SpaceX Falcon 9 Launch Thread — AMOS-17

[Anonymous No.10868624]

Sorry about AMOS-6 edition

WHEN: Tuesday, August 6 2019 6:53 PM EDT / 22:53 UTC — 8:21 PM EDT / 00:21 UTC (SIX BONGS from this post)
STREAM: https://www.spacex.com/webcast [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZh82-WcCuo]
Probability of weather delay: 60% [https://www.patrick.af.mil/Portals/14/Weather/L-1%20Forecast%206%20Aug%20Launch.pdf?ver=2019-08-05-135633-263]
Backup launch date: Unknown

Launch site: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida (East Coast)
Booster number & previous flights: B1047, 2 [Telstar 19V 2018-7-22, Es'hail 2 2018-11-15]
First stage landing: No
Fairing catch attempt: Yes
SpaceX press kit: https://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/amos-17_mission_press_kit_8_6_2019.pdf
Payload: Spacecom’s AMOS-17 communication satellite
>AMOS-17 will operate in the C, Ku and Ka bands with a digital channelizer to provide fixed high throughput (HTS) C-band coverage to Africa, steerable HTS Ka-band coverage to anywhere from China to Brazil, and extensive Ku-band coverage throughout Africa with additional coverage in Europe, the Middle East, China, and India.
Payload mass & destination orbit: 6500 kg, GEO @ 17°E
Payload information:
>https://www.amos-spacecom.com/satellite/amos-17/
>https://www.satbeams.com/satellites?id=2719
>https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/amos-17.htm

Stats:
This will be the 45th landed first stage, 26th booster reflight, and 74th Falcon 9 launch. It is the 10th SpaceX launch of 2019.

[Anonymous No.10868625]

[Anonymous No.10868628]

[Anonymous No.10868631]

[Anonymous No.10868642]

Required viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2RdSS4o88A

[Anonymous No.10868651]

>>10868631
>and then she farts!

[Anonymous No.10868652]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joONWIGtcdY
Rocketlab are announcing something in five bongs too

[Anonymous No.10868653]

>>10868652
is it a rocket that's not toy-sized

[Anonymous No.10868658]

>>10868653
in the Tim Dodd interview Beck said they're sticking with small vehicles for the near future, I think

[Anonymous No.10868660]

>>10868658
drat

[Anonymous No.10868677]

>>10868660
Feeling this. I wish Rocketlab the best but I just can't get excited about vehicles that have zero capacity to impact human spaceflight

[Anonymous No.10868698]

>>10868677
>>10868652
Maybe they're announcing a Moon lander concept or partnership? A small electric-pump rocket engine would be a pretty neat thing to have for low gravity lander designs. One advantage is that they're really easy to start up many times and are easy to throttle rapidly compared to any combustion-powered pump design. Another is that they get decent Isp compared to gas generators due to passing all propellant mass through the combustion chamber, at much better chamber pressures compared to simple but shitty pressure-fed engines.

[Anonymous No.10868702]

>>10868698
yeah but their mass ratio always sucks

[Anonymous No.10868705]

>>10868702
>just throw away your batteries bro

[Anonymous No.10868774]

>>10868702
Sure, but you don't need a good mass ratio if you're doing Moon landings anyway. Their current Rutherford engine has a thrust output pretty much right between the thrust levels of the Apollo lunar descent engine and the ascent engine, so a new engine using different propellants should be reasonable at that same size range. The question is, are the mass reductions from not having to carry highly pressurized propellant tanks worth the additional mass brought on by the engine pump's battery pack? Would the use of a non-expendable, rechargeable battery pack plus a solar array (which would probably weigh more than a pressure fed engine system) be worth it for a reusable lander, since you can't easily reuse a pressure fed engine system in-situ? What about an engine that used solar power directly and didn't have a large battery pack? I don't think the decision is very clear-cut. Maybe expander-cycle engines using methalox are the future for small Lunar landers, since you can actually store that propellant combination on the Moon's surface with a little effort, you get good Isp, and it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to work with hydrogen.

[Anonymous No.10868782]

>>10868774
hydrogen will always have a place on the lunar surface unless we find large sources of carbon on the moon but if you're bringing your own prop methane is the best choice

[Anonymous No.10868817]

>>10868782
Honestly with the advent of Starship and the fact that it can get over 200 tons of payload to the Moon's surface if it refills on oxygen alone, I don't see much reason to produce hydrogen propellant on the Moon at all. Nobody is even close to developing any vehicle with the economics or capacity of Starship, and by the time they do there's a decent chance that there will already be LOx refilling infrastructure on the Moon, and if not they'll still need to compete with Starship's baseline of 100 tons to the Moon's surface. Going farther into the future the Moon could have a nice beefy mass driver to boost spacecraft that landed with minimal propellant all the way back to Earth, making refilling an obsolete technological architecture. Such a mass driver wouldn't even need to shove at high G's to get a vehicle up to the velocity necessary to intercept Earth's atmosphere, making a return trip effectively free, the only cost being the electricity and time spent using the mass driver. That infrastructure would let Starship put not 100 tons onto the Moon, but about 300 tons, making Starship effectively equal in payload delivery capability to the old ITS. On that note, it'd make something the size of ITS (with the same mass fractions and performance otherwise) capable of putting about 1000 tons onto the Moon's surface. In short a Lunar Mass driver would be very nice to have, but you already knew that. It'd also probably bankrupt any serious hydrolox production plans on the Lunar surface. With Lunar mass drivers, oxygen cold-gas monopropellant thrusters, and oxygen resistojet propulsion, you can do Lunar orbit launch and return with reusable vehicles. It takes a lot more propellant mass than any chemical rocket with the same boost-via-coilgun, however every refinery and industry on the Moon is going to be effectively begging for a chance to sell their oxygen by product, which they will be producing retarded amounts of as they smelt metal oxides.

[Anonymous No.10868871]

>>10868817
150 tons, and that's with eight tanker starship fill-ups. just to be clear

[Anonymous No.10868873]

>>10868624
Earth is flat

[Anonymous No.10868875]

>>10868871
Can Starship even lift that much to orbit?
I guess we'll find out later this month lol

[Anonymous No.10868878]

>>10868875
100 for sure, 150 later with a fully-populated super heavy (# of raptors)

[Anonymous No.10868890]

How kill are smallsat launch companies now that SpaceX is only charging $15k to piggyback on a Falcon 9?

[Anonymous No.10868894]

>>10868890
somewhat kill. SpaceX currently is planning like three rideshare launches through 2022. Most current cubesat folks are already locked into launch providers

[Anonymous No.10868898]

>>10868890
the rideshares are all targeting a super specific orbit, sun synchronous (polar at 500-600 km)
if you want to go somewhere else you're out of luck

[Anonymous No.10868914]

>>10868871
If it can do 150 tons vanilla then it can do 250 tons by taking advantage of LOx refilling on the moon and it can do 350 in the future when there's a mass driver to send it back to Earth.

[Anonymous No.10868919]

>>10868914
I don't think you understand, it's 150t to the surface when completely full. You do like 7 fill-ups in LEO and one in translunar space. Then you need to be filled up on the surface to return

[Anonymous No.10868931]

>>10868914
they're limited to around that from the surface of the earth with super heavy, anon
you can't bring more with you unless you do cargo transfer in orbit

[Anonymous No.10868956]

>>10868919
>Then you need to be filled up on the surface to return
No, with highly-elliptical-orbit refueling, Starship gets to the Moon with maximum payload plus as much propellant as is needed to get all the way back to Earth. It doesn't need to refill on anything in order to get back to Earth. However, you can still leverage payload mass by using refilling in a tricky way. I've gone through all this before, I'll explain.

The advantage of refilling using lunar oxygen comes from *not* having to push ~100 tons of oxygen from Earth orbit to the Moon's surface. You need about that much oxygen (plus a corresponding mass of methane to burn) in order to launch empty or nearly empty Starship back to Earth. However, you get a direct payload increase in correlation with return-mission-oxygen that you don't bring from Earth. Think of it like this; Starship can bring X payload mass to the Moon plus the propellant it needs to get back, if you refuel it in orbit around Earth (plus that highly elliptical refueling thing but really it doesn't matter how you get Starship sent to the Moon). Now, consider that you can easily find oxygen on the Moon and will be making it in huge amounts if you have any kind of metal smelting operation in place. If you short load on liquid oxygen in your highly-elliptical transfer orbit refueling, such that you touch down with all the methane you'll need to get back but an empty oxygen tank, you can directly transfer that mass of oxygen into useful payload mass, because your spacecraft will weigh the same with that additional payload as it would have if you carried a full load of oxygen and less payload instead. After touching down, you remove your 250 tons of payload, take on 100 tons of liquid oxygen made on the Mon, and launch back to Earth in a single burn, now that you have a much lower dry mass.

[Anonymous No.10868966]

>>10868931
Yes, I agree, however you'd be almost doubling the payload to the Moon with a single additional Starship launch rather than an entire Lunar mission refueling campaign, which involves completely refilling a Starship and a Tanker in LEO, then boosting both towards the Moon, then transferring the remaining fuel in the tanker into the Starship while on a highly elliptical Earth orbit, then sending the Starship the rest of the way to the Moon's surface and back while bringing the Tanker back after it completes one orbit. That'd be a total of ~12 launches for 150 tons to the Moon, or ~13 launches for 250 tons to the Moon. It'd be worth doing the cargo transfer.

[Anonymous No.10868973]

>>10868956
uhhh but anon you can't get 250t to LEO in the first place. Only way to send 250t to the surface is if you launch it in two parts, but then rendezvous and load up one starship instead of two. Then land one instead of two. Why?

[Anonymous No.10868980]

>>10868973
see >>10868966
It's a lot easier to do an on-orbit cargo transfer with one additional launch than it is to do 12 launches all over again.

I will say that it would be unlikely to see any payloads as heavy as 100 tons anyway, unless they are bulk resources like sheet metal or volatile fluids (water, nitrogen, etc). In the case of machinery you're going to run out of volume before you run out of mass capacity, but in the case of flat steel panels or tanks of water yo're definitely going to be mass limited. That's actually perfect because we really only want to be faffing around with on-orbit cargo shuffling if it's stuff that's relatively dense, small, and/or easy to move from one ship to another.

[Anonymous No.10868983]

>>10868980
hmmmm

[Anonymous No.10868999]

>>10868973
Moon lacks much needed carbon. Starship crammed full of solid carbon will have over 200 tons of payload. Additionally, it can offload some methane on the Moon as another carbon source.

[Anonymous No.10869004]

we're in a void lads
A VOID

[Anonymous No.10869020]

>>10868871
disappointing if true.
seems like refueling technology is essential for Starships's success for anything other than the usual LEO/GEO satellite stuff

[Anonymous No.10869023]

>>10869020
>seems like refueling technology is essential for Starships
have you been under a rock? that's the entire meme of Starship

[Anonymous No.10869026]

>>10869020
it's true. What's wrong with refueling though? The one launch and you're done mindset needs to go away

[Anonymous No.10869027]

ariane 5 pops off in a couple minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ8HecMG2qs

[Anonymous No.10869028]

>>10869027
french language stream please

[Anonymous No.10869030]

>>10869028
non

[Anonymous No.10869037]

>>10869023
I knew that but wasn't aware it would need 8 frikking refuels to do what that anon described.

[Anonymous No.10869041]

>>10869037
it has a hundred tons of payload and a thousand tons of fuel capacity

[Anonymous No.10869044]

>>10869037
If SS & SH were expended it could deliver a metric shitton to LEO, but that isn't the point of the architecture

[Anonymous No.10869049]

>>10869037
It may need less refuels if a dedicated tanker is introduced.

[Anonymous No.10869068]

>>10869044
expended SS is the number you need to look at for maximum LEO payload for trips where refueling is on the table

[Anonymous No.10869069]

>>10869068
yeah, I guess I just meant expended SH.

[Anonymous No.10869075]

>>10869068
not exactly. Expendable SS wouldn't have landing legs or reentry hardware/tiles/whatever. Plus only vac engines.
That adds up to a fair amount of mass

[Anonymous No.10869076]

>>10868999
It'd be a better idea (if you want carbon) to pack more methane along instead, since Starship carries methane anyway and the hydrogen you get with your carbon is extremely useful as well. It'd probably be better to bring methane to the Moon than water, since the Moon settlements will have abundant oxygen to react with the hydrogen and get all the water they'd need that way, as well as to make CO2 for feeding plants and building up their habitat's life support system/ecology.

[Anonymous No.10869078]

>>10869075
there's a difference between "self recoverable", "rescuable" and "expendable"

[Anonymous No.10869079]

>>10869004
neato

[Anonymous No.10869085]

>>10869079
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/local_void/


>The existence of the Local Void has been widely accepted, but it remained poorly studied because it lies behind the center of our galaxy and is therefore heavily obscured from our view.
>Now, Tully and his team have measured the motions of 18,000 galaxies in the Cosmicflows-3 compendium of galaxy distances, constructing a cosmographic map that highlights the boundary between the collection of matter and the absence of matter that defines the edge of the Local Void. They used the same technique in 2014 to identify the full extent of our home supercluster of over one hundred thousand galaxies, giving it the name Laniakea, meaning "immense heaven" in Hawaiian.
>For 30 years, astronomers have been trying to identify why the motions of the Milky Way, our nearest large galaxy neighbor Andromeda, and their smaller neighbors deviate from the overall expansion of the Universe by over 600 km/s (1.3 million mph). The new study shows that roughly half of this motion is generated "locally" from the combination of a pull from the massive nearby Virgo Cluster and our participation in the expansion of the Local Void as it becomes ever emptier.

[Anonymous No.10869141]

[Anonymous No.10869157]

>>10868624
I have to know, when this satellite is in operation, how much pornography will pass through it each second?
>>inb4 it's just a regular commsat, it's just transferring boring bank info, telling truck drivers where to go, or sending information about who has the beans
Any conduit for information will eventually carry porn. It's hard to avoid.

[Anonymous No.10869172]

>>10869157
>be me monitoring a telecom sat
>not much happens it just streams position data for maritime operations
>suddenly data usage spikes up
>somone on a ship using our services is downloading tons of zip files
>think some shady business is happening and stop the transfer
>report it to higher ups
>decide to investigate what the folders are
>7zip time
>mfw all of them are terabytes of dolphin porn

[Anonymous No.10869192]

>>10869172
WTF man, I wanted those!

[Anonymous No.10869231]

>>10869172
Satellite comms operator here. This is a regular occurence. We've been trying to put a stop to it too. The odd thing is all these signals keep coming from the middle of the ocean from transceivers which were located on boats that sunk

[Anonymous No.10869247]

>>10869231
>The odd thing is all these signals keep coming from the middle of the ocean from transceivers which were located on boats that sunk
"How else should I get my tentacle wacking materials?"

[Anonymous No.10869368]

rocket lab stream starting

[Anonymous No.10869404]

HAT EATING TIME

[Anonymous No.10869409]

electron is doing reusability now

[Anonymous No.10869411]

inb4 the next launch is equipped for reuse

[Anonymous No.10869418]

>>10869411
They know they're fucked if one of these Chinese """companies""" gets to reuse first.

[Anonymous No.10869425]

>>10869409
lel

[Anonymous No.10869428]

[Anonymous No.10869469]

>>10869411
still a few launches away

[Anonymous No.10869472]

in case we forgot, there's a F9 launch happening soon. Stream countdown is sub-bong now.

[Anonymous No.10869473]

>>10869411

[Anonymous No.10869528]

prop load confirmed. t-30 min~

[Anonymous No.10869540]

5 min to stream start

[Anonymous No.10869544]

https://youtu.be/fZh82-WcCuo

SpaceX LIVE

[Anonymous No.10869547]

we have stream

[Anonymous No.10869549]

boo for a boring, no-landing launch.
Maybe we'll get a cool Ms Tree camera view or something

[Anonymous No.10869550]

oh heck it begins

[Anonymous No.10869566]

>It's a Kate episode

[Anonymous No.10869568]

>>10868624
fuck elon, and fuck spacex!

[Anonymous No.10869569]

>>10869566
She was perfect for the Starhopper abort stream. Probably one of my favorites.

[Anonymous No.10869570]

>>10869568
you didn't *ting*

[Anonymous No.10869571]

Spooky launch

[Anonymous No.10869573]

insprucker time

[Anonymous No.10869574]

HIS TANKS ARE SWEATY
CLAMPS WEAK
FUEL IS HEAVY

[Anonymous No.10869575]

INSPRUCKER GO

[Anonymous No.10869580]

Ad time

[Anonymous No.10869582]

All hail our lord and savior Insprucker.

[Anonymous No.10869585]

>5G
OH NO

[Anonymous No.10869592]

>>10869585
>Built by Israel

[Anonymous No.10869597]

SOMETHING GOT STUCK

[Anonymous No.10869598]

RANGE HOLD

[Anonymous No.10869599]

No go, will hold at t-30s

[Anonymous No.10869600]

Range hold incoming!

[Anonymous No.10869601]

Just got a hold at 30 sec. Range is reporting a no go

[Anonymous No.10869602]

>>10869592
they're gonna microwave those poor africans on their way to Italy

[Anonymous No.10869605]

1 minutes till launch. Post your launch face

[Anonymous No.10869607]

range is now go!

[Anonymous No.10869608]

>>10869600
Range hold cleared!

[Anonymous No.10869609]

RANGE IS GO
LIGHT EM UP FALCON

[Anonymous No.10869611]

>>10869605

[Anonymous No.10869614]

>get to this thread with 5 secs before live launch
What timing

[Anonymous No.10869615]

[Anonymous No.10869620]

GO FALCON GO

[Anonymous No.10869621]

another one.

[Anonymous No.10869625]

>The first stage won't be recovered
DROPPED

[Anonymous No.10869626]

>>10869615
Based launch cat poster

[Anonymous No.10869628]

>>10869626
I tried to post launch cat but I posted the wrong launch cat in a /v/ thread.

[Anonymous No.10869629]

NOMINAL

[Anonymous No.10869630]

>>10869625
Literally

[Anonymous No.10869635]

>>10869630
lmao

[Anonymous No.10869639]

Didn't they say they would never do a non recoverable launch again after the switch to block 5? What gives?

[Anonymous No.10869641]

dudududududududududududududu

[Anonymous No.10869644]

>>10869639
>Didn't they say they would never do a non recoverable launch again after the switch to block 5? What gives?
Where did you hear that? Or is that just your own belief?

[Anonymous No.10869646]

I swear if they cut away from this sunset

[Anonymous No.10869647]

>>10869639
No. they do expendable launches if the contract requires it. they have to do it if they burn more fuel in the first stage than usual.

[Anonymous No.10869649]

>>10869646
update: they actually fucking did, what gives

[Anonymous No.10869652]

>>10869647
in the case of AMOS-17, since SpaceX blew up AMOS-6 it's only polite to give Spacecom the full margin available

[Anonymous No.10869653]

>>10869639
this launch is a comp for Spacecom after SpaceX blew up AMOS 6 on the pad, so Spacecom had absolutely no incentive to let SpaceX renegotiate the contract to launch on reusable Falcon Heavy instead

[Anonymous No.10869655]

>>10869653
>>10869652
I hope (((this one)))) blows up too

[Anonymous No.10869656]

Press F to pay respects to B1047. At least we can take solace knowing that this was her third flight.

[Anonymous No.10869659]

The song right now is legit good, even better than usual. Gonna need a name.

[Anonymous No.10869662]

>>10869659
LC-39a

[Anonymous No.10869663]

>>10869644
Well I was very confident o that I read that from space x, but now I am less so.

[Anonymous No.10869664]

>>10869656
Fourth launch when

[Anonymous No.10869669]

>>10869655
Blow up after sat deployment please. I don't want SpaceX's name be tarnished.

[Anonymous No.10869670]

>>10869664
probably Starlink something

[Anonymous No.10869688]

>>10869664
In the rocket booster afterlife, because B1047 isn't being recovered today

[Anonymous No.10869695]

>>10869639
They never said that, expendable launches are just more expensive.

[Anonymous No.10869704]

>>10869663
their website still lists pricing for expendable so I don't think so tim

[Anonymous No.10869708]

Complete success!

Next F9 launch is October with the 2nd batch of Starlink satellites.
Thanks for tuning into another launch thread y'all

[Anonymous No.10869749]

yay

[Anonymous No.10869777]

>>10869749
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1158899839456800769
graceful as fuck

[Anonymous No.10869778]

>>10869777
fuck, didn't notice the cursor in the capture
just go to the link

[Anonymous No.10869792]

>>10869777

[Anonymous No.10869797]

>>10869792

[Anonymous No.10869881]

>>10869797
What happened to the other fairing?

[Anonymous No.10869902]

>>10869881
Went for a swim. They're going to try and pull it out though.
The faring halves don't fall very precisely, they would need two boats for total recovery.

[Anonymous No.10869932]

>>10869881
Swimming. Elon's just testing out one side of fairing for now because of how difficult it was to get it perfect in the first place. If he deems the cost savings worth it, he'll probably do dual catching which requires dual drone ship.

[Anonymous No.10869944]

>>10869932
GO Ms Tree is piloted

[Anonymous No.10869956]

I was at a neighborhood BBQ today. I asked the hosts wife to put he space x stream on the tv by their pool. She acted like she didn't know what I was talking about. I told her it was live, told her all these clamped idiots are wasting a rare chance for public space industry. I was shouting y"clamped" as her husband pushed me out.

[Anonymous No.10869961]

>>10869956
have you considered not being a fucking sperg

[Anonymous No.10869967]

>>10869961
What have you done to advance humanity to the stars today? I tried today.

[Anonymous No.10869971]

>>10869967
you annoyed your neighbors and accomplished nothing
you actively damaged human spaceflight with your flip out

[Anonymous No.10869982]

>>10869971
Didn't flip out. Human spaceflight is the ultimate task. I would never hurt it.

[Anonymous No.10869984]

>>10869982
you annoyed your neighbors and got ejected from their party while ranting about space

[Anonymous No.10869998]

>>10869984
I guess they could of seen it that way.

[Anonymous No.10870002]

>>10869998
fuck off please

[Anonymous No.10870008]

>>10870002
Ok.

[Anonymous No.10870683]

>>10869956
Clamped?

[Anonymous No.10870688]

>>10870683
have you not been using /sci/ recently, it's all over the catalog
idiots are screaming about how doctors clamp the umbilical cord of babies or something in America