Earlier quoted context omitted.
real time google earth
go outside and wave hello
DigitalGlobe did something like that recently: http://blog.digitalglobe.com/industry/sending-data-from-spac...
SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record
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Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record
#32How much of this success is because of Elon?
If Microsoft does well, it's because of Satya Nadella's brilliant leadership. If Space X or Tesla does well, it's definitely not because of Elon...because he tweeted a bad thing once?
Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record
#33NASA seems to be open-sourcing some interesting projects, ie. https://github.com/nasa/openmct
I wonder if SpaceX will publish some of their tools to the public in the near future.
Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record
#34So the 'steamroller' is now up to speed. Does anyone have any ideas if Spacex will actually grow the launch market, rather than just dominate. What new things become possible with lower cost access to space. Spacex are developing communications satellites for internet, what else? Edit: Thanks for all the replies so far, I was thinking more down to earth (di dum ch) things rather than theoretically possible. Eg I know…
real time google earth
Not sure if you're being serious.
On first thought I thought you were joking, but then real time traffic, Forest fire/ eruption/ tsunami alerts. Massive amounts of data to process, but could be useful.
Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition to asteroid mining and other industrial activities, once pricing comes down, I think entertainment could be a large market. Space tourism is one possibility, but tourists have to deal with getting sick going up. I think entertainment produced in space but sold on Earth could be big - particularly space sports! You could design sports that are just not possible to play on a planet.
People keep say astroid mining but I've yet to see a convincing business case...
I agree that cheaper launches will not do much to directly change the business of astroid mining. The majority of the cost, even today, are not related to rockets.
Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record
#36This is the second rocket launch today! The earlier one was Soyuz Launch to ISS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18587943 I didn't know that there are so many rocket launches going on all the time. Here's a list of them: https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/ There a launch almost every second day. The most interesting ones are Dec 7 Chinese launch to the far side of the moon and Jan 30 launch of India's mo…
If all goes according to plan, SpaceX will also be launching again tomorrow for their next CRS mission (resupplying the ISS).
Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record
#37They broke four records today: 1. First company booster to fly three times 2. First to launch from all SpaceX pads 3. Now most number of SpaceX launches in a year. 4. Highest number of spacecraft flown on a US rocket 64th Falcon 9 mission. 70th including Falcon 1 and Heavy.
Additionally, this was the first time that the fairings were recovered and are expected to be reused for a future launch: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1069679948103847939 The fairings currently cost a total of $6MM for each launch, or at least 10% of the physical rocket cost, so this could lead to significant savings for future launches.
> The fairings currently cost a total of $6MM for each launch
WHAAAAA?! What are they made of? I thought the fairings were just the covers for the payload. What makes them so expensive?
Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record
#38I watched the livestream over dinner on youtube. Really good footage this time. Clear weather and they shot the first stage landing with a zoom lens from land. Including pretty much all of the landing burn.
The first stage landing footage was a total lucky break for us - this was a launch profile that could have made it back to land. However, there was another rocket (ULA, I believe) on the pad at Vandenberg with some delicate payloads, so they asked SpaceX to land on the barge just far enough offshore to give themselves some distance from the pads.
Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
People keep say astroid mining but I've yet to see a convincing business case...
A simple use case would be mining asteroids for ice and selling it to NASA for use in the ISS.
The ISS isn't a big enough water market to merit this kind of activity. This might be viable if we had 100x more people in space.
Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record
#40At its current rate thats a rocket every ~19 days