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Post Info TOPIC: Falcon 1 rocket
Blobrana


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RE: Falcon 1 rocket
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FALCON 1 MAIDEN FLIGHT

This Friday at 1 p.m. PST (21:00 GMT), the Falcon 1 countdown to launch is expected to reach T-Zero. At that point, the hold-down clamps will release and it will begin its journey to orbit, accelerating to 17,000 mph or twenty-five times the speed of sound in less than ten minutes.

The launch will take place from Omelek island, which is in the Kwajalein Atoll of the Marshall Islands. This mission's customer is DARPA and the Air Force and the payload will be FalconSat-2, part of the Air Force Academy’s satellite program that will measure space plasma phenomena, which can adversely affect space-based communications, including GPS and other civil and military communications. The target orbit is 400 km X 500 km, just above the International Space Station, at an inclination of 39 degrees.

On launch day, SpaceX will make history for several reasons:

* Falcon 1 will be the first privately developed, liquid fueled rocket to reach orbit and the world's first all new orbital rocket in over a decade.
* The main engine of Falcon 1 (Merlin) will be the first all new American hydrocarbon booster engine to be flown in forty years and only the second new American booster engine of any kind in twenty-five years.
* The Falcon 1 is the only rocket flying 21st century avionics, which require a small fraction of the power and mass of other systems.
* It will be the world's only semi-reusable orbital rocket apart from the Shuttle (all other launch vehicles are completely expendable).
* The Falcon 1 first stage has the highest propellant mass of any launch vehicle currently flying.
* SpaceX will have developed and activated two new launch sites, including the only American ground launch site near equator.
* Most importantly, Falcon 1, priced at $6.7 million, will provide the lowest cost per flight to orbit of any launch vehicle in the world, despite receiving a design reliability rating equivalent to that of the best launch vehicles currently flying in the US.

To ensure reliability and prepare for the possibility of launch failure, the first flight is highly instrumented with one megabit of realtime telemetry and a live video feed streaming back to the launch control centre. If something goes wrong, SpaceX will discover and fix the problem, returning to the launch pad for flight two as soon as the solution is thoroughly tested.

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Blobrana


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Kwajalein Atoll
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A staff of about 25 flight controllers and engineers will watch the space shot from a control centre on Kwajalein Atoll, though the rocket’s launch pad sits on Omelek Island.



Omelek Island is located at 9.5 N, 167 E and is about 32,000 square metres (8 acres) in size. Geologically, it is composed of reef-rock, as are the other islands in the atoll

Kwajalein Atoll is located in the western Pacific Ocean, about 2,100 miles southwest of Hawaii and 1,400 miles east of Guam. The island is home to USAKA(United States Army Kwajalein Atoll), the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defence Test Site (RTS) , and about 2,000 support personnel and family members on Kwajalein and Roi-Namur islands.
The atoll extends from approximately 8 45` N to 9 25` N and from 166 45` E to 167 50` E.



The Reagan Test Site encompasses approximately 750,000 square miles, although the total land area is only about 70 square miles.



The largest island in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is Majuro Island (the capital of the RMI) in the Majuro Atoll. It is 1.793 square miles in area. There are only four islands larger that 1 square mile.



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Blobrana


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The Falcon 1 will lift off from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands at 21:00 GMT (4 pm EST) Friday, November 25, 2005, (9 am local time November 26).

The launch window lasts for four hours

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Blobrana


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FalconSat-2
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SpaceX will announce the launch time of the historic maiden flight of Falcon 1 at a pre-launch press conference tomorrow afternoon.

Designed from the ground up by SpaceX, Falcon 1 is an unmanned, two stage rocket powered by liquid oxygen (LOX) and rocket grade kerosene (RP-1).
The maiden flight of Falcon 1 will take place from the Reagan Test Site in the Marshall Islands (Kwajalein Atoll).

The customer for this mission is DARPA and the Air Force and the payload will be FalconSat-2, part of the Air Force Academy’s satellite program that will measure space plasma phenomena, which can adversely affect space-based communications, including GPS and other civil and military communications.
The target orbit is 400 km X 500 km (just above the International Space Station) at an inclination of 39 degrees.

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Blobrana


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The Falcon One rocket that was to lift the ashes of James Doohan, who played engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott aboard the fictional Starship Enterprise, into space next month, has now been delayed to at least February.

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Blobrana


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The target launch date for the Falcon I maiden flight is now late November to early December from the SpaceX island launch complex in the Kwajalein Atoll. All systems will be ready for flight by the end of this week with the exception of Merlin qualification, which they are extending by four weeks for added surety.



The customer for this mission is DARPA and the Air Force and the payload will be FalconSat-2, part of the Air Force Academy’s satellite program that will measure space plasma phenomena, which can adversely affect space-based communications, including GPS and other civil and military communications.

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Blobrana


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The Target launch date for Falcon I maiden flight is Halloween (October 31) from their island launch complex in the Kwajalein Atoll. The customer for the mission is DARPA and the Air Force and the payload will be FalconSat-2, part of the Air Force Academy’s satellite program that will measure space plasma phenomena, which can adversely affect space-based communications, including GPS and other civil and military communications.



The SpaceX island in the Atoll is named Omelek and it is about halfway up the island chain on the eastern side.



The Atoll’s location is advantageous for a number of reasons. Most significant is its location at 9 deg. N latitude, placing it much closer to the equator than the 28 deg. N latitude of Cape Canaveral, where their other eastward trajectory launch pad is located. That allows them to take more advantage of the Earth’s rotation and deliver increased payload to orbit. It also means that a much smaller plane change manoeuvre (to 0 deg.) is needed for geosynchronous satellites.

Kwajalein activity had been percolating along for about eighteen months, mostly dealing with regulatory matters, but became SpaceXs number one priority in June when they shifted first launch from Vandenberg to Omelek.

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Blobrana


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Falcon 1 launch
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Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has delayed the first launch of its Falcon 1 launch vehicle to late October after a rocket engine failed during a ground test.
The first stage Merlin engine, failed during a test firing at the Texas SpaceX site.

Engineers believe the failure is due to a manufacturing defect in that particular engine, and is not a design flaw with the engine design.

They will spend additional time to perform quality assurance tests and make minor changes to the engine. This will delay the launch of the first Falcon 1 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific from the end of September to late October.
The Falcon 1 will carry a small Air Force experimental satellite, Falconsat 2. The Falcon 1 is the smallest of three vehicles under development by SpaceX that promise to offer less expensive space access.
Last week the company unveiled the Falcon 9, a large launcher that will compete head-to-head with EELV-class boosters.

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Blobrana


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RE: SpaceX Falcon 1
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The SpaceX Falcon 1 flight has been moved to the Kwajalein Atoll launch complex.

The Titan IV flight will launch from the Vandenberg Air Force Base no earlier than September and may very well be delayed until October or November, depending upon what issues arise (due to overflight concerns, Falcon I is required to launch after Titan IV).

http://www.spacex.com/

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Blobrana


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Space Exploration Technologies Corporation http://www.spacex.com



Link: (source)



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