RTF when?

>>7731568
I heard (unconfirmed) that they did a static fire yesterday with a RTF due on Sunday night

>>7731568
You should really go to reddit for this, hate to admit it. Some of the guys there made a site dedicated to their launches and they know a lot, cause some of them are employees and many of them crazy spacex fanatics

>>7731604
Yeah good point. Only downside is that i have to learn how to navigate reddit to do that..:p

File: 1437071762710.jpg (61KB, 600x450px) Image search: [Google]

61KB, 600x450px

>>7731604
>suggesting going to reddit

We will have even fewer SpaceX threads if you encourage everyone to leave

You are cancer

BlueOrigin blows SpaceX out of the fucking water

SpaceX's return to flight launch is scheduled for 8 PM Eastern time on December 20th. It's an instantaneous launch window, so if it's not right on schedule, they'll try again on Tuesday at the earliest.

>>7731649
>blue origin's goal: commercialize space by bringing people to low orbit
>space x's goal: colonize mars

yeah ok.

>>7731649
Eh... Blue Origin might have pulled off a suborbital flight and landing, with a substantial separable payload, but they're still years from orbital launch and years behind SpaceX.

What SpaceX might achieve on Sunday would be beyond any goals Blue Origin has publicly stated.

Particularly now that they're using propellant densification, SpaceX's approach is very mass-efficient. Even with the recovery hardware, the Falcon 9 booster has a propellant mass fraction that would be very good even among expendable launch vehicles.

So SpaceX is talking about boosting back to land on solid ground near the launchpad, as soon as they get FAA approval to do so. This requires considerably more delta-V than downrange landing.

Blue Origin's approach is to use much more mass for aerodynamic purposes on the booster stage. While this makes the problem of recovery easier, it also makes the booster more costly and less capable. Hence, they're only aiming for downrange landing, not flyback.

SpaceX's orbital launch with booster flyback, which could be achieved tomorrow, would be a greater accomplishment than Blue Origin's orbital launch with booster downrange landing, which won't be attempted for years into the future.

>>7731667
>he thinks spacex will actually have anything to do with colonizing mars in his lifetime beyond throwing shitty pr.
Apex kek.

>>7731667
Bring payload to low earth orbit is the inevitable first step of doing anything in space
If financing that comes from space tourism, then that too is a necessary part of things.

>>7731696
Why couldn't they just land somewhere downrange, then ship the first stage back by rail?
Or land on a boat.

>>7732223
They can, that's an option. You hardly need rail, either. An empty rocket isn't very heavy. SpaceX ships its rockets around on pretty ordinary trucks.

SpaceX is also planning to do downrange landing, when they can't get flyback permission, or when they're trying recover the center stage of a Falcon Heavy. In fact, SpaceX is talking about partially refuelling the landed stage on the barge, and launching it back to land, so it's recovered for reuse immediately.

The problem with downrange landing is that it's a long way away from the launch site, and launches are normally done over the ocean, mostly for safety reasons. So if you've got decent weather at the launch site, you could still have bad weather out in the ocean, which could cause you to either lose rockets or miss launch windows.

Downrange landing on land limits you to launching at certain angles, where there are landing pads. Rockets launch at different angles to get to different orbits. A launch to the ISS is at a different angle than a launch to geostationary orbit, which is almost at right angles to a launch to a polar orbit.

>>7731568
17 hours