Recent content by Roundaboutdan

Rumour I heard was they were planning on flipping the first stage round after separation, performing a powered reentry and attempting to 'land' on the ocean surface a la Grasshopper (minus legs etc. of course, so just a low speed splash!). That would be rather cool......

Elon Musk ‏@elonmusk Solar array deployment successful :-D Things are sure looking more positive!

From the audio I heard, the flight computer had entered a passive failure mode. Regarding the ability to reach the station, whether it can or not is immaterial, it's more a case of will it be ALLOWED to approach with a known fault and dubious energy state?

Callisto is also less deep inside Jupiter's gravity well, making it a more useful stopoff point for jaunts out into the Solar System using all that lovely fuel you've produced from the ice. From an exobiology standpoint Callisto is more likely to contain a liquid ocean than Ganymede, making it a...

The released solar array received the catalogue number 22920; it decayed on October 28, 1998, nearly 5 years after 'launch'.

Cheers! The propulsion .pdf is really informative. My understanding was that the heritage Falcons' performances were assumed using the Merlin 1C spec engine, and the 1D engine has a higher s/l thrust rating (140k lbf cs. 125k lbf) as well as the manufacturing optimisation. If the 1D is the new...

My first Orbiter Forum post :-) I presume there are plans to switch over to using the Merlin 1D (140,000 lbf s/l) on the standard Falcon 1 and 9? What kind of performance boost (through lower gravity losses etc.) would this give to the 'heritage' Falcons?