DocM Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 Someone call Guinness; Iridium NEXT's entire constellation of 72 satellites goes up 9 at a time on 8 Falcon 9's. A $3 BILLION contract for SpaceX. Guess the 8 sats under the last Dragon was practice, not to mention having a nice reserve of R&D money for crew Dragon and Falcon Heavy. Universe Today.... >This time, only a single launch provider, SpaceX, and their twice-flown Falcon 9 rocket have been given the nod to accomplish the job. They will also complete the planned 72 satellite fleet in only eight launches of nine satellites each. Sixty-six of these satellites will be fully operational; the remaining six will be on-orbit spares (in case there is a contingency with any of the operating satellites). Iridium will also have nine additional ground spares. But Iridium has plans to further maximize the value of these satellites by selling space on them so that other firms can attach sensors or experiments. ?Every one of these satellites has a budget of about 110 pounds that can be used to fly extra payloads from different customers,? said Iridium?s CEO Matt Desch during a recent interview. ?We will be hosting other people?s sensors on our satellites.? The arrangement between Iridium and the NewSpace firm was just one in a string of successes as far as SpaceX is concerned. With the first two successful flights of the Falcon 9 rocket, the unspoken-but-obvious backing of the White House and the contract with Iridium, SpaceX is on a winning streak that shows little signs of abating. With the second launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX became the first company to do what only nations had done before ? send a spacecraft into orbit and have it return safely to Earth (the Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean a few hours after launch). > Falcon 9 with cargo fairing.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincent Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 Somewhat related question do any of these companies (NASA SpaceX, etc) have any plans in the future for litter of satellites and other 'space junk" no longer in use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted April 14, 2011 Author Share Posted April 14, 2011 Most satellites sre either put in low orbits that will decay due to atmosphereic drag or they have small thrusters whose job it is to de-orbit the satellite. In either case they burn up in the atmosphere. Increasingly ion thrusters are being chosen for satellite de-orbit or maneuvering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spudtrooper Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 Seems like a risky bet. THe first iridium launched a network then declared bankruptcy and let a good chunk of their sats rot in space. If Iridium "next" has to file BK to write off their launch costs again, wouldn't that hurt SpaceX in the gut? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unix2 Posted April 14, 2011 Share Posted April 14, 2011 SpaceX have to be backup by big investors because there is not way in hell that they are going to have businesses when the only ones that can afford their prices are the super rich. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted April 14, 2011 Author Share Posted April 14, 2011 Iridium has outside funding guarantees for NEXT, so..... SpaceX has been cash-positive for a few years, and has some pretty big contracts, including this and a $1.6B contract for ISS cargo flights. SpaceX isn't selling rides to individuals or joyrides like Virgin Galactic, but they could through a 3rd party outfit like Space Adventures (currently buys rides on Soyuz) or Bigelow. Their current key customers are governments (inclusing militart & intel) and commercial (satellites), but they certaonly do want to do crew. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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