NASA Replaces ULA's Vulcan Centaur With SpaceX Falcon Heavy For Solar Storm Research (space.com) 42
There's been a change to NASA's launch of six satellites for solar storms research. Space.com reports that those satellites "were originally slated to lift off on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket but have now been assigned a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, according to a NASA mission update."
[NASA's Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment mision — or SunRISE] will fly to space as part of a rideshare mission sponsored by the U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command. Though it's not stated specifically in the NASA release, that may be a hint as to why the mission's rocket was changed. On its most recent launch [U.S. Space Force mission USSF-87], Vulcan experienced an anomaly in one of its solid rocket boosters — the second such incident to occur during the rocket's four launches to date. Vulcan succeeded in delivering the USSF-87 payload to its designated orbit on that launch, but the recurrence of the booster issue during ascent prompted the Space Force to pause national security launches on Vulcan until it could be addressed. Which mission SunRISE will be manifested on has not yet been released, but Space Force's Space Systems Command [SSC] has already shifted other launches between Vulcan and SpaceX's Falcon 9...
Falcon Heavy is SpaceX's heavy-lift launch vehicle... that consists of three modified Falcon 9 first stages, and has launched 12 times since it debuted in 2018. Four of those have delivered national security payloads to orbit, with the most recent of those, USSF-52, launching in December 2023. Falcon Heavy's most recent flight overall occurred this past April, when it sent the Viasat-3 F3 telecom satellite to orbit. Falcon Heavy's next mission will lift off with NASA's Nancy Roman Space Telescope, currently set for no earlier than Aug. 30. SunRISE is scheduled to launch later this year...
Sientists will use data collected by the satellites "to improve prediction models for impending space weather, which in turn could lead to mitigation plans to better thwart the effects of such solar events on orbital infrastructure."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
Falcon Heavy is SpaceX's heavy-lift launch vehicle... that consists of three modified Falcon 9 first stages, and has launched 12 times since it debuted in 2018. Four of those have delivered national security payloads to orbit, with the most recent of those, USSF-52, launching in December 2023. Falcon Heavy's most recent flight overall occurred this past April, when it sent the Viasat-3 F3 telecom satellite to orbit. Falcon Heavy's next mission will lift off with NASA's Nancy Roman Space Telescope, currently set for no earlier than Aug. 30. SunRISE is scheduled to launch later this year...
Sientists will use data collected by the satellites "to improve prediction models for impending space weather, which in turn could lead to mitigation plans to better thwart the effects of such solar events on orbital infrastructure."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
Falcon Heavy (Score:1)
Re: Shouldn't it be called (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
she didn't have a good explanation for why she was absent from the HR meeting with the flight attendant who accused Elon of offering a horse for a handjob and why Elon himself was allowed to preside.
but she's done a really good job of running SpaceX which likely would have crashed and burned (more often) if the Imperator of Mars ran it directly
Muskrat businesses have an entire team (Score:2, Interesting)
Basically if you're going to have a mad emperor you need to corral them. Personally I think just not having emperors would be a better solution.
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What are you even basing all of this on? He literally uses the same coffee bars as every other employee. In fact, I'd be more concerned that anybody in their right mind would allow you anywhere near the IT department. Given how incredibly bad your comments on the topic are, you're likely to manage to break something just by looking at it.
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Neither is rsilvergun pulling shit out of his ass, but you obviously gobbled it up anyway, which also isn't normal by the way.
Re: Muskrat businesses have an entire team (Score:2)
And I guess you wanted to add to the not-normal collection with this pathetic post.
Nor was your reply relevant.
In case you didn't notice,
I don't use Twitter or go around googling everything Elon does. So yeah, I didn't. I'm not in your club, nor would I care to be.
nothing I said came from a post here on /.; Musk posts on twitter / X - you know, in public.
Just like slashdot. The same place where you only post anonymously. The same place where I've watched people literally praise murderers like Luigi Mangione and Tyler Robinson, and I've never seen anybody (save for me) call it out. Yet you're sitting here complaining about much less in a place where it isn't even relevant.
Musk really is having a meltdown, and letting his very racist side shine through. If he drops some of the thinly-veiled euphemisms around his remigration tirades, or make his already crazy threats against people even more explicit
If this is all true, which I'm no
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The main point was about how SpaceX was keeping Musk away from a lot of decision making. My posts discussed part of the context around that.
The premise of both of these is false. Not only is the commentary about spacex false, (again, this is based on absolutely nothing) but your posts didn't even talk about that. In case you've already forgotten:
In case you didn't notice, nothing I said came from a post here on /.
You said it yourself.
Really? Is your argument that Musk's decline has no effect on SpaceX?
Everything you're saying here is consistent with what I've heard from him in the past, dating at least as far back as 2018, and realistically much earlier. What "decline", specifically?
You've just spent several posts and paragraphs throwing out petty insults and assumptions at commenters, instead of addressing the content of the posts. Interesting choice.
You know why that is? Because this is just a variation of exactly the same shit he has been repeat
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He used to better at hiding his racism.
Seriously? That guy is putting meaning into words that he doesn't even know is there, making tons of references to turner diaries, despite saying this:
(although to be clear there is no direct evidence that Musk has read the book).
More than that, he's making a ton of leaps in logic that amount to what is indistinguishable from a conspiracy theory. In fact, I'd say it IS a conspiracy theory. Chief among them being his commentary about an Elon post that just has the word "yes" in response to a picture of a guy holding a gun saying "traiters then invaders" which somehow relates to turner
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Today he continued his meltdown over the Economist interview.
I mentally left this behind until I noticed the the Economist posted the entire interview, which I listened to, so now I can respond in more detail...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Where does this "meltdown" happen? At worst I've seen a case where he trips over his words, part of which is due to the modern lack of the word 'thou' in our vocabulary, and other parts look like my own ASD symptoms. The conversation heats up a little in parts, but no more than you'd see in a typical debate, and it's mutual bet
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Aside from the sentence that came right before what you quoted, he isn't even making any point, he just keeps repeating different (read: inconsistent) variations of this claim multiple times, hoping people will believe it. rsilvergun is a fascist. This is what fascists do to get buy-in, and you've already bought in. Besides, I know more than enough about SpaceX to confidently say that what he's saying literally can't happen. What he's asking for requires a level of bureaucracy that simply doesn't exist at S
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For all his supposed environmentalism - he once said at an event "if we don't solve climate change, we're FRAKKED" - he flies a LOT in a private jet.
perhaps one day he'll take time out from his busy schedule of shitposting to sit down and use that peerless intellect to invent telecommunications & videoconferencing.
when the Nevada Gigafactory was 1st announced the presentation made a big deal of offsetting the electrical usage with rooftop & ground-mounted solar and wind turbines.
That was in 2014. To
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Umm...ok...
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By contrast, it was a mere few months for xAI to procure and fire up 46 temp gas turbines for a datacenter in Mississippi for a reported rated capacity of at least 500MW.
and there are more to come.
does Elon have permits for all of these you ask?
This was discussed on the All-In podcast last week. The "temp turbines" are mobile units (truck-based,) and thus classified as temporary consumer use. They don't require permits, which is precisely why Musk's companies acquired controlling stake the company. The permitting process for a permanently installed base of power didn't meet the timeline, but those permit applications are in progress.
I'm not saying that xAI/Musk/whoever you want to blame is going out of their way to protect the environment from
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The EPA regs apply to all such whether temporary or permanent. Emissions are emissions, period.
The state loophole which Musk exploited and was finally overruled as a misapplication of the regs was intended as an exception for much smaller units.
Be that as it may, Musk and many who work for him knew the impact of continuous operation on local air quality and would never have dared if the community was wealthy & influential but if you're not meritorious enough to be rich, sucks to be you.
Re: (Score:2)
as a followup to my previous reply, Musk has been a secretive cunt about this all along.
Originally it was supposed to be 15 temp units but instead they deployed 18, Then they quietly increased the number to 33 and then 46 all while publicly stating a lower number.
When it was discovered the number had grown to 59 and pressure was building on the company they started talking about removing some "very soon' WHILE adding TEN more for a total of 69 units!!
WTAF??
Re: Shouldn't it be called (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Shouldn't it be called (Score:2)
Re: Shouldn't it be called (Score:2)
SLS is abysmal, I agree. But it was designed by Congress, not by engineers.
Re: Shouldn't it be called (Score:2)
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ULA got a loan to cover losses of Vulcan grounding (Score:2)
https://behindtheblack.com/beh... [behindtheblack.com]
Spending $250 million on Trump's campaign (Score:2, Insightful)
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Timeline hopper here, just through the gate from funny laugh lady land. Believe it or not in that line Musk is still the richest man ever over there - richer even - but he's a woke social librul because he knows which side of his bread has butter on it.
Notably, President Harris also prefers rockets that will launch to rockets that will not for some reason.
But don't eat the fish. Just in case.
Neither Vulcan nor Starship (Score:2)
Notable that both were snubbed for not being ready.
Re: (Score:1)
Notable that both were snubbed for not being ready.
Vulcan has issues with the SRBs and the BE-4 engines. Until both are resolved it isn't flying.
Starship still in prototype.