2017 SpaceX Launch Schedule

This is an edited version of the complete worldwide launch schedule for 2017 which can be found on Spaceflight Now: http://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/

January Falcon 9 • Iridium Next 1-10

Launch time: TBD

Launch site: SLC-4E, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch 10 satellites for the Iridium next mobile communications fleet.

January Falcon 9 • EchoStar 23

Launch time: TBD

Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch EchoStar 23 communications satellite for EchoStar Corp. EchoStar 23, based on a spare platform from the canceled CMBStar 1 satellite program, will provide direct-to-home television broadcast services over Brazil.

February Falcon 9 • SpaceX CRS 10

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the 12th Dragon spacecraft on the 10th operational cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station. The flight is being conducted under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

February Falcon 9 • SES 10

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the SES 10 communications satellite. Owned by SES of Luxembourg, the spacecraft will provide direct-to-home TV broadcasting and other telecommunication services for Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America. It will also cover Brazil and support offshore oil and gas exploration.

TBD Falcon 9 • Koreasat 5A

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Koreasat 5A communications satellite for KTsat based in South Korea. Koreasat 5A will provide direct-to-home television broadcast and other communications services over Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Guam, Indochina, and South Asia. The satellite will also support maritime communications.

TBD Falcon 9 • Formosat 5 & Sherpa

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: SLC-4E, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Formosat 5 for Taiwan’s National Space Organization (NSPO) and the Sherpa deployer from Spaceflight Industries carrying approximately 90 small payloads and CubeSats for a variety of scientific and commercial customers.

TBD Falcon 9 • Iridium Next 11-20

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: SLC-4E, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch 10 satellites for the Iridium next mobile communications fleet.

TBD Falcon 9 • SpaceX CRS 11

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the 13th Dragon spacecraft on the 11th operational cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station. The flight is being conducted under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

Early 2017 Falcon 9 • SES 11/EchoStar 105

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: Cape Canaveral, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the SES 11 communications satellite. Owned by SES of Luxembourg, the spacecraft will provide direct-to-home TV broadcasting services over North America, including Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean, for EchoStar Corp., which calls the satellite EchoStar 105.

2nd Quarter Falcon Heavy • Demo Flight

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch on its first demonstration flight. The heavy-lift rocket is formed of three Falcon 9 rocket cores strapped together with 27 Merlin 1D engines firing at liftoff. Delayed from 3rd Quarter of 2015 and April, September and December 2016.

June 1 Falcon 9 • SpaceX CRS 12

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: Cape Canaveral, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the 14th Dragon spacecraft on the 12th operational cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station. The flight is being conducted under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

3rd Quarter Falcon Heavy • STP-2

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the U.S. Air Force’s Space Test Program-2 mission with a cluster of military and scientific research satellites. The heavy-lift rocket is formed of three Falcon 9 rocket cores strapped together with 27 Merlin 1D engines firing at liftoff.

August Falcon 9 • Crew Dragon Demo 1

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch a Crew Dragon spacecraft on an uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station under the auspices of NASA’s commercial crew program.

Sept. 13 Falcon 9 • SpaceX CRS 13

Launch window: TBD

Launch site: Cape Canaveral, Florida

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the 15th Dragon spacecraft on the 13th operational cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station. The flight is being conducted under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

"Make America Great Again"....in Space

Man has always looked up at the millions of twinkling stars in the night sky with wonder and awe of what could be out there. America has always been a nation of curiosity and discovery. We are in America for that reason. From our very beginnings we were adventurers, searching for a more prosperous land where we could grow. The only natural evolution of that curiosity is outer space. It all began on March 16, 1926 when Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid fueled rocket. From that point on it became a race between America and the Soviet Union to see who could progress and explore faster. It was an amazing time of discovery and wonder for the world!

                

            Albert1 was the first rhesus monkey to be launched into space on June 11, 1948.  He went up in a V-2 rocket the US had confiscated from Germany at the end of the war. He achieved an altitude of between 30 and 39 miles. On June 14, 1949 Albert 2, another rhesus monkey, was launched into space and achieved an altitude of about 83 miles. Though this was only the beginning of a series of suborbital flights they were the first baby steps that paved the way for a human launch. On October 4, 1957 The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 the first artificial satellite to actually orbit the Earth. This event precipitated the American Sputnik Crisis and triggered the Space Race. That launch ushered in a new era of political, technological, and scientific development that has yet to end.

Neither was America the first to send a man into space. April 12, 1961 marked a very historic event when a man named Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union became the man to fly the first human crewed orbital flight. Although America was not far behind. On May 5, 1961 Alan Shepard, became the first American to fly a human piloted space vehicle on a suborbital flight.  Those men were the beginning of a very amazing period in time. The 1960’s were busy with America and the Soviet Union both discovering and celebrating many firsts. Then something amazing happened! On July 16, 1969 Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins blasted off on the Apollo 11.  And just 4 days later Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon in a Lunar Module named The Eagle. On July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to step onto the Moon.

                

             Now we’ll fast forward a bit. The date is currently June 6, 2016. America is leading in the never ending Space Race. Up to this point twelve men have walked on the Moon, but none since 1972.  That may very soon change. In addition to NASA, there are several private space companies taking up the exploration banner and running with it.  One idea, which is gaining a lot of traction, is to go back to the Moon as a prep flight for a mission to Mars. Now I’m sure you’re wondering how as a nation we could afford this. An entrepreneur named Elon Musk has created the means to do that. After making a fortune by helping to create the online payment system known as PayPal, he created a company called SpaceX.  This company recently made history when he successfully launched and then landed a rocket upright on April 8, 2016.

He has proven that not only can we build rockets more economically but that we can reuse them as well. Next stop Mars! SpaceX states they will be launching a mission to Mars using the Red Dragon in 2018 and sending humans to Mars in 2024. NASA also has a timeline for Mars but it’s, well, a bit further out, like sometime in the 2030’s so it is honestly far more realistic to believe a private space company will get there first. But after that who knows? The sky is literally the limit. There is no telling how far we can go.

                

             As we embark on this amazing journey of discovery we need to remember that searching for answers and exploring new world’s is the American way. We must go further and aim higher. It’s a necessary part of who we are.  We are the innovators, the explorers, the leaders in a race spanning decades and it’s not over yet. This race probably will not ever be over as long as we keep the curiosity and the drive. It’s up to us to preserve the American desire to know more, to go further, and to excel. Let’s go! Let’s colonize Mars then go further! Let’s push ourselves out into the abyss of space and see what’s there. Because frankly space exploration is as American as Apple Pie!

COMMERCIAL SPACE: WE HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE

SpaceX Is The Twenty-first Century Equivalent To The East India And Hudson Bay Companies

On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy announced before a crowd of 35,000 that “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade”.  On July 20, 1969, we did just that with the landing of Apollo 11.  The United States Government, driven by popular demand made an unprecedented investment throughout the 1960’s, often spending up to 4% of the annual federal budget on manned spaceflight.

As soon as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin returned to earth however, public interest in space dropped off.  Congress followed popular opinion, and for the last 40 years NASA budgets averaged about one half of one percent of the federal budget.

This financial malaise has continued to this day.  In spite of glorious claims regarding the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) projects, the NASA budget has not increased significantly.  SLS/Orion will not launch until 2021.  Even then the best we can hope for under current budget constraints is to have one launch every two or three years.  This is wholly insufficient for real exploration and completely eliminates any hope of NASA building a Mars colony.

By Contrast, commercial space entities like Bigelow Aerospace and SpaceX are finding ways to get the job done faster, cheaper and more efficiently.  SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy will launch this year for instance, with the ability to lift 80% of the capacity of the SLS block one at as low as one tenth the price.

Despite the advantage that commercial space has both in terms of cost and innovation, many balk at giving commercial entities the lead role in space exploration and colonization.  The truth is that historically it has been shown that commercial enterprises can be for more effective at colonization and resource development than government entities.

Let us look at the history of exploration and colonization of the earth for some examples.  On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I chartered the East India Company.  In 1670 a similar charter created the Hudson Bay Company.

England was interested in expanding her empire and bringing in wealth through trade.  The standing armies and navies and other expenditures necessary to accomplish expansion made this an expensive endeavor.  Instead of the crown (and therefore the taxpayers) shouldering this cost, members of the aristocracy and wealthy merchants banded together to form these independent companies.  In addition to conducting trade, they had their own armies and navies and even local government.

The East India Company in fact set up everything the British did in India.  Eventually they had to let government entities take over, but that was not until 1847.  The British Raj took over an India that already had all the modern facilities of government in place, courtesy of  the East India Company.

The Hudson Bay Company was responsible for the exploration and settlement of the American Pacific Northwest and Canada.  Fur trapping was a major industry, and that resource drove the company’s trappers all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

These examples prove commercial entities have more incentive to do resource development and colonization than governments do.  It is not such a stretch to view the vast expanses between our home world and the red planet in the same way that seventeenth century Europeans viewed the Atlantic Ocean.  It is vast, dangerous, and if you cross that expanse, you may never return.  Only the incentive of profit can drive people to take such great risks. 

SpaceX and other commercial space endeavors are the modern equivalent of the East India and Hudson’s Bay Companies.  We need to be sure they have the opportunity to do what must be done, as history shows that governments may not be the best drivers for economic migration, resource development and colonization of strange lands.

                

BEWARE FLORIDA!!!

I know there are a few of you out there that are thinking “Hey, aren’t you being a bit rough? After all Bezos is trying to do his part to get us all into outer space too!” Well to all you folks that think that is the case, I wanted to write this for you. Frankly the guy does want to build rockets, but his history, motivations and methods often seem more like Mike Myer’s evil Doctor.

Bezos was born in 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico as Jeffrey Jorgensen. His mother was a teenager when his was born, the daughter of a wealthy Texas family. His Father divorced her a year after he was born and she married a hard working Cuban immigrant named Miguel Bezos (an engineer for Exxon) who adopted him.

Bezos went to Princeton where he obtained a BS (with honors) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. He worked a few years for IT departments at Wall Street banks and investment firms before moving to Seattle and forming Amazon in 1994. As of March 2015, Bezos's personal wealth is estimated to be US$ 50 billion, due in part to a recent spike in Amazon's stock price, ranking him 15th on the Forbes list of billionaires.

Portfolio.com, has described him as a notorious micromanager: "an executive who wants to know about everything from contract minutiae to how he is quoted in all Amazon press releases."

On August 15, 2015 the New York Times wrote a scathing article "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace" about Amazon's business practices. It described working for Bezos and Amazon in the offices as a grueling and inhumane experience with many employees regularly being terminated or quitting. Bezos responded by claiming it doesn't represent the company he leads and challenged its depiction as "a soulless, dystopian workplace where no fun is had and no laughter heard"

He was named World's Worst Boss by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), at their World Congress, in May 2014. In making the award Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the ITUC, said "Jeff Bezos represents the inhumanity of employers who are promoting the American corporate model..."

A series of articles in the Morning Call newspaper described working for Bezos and Amazon in the warehouses as grueling and inhumane. 

 
Bezos formed his Blue Origin Spaceship Company in 2000, always keeping whatever they do under a deep cloud of secrecy. After 15 years their biggest known success was the launching of their New Shepard suborbital space vehicle one time. 

This April, New Shepard went to 93,500 meters (307,000 feet) and fell back to earth. While the test itself was deemed a success and the capsule was correctly recovered via parachute landing, the booster stage crashed because hydraulic pressure was lost during the descent.

For comparison, SpaceX (which Elon Musk formed in 2002) has had 18 successful ORBITAL flights including six cargo deliveries to the international space station. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 v1.1 generates 1.3 million pounds of thrust at liftoff while New Shepard only generated about 110,000 pounds of thrust.

The Blue Origin New Shepard is not only severely under powered, it also looks suspiciously like a penis (Sigmund Freud might have had a thought about this if he were still around).

Bezos’ lack of results in the space arena might be forgivable or at least cast in the same light as other under-achievers like Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson or Mars One’s Bas Lansdorp if it weren’t for the fact that he has actually tried to screw another new space entrepreneur, apparently (from the appearance of his rocket) out of penis envy.

The Amazon Billionaire has made it clear that if he can’t be atop the New Space industry by succeeding, then he is willing to get to the top of the heap by dragging down the leader: SpaceX.

 His first attack came when SpaceX decided to lease the old Apollo/Space Shuttle launch pad, LC-39A.  When it became obvious that the award was going to SpaceX, Blue Origin appealed, claiming that they would have a human rated rocket to launch from it within five years.  The GAO ruled against Blue Origin.  Elon Musk injected a bit of memorable humor into the feud stating "If they do somehow show up in the next 5 years with a vehicle qualified to NASA's human rating standards that can dock with the Space Station, which is what Pad 39A is meant to do, we will gladly accommodate their needs.  Frankly, I think we are more likely to discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct."

He tried a second time when SpaceX announced its intention to land their Falcon 9 first stage booster on a barge.  He produced a patent owned by Blue Origin that claimed a system for doing just that.  The problem was that the patent was much too vague.  While it described landing on a barge it didn’t actually go into any detail on how to do it.  The claim was thrown out of court.

Earlier this year Bezos announced at a press conference with United Launch Alliance (ULA) that he is going to use his new engine, the BE-4, to replace the Russian RD-180 engines that ULA can no longer use.  This seemed like a match made in heaven for Bezos, giving the Lockheed – Boeing partnership the engine they desperately need and giving them a chance to compete against the low price juggernaut that is SpaceX.  But not so fast.  In the last week there have been rumblings of an imminent deal with Aerojet Rocketdyne, an old space manufacturer of rocket engines to buy ULA. 

If this deal goes through there is no way their rockets will be using Blue Origin rocket engines.  Apparently someone at ULA was not very impressed with Bezos’ ability to deliver.  This appears to be a desperation move on the part of ULA to keep their rockets flying.

This week Bezos’ announced big plans to build rockets in Titusville, Florida next to the Kennedy Space Center and to lease the pad next to SpaceX out on the cape.  His claim is that they would be building rockets there to launch at KSC “within ten years”.

Given the apparent experience of Amazon employees, I wouldn’t want to work there.  Given the track record of Blue Origin, they have already had 15 years and done almost nothing.  I don’t have much faith that we will see anything significant launch there in the next ten years.  But who knows?  Perhaps Dr. Evil will surprise us.

Waste in Space

The blog below was originally written in 2012.  The graphic above reflects more recent numbers, showing that the math on the SLS is just getting worse.  This behemoth is a white elephant and a drag on our ability to explore deep space.

NASA spent ten billion dollars on the Constellation program during the five years of its existence, from 2005 until president Obama cancelled it in 2010.  They had little to show for the money except an expensive and almost catastrophic suborbital test flight of a dummy first stage and an incomplete space capsule. The Orion/MPCV capsule is the only piece they carried over to the current SLS program.  Developing the Orion capsule consumed about half of the money; $5 billion of that $10 billion.  Recent estimates for Orion reaching first flight say that it will require $6 to 7 billion more. NASA also spent around a billion dollars just to modify one of the shuttle launch pads so that it could be used to launch the Ares vehicle.

Meanwhile SpaceX developed and launched two complete launch vehicles, the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9, and a space capsule that will eventually carry humans in orbit, the Dragon. They designed and flew two different versions of their Merlin rocket engines plus their Draco thruster, they built a huge factory in California, a test facility in Texas, and launch facilities on a pacific atoll and at Cape Canaveral, Florida.  They are building another launch pad at Vandenburg Air Force Base in California.  They have done all of this for about $1 billion, and almost all of that was exclusively privately raised funds. The SpaceX Falcon 9 can put an 11.5 ton payload into low earth orbit (LEO) for approximately $54 million or $2400 a pound. The Falcon 9 / Dragon spacecraft will launch a 7 person crew to LEO for approximately $120 million or a fraction over $17 million per seat.  That's about one third of what Russia is now charging NASA for seats on Soyuz and an order of magnitude cheaper than Constellation would have been. Even the Chinese have flatly stated that they cannot match SpaceX on price.

Also, SpaceX plans to test fly its Falcon Heavy in late 2015.  The Falcon Heavy that will have a payload capacity of around 53 tons to LEO at a cost of less than $150 million per launch.  That is $1400 per pound, which is getting very close to the “holy grail” price of $1000 per pound. Again that was with ZERO developmental cost to the American taxpayer.

The future of manned space exploration is with commercial development, not bloated government programs like SLS.  The Space Launch System, or SLS, is the government funded project NASA came up with to please members of the House and Senate that opposed President Obama's efforts to lower costs by introducing commercial competition.  It followed the cancellation of the Constellation Program as the vehicle to replace the retired Space Shuttle.  An unofficial NASA document recently estimated the cost of the program through 2025 to total at least $41B for four 70 metric ton launches.  Some estimates place the SLS cost per pound to LEO at $8,500, more than six times that of the Falcon Heavy.

The Competitive Space Task Force, in September 2011, said that the new government launcher directly violates NASA’s charter, the Space Act, and the 1998 Commercial Space Act requirements for NASA to pursue the "fullest possible engagement of commercial providers" and to "seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space".  So why are we throwing scarce taxpayer money at the monstrosity called SLS, and not fully funding COTS and Commercial Crew programs?  Ask your Senator or Congressman.  Something is VERY wrong with this picture.