Haiti/Puerto Rico sort of precludes that from Canaveral, even if they were willing to launch spy sats whose pieces might come down in Cuba. I'd think it would take a large amount of fuel to change the orbital inclination from roughly east-west to polar.mbender said:Yeah, I just saw this tweet:
I'm sure they have their reasons, but wouldn't the Pacific have made for a better place for the drone than the Atlantic in winter? I seem to remember a movie... what was it called again? Oh well, at least DSCOVR is en route.Elon Musk said:Mega storm preventing droneship from remaining on station, so rocket will try to land on water. Survival probability <1%.
(Yes, awesome launch.)
Edit: I guess they always launch eastward, which would effectively rule out the Pacific for Cape Canaveral launches. I guess I'm so "jazzed" up that I'm posting without thinking right now. ;-)
That seems right. I suspect that sort of reasoning is in play for payloads that launch from Wallops Island, VA.GRA said:Missed it, but ISTR that the Pacific (i.e. Vandenberg) is used for high inclination (polar) orbits, as they can launch to the south and not worry about hitting anything with a large population if there's a malfunction shortly after launch - Cuba/Bahamas/Haiti/Puerto Rico sort of precludes that from Canaveral, even if they were willing to launch spy sats whose pieces might come down in Cuba. I'd think it would take a large amount of fuel to change the orbital inclination from roughly east-west to polar.mbender said:Yeah, I just saw this tweet:
I'm sure they have their reasons, but wouldn't the Pacific have made for a better place for the drone than the Atlantic in winter? I seem to remember a movie... what was it called again? Oh well, at least DSCOVR is en route.Elon Musk said:Mega storm preventing droneship from remaining on station, so rocket will try to land on water. Survival probability <1%.
(Yes, awesome launch.)
Edit: I guess they always launch eastward, which would effectively rule out the Pacific for Cape Canaveral launches. I guess I'm so "jazzed" up that I'm posting without thinking right now. ;-)
Thanks very much for this! Excellent info - and a long-range launch schedule, too. \o/mbender said:FYI: LOTS of great detail on DSCOVR, its mission, and even today's launch (already):
SpaceFlight101 DSCOVR
- . . . . " . . . . Mission Updates
You're right - it does. Any idea why?WetEV said:Delta IV uses liquid hydrogen rather than kerosene used by Falcon 9. Here is one place that I think hydrogen is the correct fuel/energy store for long term development.
The impression I get from the way Hohmann low-energy transfers work, is that there are sort-of three 'orbits' from launch to being on station at L1. Only the last one is intended to be a 'full orbit' - the rest are partial (half?) by design.Nubo said:So what happens during the 110 days? Does it just keep nudging its orbit wider until it intersects with L1? I assume there would be some interaction with the Moon, etc...?
Nubo said:So what happens during the 110 days? Does it just keep nudging its orbit wider until it intersects with L1? I assume there would be some interaction with the Moon, etc...?
Enter your email address to join: