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| NZ rocket launch heralds new wave | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 23 Jan 2018, 02:00 AM (88 Views) | |
| skibboy | 23 Jan 2018, 02:00 AM Post #1 |
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NZ rocket launch heralds new wave Jonathan Amos Science correspondent 6 hours ago ![]() The Electron launches from New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula in the North Island Twenty-eighteen is shaping up to be a fascinating year for the rocket business. All eyes currently are on Florida as we await the debut of the Falcon Heavy, the SpaceX company's bid to claim the title of "the most powerful launch vehicle on the planet". But we're also avidly watching the other end of the lifting scale, and the flurry of small launchers that are in the process of making their way to market. Silicon Valley start-up Rocket Lab announced its intent at the weekend with a fully successful launch from New Zealand of its Electron vehicle, popping three cubesats in orbit. A maiden flight last May had to be terminated a few minutes after lift-off, but Sunday's flawless mission was clear demonstration that Rocket Lab is now ready to enter commercial service. And there'll be others following hard on the heels of the US/NZ operation. ![]() The Electron vehicle looks down on Earth after Sunday's successful flight Sir Richard Branson has a low-cost satellite launcher going through the final phases of ground testing before attempting its first outing. Called simply enough LauncherOne, this 21m-long booster will be carried to cruising altitude by an old Virgin Atlantic jumbo, before then being released to power skywards. The rocket is designed to take spacecraft weighing up to 300-500kg into low-Earth orbit. If analysts are correct, the future will be dominated by satellites in this class, and smaller. Paris-based market-watchers Euroconsult reckon more than 6,200 small satellites will need rides over the next decade, and LauncherOne, Electron and others will all vie to be the taxi of choice. For years, the LauncherOne project lived in the shadow of Sir Richard's other space project - his Virgin Galactic tourist rocket-plane. But then in March last year, LauncherOne was cleaved into a separate entity with its own company profile called Virgin Orbit. It occupies a 16,000-sq-metre design and manufacturing facility in Long Beach, California, on the edge of the airport where McDonnell Douglas used to despatch its newly built planes. Walking around Virgin Orbit, as I did in the autumn, you see a mass of tanks, composites and propulsion motors in various stages of dress. The current timeline calls for the first fully assembled rocket to be flight-tested in the first six months of this year. Assuming that goes well, the production and flight rate will be ramped up sharply. There is capacity to make 24 LauncherOnes a year in Long Beach. That's two missions a month. If the projections about the coming wave of small satellites are correct, that number of 24 seems almost too few! ![]() The Long Beach factory hopes to be turning out 24 vehicles a month There's definitely a new entrepreneurial spirit out there that's taking advantage of technologies proven with consumer electronics like cellphones to make very capable spacecraft in compact packages - to relay telecommunications, take Earth observation pictures and to gather weather data. Earlier this month, I wrote about a novel radar micro-satellite and a rapid-build spacecraft that will make movies from orbit. These and other "new space" products will feature in constellations of breathtaking size. It's this expected bonanza that has prompted the rush of new, small rocket concepts. Just how many small rocket projects are actively in development is hard to say, but it certainly numbers in the tens. They won't all succeed, of course; and the long-established aerospace companies with their much larger vehicles are bound to react. They're already trying. It's now commonplace, for example, to see bigger rockets pump out small satellites after they have dropped off a primary payload in orbit. But Will Pomerantz, Virgin Orbit’s vice president of special projects, says the new class of small-sat operators are no longer prepared to play second fiddle. "Right now, if you had a satellite already built and you had the money to buy a launch - you'd still have to wait 24 months typically to get that satellite into orbit," he told me. "And if you haven't built a big satellite and paid for the whole launch yourself, you're really at the mercy of whoever has booked that ride and has allowed you to come along as a hitchhiker. "So, if their schedule changes, then so does yours; and if their plans change about which orbit they're going to, then so do yours; or you go back to the end of the queue and start over. "We're offering those customers who've been used to being literally second-class citizens the chance to be the driver of the car." But it's not just the flexibility that this new breed of small rockets is playing off - it's also price, says Vector chief executive Jim Cantrell. After a couple of limited-altitude flights in 2017, his Arizona-based company's rockets will likely make their orbital debut this year as well. Vector is offering rides for payloads weighing up to some 50kg that cost no more than $1.5m. Part of the reason small rockets carry such a low sticker price has to do with their simple designs, says Cantrell, and the old, established rocket manufacturers, with their bloated supply chains, simply won't be able to compete on the same level. "The smaller it is, the simpler you can make it," he told me. "Our rocket, for example, has 1,000 parts, and SpaceX's rocket - we estimated at about 26,000 parts. Think about the supply chain behind each of those parts. Each of those parts has someone who's making something or a machine is making it. "It's a combination of all these things that's really made it possible to sell rockets for what seems like a ridiculously low price." Source: .com
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| skibboy | 25 Jan 2018, 12:27 AM Post #2 |
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'Disco ball' put into space from NZ By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent 6 hours ago ![]() Peter Beck says he wanted to create a "shared experience" A highly reflective sphere has been placed in orbit by a New Zealand-launched rocket. Akin to a giant "disco ball", the object should be visible to the naked eye as it sweeps across a twilight sky. It was lofted by American start-up Rocket Lab, whose Electron boosters operate from the North Island. The company said its "Humanity Star" was an attempt to create a shared experience for everyone on Planet Earth. "No matter where you are in the world, or what is happening in your life, everyone will be able to see the Humanity Star in the night sky," said Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck in a statement. "My hope is that all those looking up at it will look past it to the vast expanse of the Universe and think a little differently about their lives, actions and what is important for humanity." The announcement solves a mystery following Rocket Lab's most recent launch from the Mahia Peninsula last Sunday. Amateur satellite-watchers will often count the elements that finally make orbit at the end of a rocket's ascent to check the mission went as planned - but they were puzzled in this case by Sunday's number. Five objects could be accounted for by the vehicle's spent parts and the pre-publicised payload of small spacecraft. But a sixth item was unexplained - until now. The Humanity Star is a geodesic sphere constructed from carbon fibre with 65 highly reflective panels. Circling the Earth every 90 minutes, it should be most visible in the darkened sky when the setting or rising sun shines up from below the horizon to catch the spinning ball's surface. These are the same observing conditions that offer the best view of the International Space Station when it comes overhead. It shines brightly because of its huge solar arrays. ![]() Sunday's Electron launch from NZ's Mahia Peninsula This is not the first time an object has been launched purely for its reflective properties. The Russian Znamya project experimented with space mirrors in the 1990s. Another Russian effort last year put up a small sat that was designed to deploy a pyramidal reflector, although it seems to have failed. The US artist Trevor Paglen is currently working on a future sculpture in space that would take the form of a giant diamond balloon. Again, it would be visible to the naked eye down on Earth. Professional astronomers usually take a dim view of such projects; they dislike having bright, artificial objects pass across, and obstruct, their view of the stars. Rocket Lab says the Humanity Star will not be up for long. The sphere's orbit is expected to decay over the coming months; gravity will pull it into the Earth's atmosphere where it will burn up. The company is going to host a website that will help the public to work out when they can see the ball. Jonathan McDowell, a satellite-tracker and astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, commented: "The irony is that it's poorly placed for observation right now - low on the horizon for evening passes in New Zealand and not visible from the USA until March - if it stays up that long." Source: .com
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9:15 AM Jul 11