Falcon 9: SES-9 commsat rides first Enhanced F9 (mission)


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This is a really nice shot of the complex...everything in proximity and in a round house lane...

 

24585667074_aa712b13a8_o.thumb.jpg.4d3a0

 

I am having issues with the autosizer here....much nicer if you go to the Flickr site and expand...great detail...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/spacexphotos/

 

:D

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7 hours ago, anthdci said:

that extra 45mins later to yesterday takes this closer to 1am for the UK :( guess I'll have to check what happened when I wake up in the morning.

What do you mean? It is 1 min later than yesterday. So still 13mins to midnight for you :)

 

I am stuck here till 1am, not u :p

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Got my chili-n-cornbread, nibbles and my sports drink. Arm is propped up in as comfortable position as I can get it. Eating my chili, trying not to make a mess. Livestream tab is pinned.

 

Think I'm good to go. :D 

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15 minutes ago, Beittil said:

What do you mean? It is 1 min later than yesterday. So still 13mins to midnight for you :)

 

I am stuck here till 1am, not u :p

 

All good im sitting at my desk at work, 10.45am for me.

 

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Man that was just... sooooooooooooo disappointing =/

 

This pretty much sums up my feelings about SpaceX this year:

 

 

 

Seriously, I guess live rocket launches are the ultimate testing tools... but lock the damn design/procedures for a while and work some backlog already :x

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10 hours ago, Beittil said:

What do you mean? It is 1 min later than yesterday. So still 13mins to midnight for you :)

 

I am stuck here till 1am, not u :p

miss read, thought it was 6pm est (midnight UK) moved to 6.45pm est (1.45am UK). Doesn't really matter now though! 

 

Is there no 2nd backup launch date?

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A NSF user did find a NOTAM for today and posted that over at NSF:

Quote

NOTAMs valid for Friday night:

!SUAE 02/629 ZMA AIRSPACE R2933 ACT 5000FT-UNL 1602262311-1602270154

!SUAE 02/628 ZMA AIRSPACE R2934 ACT SFC-UNL 1602262311-1602270154

 

This would put it at 6:11pm EST (fri 26th) / 11:11pm GMT (fri 26th) / 0:11am CET (sat 27th). But so far there hasn't been a peep from SpaceX, so it remains to be seen,

Edited by Beittil
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USAF has a weather forecast up for Saturday, and SES is taking *possibly* next week, but nothing firm. 

 

Meanwhile,

 

@NASASpaceflight 

First stage is going to pull some massive Gs slowing down. Multi-engine landing burn too! :-O

 

Because it's coming in hot.

 

Its unknown if it's 3 engines and divert* to touchdown, 2 outer engines and divert to touchdown, or 3 engines down to the divert then cut to 1 engine for touchdown. 

 

High G's whichever.

 

* the ballistic path splashes the stage into the drink. The divert after landing burn start takes it over the Landing Zone or ASDS.

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Here we go: 

 

A0264/16 -  THE FOLLOWING AIRSPACE IS IN USE FOR A MISSILE LAUNCH/SPLASH DOWN. DURING THESE TIMES KZMA ARTCC/OAC, KZNY ARTCC/OAC AND TJZS ARTCC/OAC WILL NOT APPROVE IFR FLIGHT WITHIN 45NM OF THE AFFECTED OCEANIC STATIONARY AIRSPACE RESERVATIONS WEST OF 6000W, 50NM BETWEEN 6000W AND 5500W, AND 60NM EAST OF 5500W OR WITHIN AFFECTED WARNING AREA AIRSPACE. EFF: 1602292142 - 1602292342 LAUNCH HAZARD AREA 1, FROM 2837N8036W TO 2838N8035W TO 2837N7938W TO 2836N7924W TO 2832N7824W TO 2828N7824W TO 2830N8017W TO 2829N8032W TO 2833N8036W TO POINT OF ORIGIN, SFC-FL180. EFF: 1602292142 - 1603010138 W497A WEST OF 80 WEST, SFC-5000MSL EFF: 1602292142 - 1603010138 CAPE ATCAA, SFC-FL180 EFF: 1602292312 - 1603010138 R2933, 5000MSL-UNL EFF: 1602292312 - 1603010138 R2934, SFC-UNL EFF: 1602292342 - 1603010138 END PART 1 OF 4. SEE TEXT, 29 FEB 21:42 2016 UNTIL 01 MAR 01:38 2016. CREATED: 26 FEB 20:17 2016

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Misc data....

 

Issues with supercold fuel again halt SpaceX launch

 

Quote

A design change in SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket that requires its liquid oxygen fuel to be kept cold even by rocket-science standards again proved tricky to implement at the launch pad Thursday, delaying liftoff of a communications satellite for a second straight day.


The countdown for the SES-9 satellite launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, was halted with only 1 minute, 40 seconds to go due to problems loading the liquid oxygen into the rocket, said John Insprucker, SpaceX's Falcon 9 product director, during the company's launch webcast.
No further details were given about the problem, which Insprucker said SpaceX engineers would investigate. A new launch date has not yet been assigned.


In most rockets that use liquid oxygen fuel, as with earlier versions of the Falcon 9, the LOX is loaded hours ahead of time. But the performance boost required for launches like that of the geostationary SES-9 led SpaceX designers to call for "densified" liquid oxygen — fuel subcooled so more of it could be kept in the same size tanks, allowing the newer F9 to throttle up its nine first-stage Merlin 1D engines, as well as leaving enough extra fuel for the stage to return to Earth for potential re-use.


That latter capability was proven in the new design's first flight, in December, when its first stage successfully touched down at a CCAFS landing complex five miles from the launch pad.


But while the rocket industry has decades of experience dealing with "normal" liquid oxygen at temperatures down to -300 degrees F, keeping the Falcon 9 Full Thrust's fuel at the required -340 degrees F has proven much trickier. Even just keeping the fuel in the F9FT's tanks longer than tens of minutes lets it warm up too much. So now, the fuel is loaded in the last minutes of the countdown.


Those problems delayed the pre-launch static fire test in December and led SpaceX engineers to call off Wednesday's launch attempt half an hour before launch and minutes before the webcast was to have started — with a 40 percent chance of no-go weather then, the fear appears to have been that the odds of a weather delay after fuel loading were too high.


The late fuel loading was where things went wrong Thursday. As the clock ticked down from T minus 2 minutes, engineers on the countdown audio net requested a hold at T-1:40. That was quickly followed by an abort call from the launch director — even though the launch had a nominal window of around an hour and a half, Wednesday's apparent fear became Thursday's reality: a halt that late in the countdown wouldn't leave enough time to re-chill the fuel to the required, densified temperature. It also appeared that the fueling was taking too long, leading to the hold request.

http://www.wacotrib.com/blogs/joe_science/issues-with-supercold-fuel-again-halt-spacex-launch/article_88079414-dc36-11e5-a64f-8b9ca7b59bdb.html

 

 

first this.....

 

 

 then this....

 

Quote

Sources say next #Falcon9 launch attempt is no earlier than Sunday at 6:47pm EST (2347 GMT) http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/02/24/falcon-9-ses-9-mission-status-center/ … 

https://twitter.com/SpaceflightNow/status/703274348770168833/photo/1

 

and the above mentioned NOTAM ......supposed to be great weather on Sunday as well......

 

56d10b3801429_EdtheSock.thumb.jpg.ea321e

 

Make it so.....

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@DocM Do you know anything about their plans to land with more then one engine? Usually they use 3 for boost back and reentry and 1 for landing but now the rumor is on reddit that they'll use more then 1 engine for landing...

Maybe that way they will save fuel? Would be an extremely aggressive suicide burn.

 

Edit: Found this

 

 

Edited by PaulRocket
Added Guess
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