Falcon 9 - AsiaSat 6/ThaiCom 7 (mission thread)

[DocM]

Second stage reignition, burn and SECO-2 confirmed. AsiaSat-6 released and on her way.

Wonderfully uneventful ;)

[Beittil]

Around the 31minute mark of the video, is that them showing the inside of the fueltank again?

[DocM]

S2 liquid oxygen tank.

[PaulRocket]

Any info yet on how the 1st stage did? I sure it didn't land but on the last flight they made it survive to terminal velocity.

[DocM]

Because AsiaSat 6 was heavy and headed for GTO there weren't propellant reserves for more than re-entry profile tests. Those were done.

Next up is Dragon CRS-4 which is already at KSC. The NET date is the 19th, but the AsiaSat 6 hold may move that right a week or so. We'll see.

This launch brought to light another issue, which shows why SpaceX is building a commercial spaceport in Texas.

SpaceFlightNow has an article with AsiaSat's CEO stating the bleeding obvious. Being based in Hong Kong some of their people are Chinese, and the word is they were really put through the wringer by base security. Some Cape folks say excessively so.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/012/140906capecanaveral/#.VAxCSGd0yoA

AsiaSat CEO says Cape Canaveral has its drawbacks

Expect some frustrations from bureaucratic red tape if you're a commercial company looking to launch from Cape Canaveral, says the head of AsiaSat as it prepared to send up a satellite Sunday.

Based in Hong Kong with an international staff, AsiaSat is in the midst of back-to-back launches with SpaceX. The missions from Cape Canaveral mark AsiaSat's first time launching from Florida since 2003, when an Atlas 3B booster delivered one of the company's satellites to orbit.

"I think Cape Canaveral is a great place to launch, but it does have its downside, which is it's quite bureaucratic here," said William Wade, AsiaSat's president and CEO.

"There are a lot of regulations and clearances and restrictions, which I think hinders the processing of commercial satellites here," Wade said in an interview at Cape Canaveral. "I think that's too bad because it is a bit of a negative."

SpaceX's launch pad and processing facility is on U.S. Air Force property. The military controls access to the launch base, meaning employees and visitors must comply with Defense Department security and safety restrictions.

"Even though our processing has gone well, it's not been without some frustrations from the various teams just having to deal with some of the bureaucracy of the government in working at the Cape," Wade said. "Unfortunately, I think that's one of the reasons that SpaceX is looking at doing commercial launches on their own satellite base down in Texas."

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But Wade said regulations and procedures in place at Cape Canaveral are not well-suited for commercial launches, which often involve satellites and customers from overseas.

"There are certain clearances and restrictions for foreign nationals here," Wade said. "In addition to just the nationality issues, there are just regulations that all people have to abide by here, and it does make it more difficult from a commercial perspective when you have these regulations in processing, access to locations, weather restrictions and things like that, that you deal with here at the Cape that you don't typically have to deal with at other locations."

Space Florida, a state economic development agency focused on the space industry, envisions luring more commercial business to Cape Canaveral.

One way to make the area more business-friendly would be to develop a launch site off Air Force property, where the launch provider could control access to the facility.

"You're going to have to make the environment very flexible and responsive to the commercial marketplace," said Frank DiBello, CEO of Space Florida, in a July interview. "That means you need to bring in your international customers to the site who want to see and touch their payloads and have easy and free access to the site, as they can overseas. That is difficult to achieve on federal property."

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