In is a contest. It concerns economics and sovereignty. Europe has launched orbital rockets for ages but never from geographic Europe and that makes the launch-capability vulnerable as the US goes down the drains.
If this is an entry in a contest, give a dissertation on why it is above the arctic circle. Not much of a market for that.
Indeed. And that is why this is a big deal. The other part is the cost, which is pretty low, compared to what Europe had before.
Did anyone give consideration to the fact that the launch site is above the arctic circle? Since no one will believe me, here's an easily digestible site that explains.
https://www.scienceabc.com/eye....
High latitude launch sites have some serious disadvantages unless you are planning on circumpolar orbits, which means you are planning on launching spy satellites.
Those launch sites near the equator use the earth's rotation for a speed boost from the earth's rotation which has a significant boost in payload or weight. 1,674 kilometers per hour boost. at the equator, At sites like Andoya, almost nothing.
In addition, it is handy to have ocean in on an easterly path in the event of failure so the bits of rockets have a place to land.
So, for some reason, Germany put a launch site in a place that is mostly useable for spysats, and just so happens to be not that far from a land the US president wants to invade.
I am of course, making conjecture. I know that if Germany wants a Western European launch site there are places in the south of France that might seem more suitable for normal operations. That last isn't conjecture
This isn't a contest as far as I know. Well maybe it is for the checkbox people. With prizes for "firsts"
The commercialization of spaceflight IS a contest. Not sure what else to say, I thought people knew what was going on.
Whoosh.
Way to miss the point. My point, which is summarized concisely in the first paragraph in the story, to wit:
"No rocket had ever reached orbit from Western European soil — until today,"
Do we have data on how many rockets were launched on say Thursday mornings at 0710? By a team of Lithuanian "little people"?
It is painfully obvious they are check boxing when they go on to list more competition among the spaceworthy:
"The company said that while the US launched 198 rockets last year, Europe's tally was just eight"If it is as you say, a competition, then this company only has 197 more launches, think they'll make it?
Much more interesting at least to me, is the location of the launch. Above the Arctic Circle, good for circumpolar orbits - mostly the province of spy sats. But let's look a little deeper.
About 950 miles or 1529 Kilometers away from Greenland! Perhaps a little geopolitical shot across the bow to a rather unpopular president, who seems to have a weird rageboner to occupy Greenland?
What this is, is showing just how far rocketry has been reduced to practice, which is not a bad thing at all.
Modern Rocketry is nearly a century old, the operational process that the Germans brought to fruition in WW2 has been refined, but yeah, contemporary liquid fueled rocket engines are tweaks of the original. Tweaks of fuel types, gimbaling, pump capacity, and now we have to go to check boxing for "firsts".
Solid rocket boosters are also largely reduced to practice.
It's all good people, now a lot of groups can participate.
If someone writes "No rocket had ever reached orbit from Western European soil" then you cannot just miss out qualifying words like "Western" to make a headline. If I write a story saying "Greytree is the fastest 100m runner called Greytree" you cannot post a story with the headline "Greytree is the fastest 100m runner". This is Journalism 101, not rocket science.
Soo.... you aren't the fastest 100m runner? 8^)
Yes and gm got caught reporting data to LexisNexis without telling customers. One guy got a literal book when he asked for his lexisnexis report. It detailed everywhere he had driven in his onstar car. gm settled and supposedly stopped doing it.
Yeah, you need to remove the Tracking module, because they can track you even if you don't have a sub.
1. The US gets into a war with China. 2. China sends a kill signal to all Chinese vehicles in the US. 3. The US government says they'll rapidly build millions of new vehicles in the US to replace them. 4. Ooops, we don't have the factories and anyway we forgot how.
Even if the Chinese didn't kill the cars, parts would rapidly become unobtainable.
Review your WW2 History. The US managed to gear up to fight a 2 front global war.
So China’s long game is to sell the world cheap cars and then engage a kill switch at some point?
How does that benefit anyone?
True dat. And just as a data point, if a person has a GM Vehicle, they have ONStar. And you don't need a subscription for them to hit the kill switch and cause the car to only idle. So you pull off the road, and let popo come to visit.
American cars have sucked since about the 1970s.
When I was a kid, it was "American cars have sucked since the 1920's"
Oddly enough, those good cars befrore rusted in a few years, and I remember celebrating when my 1965 Buick Skylark hit 100K miles. And then I sold it to a junkyard. Tires lasted 15,000 miles, Water pumps maybe 20,000 miles. Brake pads mayby 15,000 miles.
Today, I put around 300,000 mile on a vehicle, First time body issues hardly ever start before 200,000 miles.Ceramic brake pads seem to last forever. The engines are essentially what we used to call "blueprinted" which would have resulted in gasps
I get some of it - nostalgia for the older cars. Wife had a 69 Mustang and I had a 73 Mach 1. Awesome rides. But compared to anything now? We sold them before the 100,000 mile mark because they were done.
It's not really an apples to apples comparison. You wonder why SpaceX doesn't treat a lost rocket as a big deal where everybody else does. Well, this is why. Same reason you think starship is some sort of joke or vanity project: You're expecting the very first rocket to be fully developed and production ready with all planned features implemented. SpaceX does not.
All apologies if I insulted a fan.
I think GP means they fail to deliver on time or on specification, so contract goes to SpaceX, and this wouldn't be the first time exactly that has happened. SpaceX is already the lower cost, more reliable choice by a very wide margin; the reason the others get the contracts is to more or less throw them a bone and ensure there are future options available.
Right. But I don't think it is throwing a bone. The New Glenn is becoming a good rocket, and is there a good reason to not use New Glenn for rocketry? The recent incident of it blowing up is no different than a Falcon 9 blowing up on the launchpad 10 years ago. New rockets, new problems.
And it is for a darn good reason to have multiple providers. As an example, at one time, Boeing was a respected company that created good products. Now after becoming a bean counter company, they are rapidly becoming an also ran, with a crew capsule that reminds me of the early Soviet nuc subs.
And despite all the love heaped on Spacex, there is no guarantee that the same won't happen to them.
This isn't to disparage the Falcons, they are really good rockets. Starship - not so much, but that's a vanity project. But time moves on, and I've never been into the hot hand theory.
"Most of the fans forgot about the rapid unplanned disassembly of the vaunted Falcon 9 on the launchpad 10 FUCKING YEARS AGO!" TFTFY
Irrelevant. Acting like it didn't happen in early development is a double standard. These candles are dangerous, and it takes a while to perform the learning curve.
Sorry, but none of their new glen launches was without problems, especially the last one, which obliterated their complete launchpad. (Previous one did lift off and flew great but didn't land properly). So in that regard their testflights weren't much better as SpaceX.
Most of the fans forgot about the rapid unplanned disassembly of the vaunted Falcon 9 on the launchpad in 2016. There will always be unplanned events as the rocket makers work their learning curve.
As much as it pains me to say it, I don't think Blue Origin is that far behind. They just have a different methodology to SpaceX. Instead of failing fast and often while they iterate, Blue Origin does a lot of testing and then a successful launch. So it's very hard to say exactly where they are in comparison to SpaceX, but we will find out in the next few years when they are supposed to deliver the first crewed lunar lander to NASA.
Correct, they aren't that far behind. We have armchair engineers in here claiming that BO's big achievement is Launching a suborbital flight with Pop Stars, that Bezos paid baksheesh to the orange shitgibbon, when they've already put satellites into orbit on New Glenn rockets.
This is how the system is supposed to run, with multiple vendors. BO is on their learning curve.
I'm betting they'll contract out to SpaceX for the launching to Mars. It makes sense to give a networking contract to the company adjacent to Amazon.
They have New Glenn Rockets. Hard to imagine they would use Spacex When they already have a livery.
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.
