SpaceX and Orbcomm have put out a press kit. A successful landing (along with Blue Origin’s recent successful flight) would be a nice early Christmas present to space enthusiasts.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Congrats to SpaceX obviously. Here are some nice photos of the landing. Here is Tim Fernholtz’s story.
[Update mid morning]
Here’s a detailed technical explanation from Spaceflight101, and Lee Billings has the story as well.
No water required? Not sure how this relates to the recent stories about liquid water.
…has been postponed. Elon tweeted that their Monte Carlo runs had indicated a slightly higher probability of landing success tomorrow, and Orbcomm said that they wanted to continue to analyze static-fire data and allow an extra day to pre-chill the LOX. Someone at NASASpaceflight indicated that it might be that, though launch conditions are slightly worse tomorrow (80% chances of good weather as opposed to 90% today), it might be less wind, with less convection to warm the oxidizer. as Jonathan McDowell points out, this may be the first time they’ve ever delayed a launch to improve the chances of a landing, but the customer seems fine with it. As I noted to him, every aircraft operator takes into account landing conditions prior to takeoff.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the first flight, and I put up a post at Ricochet with links to my centennial essays from a dozen years ago.
Chris Bergin has the latest on the next flight, which has been delayed due to issues with the slush LOX. I wonder if they’re running into problems at the Cape that they didn’t encounter in McGregor, due to the different environment.
David Brin is remembering Arthur C. Clarke.
The omnibus bill provides a boost, and full funding of Commercial Crew, for the first time ever. It also allows NASA to apply Soyuz payments for 2018 flights to the program, to get it flying in 2017 (I still think they could fly next year if they were serious about it). Loren Grush has more. Unfortunately, it also increases the SLS budget.
On the milspace side, it also lifts the restriction on the RD-180, which McCain is going nuts about on the floor right now, according to Twitter. He’s lambasting Shelby and Durbin by name.
[Update a while later]
The worst part of the NASA budget is that it overfunds SLS at the expense of (as usual) technology.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here‘s the McCain story. Nutty.
A dumb piece at Newsweek.
On the other hand, here’s a smart piece from Eric Berger: We’re going back to the moon, with or without NASA. Absent a major change of attitude in Congress, probably without.
They say they’ve closed the loop on the propulsion system for the Lynx. Sounds like they still have to improve it to get needed performance, but that’s a breakthrough. One of the long poles, as well as the wings.
Looks like they should be great this year, with an almost new moon. Might drive up to the mountains or desert, if it’s clear.