Tuesday's The Charm for SpaceX and SES-8

From the SpaceX website

"Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at 5:41 PM
Eastern Time. Approximately 185 seconds into flight, Falcon 9’s second
stage’s single Merlin vacuum engine ignited to begin a five minute, 20
second burn that delivered the SES-8 satellite into its parking orbit.
Eighteen minutes after injection into the parking orbit, the second
stage engine relit for just over one minute to carry the SES-8
satellite to its final geostationary transfer orbit. The restart of
the Falcon 9 second stage is a requirement for all geostationary
transfer missions."

http://www.spacex.com/press/2013/12/03/spacex-successfully-completes-first-mission-geostationary-transfer-orbit
tinned as http://tinyurl.com/F9-SES8


Fotos at
http://www.spacex.com/gallery/falcon-9-first-geostationary-transfer-mission

/dps

--
Killing a mouse was hardly a Nobel Prize-worthy exercise, and Lawrence
went apopleptic when he learned a lousy rodent had peed away all his
precious heavy water.
_The Disappearing Spoon_, Sam Kean

Snidely submitted this gripping article, maybe on Tuesday:
From the SpaceX website

"Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at 5:41 PM Eastern
Time. Approximately 185 seconds into flight, Falcon 9’s second stage’s
single Merlin vacuum engine ignited to begin a five minute, 20 second burn
that delivered the SES-8 satellite into its parking orbit. Eighteen minutes
after injection into the parking orbit, the second stage engine relit for
just over one minute to carry the SES-8 satellite to its final geostationary
transfer orbit. The restart of the Falcon 9 second stage is a requirement
for all geostationary transfer missions."

http://www.spacex.com/press/2013/12/03/spacex-successfully-completes-first-mission-geostationary-transfer-orbit
tinned as http://tinyurl.com/F9-SES8


Fotos at
http://www.spacex.com/gallery/falcon-9-first-geostationary-transfer-mission

Any ss* viewers get a glimpse?

/dps

--
"This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away be excitement,
but ask calmly, how does this person feel about in in his cooler
moments next day, with six or seven thousand feet of snow and stuff on
top of him?"
_Roughing It_, Mark Twain.

"Snidely" wrote in message
news:mn.1d427ddca3bf5783.127094@snitoo...
From the SpaceX website

"Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at 5:41 PM
Eastern Time. Approximately 185 seconds into flight, Falcon 9’s second
stage’s single Merlin vacuum engine ignited to begin a five minute, 20
second burn that delivered the SES-8 satellite into its parking orbit.
Eighteen minutes after injection into the parking orbit, the second
stage engine relit for just over one minute to carry the SES-8
satellite to its final geostationary transfer orbit. The restart of
the Falcon 9 second stage is a requirement for all geostationary
transfer missions."


I made several predictions previously related to SpaceX:

- Europe's Ariane 6 will never fly
- Europe may pull out of the launching business entirely
- Russia's space program will shrivel into obscurity
- virtually all U.S. based satellite operators will switch *all* of
their launches to SpaceX over time

Arianespace has already announced that it will lower the price for a
launch significantly in response to SpaceX entering the geo-launch
business. As a Ariane customer I would feel cheated. Only
now that a much more efficient competitor enters the market are they
willing to cut prices. And only for the lower (smaller) satellite
launched on an Ariane 5.

Although some customers will keep flying on Ariane and Proton for a
while, eventually the number of competitors may dwindle since Ariane 5
is simply too expensive to operate. Each launch costs in
excess of $200 million and Europe still needs to fund Arianespace with
public funds to keep them in the black. The Ariane 6 is designed to
launch a single satellite at $90 million which is at
least $40 million more than a Falcon 8. The only way they can ever
compete is to sell below cost and absorb the losses to keep in the
launch business. This would quickly cost upwards of $500 million
a year and turn into a political hot potato.

Russia's space program is mostly being funded by foreign satellite
operators launching on Proton and Western nations flying their
astronauts to ISS on Soyuz. When SpaceX's man-rated Dragon capsule
starts flying I predict Russia will rarely fly Soyuz, even if they
decide to build their own space station (which will make them the
laughing stock of space fairing nations when the Chinese land
men on the Moon and the U.S. decides to land a man on Mars in response).
The Russian government is already underfunding its space program but
when foreign customers leave it will quickly become
derelict.

It will be interesting to see how many of these predictions are proven
right.

some launch competitors have probaly thought of ways to have some space X failures.....

On Sun, 15 Dec 2013 11:16:56 -0500, Robert Clark wrote:

... This all stemming from the ESA choice to move backwards and not
forwards in choosing a solid-fueled version of the Ariane 6....

Maybe not. That decision gets Ariane 6 more LEO payload than Falcon.
When the time comes someone wants to to lift more than twelve or thirteen
tons on a Falcon, wanna bet they attach a couple of SRBs?

--
RLW