http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Elon Musk talked about the plans to launch the Falcon-9 Heavy from Vandenburg some time in 2013.
He talks a good talk, I hope he can walk, the walk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Animation of the world's most powerful rocket from SpaceX
- LRK -
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http://www.spacex.com/falcon_
Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful rocket, represents SpaceX’s entry into the heavy lift launch vehicle category. With the ability to carry satellites or interplanetary spacecraft weighing over 53 metric tons (117,000 lb) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Falcon Heavy can lift nearly twice the payload of the next closest vehicle, the US Space Shuttle, and more than twice the payload of the Delta IV Heavy.
snip
Falcon Heavy’s first stage will be made up of three nine-engine cores, which are used as the first stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle. It will be powered by SpaceX’s upgraded Merlin engines currently being tested at the SpaceX rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas. SpaceX has already designed the Falcon 9 first stage to support the additional loads of this configuration, and with common structures and engines for both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, development and operation of the Falcon Heavy will be highly cost-effective.
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Musk was asked if the Falcon Heavy could go to the Moon and he thought it could do a loop around the Moon.
Actually landing on the Moon takes more equipment besides a booster.
Could it be possible? Nah, we have been there and done that, someone said. :-(
- LRK -
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http://www.spacex.com/press.
WASHINGTON – Today, Elon Musk, CEO and chief rocket designer of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) unveiled the dramatic final specifications and launch date for the Falcon Heavy, the world's largest rocket.
“Falcon Heavy will carry more payload to orbit or escape velocity than any vehicle in history, apart from the Saturn V moon rocket, which was decommissioned after the Apollo program. This opens a new world of capability for both government and commercial space missions,” Musk told a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
“Falcon Heavy will arrive at our Vandenberg, California, launch complex by the end of next year, with liftoff to follow soon thereafter. First launch from our Cape Canaveral launch complex is planned for late 2013 or 2014.”
Musk added that with the ability to carry satellites or interplanetary spacecraft weighing over 53 metric tons or 117,000 pounds to orbit, Falcon Heavy will have more than twice the performance of the Delta IV Heavy, the next most powerful vehicle, which is operated by United Launch Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture.
53 metric tons is more than the maximum take-off weight of a fully-loaded Boeing 737-200 with 136 passengers. In other words, Falcon Heavy can deliver the equivalent of an entire commercial airplane full of passengers, crew, luggage and fuel all the way to orbit.
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It will be interesting to see how the first launch goes with all those engines working together.
- LRK -
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http://www.nasaspaceflight.
SpaceX: Falcon Heavy, Falcon 9 tag team set to share 20 launches a year
April 5th, 2011 by Chris Bergin
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) head Elon Musk revealed their latest launch vehicle on Tuesday, the Falcon Heavy. Effectively three Falcon 9 core stages strapped together, the new vehicle – set to debut as soon as 2013 – will be the most powerful US rocket to have launched since the Saturn V was built for the Apollo Program, eventually sharing a 20 missions per year manifest with the Falcon 9.snip
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Now who will carry Morpheus to the Moon?
- LRK -
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/
NASA Engineers Work on Project Morpheus to Build a Lunar Lander
Mark Whittington – Wed Mar 30, 6:14 pm ET
According to a story in Fox News, a group of engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center, acting pretty much on their own, with almost no funding, have created a test article of a lunar lander. They intend to test the vehicle on May 4.
It is called Project Morpheus, an outgrowth of a previous endeavor, Project M, which was designed to land a humanoid robot on the lunar surface. Morpheus is more focused, concentrating on two new technologies.
The first technology consists of a group of sensors that would detect hazards on the lunar surface and automatically adjust the landing trajectory to avoid them. During the descent of the lunar module of the flight of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong was obliged to fly the space craft manually to avoid landing in a bolder strewn field.
The second technology is an engine that burns methane. Methane can be created from the water that recent space probes have found trapped in craters at the lunar poles. This ability to refuel is important to sustain a lunar settlement since space craft landing on the Moon would not have to carry the fuel needed for takeoff from the lunar surface.
The story of Project Morpheus, and Project M before it, shows NASA at its finest, innovation on an almost nonexistent budget to create technology that would be of great use for future space missions. It has its inspiration, without a doubt, in the entrepreneurial efforts of nascent commercial space companies. Indeed, the Morpheus lander is a super sized version of a landing craft developed by Armadillo Aerospace during Project M.
snip
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Fox News says EXCLUSIVE and it seems to be just that.
Not finding much from others except for copies of below.
- LRK -
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http://www.foxnews.com/
EXCLUSIVE: Will Morpheus Be the First Vehicle on the Moon Since Apollo?
By Loren Grush
Published March 29, 2011
FoxNews.com
Nearly 40 years after Americans last set foot on the moon, a determined band of NASA engineers, undeterred by massive budget cuts and red tape, may have paved the way for a long awaited return to the lunar surface
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Well keep the ideas coming. Maybe some Angel Investor will see a profit motive and follow through.
Somehow it seems like we are feeding a flock of pigeons with a few pieces of pop corn.
Or throw a few coins to the crowd of kids and watch them run and fight over who gets the most.
I would like to see a business plan for lunar development.
Thanks for looking up with me.
- LRK -
Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/
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http://gigaom.com/2011/04/04/
For Some Entrepreneurs, Moon Is Money
By Om Malik Apr. 4, 2011, 6:30pm PT
I have to admit, when I received an email from Dr. Barney Pell, founder of Powerset, a search startup that was acquired by Microsoft for $100 million in July 2008, I was incredulous. Pell and his two co-founders, Naveen Jain (Infospace) and Dr. Robert (Bob) Richards have started a new company called Moon Express (yup, you heard that right) to develop a space vehicle that will in turn allow the company to tap into mineral resources on the lunar surface.
The trio met as members of the board of Singularity University, which is based in the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley. A year ago, they started the company with some initial funding from Pell and Jain, but they have since raised a little bit of angel funding. With seven full-time employees and a handful of contractors, the company isn’t looking for big round of funding just yet. It is all in the future, Pell said.
Pell spent a large portion of his working life at NASA before leaving to work in Silicon Valley. He worked on projects for the Mars Exploration Rover mission along with several other projects related to autonomous systems. He was also involved in the development of one of the first artificial intelligence systems to fly onboard (and control) a deep space probe. “I’m still fully engaged with my day job at Bing, but this is definitely an exciting nights and weekends [almost literally moonlighting] job for me,” Pell wrote.
For now the company has a contract from NASA worth up to $10 million “for the initial delivery order of the ‘Innovative Lunar Demonstration Data (ILDD)’ program.” The company is competing in the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, “a competition to place a robot on the Moon’s surface that travels 500 meters and transmits high definition video, images and data back to Earth.”
Moon Express describes itself as a “lunar transportation and data services company created to establish new avenues for commercial space activities beyond Earth orbit” and “will be sending a series of robotic spacecraft to the Moon for ongoing exploration and commercial development.” What does that mean? “Our big play is to develop a robotic lander to transport things to (and from) the moon,” Pell said. And why would we do that?
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http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/
snip
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
==============================
For Some Entrepreneurs, Moon Is Money
By Om Malik Apr. 4, 2011, 6:30pm PT
I have to admit, when I received an email from Dr. Barney Pell, founder of Powerset, a search startup that was acquired by Microsoft for $100 million in July 2008, I was incredulous. Pell and his two co-founders, Naveen Jain (Infospace) and Dr. Robert (Bob) Richards have started a new company called Moon Express (yup, you heard that right) to develop a space vehicle that will in turn allow the company to tap into mineral resources on the lunar surface.
The trio met as members of the board of Singularity University, which is based in the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley. A year ago, they started the company with some initial funding from Pell and Jain, but they have since raised a little bit of angel funding. With seven full-time employees and a handful of contractors, the company isn’t looking for big round of funding just yet. It is all in the future, Pell said.
Pell spent a large portion of his working life at NASA before leaving to work in Silicon Valley. He worked on projects for the Mars Exploration Rover mission along with several other projects related to autonomous systems. He was also involved in the development of one of the first artificial intelligence systems to fly onboard (and control) a deep space probe. “I’m still fully engaged with my day job at Bing, but this is definitely an exciting nights and weekends [almost literally moonlighting] job for me,” Pell wrote.
For now the company has a contract from NASA worth up to $10 million “for the initial delivery order of the ‘Innovative Lunar Demonstration Data (ILDD)’ program.” The company is competing in the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, “a competition to place a robot on the Moon’s surface that travels 500 meters and transmits high definition video, images and data back to Earth.”
Moon Express describes itself as a “lunar transportation and data services company created to establish new avenues for commercial space activities beyond Earth orbit” and “will be sending a series of robotic spacecraft to the Moon for ongoing exploration and commercial development.” What does that mean? “Our big play is to develop a robotic lander to transport things to (and from) the moon,” Pell said. And why would we do that?
snip
==============================
http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/
Project M was conceived last fall in the Engineering Directorate at the Johnson Space Center.
There were several things swirling in the environment at the time.
One was a simple management desire to coordinate the technology efforts going on across the Directorate.
We were already doing significant work advancing LOX/LCH4 propulsion systems -work funded at multiple
centers by the Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP). We were already leading the development
of the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology Project (ALHAT), also funded by ETDP.
We also had this magnificent machine we had built with General Motors, Robonaut 2 (R2),
funded primarily by GM. Coordinating those and other disparate efforts and focusing them toward a
project with tangible milestones seemed sensible in order to leverage the greatest return from those investments.
snip
July 6, 2010
Matt Ondler
http://www.nasawatch.com/By Keith Cowing on February 5, 2010 12:40 PMarchives/2010/02/video-jscs- proj.htmlVideo: JSC's Project M
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK
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