Need Kerbal Space Program 1.1 to come out so it stops running like a pig.
Sick to death of mighty rocket launches? Avoid these dates
It's a sad fact that mighty rocket launches have become so run-of-the-mill - the occasional entertaining fireworks display excepted - that the public hardly give them a second glance. For those of us who haven't yet succumbed to space ennui, here's a list of forthcoming missions for the diary. Non-interested parties are …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 30th March 2016 13:58 GMT Mage
Hypothetically
Amazing! That's as much launches as we used to have in a year, not long ago. I think though Arianespace is still leader? Over 50% of operational satellites have been launched by them.
Say we had a reason* to put all world wide military expenditure into building something in space ... urgently.
How many launches a month could we manage?
I think we could have more than 20 launch sites operational fairly quickly.
(*Say an Alien Civilisation gives us plans for a Starship, or whatever scenario you fancy).
CNES, ESA and Arianspace might not get as much publicity as NASA, but do a lot. How many Europeans that know about NASA know that there is a European Space Port in South America (started by French in 1960s) with now a pad for the Russians (as their main Cosmodrome is now in Kazakhstan. I think the Russians are building a replacement in far South East Asian "Russia").
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Thursday 31st March 2016 11:05 GMT phuzz
Re: Hypothetically
If you're interested in the the whole "how quickly can we shove stuff into orbit" idea, you might enjoy the book Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, wherein the human race has to work out get as many people into space and keep them alive there in a very short timespan (that's the first third of the book anyway).
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Wednesday 30th March 2016 20:57 GMT Vector
Re: Oh to live in such a time.
Exactly! I don't find the public disdain for launches sad at all! We need these launches to be as ho-hum as a day at the airport if we're going to advance our presence in space. Those of us who are still fascinated can watch streams online or, better yet, someday, head down to the local spaceport for a day of rocket spotting.
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Thursday 31st March 2016 03:52 GMT Kurt Meyer
Re: Fed up!........
It seems that you're not alone, according to this BBC report.
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Wednesday 30th March 2016 14:56 GMT x 7
what odds are the bookies offering on them going bang?
which one should I bet on.......do you think the gamblers have started bribing the assembly staff yet to ensure failure? I mean.........can I rely on the Russian one blowing up on the launch pad? 10 seconds into flight? 20 seconds? The spot-betting possibilities are fun with this
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Wednesday 30th March 2016 15:57 GMT Andy france
It's the insurers who set the odds not the bookies. You would get very long odds on the Russian Soyuz going bang. They have a very safe track record. The Proton however has had a fair share of mishaps though it seems most likely to go wrong around the 10 second mark. After that ... it's all downhill.
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Wednesday 30th March 2016 17:50 GMT Gene Cash
Re: if anyone is truly sick of these launches
Damn sonic booms over my house from SpaceX boosters coming back to land!!
There ougta be a LAW!! Think of the children!
(seriously though, I was evil enough to use Shuttle sonic booms to terrify my dog. When it was landing, I'd take him for a walk. BOOM!BOOM! and 180lbs of black Lab went almost straight up in the air)
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Wednesday 30th March 2016 20:49 GMT Captain DaFt
Missed this silly one:
Mad Mike Hughes is planning to beat his old record and fly a steam powered rocket over a mile* on 02 April . (He's probably happy he didn't see the condition of his parachute until after he landed in that video.)
This loony's playing a real life steampunk version of KSP!
Hey, it may not be as important or scientifically minded as the others listed, but every effort to push the boundaries helps.
*Over 1.6Km for the rest of us.
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Thursday 31st March 2016 22:55 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Missed this silly one:
Holy crap!
It's not just the state of the parachute that terrifies me, it's the amount of bits that seem to be falling off the "rocket" both during ascent and descent!
I think even The Intrepid Playmonaut would have second thoughts about going up in that contraption.
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Wednesday 30th March 2016 23:41 GMT Robert Sneddon
Bit slow
December 2015 had fourteen launches, a record for a single month I believe. There were three launches in a single 24-hour period on the 16th and 17th of that month comprising an Indian GSLV with a range of payloads, a Chinese Long March with a dark matter experimental satellite and an ESA Soyuz from Guyana carrying two Galileo satellites.
It's a rare month that doesn't have at least eight launches these days.
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Thursday 31st March 2016 11:18 GMT phuzz
Launch times
I thought it would be useful to know the predicted launch time as well, so for your edification, here's the predicted launch times (you don't need me to to tell you that these are provisional do I?). I've put them in UTC for ease of conversion to your own timezone.
Progress 63P ISS resupply: 16:23
SpaceX Dragon ISS resupply: 20:43
Sentinel-1B satellite: 21:02
Intelsat 31/DLA-2: TBD
Mikhailo Lomonosov satellite: TBD
IRNSS 1G navigation satellite: TBD