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#11
07-14-2011, 12:21 AM
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Roy- Glad you were able to have the 'up close and personal' shuttle launch experience. Patience does pay off from time to time. Comparing the two events (one from the shores of the greater Titusville area; the other on KSC property), I suspect you'd agree it's a different animal from just 2-3 miles away! Of the five I've seen from 'down there', four were from within 4 miles or closer. The other was from directly across the 'bay' at Titusville and that was for the Glenn flight on Discovery in '98. At that distance, by the time the 'sound' reached us, it basically reminded me of a looooooong drawn-out thunderclap. I knew the sound would be attenuated at that distance, but I did not think it would attenuate quite so much. At three miles away it still takes about 15 seconds for the sound to reach your ears. At 11-12 miles it's over 50 seconds before one hears any rumble at all. Still, at any distance it was a neat sight to behold, but the sound energy experienced from those closer vantage points was always a special thrill. The sensation and experience of shear, raw power was incredible. Earl
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Earl L. Cagle, Jr. NAR# 29523 TRA# 962 SAM# 73 Owner/Producer Point 39 Productions Rocket-Brained Since 1970 
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#12
07-14-2011, 02:09 AM
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You nailed it on the description at 12 miles. It was amazingly bright and eerie, and when the sound finally got there it was ultimately disappointing. That is why I decided not to even bother again unless I was going to be closer, but I never expected 2.9 miles! Mike told me that in the past, some employees had to be even closer (like maybe 1.5 - 2 miles), but were warned they needed to be shielded from the sound waves (i.e. stay inside!). There are a handful of military that are trained to attempt rescues and fight fires that might occur if there was a pad explosion, and they have to stay something like 1500 feet away in an armored carrier and only one gets to actually look at the pad through thick glass during this.
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Roy nar12605
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#13
07-14-2011, 08:22 AM
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Think of how loud Falcon-9 Heavy will be with 27 engines going at once (just 7 more than a Soyuz, three fewer than an N-1).
I don't know if Space-X can hit their cost-per-pound target, but I am sure they will come in less than Delta or Atlas (or Shuttle). The way they build the boosters makes sense (all stages same diameter so one set of tools can build both - just like "standard" and "stretch" versions of airliners), a single engine in every booster and stage (you tend to build a lot of data on something when you fly a lot of them, and Falcon-1 and Falcon-9 use the same engine in upper and lower main stages). They also do everything "in-house" which gives the company much better quality and production control (we use vendor parts where I work, and a lot of them are just terrible. It takes forever to get them corrected, and time is money). Add to that Space-X is still a small company, not top heavy like Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA.
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John Adams "There is a lot of rocketry under 20ns"
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#14
07-14-2011, 10:55 AM
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Those are precisely the things that are making SpaceX so successful, and why they've managed to do what they've done (fly a "from scratch" new booster, with all-new in-house developed engines, and a new "from scratch" capsule, SUCCESSFULLY, in about the same time and for about a THIRD of the money that NASA WASTED on the Constellation program... Just goes to show what you can do when you don't have 337 layers of bureaucratic dead wood to go through to get ANYTHING done... Sadly, I suspect that doing business with NASA, especially when it comes to commercial crew, that NASA is going to create SO much bureaucratic garbage and hoops to jump through that it's going to make it VERY expensive and time consuming to get anything done... The only thing bureaucracies do well is RED TAPE, and NASA is NOTHING if not a bureaucracy... Later! OL JR 
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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!
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#15
07-14-2011, 11:47 AM
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I wonder how they would do at building an entire space station... It would have to cost less than the NASA/ESA/ENERGIA/INPA/CSA/NASDA-run program. That is a LOT of red tape to get through.
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John Adams "There is a lot of rocketry under 20ns"
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#16
07-14-2011, 10:43 PM
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I understand Mr. Bigelow has some rooms to rent... Later! OL JR
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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!
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#17
07-15-2011, 05:23 AM
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Well, he's taking reservations I thought they had gone under. A quick read-through of the web page shows they are alive. Mr. Big(elow) even has a congratulatory note for the Space-X people. Unfortunately, Bigelow is running into a small problem with Soyuz seats (now up to $63 million / seat). If I have a few million laying around, I would go for it. Bouncing around inside Mr. Bigelow's Big Balloon for a few days sounds like a hoot.
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John Adams "There is a lot of rocketry under 20ns"
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#18
07-15-2011, 12:57 PM
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So here is a REAL question: What is the United States Federal Government doing OFFICIALLY for our next manned space ship?
Not private rockets, not probes to Mars, but what OFFICIAL U.S. Government (NASA) sponsored manned craft is being built; BUILT, not animated for a Power Point presentation, not a model for a Discover-Science program, but a real manned carrier to space; any orbit will do. The Russians and Chinese have manned rockets and carriers that they are building at the very same time I type this posting... so where is ours? Jonathan P.s. Follow the money ... the more palms that get greased, the greater the drive for that solution. That is the way we (United States) do business now. President Obama kills NASA's moon mission plans: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/scienc...oon-obama_N.htm
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#19
07-15-2011, 01:06 PM
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Nothing
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John Adams "There is a lot of rocketry under 20ns"
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#20
07-15-2011, 01:36 PM
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I thought so  Well here is a very nice video about Russia winning the space race: http://online.wsj.com/video/the-end...ORDS=space+race J
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