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Nuclear Propulsion
For a manned mission to a distant planet like Mars a nuclear propulsion system or nuclear thermal system seems to be more advantageous in terms of propulsive power than a chemical system as a result of some basic differences. The two main features that lead to the advantages of a nuclear thermal rocket over a chemical one are the enormous energy available per unit mass of fission (or fusion) fuel, and that in a nuclear thermal system the energy producing medium is separate from the thrust-producing propellant.
The first difference between both systems provides nuclear thermal systems with a greater specific impulse (Isp) than chemical ones. The greater specific impulse of the nuclear rocket allows it to carry a larger payload into space, and to accomplish its missions in a reduced time span. The other advantage of a high specific impulse is that the spacecraft can attain higher transfer orbits that result in a transfer orbit that minimizes travel time to the destination.
The second fundamental difference allows nuclear systems to use propellants of low molecular weight, which increase the propulsive force per unit propellant flow. The low molecular weight of the propellant permits for the use of a greater proportion of the total weight placed in space to be composed of the actual payload and not of the propellant. Low molecular weight propellants give mission designers a degree of flexibility for mission design that is not permitted by the chemical propulsion system. With the use of a nuclear propulsion system, mission designers can design missions that are more scientifically complex in nature, because more equipment can be taken up into orbit.
A consequence of these advantages is that nuclear propulsion thus allows the planification of manned missions to distant planets such as Mars. This is not possible with the use of a chemical system, because the crew would not survive the prolonged travel time between Earth and Mars that would be necessary with a rocket propelled by conventional chemical reactions.
Although the interest in high-thrust nuclear thermal propulsion systems (NTP) has grown after President Bush's Space Exploration Initiative in 1991, research into NTP systems has been going on for approximately 50 years. Among the many research programs that have focused on this type of propulsion for the past 50 years is the Rover/NERVA program. The Rover/NERVA program, which lasted for 17 years, proved the feasibility of, and built full-scale operating versions of fission-driven rocket reactors. Also, this program developed an NTP engine system. The NTP engine developed by the Rover/NERVA program was never fully tested, because the program was canceled before flight-testing was achieved
Keep Updated about Spaceport America ....http://www.spaceportamerica.com/
Chinas planned MEGA LIFT ROCKET...July 27, 2010
China is Planning a large Heavy Lift Rocket
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The Long March 5 can have 10.64 MN of thrust and 25 tons to low earth orbit
10.64 MN (long march) = 1,086 tons of thrust. This is a multi-rocket configuration.
China is planning to develop rocket engines that could generate 600 tons of thrust and five could be combined to 3000 tons of thrust. This is likely about as powerful (90%) as the Energia. The Russian Energia rocket had 32 MN of thrust and could lift 100 tons to low earth orbit. The Energia had a core thruster, so it could act as a second stage. 32 MN (meganewtons) divided by 9.8 N/kg (or 9.8 kN/T) yields 3,300 metric tons of thrust. Thanks to Goatguy for the corrections and calculations.
The Saturn V (used for the moon missions) had 34,020,000 N of thrust in the first stage and had two other stages.
Falcon 9 Heavy Lift specs here nice DD site imho...http://www.spacex.com/falcon9_heavy.php Check out the videos and mission summary UN BE LEAVE ABLE
ANTI GRAVITY...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-gravity
The Dream Chaser spacecraft proposed...http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//101125/480/urn_publicid_ap_org12430f3c3f7e4061a5588fb221106c66/
NASA ISS Site...http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Space station about to have spacedock...http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20101217/sc_space/newcrewtorendezvouswithspacestationtoday
Ion Rockets future propulsion???..http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Sionrock.htm.
The New Space Race
By Paul Spudis Posted Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Introduction
Recent media reports suggest that China is stepping up their program to send people to the Moon just as America appears to be standing down from it. This circumstance has re-awakened a long-standing debate about the geopolitical aspects of space travel and with it some questions. Are we in a race back to the Moon? Should we be? And if there is a "space race" today, what do we mean by the term? Is it a race of military dimensions or is such thinking just an artifact of the Cold War? What are the implications of a new space race?
Many in the space business purport to be unimpressed by the idea that China is going to the Moon and publicly invite them to waste money on such a stunt. "No big deal" seems to be the attitude - after all America did that over 30 years ago. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recently professed to be unmoved by the possible future presence of a Chinese flag on the Moon, noting that there are already six American flags on the Moon.
Although it is not currently popular in this country to think about national interests and the competition of nations in space, others do not labor under this restriction. Our current human spaceflight effort, the International Space Station (ISS), has shown us both the benefits and drawbacks of cooperative projects. Soon, we will not have the ability to send crew to and from the ISS. But that's not a problem; the Russians have graciously agreed to transport us - at $50 million a pop. Look for that price to rise once the Shuttle is fully retired.
To understand whether there is a new space race or not, we must understand its history. Why would nations compete in space anyway? And if such competition occurs, how might it affect us? What should we have in space: Kumbaya or Starship Troopers? Or is the answer somewhere between the two?
Some History
People tend to think of Apollo and the race to the Moon when they hear the term "space race" but the race began with the October 1957 launch of a Russian satellite called Sputnik. The clear implication of this new Soviet satellite was that if they wanted to, they could lob a nuclear bomb at the United States. This situation led to near panic in America, with outraged demands that we technically catch up to the Soviets as quickly as possible and damn the cost.
The initial phases of the space race were not auspicious for America. In our publicized and televised launches, vehicles frequently blew up while the Soviets appeared to effortlessly achieve an endless series of headline-grabbing space "firsts." American officials working behind the scenes knew that we were not as far behind as it seemed but to reveal that knowledge was to disclose our national technical means of surveillance. So each new Soviet first was officially greeted with silence.
The Russians raised the stakes in the spring of 1961 with the launch of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. Although America followed a month later with Alan Shepard's ballistic hop, the new U.S. President, John F. Kennedy, wanted to issue a challenge, one carefully crafted to be beyond the existing capabilities of both the USA and the USSR, yet reachable by us (but not by them) over the course of a few years. A manned landing on the Moon was selected as the ideal target for such a race. Although no specific strategic goals on the Moon were identified, it was believed that the attainment of this difficult task would demonstrate the superiority of our open, pluralistic capitalist society in contrast to its closed, authoritarian, socialist opposite number.
The so-called "Moon race" of the 1960's was a Cold War exercise of soft power projection, meaning that no real military confrontation was part of it, but rather, it was a competition by non-lethal means to determine which country had the superior technology and by implication, the superior political and economic system. In short, it was largely a national propaganda struggle. Simultaneously, the two countries also engaged in a hard power struggle space race to develop ever-better systems to observe and monitor the military assets of the other. There was little public debate associated with this struggle, indeed, much of it was held in the deepest secrecy. But as the decade passed, military space systems became increasingly capable and extensive and largely replaced human intelligence assets for the estimation of our adversaries' strategic capabilities and intentions.
The United States went on to very publicly win the race to the Moon, giving rise to a flurry of rhetoric pronouncing everyone's peaceful intentions for outer space while the larger struggle continued to play out behind the scenes. NASA's replacement effort for the concluded Apollo program, the Space Shuttle project, promised to lower the costs of space travel by providing a reusable vehicle that would launch like a rocket and land like an airplane. Because of the need to fit under a tightly constrained budgetary envelope and for a variety of other technical reasons, the Shuttle did not live up to its promise as a low cost "truck" for space flight. However, the program resulted in a fleet of four operational spacecraft that flew over 120 missions over the course of its 30-year history.
Although widely cited in American space circles as a policy failure, the Shuttle had some interesting characteristics that led it to be considered a military threat by the USSR. One of the earliest missions of the Shuttle had its crew retrieve and repair an orbiting satellite (Solar Max). Later missions grappled balky satellites and returned them to Earth for refurbishment, repair and re-launch. This capability culminated with a series of Shuttle missions to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which conducted on-orbit servicing tasks ranging from literally fixing the worthless satellite (the first mission) to routine upgrading of sensors, replacement of solar arrays and main computers, and re-boosting the telescope to a higher orbit. The significance of these missions was that the HST is basically a strategic reconnaissance satellite: it looks up at the heavens rather than down at nuclear missile sites from orbit. The Hubble repair missions documented the value of being able to access orbital assets with people and equipment.
Another relatively unnoticed series of Shuttle missions demonstrated the value of advanced sensors. As a large, stable platform in orbit (the orbiting mass of the Shuttle is almost 100 mT), the Shuttle could fly very heavy, high-power payloads that smaller robotic satellites could not. The Shuttle Imaging Radar (SIR) was a synthetic aperture radar that could obtain images of the Earth from space by sending out radar pulses as an illuminating beam. It could thus image through cloud cover, day or night, all over the Earth. In a stunning realization, it was found that it could also image subsurface features; in particular, the SIR-A mission mapped ancient riverbeds buried beneath the sands of the western Sahara from space. The strategic implications of this were immense; as most land-based nuclear missiles are buried in silos, they cannot be hidden from account because of sensors like imaging radar.
The construction of the International Space Station (ISS) became the next frontier for strategic space. One of the most complex spacecraft ever made, it was designed to be launched in small pieces by the Shuttle without an end-to-end systems test on the ground and assembled on-orbit. It worked perfectly the first time it was activated. The building of the ISS documented that not only could people assemble complex machines in space, they could also repair, maintain and upgrade them as well. As the ISS nears completion, much complaint continues about its cost and supposed lack of value, yet even if we get nothing further from it as a research facility, it has already taught us invaluable lessons about the building and maintenance of large spacecraft in orbit.
These new Shuttle capabilities had significant policy implications for the Soviets. To them, it seemed that the Shuttle was a great leap forward in military space technology, not the "policy failure" bemoaned by American analysts. With its capabilities for on-orbit satellite servicing and as a platform for advanced sensors, the Shuttle became a threat that had to be countered. The USSR responded with their own space shuttle (Buran), which looked superficially very similar to ours. The Challenger accident showed that Shuttle was a highly vulnerable system in many respects; even as the Soviets developed Buran, the American military decided to withdraw from our Shuttle program.
During the 1990's, we saw a revolution in tactical space - the use of and reliance on space assets on the modern battlefield. The Global Positioning System (GPS) has made the transition to the consumer market, but it was originally designed to allow troops to instantly know their exact positions. A global network of communications satellites carries both voice and data, and interfaces to the partly space-based Internet (another innovation originally built for military technical research). The entire world is connected and plugged in and spacebridges are now key components of that connection. Fifty years after the beginning of the Space Age, we are now, more than ever, dependent upon our satellite assets.
Space and the national interest
Most people don't realize how the many satellites in various orbits around the Earth affect their lives. We rely on satellites to provide us with instantaneous global communications that impact almost everything we do. We use GPS to find out both where we are and where we are going. Weather stations in orbit monitor the globe, alerting us to coming storms so that their destructive effects can be minimized. Remote sensors in space map the land and sea, permitting us to understand the distribution of various properties and how they change with time. Other satellites look outward to the Sun, which controls the Earth's climate and "space weather" (which influences radio propagation.) No aspect of our lives is untouched by the satellites orbiting the Earth. In a real sense, they are the "Skynet" of the Terminator movies - they are our eyes (reconnaissance), ears (communications) and brains (GPS and Internet) in Earth orbit. Fortunately, they are not yet self-aware. But the people who operate them are.
All satellites are vulnerable. Components constantly break down and must be replaced. New technology makes existing facilities obsolete, requiring replacement, at high cost. A satellite must fit within and on the largest launch vehicle we have; satellites thus have a practical size limit, which in turn limits their capabilities and lifetime. Once a satellite stops working, it is abandoned and a replacement must be designed, launched and put into its proper orbit.
Satellite aging is normal and expected but satellites can also be catastrophically lost or disabled, either accidentally or deliberately. Encounters between objects in space tend to be at very high velocities. The ever-increasing amounts of debris and junk in orbit (e.g., pieces of old rockets and satellites) can hit functioning satellites and destroy them. NORAD carefully tracks the bigger pieces of junk and some spacecraft (e.g., ISS) can be maneuvered out of the path of oncoming debris, but smaller pieces (e.g., the size of a bolt or screw) cannot be tracked and if they collide with a critical part, it can cripple a satellite.
It has long been recognized that satellites are extremely vulnerable to attack and anti-satellite warfare (ASAT) is another possible cause of failure. Both the US and the USSR experimented with ASAT warfare during the Cold War. Although it sounds exotic, ASAT merely takes advantage of the fragility of these spacecraft to render them inoperative. This can be done with remote affecters like lasers to "blind" optical sensors. The simplest ASAT weapon is kinetic, i.e., an impactor. By intercepting a satellite with a projectile at high relative velocity, the satellite is rapidly and easily rendered worthless.
Despite the fact that the destruction of satellites is relatively easy, it has seldom happened by accident and never as an act of war. Although most space assets are extremely vulnerable, they are left alone because they are not easy to get to. Some orbiting spacecraft
occupy low Earth orbit (LEO) and are accessible to interceptors, but many valuable strategic assets are in the much higher orbits of middle Earth orbit (MEO) 3000 to 35000 km and geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) 35786 km. Such orbits are difficult to reach and require long transit times and complex orbital maneuvers which quickly reveal themselves and their purpose to ground-based tracking.
In 1998, a communications satellite was left in a useless transfer orbit after a booster failure. Engineers at Hughes (the makers of the satellite) devised a clever scheme to send the satellite to GEO using a gravity assist from the Moon. This was the world's first "commercial" flight to the Moon and it saved the expensive satellite for its planned use. One aspect of this rescue is seldom mentioned but attracted the attention of military space watchers everywhere. This satellite approached GEO from an unobserved (and at least partly unobservable) direction. Most trips to GEO travel from LEO upwards; this one came down from the Moon, a direction not ordinarily monitored by tracking systems. This mission dramatically illustrated the importance of what is called "situational awareness" in space.
Our current model of operations in space is well established. Satellites must be self-contained and operated until dead, then completely replaced - a template of design, build, launch, operate, and abandon. With few exceptions, we are not able to access satellites to repair or upgrade them. Sometimes favorable conditions allow us to be clever and rescue an asset that had been written off, but the system is not designed for such operation. The current spaceflight paradigm is a use and throwaway culture. Yet thirty years of experience with the Shuttle program has shown us that such is not the case by necessity. What is missing is the ability to get people and servicing machines to the various satellites in all their myriad locations: LEO is easy, but MEO and GEO cannot be accessed with existing space systems. Yet from the experience of Shuttle and ISS, we know that if they could, a revolution in the way spaceflight is approached might be possible.
The Vision for Space Exploration and its implications
The Vision for Space Exploration (the Vision, or VSE,) announced by President Bush in January 2004, called for returning the Shuttle to flight after the Columbia accident, completion of the International Space Station, a human return to the Moon and eventually voyages to Mars and other destinations. This proposal was subsequently endorsed by two different Congresses (in 2005 and 2008) under the control of different parties; both authorizations passed with large bipartisan majorities. The preface to the founding VSE document states that the new policy is undertaken to serve national "security, economic and scientific interests."
Subsequent statements and writings elaborated on the purpose of the VSE. Despite concerted efforts to distort its meaning, the goal of lunar return was not to repeat Apollo but to create a long-term, sustained human presence in space by learning to use the material and energy resources of the Moon. The VSE was to be implemented under existing and anticipated budgetary constraints; the guidance given to NASA for this aspect of the mission was to stretch timetables if money became short. The idea was to create this new system with small, incremental, yet cumulative steps.
The intellectual underpinnings of the VSE began to be undermined by NASA almost immediately. The Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) made lunar return an Apollo redux, with the development of a large, 150-mT-payload heavy lift vehicle becoming the centerpiece and sine qua non of human spaceflight beyond LEO. An ambitious program to establish an early robotic presence to prospect for resources on the Moon was cancelled, along with the incremental approach outlined by the Vision. Thus, the Moon became a distant goal, with first arrival of humans occurring well after 2020, if then. NASA had chosen something familiar, an architecture very similar to Apollo with little effort made to develop reusable, refuelable spacecraft (although the Altair lander used LOX-hydrogen, so in principle, it could be modified for refueling).
In short, the purpose of returning to the Moon, i.e., to create a sustainable human presence based on the use of lunar resources, got lost in the ESAS shuffle. Lunar return became synonymous with "Apollo on Steroids" and heavy-lift rocket building while ESAS (Constellation) became synonymous with the VSE. Project Constellation, the agency project to develop the new Orion spacecraft and Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles, was a costly, throw-away space system that got us to the Moon with considerable capability, but with little or no thought given to planned surface objectives or activities. The idea of finding and learning to use the resources of the Moon became an experiment slated for the manifest of some future mission, not the primary driver or objective of lunar return. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is currently mapping the Moon and sending us data on the extent and nature of lunar resources, but no lander missions are planned to follow up on its findings. The ingenuity of an incremental program was lost and we created no new capability in space.
The goal of the VSE is to create the capability to live ON the Moon and OFF its local resources with the goals of self-sufficiency and sustainability, including the production of propellant and refueling of cislunar transport vehicles. A system that is able to routinely go to and from the lunar surface is also able to access any other point in cislunar space. We can eventually export lunar propellant to fueling depots throughout cislunar space, where most of our space assets reside. In short, by going to the Moon, we create a new and qualitatively different capability for space access, a "transcontinental railroad" in space. Such a system would completely transform the paradigm of spaceflight. We would develop serviceable satellites, not ones designed to be abandoned after use. We could create extensible, upgradeable systems, not "use and discard." The ability to transport people and machines throughout cislunar space permits the construction of distributed instead of self-contained systems. Such space assets are more flexible, more capable and more easily defended than conventional ones.
The key to this new paradigm is to learn if it is possible to use lunar and space resources to create new capabilities and if so, how difficult it might be. Despite years of academic study, no one has demonstrated resource extraction on the Moon. There is nothing in the physics and chemistry of the materials of the Moon that suggests it is not possible, but we simply do not know how difficult it is or what practical problems might arise. This is why resource utilization is an appropriate goal for the federal space program. As a high-risk engineering research and development project, it is difficult for the private sector to raise the necessary capital to understand the magnitude of the problem. The VSE was conceived to let NASA answer these questions and begin the process of creating a permanent cislunar transportation infrastructure.
So where do we stand with the creation of such system? Is such a change in paradigm desirable? Are we still in a "space race" or is that an obsolete concept? The answers to some of these questions are not at all obvious. We must consider them fully, as this information is available to all space faring nations to adopt and adapt for their own uses.
A new space race
The race to the Moon of the 1960's was an exercise in "soft power" projection. We raced the Soviets to the Moon to demonstrate the superiority of our technology, not only to them, but also to the uncommitted and watching world. The landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969 was by any reckoning a huge win for United States and the success of Apollo gave us technical credibility for the Cold War endgame. Fifteen years after the moon landing, President Reagan advocated the development of a missile defense shield, the so-called Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Although disparaged by many in the West as unattainable, this program was taken very seriously by the Soviets. I believe that this was largely because the United States had already succeeded in accomplishing a very difficult technical task (the lunar landing) that the Soviet Union had not accomplished. Thus, the Soviets saw SDI as not only possible, but likely and its advent would render their entire nuclear strategic capability useless in an instant.
In this interpretation, the Apollo program achieved not only its literal objective of landing a man on the Moon (propaganda, soft power) but also its more abstract objective of intimidating our Soviet adversary (technical surprise, hard power). Thus, Apollo played a key role in the end of the Cold War, one far in excess of what many scholars believe. Similarly, our two follow-on programs of Shuttle and Station, although fraught with technical issues and deficiencies as tools of exploration, had significant success in pointing the way towards a new paradigm for space. That new path involves getting people and machines to satellite assets in space for construction, servicing, extension and repair. Through the experience of ISS construction, we now know it is possible to assemble very large systems in space from smaller pieces, and we know how to approach such a problem. Mastery of these skills suggests that the construction of new, large distributed systems for communications, surveillance, and other tasks is possible. These new space systems would be much more capable and enabling than existing ones.
Warfare in space is not as depicted in science-fiction movies, with flying saucers blasting lasers at speeding spaceships. The real threat from active space warfare is denial of assets and access. Communications satellites are silenced, reconnaissance satellites are blinded, and GPS constellations made inoperative. This completely disrupts command and control and forces reliance on terrestrially based systems. Force projection and coordination becomes more difficult, cumbersome and slower.
Recently, China tested an ASAT weapon in space, indicating that they fully understand the military benefits of hard space power. But they also have an interest in the Moon, probably for "soft power" projection ("Flags-and-Footprints") at some level. Sending astronauts beyond low Earth orbit is a statement of their technical equality with the United States, as among space faring nations, only we have done this in the past. So it is likely that the Chinese see a manned lunar mission as a propaganda coup. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that they also understand the Moon's strategic value, as described above. They tend to take a long view, spanning decades, not the short-term view that America favors. Thus, although their initial plans for human lunar missions do not feature resource utilization, they know the technical literature as well as we do and know that such use is possible and enabling. They are also aware of the value of the Moon as a "backdoor" to approach other levels of cislunar space, as the rescue of the Hughes communications satellite demonstrated.
The struggle for soft power projection in space has not ended. If space resource extraction and commerce is possible, a significant question emerges - What societal paradigm shall prevail in this new economy? Many New Space advocates assume that free markets and capitalism is the obvious organizing principle of space commerce, but others might not agree. For example, to China, a government-corporatist oligarchy, the benefits of a pluralistic, free market system are not obvious. Moreover, respect for contract law, a fundamental reason why Western capitalism is successful while its implementation in the developing world has had mixed results, does not exist in China. So what shall the organizing principle of society be in the new commerce of space resources: rule of law or authoritarian oligarchy? An American win in this new race for space does not guarantee that free markets will prevail, but an American loss could ensure that free markets would never emerge on this new frontier.
Why are we going to the Moon?
In one of his early speeches defending the Apollo program, President John F. Kennedy laid out the reasons that America had to go the Moon. Among the many ideas that he articulated, one stood out. He said, "whatever men shall undertake, free men must fully share." This was a classic expression of American exceptionalism, that idea that we must explore new frontiers not to establish an empire, but to ensure that our political and economic system prevails, a system that has created the most freedom and the largest amount of new wealth in the hands of the greatest number of people in the history of the world. This is a statement of both soft and hard power projection; by leading the world into space, we guarantee that space does not become the private domain of powers who view humanity as cogs in their ideological machine, rather than as individuals to be valued and protected.
The Vision was created to extend human reach beyond its current limit of low Earth orbit. It made the Moon the first destination because it has the material and energy resources needed to create a true space faring system. Recent data from the Moon show that it is even richer in resource potential than we had thought; both abundant water and near-permanent sunlight is available at selected areas near the poles. We go to the Moon to learn how to extract and use those resources to create a space transportation system that can routinely access all of cislunar space with both machines and people. Such a system is the logical next step in both space security and commerce. This goal for NASA makes the agency relevant to important national interests. A return to the Moon for resource utilization contributes to national security and economic interests as well as scientific ones.
There is indeed a new space race. It is just as important and vital to our country's future as the original one, if not as widely perceived and appreciated. It consists of a struggle with both hard and soft power. The hard power aspect is to confront the ability of other nations to deny us access to our vital satellite assets of cislunar space. The soft power aspect is a question: how shall society be organized in space? Both issues are equally important and both are addressed by lunar return. Will space be a sanctuary for science and PR stunts or will it be a true frontier with scientists and pilots, but also miners, technicians, entrepreneurs and settlers? The decisions made now will decide the fate of space for generations. The choice is clear; we cannot afford to relinquish our foothold in space and abandon the Vision for Space Exploration
Another great source of information here more spaceplanehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceplane info...
I found a different recap of our launch here I hope it adds some insight into our launch..... Millionaire's Private Space Capsule Splashes Down After Successful Maiden Voyage
By Denise Chow
SPACE.com Staff Writer
posted: 08 December 2010
10:43 am ET
This story was updated at 2:33 p.m. ET.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The first unmanned space capsule built by millionaire rocket maker Elon Musk blasted off on a maiden voyage today (Dec. 8), in a historic milestone for his private spaceflight company SpaceX and the commercial space industry.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the company's robotic Dragon space capsule, lifted off at 10:43 a.m. EST (1543 GMT) from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40. The capsule's successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean more than three hours later made SpaceX the first commercial company to re-enter a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit.
10:52 a.m. EST (1552 GMT), Dragon jettisoned the Falcon 9's second stage and began circling Earth.
"Dragon is in orbit," a launch controller said.
"Great day here at SpaceX," SpaceX director of marketing Emily Shanklin said. "Looks like we had a great flight."
The successful liftoff occurred after an earlier launch attempt at 9:06 a.m. EST (1406 GMT) this morning was aborted just under three minutes before launch, due to a false computer alarm.
The mission was the first flight test of the Dragon capsule and the second launch of a Falcon 9 rocket. It lasted a little over 3 hours, ending with the Dragon spacecraft re-entering Earth's atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean 500 miles (nearly 805 kilometers) off the coast of Mexico. Shortly after splashdown, SpaceX officials reported that the operation had been a success. [INFOGRAPHIC: Inside Look at SpaceX's Dragon Capsule]
"This would represent an important milestone in the history of space, heralding the dawn of a new era where private companies can now bring back spacecraft from orbit," Musk told SPACE.com before launch. "Successful recovery of Dragon would also bode very well for future astronaut transport."
The Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, short for Space Exploration Technologies, was founded by Musk, who also co-founded the online payment system Paypal, in 2002. Musk is also the CEO of Tesla, an electric car company.
In the spectacular morning launch, the Falcon 9 rocket carried the Dragon space capsule on its ascent into low-Earth orbit. The capsule separated from the rocket's second stage and made two orbits of the Earth while demonstrating various operations, including telemetry, navigation and maneuvering abilities.
The launch was originally scheduled for Dec. 7, but was delayed 24 hours to give technicians time to investigate two cracks that were found on the second-stage engine nozzle extension of the Falcon 9 rocket.
SpaceX engineers worked overnight to trim the cracked section of the nozzle extension, and tests that were performed throughout the day Tuesday showed that the repairs had been successful.
Earlier this week, Musk told MSNBC that he predicts the chances of success for this test flight to be about 60 percent. With the success of Dragon's first test flight, SpaceX has become the very first commercial company to launch and re-enter a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit – a significant milestone for the young but burgeoning private spaceflight industry.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets stand about 180 feet (nearly 55 meters) tall and are 12 feet (3.6 meters) wide, according to SpaceX descriptions. The Dragon capsule and its unpressurized trunk are just over 20 feet (6 meters) long and have an interior cabin that is just over 10 feet (3 meters) wide at its widest point.
The Dragon space capsules are named after the song Puff the Magic Dragon by the group Peter, Paul and Mary, because many critics considered it to be impossible, SpaceX officials have said. SpaceX's Falcon 9 and smaller Falcon 1 rockets are named after the Millennium Falcon, the fictional "Star Wars" spaceship of choice for the character Han Solo.
Today's test flight was also the first by any company under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, which is designed to stimulate the development of private vehicles capable of carrying cargo and crew to the International Space Station.
As part of the COTS deal, NASA has provided SpaceX with $278 million for successful demonstration tests of a vehicle and hardware capable of ferrying cargo to the space station.
Separately, SpaceX has a fixed $1.6 billion contract with NASA to use its Dragon spacecraft for cargo delivery flights to the International Space Station, following the retirement of the agency's space shuttle fleet. SpaceX plans to fly its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule on at least 12 unmanned missions to deliver supplies to the space station through 2016.
NASA has also inked a $1.9 billion deal with the Virginia-based spaceflight company Orbital Sciences Corp. to provide eight cargo flights to the International Space Station using its unmanned Cygnus spacecraft and Taurus 2 rockets. The first flights of those craft are expected in 2011.
SpaceX will follow up this demonstration with a series of other test flights, each with increasingly more complex mission objectives. If the standards of the COTS program are met, SpaceX could begin carrying cargo to and from the space station as early as next year.
Eventually, SpaceX hopes to win a contract to one day ferry astronauts to and from station – though the Dragon capsule has yet to be man-rated to carry human passengers into space.
INFOGRAPHIC: Inside Look at SpaceX's Dragon Capsule
Gallery: Photos of the Dragon Space Capsule, Dragon Video
Top 10 Private Spaceships Becoming Reality
You can follow SPACE.com Staff Writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Visit SPACE.com for complete coverage of SpaceX's debut Dragon spacecraft launch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race Infomation about the first space race....
Future space place information...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceplane
The New space race Pitting the billionares against one another Popular mechs......http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/4221979
Future advanced propulsion ???http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/advanced_projects_000621.html
Composites the future I say YES...http://www.compositesworld.com/articles/the-private-space-race
The new space private space race msnbc...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5184095/
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.
This message board is meant to be purely for disscussion of New science in reguards to the advancement of Humankinds advancement into space exploration . Please adhere to TOU as spelled out in Handbook.Thank you All
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