The Rocketry Blog

SpaceX ‘s new rocket name revealed

rocketry — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:50:05 +0000

Musk has thrown around the name “MCT ” for a while but hasn’t elaborated on what it means.

Musk has said the new rocket will be “several times” as powerful as the 1 Merlin series, and won’t use Merlin’s RP-1 fuel. Beyond adding that it will have “a very big core size”, he declined to elaborate, promising more details in “between one and three years”.

Yesterday the mystery was solved in a tweet by Musk

Got to love the name. Exciting!

Thunder in Texas: First firing of Falcon 9-R

rocketry — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 12:38:54 +0000

Image credit: SpaceX

2014 TARC Rules

rocketry — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:03:01 +0000

The 2014 TARC Rules have now been released.

Homer Hickam sends student to Space Camp

rocketry — Fri, 24 May 2013 12:32:21 +0000

The Rocket Boys image credit: homerhickam.com

Back in April a Florida student was arrested because she set off an explosion as part of a science experiment on the school grounds. Homer Hickam hearing of the ordeal and relating to the experience is sending the student and twin sister to Rocket camp. Homer Hickam is well known in rocketry circles as the author and true life member of the “Rocket Boys” made famous in the movie“October Sky”. The student was later cleared of all charges but Hickam’s experience being arrested as a Rocket Boy in the 1950s made this NASA veteran relate to her ordeal.

Hickam hearing of the ordeal raised the money to send the student and her twin sister to Rocket Camp.

Read the full story here at ABC News

homerhickam.com

SpaceX Grasshopper on the move

rocketry — Tue, 07 May 2013 19:42:35 +0000

Press Release from Spaceport America:

Governor Susana Martinez today announced that Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, has signed a three-year agreement to lease land and facilities at Spaceport America to conduct the next phase of flight testing for its reusable rocket program. The company will be a new tenant at Spaceport America, the state-owned commercial launch site located in southern New Mexico.

“I am thrilled that SpaceX has chosen to make New Mexico its home, bringing their revolutionary “Grasshopper” rocket and new jobs with them,” Governor Martinez said today. “We’ve done a lot of work to level the playing field so we can compete in the space industry. This is just the first step in broadening the base out at the Spaceport and securing even more tenants. I’m proud to welcome SpaceX to New Mexico.”

READ the entire Release here

NASA to migrate ISS computers from Windows to Linux

rocketry — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:20:45 +0000

Citing stability issues NASA has announced they will be migrating the ISS laptops and PCs from Windows to Linux. Being a long time Linux user and typing this on a Linux system I am happy to hear about this change. Linux has been used in many of the ISS systems but it nice to see the move to the workstations as well.

It looks like NASA is heavy into Debian but also uses Red Hat and Centos. The ISS workstations will be Debian 6.A quick search for Linux on the NASA website shows that there is a substantial Linux culture at NASA within research and operations. Lets not forget the recent Robonaut 2 Linux powered robot.

They have contracted with the Linux Foundation to get the astronauts and specialist up to speed with the OS change. Information on this can be found here: Linux Foundation

UPDATE: More now being reported at ZDNet

OpenRocket 13.05 Released

rocketry — Sun, 05 May 2013 02:25:59 +0000

After a rather long delay, OpenRocket 13.05 has been released. There are a lot of new features, thanks to numerous contributors. The most important new features include:

- Realistic 3D rendering with decal support
- Flight configurations replacing motor configurations
- Lower stage descent simulation
- Boosted dart support
- New translations to Portuguese and Japanese

Read more about the new features at http://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?53619-OpenRocket-13-05-released

In order to support decals, the file format was changes to being ZIP-based. This means that OpenRocket versions older than 12.03 will not be able to read files written by OpenRocket 13.05 and later. Nobody should be using that old versions anyway, so this shouldn’t be much a problem. The new versions will read old files without problems.

The software is available as usual at http://openrocket.sourceforge.net/

-Sampo Niskanen

Could these be the Future Falcon 9 Legs

rocketry — Fri, 03 May 2013 14:39:09 +0000

click to enlarge – image tweeted by Elon Musk

SpaceShipTwo makes a powered flight

rocketry — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:12:23 +0000

Yesterday Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo made a powered flight over the Mojave dessert. After being carried to altitude by WhiteKnightTwo it fired up the rocket engines for about 16 seconds and broke the sound barrier.
“The first powered flight of Virgin Spaceship Enterprise was without any doubt, our single most important flight test to date,” said Virgin Galactic Founder Sir Richard Branson, who was on the ground in Mojave to witness the occasion. “For the first time, we were able to prove the key components of the system, fully integrated and in flight. Today’s supersonic success opens the way for a rapid expansion of the spaceship’s powered flight envelope, with a very realistic goal of full space flight by the year’s end. We saw history in the making today and I couldn’t be more proud of everyone involved.” – Virgin Galactic

official press release here

Rocket’s sonic boom made visible by ice crystals

rocketry — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:08:18 +0000

This Solar Dynamics Observatory Atlas V rocket launch in February 2010 exceeded the speed of sound in a layer of ice crystals, making the shock wave visible from the ground. This occurs around 1:53 in the video.