NewSpace
2010 Review
A report on the annual Space
Frontier Foundation's conference, held
this year in Sunnyvale, California. Topics
of discussion ranged from entrepreneurial
space businesses to lunar miing to fully reusable
suborbital space vehicles.
Satellite tracking and observing as been
a frequent topic here at HobbySpace.
The Satellite
Observing section includes links to
a various tracking
tools to determine the current locations
of satellites as well as where they will
be on particular day and time.
Now you can run the Satellite
Tracking Tool from BINARY
SPACE right here at HobbySpace
in your browser. The program allows you
to track a large set of satellites in both
low earth and geostationary orbits. (Note:
the program requires Microsoft
Silverlight, version 4 or higher):
The program presents satellites
in a choice of 2-D and 3-D views:
The program provides interactive controls
to obtain data on satellites, to predict
their orbits, and more. There is also a
tutorial video with virtual host Amanda
Bush:
It's
a Whole New Outer Space Out There
SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch
Vehicle
..
On April
5th SpaceX introduced the design of
the Falcon
Heavy (FH) launch vehicle. Based on
their Falcon
9 rocket, which has had two successful
flights, the FH would place 53 metric tons
of payload into low earth orbit. The price
comes to about $1000/lb ($2200/kg), which
is 3 to 4 times less than the best current
world launch price. The payload would be
twice that of any other launch vehicle now
in operation and would be half that of the
Saturn V.
The Falcon Heavy will launch for the first
time from Vandenberg Air Force Base in southern
California by late 2012 or early 2013. They
expect within a few years to be flying about
ten Falcon Heavy and ten Falcon 9 missions
per year. The company currently has contracts
to supply cargo to the International Space
Station and is expecting to win contracts
also to deliver crews to the ISS using the
Dragon capsule on the Falcon 9 rocket. In
addition, they have a number of commercial
satellite contracts on their manifest.
Here is a video of the press conference
in which SpaceX
founder and CEO Elon Musk presented the
Falcon Heavy:
..
News on SpaceX and other innovative and
entrepreneurial space companies and projects
can be found on the HobbySpace
blog Space
Transport News.