US Spaceflight for the future [update]

uh
I cant find the spacex exploding thread

they figured it out:
SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said Friday morning that the company could return to launch next month. Musk said the company thinks it has “gotten to the bottom of the problem” that led to a September launch pad explosion and the destruction of a Falcon 9 rocket and communications satellite in Florida.
Musk said in an interview on CNBC that it “looks like” SpaceX will start launching again in mid-December. He described the cause of the explosion as something that has “never been encountered before in the history of rocketry.”
Musk provided few specific details but said it “basically involves a combination of liquid helium, advanced carbon fiber composites and solid oxygen, oxygen so cold that it actually enters solid phase.” - from a LA Times article.
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Pad Failure: SpaceX Falcon 9 - AMOS-6 - Sept 3 2016 - UPDATES

Elon Musk says SpaceX could resume launches in December - LA Times
 
You heard it here first, Elon Musk's scams only fail because of something that has never happened before in the history of ever.

What a loon.
 
good news, NASA made an emdrive space engine that works. no fuel required.

It is shown here that a dielectrically loaded, tapered RF test article excited in the transverse magnetic 212 (TM212) mode (see Fig. 1) at 1937 MHz is capable of consistently generating force at a thrust-to-power level of 1.2±0.1  mN/kW


Read More: http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.B36120
 
its a lot cheaper launching on a spacex rocket than anything else (keeping nasa costs lower) and its a sat that is already built that needs a ride

try again ass fuck
 
Absent is going hard at the space program recently. Probably jealous because his country is too small and poor to have one.

WAAAAAH CAPITALISTS WAAAAAAH!
 
Russia lost ANOTHER resupply to ISS
that's 3 in as many years I think?

While 66 Progress missions have launched to ISS to date, Progress MS-04/65P was the 65th attempt of a Progress family vehicle to successfully reach the Station, following the Progress 44 launch failure in August 2011 and the Progress 59 launch mishap in April 2015. Sadly, this latest Progress was to be a failure.

After what was supposed to be 8 minutes 44 seconds of powered flight, Progress MS-04/65P was to be released into a two-day rendezvous orbit and was to quickly deploy its solar arrays.

However, telemetry issues during third stage flight have resulted in a lack of confirmation of the success of the ascent.

Information they pointed to a premature shutdown of the third stage, deploying the Progress into the wrong orbital parameters.

A lack of information on the status of the solar arrays and any data on the specific orbital status of the vehicle pointed to a larger issue.

This was then followed by reports in Southern Russia of a fireball and explosion, as the Progress dived towards its doom.
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guess 3 failures in 5 years rather

Progress MS-04/65P fails during launch to the ISS | NASASpaceFlight.com

not the best thing for ISS
essentially 3 of 4 resupply vehicles have gotten fucked up in the last 2 years. HTV from japan is the only one with a clean record at this point
this supply was mainly consumables so nothing scientific was blown up which is a plus I guess
However, Progress 65 was also set to deliver five new KTOs (Russian Solid Waste Containers), three new filter inserts and 10 packages of ACY filters for the Russian Waste Management System in the Zvezda Service Module, six EDVs for the EDV + TUBSS (Temporary Urine and Brine Storage System) for the Urine Processing Assembly, and two tanks of pretreat.

Progress MS-04 was also carrying 705 kg (1,554 lbs) of propellant for Station orbit raising maneuvers and 50 kg (110 lbs) of oxygen for ISS.

All of those supplies have now been lost, with a State Commission arranged to discuss the problems that caused its demise.
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SpaceX set to return to action with RTF Falcon 9 launch of Iridium spacecraft | NASASpaceFlight.com

it's not sexy anymore cuz its been 4 months but spacex found the root cause of the explosion

basically, no one super chills lox with a copv composite tank and at those extreme temps it causes weird shit to happen. LOX can turn to Solid Oxygen (sox) and in either case can settle in little rivets or voids in the composite tank. If this happens, the tank can get all fucky and then explode

The Fix: they arent going to super chill the LOX anymore while working on better manufacturing for the COPV with probably different materials
going solid stainless steel eats 1 ton of liftoff payload tho so it'll be interesting what they choose

Investigators scoured more than 3,000 channels of video and telemetry data covering a very brief timeline of events – there were just 93 milliseconds from the first sign of anomalous data to the loss of the second stage, followed by loss of the vehicle. Because the failure occurred on the ground, investigators were also able to review umbilical data, ground-based video, and physical debris. To validate investigation analysis and findings, SpaceX conducted a wide range of tests at its facilities in Hawthorne, California and McGregor, Texas.”

The update provided more specifics on the failure mode of the COPV in the LOX tank, which caused the destruction of the entire rocket and payload – along with causing major damage to the SLC-40 pad at Cape Canaveral. The recovery of several COPV “bottles” from the debris has proved to be a major help in the investigation.

“The accident investigation team worked systematically through an extensive fault tree analysis and concluded that one of the three composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) inside the second stage liquid oxygen (LOX) tank failed. Specifically, the investigation team concluded the failure was likely due to the accumulation of oxygen between the COPV liner and overwrap in a void or a buckle in the liner, leading to ignition and the subsequent failure of the COPV,” added SpaceX.

“Each stage of Falcon 9 uses COPVs to store cold helium which is used to maintain tank pressure, and each COPV consists of an aluminum inner liner with a carbon overwrap. The recovered COPVs showed buckles in their liners. Although buckles were not shown to burst a COPV on their own, investigators concluded that super chilled LOX can pool in these buckles under the overwrap.

“When pressurized, oxygen pooled in this buckle can become trapped; in turn, breaking fibers or friction can ignite the oxygen in the overwrap, causing the COPV to fail. In addition, investigators determined that the loading temperature of the helium was cold enough to create solid oxygen (SOX), which exacerbates the possibility of oxygen becoming trapped as well as the likelihood of friction ignition.”

As part of the corrective process, SpaceX has opted to avoid its press towards super chilled LOX for the interim until they are confident they can redesign the COPVs to cope with the colder chill process.

“The investigation team identified several credible causes for the COPV failure, all of which involve accumulation of super chilled LOX or SOX in buckles under the overwrap. The corrective actions address all credible causes and focus on changes which avoid the conditions that led to these credible causes.

“In the short term, this entails changing the COPV configuration to allow warmer temperature helium to be loaded, as well as returning helium loading operations to a prior flight proven configuration based on operations used in over 700 successful COPV loads. In the long term, SpaceX will implement design changes to the COPVs to prevent buckles altogether, which will allow for faster loading operations. ”
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