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Trying to double-up?
http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/31/14...llite-contract
Suggests that a quintet of Iridium Next satellites will be lauched in conjunction with a pair of NASA satellites. It isn't entirely clear, but it appears the Iridium satellites are the hitchhikers. Given that SpaceX have launched 10 of the Iridium satellites in a single shot before, is this perhaps trying to squeeze things into a smaller number of launches? Schedule issues? rick jones -- Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that. - Anonymous these opinions are mine, all mine; HPE might not want them anyway... feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hpe.com but NOT BOTH... |
#2
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Trying to double-up?
On 2/1/2017 8:13 PM, Rick Jones wrote:
is this perhaps trying to squeeze things into a smaller number of launches? It could have just been a bargain. Perhaps Iridium got a good price on the excess capability of that one launch? One thing though, ten identical birds at one time, with all of them belonging to the same company, sounds like a huge crap shot to me. They could all be lost in a single launch failure, or (being identical) they could all share the same technical problem. Putting up a few at a time via shared launches sounds a whole lot safer. |
#3
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Trying to double-up?
On 2/02/2017 1:46 PM, Vaughn Simon wrote:
On 2/1/2017 8:13 PM, Rick Jones wrote: is this perhaps trying to squeeze things into a smaller number of launches? It could have just been a bargain. Perhaps Iridium got a good price on the excess capability of that one launch? One thing though, ten identical birds at one time, with all of them belonging to the same company, sounds like a huge crap shot to me. They could all be lost in a single launch failure, or (being identical) they could all share the same technical problem. Putting up a few at a time via shared launches sounds a whole lot safer. Putting them up over several launches increases the chance that some are lost, so it's swings and roundabouts. Sylvia. |
#4
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Trying to double-up?
JF Mezei wrote:
On 2017-02-01 21:46, Vaughn Simon wrote: One thing though, ten identical birds at one time, with all of them belonging to the same company, sounds like a huge crap shot to me. They could all be lost in a single launch failure, or (being identical) they could all share the same technical problem. Putting up a few at a time via shared launches sounds a whole lot safer. Iridium is launching a whole bunch of satellites on a limited number of orbital planes. The 10 were launched on an 86° orbital plane (aka polar orbit) and would be spaced out on the same plane. So it makes sense to launch them at same time. Right. Iridium has gone through and optimized the number of launches they need to replace their constellation. It turns out to be a number of 'sets of 10' launches with some 'sets of 4' launches to fill in the gaps. The idea is to have enough 'spares' in the build pipeline to be able to slot them in for a bad launch and be able to use the insurance money to build replacement birds for later in the launch sequence. So as long as you stay 10 birds ahead in construction, you're good as gold. -- "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw |
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