Another Exciting Thing

This actually happened before the Draco thruster firing that I posted about earlier, but is in some ways cooler.  It's full mission duration firing of the cluster of 9 Merlin engines that are soon going to lift the SpaceX Falcon 9 booster from the shores of Florida to low earth orbit.  It's exciting for a lot of the same reasons as the Draco firing; it's a fully private endeavor that will be able to put a whole lot of equipment, cargo, or even crew into space, and is likely to be able to do it before NASA will.  

What's also cool about this particular test is that it was done in the dead of night in rural Texas, and boy did it wake the neighbors!  SpaceX followed the law and notified who they were supposed to, but people in nearby towns didn't get the message and were woken up by the thunderous tumult.  I'm sure it was disturbing, but I still would've loved it.

Something to be excited about

SpaceX is one of the few things that I’m really excited about at the moment in relation to crewed spaceflight. I love the ISS and Shuttle, but due to the upcoming retirement of the STS that love is bittersweet. Ares/Orion/Altair is in development, but its unclear how soon that will become a reality since they are at the mercy of a political and budgetary system that are in transition at the moment.

SpaceX is a private company that is working to develop a family of low to medium lift rockets for commercial use. The Falcon 1 development had a few snags in the form of 3 consecutive launch failures, but is still riding the high of the fourth and successful launch. They’re pushing ahead on the larger Falcon 9 booster which can carry larger payloads and the Dragon capsule. Dragon has several uses, among them is rendezvousing with the ISS for resupply, cargo return, and potentially crew transfer/lifeboat capability.

The test shown above is for the orbital thruster design. It’s conducted in a vacuum chamber that SpaceX custom-built which is why you can’t actually see any exhaust from the combustion. The only way you can tell that anything is actually happening in there is because of the way the engine bell glows red hot. Awesome.