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Space, Rockets, Satellites, oh my!

OneirosTheWriter

OneirosTheWriter

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Okay, we only have a SpaceX megathread, so I thought it would be good to have a thread to discuss happenings from around the world. So here is a place for Rocket Lab, Roscosmos, ULA, Arianegroup, you name it, it can go. If you hear news of interesting launches or payloads, bring 'em here. If you read interesting articles about the state of the industry, post 'em here! Etc etc.

To start things off, it looks like the ISRO (India) is not letting the loss of a Satellite get to them. They are not postponing the launch of a PSLV with another satellite, despite their most recent satellite suffering a failure of either comms or power, leaving it in a somewhat worrying elliptical orbit.

Also, next rocket up globally is an Ariane 5 carrying a Japanese civilian/military comms satellite, Superbird-B3. The last Ariane 5 took an inadvertent walk on the wild side by being programmed in with the wrong launch profile by mistake, resulting in a bad orbit for the satellite that required a bunch of lifespan to fix, so they'll probably be anxious for this one to go smoothly.
 
If you want a solid source of space news that has an emphasis on the industry and politics, the imaginatively-named SpaceNews is probably the best you're going to find.

And the comments on the articles are usually, like, not even a steaming pile of dogshit!
 
Not terribly surprised, the Arianes have been very reliable vehicles, like most of the good established launch vehicles.
On another note, it seems like a lot of groups are getting into reusability for rockets recently, but I haven't heard a peep out of Roscosmos or China. They're probably working on something but I've got no idea what. I think the Russians are working on an old SSTO design, but I don't know how far they've gotten on that and I haven't heard of anything from China.
 
TortugaGreen said:
Not terribly surprised, the Arianes have been very reliable vehicles, like most of the good established launch vehicles.
On another note, it seems like a lot of groups are getting into reusability for rockets recently, but I haven't heard a peep out of Roscosmos or China. They're probably working on something but I've got no idea what. I think the Russians are working on an old SSTO design, but I don't know how far they've gotten on that and I haven't heard of anything from China.
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China is starting major research and development on the concept, but are pulling a China and waiting to see what other people find to be the best method. Russia is Russia, and are barely able to keep their existing launch site's lights on. They're getting almost as badly slaughtered by the expansion of SpaceX as ULA and the ESA, on top of the issue that they're having major teething issues with their new site and a precipitous decline in build quality leading to some ameture mistakes. They had a damn rocket turn around and deliberately plow into the ground because it thought it was on the west side of russia, not the east.
 
Richardson said:
China is starting major research and development on the concept, but are pulling a China and waiting to see what other people find to be the best method. Russia is Russia, and are barely able to keep their existing launch site's lights on. They're getting almost as badly slaughtered by the expansion of SpaceX as ULA and the ESA, on top of the issue that they're having major teething issues with their new site and a precipitous decline in build quality leading to some ameture mistakes. They had a damn rocket turn around and deliberately plow into the ground because it thought it was on the west side of russia, not the east.
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So Russia will probably just launch soyuzes for the forseeafore future, as usual. If nothing else, Russia won't stop having national payloads to put up, so there's at least that to sustain Roscosmos, even if everything else like ISS crew and most sattelites stop using them in favor of falcon 9s.
 
Article:
WASHINGTON — Blue Origin quietly changed the design of its New Glenn rocket around the beginning of the year in order to hold to a 2020 first launch and increase the range of orbital missions the rocket can complete.

Although the company's website still shows New Glenn with a second stage powered by a reignitable version of the BE-4 it is developing to power the main stage of both New Glenn and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, that configuration is now out of date.

A Blue Origin executive told SpaceNews the company is shelving development of a vacuum-optimized version of BE-4 and will instead use vacuum-optimized versions of flight-proven BE-3 engines for New Glenn's second stage and optional third stage.

"We've already flown BE-3s, and we were already in the development program for BE-3U as the third stage for New Glenn," said Clay Mowry, Blue Origin's vice president of sales, marketing and customer experience. "It made a lot of sense for us to switch to an architecture where we get there faster for first flight."

The BE-3U is the upper stage variant of the liquid hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine that has powered Blue Origin's reusable New Shepard spacecraft on seven suborbital test flights since its 2015 debut.

Mowry said switching to the BE-3U for New Glenn's second stage will allow Blue Origin to conduct the rocket's first launch in the fourth quarter of 2020. He declined to say how much time the engine change saves compared to the original configuration.


So we have heard some news about New Glenn. It looks like they are trying hard to keep on schedule.
 
ISRO is gearing up for a launch of the PSLV tomorrow. The PSLV rocket has had a pretty good record, but their last launch ended in faring separation failure, dooming the payload.

Also, if you've ever seen any of the publicity work of the ISRO ... my god it's like going back in time:
 
I find it quite interesting how much the PSLV uses solid rocket stages, compared to everyone else's near complete focus on liquid propellant. I'm guessing they figure that the dead simple nature of solid rockets will allow them to save on money despite the increased mass from using less efficient engines, but I don't really know how well that works.
 
TortugaGreen said:
I find it quite interesting how much the PSLV uses solid rocket stages, compared to everyone else's near complete focus on liquid propellant. I'm guessing they figure that the dead simple nature of solid rockets will allow them to save on money despite the increased mass from using less efficient engines, but I don't really know how well that works.
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I was actually shocked to see that, in particular that they have a mid-stage that uses a solid propellant, which seems just headspinning. I'm not aware of any other launch vehicle that does that. Indeed, any other launch vehicle that uses solid propellant as a first stage rather than simply boosters, off the top of my head anyway.
 
A lot of missiles do for storability, which looks to be something they're going for, with their heavy SRB use and in the lower liquid stage non-cryogenic fuel. This may allow them to fuel their stages prior to integrating them, which is useful considering they integrate on the pad.
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
I was actually shocked to see that, in particular that they have a mid-stage that uses a solid propellant, which seems just headspinning. I'm not aware of any other launch vehicle that does that.
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It's unusual, but hardly unheard of. Right off the top of my head, Antares has a solid second stage. Many early launch vehicles had solid upper stages as well, and the use of solids as kick stages is so common as to be positively mundane.

OneirosTheWriter said:
Indeed, any other launch vehicle that uses solid propellant as a first stage rather than simply boosters, off the top of my head anyway.
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Vega and Pegasus are primarily solid launch vehicles that are still in active service. Orbital ATK's Next Generation Launcher has a solid first (and I think second?) stage and is likely to go into serious development soon. Athena is another solid-based launcher which saw service in the '90s, and there are a whole bunch of solid-fueled smallsat launchers. Ares I had a solid first stage, which caused many of the problems that the Orion spacecraft had and is still struggling with.

And that's just the ones that are purpose-built launch vehicles. There are a bunch of launchers that are literally retired ballistic missiles.

Oh yeah! And at one point, Aerojet wanted to replace the entire first stage of the Saturn I with a single, staggeringly large solid rocket motor.
 
A classified mission payload for ULA's Atlas V launch today - however, mission patch is still available. This one is fucking genius:



Went up without a hitch. Give ULA their due, they are reliable. Expensive fuckers, but reliable. An Atlas V in 551 is a pretty impressive sight at launch.
 
New heavy-lift rocket project announced - Orbital ATK's next-gen launcher project will take the form of OmegA, intended to lift 10 ton to GTO.

Big ass solid first stage, another solid second-stage, (it is Orbital ATK, after all) and a cryogenic third stage.

Meet OmegA: Orbital ATK Unveils Name, Upper Stage Pick for Next-Gen Rocket

Looks like Rocketdyne beat out Blue Origin's engine offering for the upper-stage propulsion.
 
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OneirosTheWriter said:
New heavy-lift rocket project announced - Orbital ATK's next-gen launcher project will take the form of OmegA, intended to lift 10 ton to GTO.

Big ass solid first stage, another solid second-stage, (it is Orbital ATK, after all) and a cryogenic third stage.

Meet OmegA: Orbital ATK Unveils Name, Upper Stage Pick for Next-Gen Rocket

Looks like Rocketdyne beat out Blue Origin's engine offering for the upper-stage propulsion.
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Looks to be a pretty solid design in many ways, though it does closely follow the usual commercial rocket design with little side-mounted SRBs and lots of stages, indicating they probably have no intention of making it reusable, which is a pity. I also note that I don't see anywhere where they state the rocket's expected cost.
 
TortugaGreen said:
Looks to be a pretty solid design in many ways, though it does closely follow the usual commercial rocket design with little side-mounted SRBs and lots of stages, indicating they probably have no intention of making it reusable, which is a pity. I also note that I don't see anywhere where they state the rocket's expected cost.
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Not sure about the price tag to orbit, but Orbital ATK is well placed here, given their in-house production of solid-fuel rockets. It should be vertically-integrated production, with the only exception of the RL-10s in the third stage.
 
TortugaGreen said:
So Russia will probably just launch soyuzes for the forseeafore future, as usual. If nothing else, Russia won't stop having national payloads to put up, so there's at least that to sustain Roscosmos, even if everything else like ISS crew and most sattelites stop using them in favor of falcon 9s.
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(NOT an expert on this.)

What has been done with Angara (as the evolution of the earlier URM concept) has been very promising, even extremely promising. Somewhat related, but URM's employment by South Korea with the Naro-1 launch vehicle has been "nominal to good"--the earlier failures of Naro-1 have been attributed by both Korean and Russian investigators as coming from KARI (payload and second stage) and not Khrunichev (first stage). Angara 1.22P and Angara A5 in 2014 were both as successful as could possibly be hoped for test launches.

They were also expensive, unsurprisingly. Three more Angara missions have been (repeatedly?) pushed back to 2019 (we'll see if they happen or not). In the meantime, improvements have to be made on Proton-M (the last several Proton-M losses have all been indigenous cargos, not foreign payloads, which make up most of that 10% failure rating for the Proton-M) no matter how promising Angara is. Further refinements will of course appear on Soyuz (and Progress). I'm not an expert on budgeting either, but those are only taking money away from a to-be-tested vehicle line.

But, provided you wait, I'd be extremely surprised if we didn't see Angara again eventually.
 
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RRoan said:
How so? They're correctly ordered by volume, although I guess they probably should have leveled the images by the payload mating plane instead of the fairing base.
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I think it's because frequently the rocket capacity limiting factor is lift mass rather than fairing volume. While fairing volume is valid for certain things, like super low density space station modules and the like, much more often a fully loaded rocket has open fairing space.
 
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