Recommended Posts

I'm almost frozen right now... but omg my dad always loved star trek and has watched every episode and always wanted to met the cast and OMG HE WENT UP WITH ONE OF THEM!!!!!

and a REAL ASTRONAUT AS WELL!!!!

AAAAAH!!! OMG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE HERE THAT PARTICIPATED IN THIS THREAD!~!! THAT MEANS SO MUCH TO MY FAMILY!!!!!!MY FAMILY THANKS YOU FOR THIISSS!!!

And I'm crying again...launches always make me weepy, altho I missed the live broadcast so only replays. Congrats to SpaceX, NASA, and everyone.

And so good that your dad has closure and what he wanted, remixed!

Whaddya mean "after how many attempts?" Methinks you're being argumentative for arguments sake.

Falcon 9 is 3 for 3, and Dragon's only other full mission flight was a 100% success (the flight 1 Dragon being a mass simulator) , landing within 800 meters of its pickup ship when Soyuz is lucky to hit within a 20-30 km landing zone.

As far as this attempt goes, the abort on Saturday was a failed nitrogen gas valve and it was not a SpaceX part - similar parts from the same manufacturer are used on other launch vehicles including the Atlas V Delta IV. That they could do a full analysis, repair, and check all the other valves on the other 8 engines on the pad, and turnaround to a successful launch within 3 days is raising eyebrows.

Day One Milestones

(aborts = bug-out modes - rapidly retreat from the existing position without destabilizing the spacecraft)

Free drift (no station keeping): no leaking gases or fluids destabilizing its orientation; successful

Pulsed abort: Draco thrusters rapidly pulsing; successful

Non-Pulsed abort: Draco thrusters continuously firing; successful

All milestones met

is my video I uploaded. Mom watched my upload since she needed the rest after a long work trip...and was unable to be awake at those hours...

video recorded with FRAPS and processed with AVS video editor.

After how many attempts? About damn time. Now start sending people up there.

Better safe than sorry! I'd glad they were careful, cool, and took their time to get it right instead of being like "oh well it didn't work so let's just quit" ... They were extremely patient, collected, and really did an AMAZING job and anyone with anything bad to say about them is disgusting.

This is the Dragon schedule - all times US Eastern. If it's streamed NASA TV is at -

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

but it'll probably also be streamed by LiveStream and at SpaceX's website

http://www.spacex.com

MY 23, Wednesday

Catch up to ISS

May 24, Thursday

2:30 a.m. ? SpaceX/Dragon Fly-Under Coverage

10 a.m. ? Mission Status Briefing

11 a.m. ? ISS Update

May 25, Friday

2 a.m. ? SpaceX/Dragon ISS Rendezvous and Berthing Coverage

1 p.m. ? Mission Status Briefing

May 26, Saturday

5:30 a.m. ? SpaceX/Dragon Hatch Opening Coverage

11:25 a.m. ? Expedition 31 Crew News Conference

May 31, Thursday

3:30 a.m. ? SpaceX/Dragon Departure Coverage

9:00 a.m. ? ISS Update

10:15 a.m. ? SpaceX/Dragon Deorbit and Splashdown Coverage

1:30 p.m. ? Mission Status Briefing

Dragon was going to stay longer, but the launch delay and other issues like the solar beta angle (Earth shadow issue) made the stay have to be short.

This would be tests for the Grasshopper project - landing a Falcon 9 first stage propulsively so it can be re-used.

Concept video: http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=sSF81yjVbJE

http://www.nasa.gov/...012/12-058.html

Kimberly Newton

Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.

256-544-0034

[email protected]

05.23.12

RELEASE : 12-058

NASA's Marshall Center Concludes Wind Tunnel Testing to Aid in SpaceX Reusable Launch System Design

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., completed wind tunnel testing for Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorn, Calif., to provide Falcon 9 first stage re-entry data for the company's advanced reusable launch vehicle system.

Under a Reimbursable Space Act Agreement, Marshall conducted 176 runs in the wind tunnel test facility on the Falcon 9 first stage to provide SpaceX with test data that will be used to develop a re-entry database for the recovery of the Falcon 9 first stage. Tests were conducted at several orientations and speeds ranging from Mach numbers 0.3, or 228 miles per hour at sea level, to Mach 5, or 3,811 miles per hour at sea level, to gage how the first stage reacts during the descent phase of flight.

>

Marshall's Aerodynamic Research Facility's 14-square-inch trisonic wind tunnel is an intermittent, blow-down tunnel that operates from high-pressure storage to either vacuum or atmospheric exhaust. The facility is capable of conducting tests in the subsonic, transonic, and supersonic mach ranges using its two interchangeable test sections. Subsonic Mach numbers are below Mach 1, the speed of sound, or 760 miles per hour at sea level, while transonic speeds approach and are slightly above Mach 1. The facility can achieve a maximum supersonic Mach number of 5, or five times the speed of sound.

In addition to wind tunnel testing, Marshall is providing propulsion engineering support to SpaceX in the development of the SuperDraco Launch Abort System (LAS) and on-orbit propulsion systems. Marshall is supplying SpaceX with Reaction Control Systems lessons learned that will be incorporated into the Dragon spacecraft's design for steering and attitude control. Marshall engineers also are providing technical insight in the development of materials and processes to support future improvements of the Falcon 9 and Dragon to be used in the SpaceX Commercial Crew Development Program.

>

Marshall has been engaged throughout the development in evaluating the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft systems' design under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Program led by the Johnson Space Center in Houston for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) in Washington. The Marshall team supported various design reviews, flight readiness reviews, post-flight reviews and special studies.

The Marshall Center also provides SpaceX technical support as requested under the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) led by the Kennedy Space Center for HEOMD. Engineers from the Marshall Center have been engaged with SpaceX by serving as the CCP launch vehicle systems lead and by providing discipline support to the partner integration teams.

post-347280-0-57497800-1337799842.jpg

NASA TV MISSION COVERAGE

Thursday, May 24 (Flight Day 3): Live NASA Television coverage from NASA's Johnson Space Center mission control in Houston as the Dragon spacecraft performs its flyby of the International Space Station to test its systems begins at 2:30 a.m. EDT and will continue until the Dragon passes the vicinity of the station. A news briefing will be held at 10 a.m. following the activities.

Friday, May 25 (Flight Day 4): Live coverage of the rendezvous and berthing of the Dragon spacecraft to the station begins at 2 a.m. and will continue through the capture and berthing of the Dragon to the station's Harmony node. A news briefing will be held at 1 p.m. after Dragon is secured to the station.

Saturday, May 26 (Flight Day 5): Live coverage of the hatch opening and entry of the Dragon spacecraft begins at 5:30 a.m. and will include a crew news conference at 11:25 a.m.

NASA TV also will provide live coverage of the departure and reentry of the Dragon spacecraft once a date is determined.

Orbital map as of 7:08 PM EST, and for a while all anyone could get was "GoogleSatTrack is temporary unavailable due to heavy traffic. Please try again later" :)

post-347280-0-86965100-1337818296_thumb.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Hello mysterious lamborghiniv10, I was in Australia and... now I'm in the Netherlands. 
    • EU says Meta must restore rival chatbots' access to WhatsApp by Hamid Ganji The European Commission has ordered Meta to restore third-party AI chatbots’ access to WhatsApp after the tech giant decided to block them from operating on the popular messaging platform. After Meta banned rival AI chatbots from operating on WhatsApp, the European Commission launched an antitrust investigation to determine whether the company had abused its market dominance. As a result of Meta’s decision, third-party AI chatbots, including Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, were prevented from operating on WhatsApp. At the time, Meta said it wanted to reserve the WhatsApp Business API for other types of businesses and did not allow rival chatbots to use it. This effectively prevented the WhatsApp ecosystem from being used to distribute rival chatbot services. However, the European Commission has now announced an interim measures decision requiring Meta to restore access to WhatsApp for rival general-purpose AI assistants on the same terms and conditions as before October 15, 2025. The Commission has also asked Meta to maintain that access until the antitrust investigation is concluded. The Commission argues that Meta has used its dominant market position to prevent rival AI chatbots from accessing the WhatsApp Business API. While Meta allowed rival services to return to WhatsApp by paying a fee, the European Commission still considers that arrangement to be a de facto access ban. According to EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera, the fees introduced by Meta are so high that using WhatsApp is no longer economically sustainable for competitors. “It seems that Meta expects to leverage the vast reach and likely dominance of WhatsApp to benefit its own AI assistant and to foreclose rivals,” Ribera said. “We cannot let large digital incumbents leverage their dominance of the past to dictate who in Europe gets to compete and who gets to innovate in AI.”
    • A few years ago walmart had the 512 models on clearance for $35. I bought 3 of them. I should have purchased more.
    • I'm fine with a little reasonable promotion of Edge, but the degree which they do it right now I consider extremely unreasonable. 
    • Microsoft AI boss no longer believes that AI will replace human workers by David Uzondu Mustafa Suleyman, the head of Microsoft AI, recently took back his statements concerning white-collar jobs that he gave to the Financial Times in an interview made back in February, where he claimed that AI would replace office workers within 12 to 18 months. On Monday's episode of The Verge's Decoder, Suleyman recast the technology as more like a helpmate than a tool designed to take over your job. He explained that smaller office duties will "increasingly become digitized, automated" as people generate more digital materials. During the discussion, Suleyman emphasized a "very important distinction" between "tasks" and "jobs" to clarify his previous claims. He argued that his earlier comments only referred to individual actions that people perform at their desks. Suleyman used to work for DeepMind, the research lab he co-founded in 2010 alongside Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg, before he left in 2022 to establish Inflection AI and build an empathetic digital assistant. Microsoft hired him in March 2024 to lead its newly formed "Microsoft AI" division, placing him in charge of consumer products like Copilot, Bing, and Edge. His February comments also detailed plans for Microsoft to achieve self-sufficiency with a $140 billion infrastructure budget to train frontier models, predicting that creating a customized AI will soon feel like creating a podcast or a new blog: The 41-year-old is not the only AI executive who's softened his "AI will replace you" stance. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, last month used X to push back against employment panic by arguing that his startup builds tools to assist humans rather than build replacements. He had previously garnered backlash by suggesting that many modern office roles that AI might replace did not qualify as "real work" in the first place, at least when you compare desk jobs to physical, historical labor like farming.
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Year In
      Primer1st earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Experienced
      JayZJay went up a rank
      Experienced
    • Reacting Well
      Sir_Timbit earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Week One Done
      rubentuben8 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      ARaclen earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      512
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      229
    3. 3
      Edouard
      134
    4. 4
      ATLien_0
      87
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      80
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!