SpaceX CRS-4

[Chippiewill]

Whilst many on this forum are distracted by trivial matters like Scottish independence, I have been keeping track of the real issues. Such as SpaceX's upcoming Falcon-9 and Dragon launch early Saturday morning to the International Space Station for NASA under the cargo resupply program.

The Dragon spacecraft will be transporting a payload of 'mousetronauts', a 3-D printer and will also return important scientific payload from the ISS. The Falcon 9 will also carry a secondary payload: Arkyd-3, an asteroid survey satellite.

A first-stage landing success is not anticipated on this flight due to the lack of landing legs, in a previous flight late 2013 the vehicle entered a high spin preventing a first-stage engine restart. This was attributed to the lack of landings legs. The landings legs are missing due to the core being switched with the previous flight which launched to GTO and could not use them.

If the Falcon-9 lifts off as schedules then this will be the fastest turn-around for SpaceX in the company's history, just 13 days. It is also close to the US pad turn-around of 11 days back in the Gemini days. Still a long way off from the Soyuz turn around of 2 days.

The launch comes hot off the heels of the announcement that SpaceX's Dragon, along with Boeing's CST-100, has been selected by NASA for the commercial crew program to have a non-russian crew transport to the ISS. They will be the first space-craft carrying humans, other than Soyuz, to dock with the ISS since the Space Shuttle program was terminated in 2011.

It also follows a failure of their F9R-Dev vehicle, designed for atmospheric landing testing. Control was lost over the vehicle resulting in the activation the fail-safe self-destruct. It is believed to be attributed to the lack of redundancy in sensor on the test vehicle and would not occur on a full Falcon-9.

The Falcon-9 with Dragon is scheduled to lift off at 20 Sep 07:14AM BST. The Falcon 9 is scheduled to be powered on within the next few hours and is the first step in the launch count-down.

[sexpot]

This is clearly very big and important news, so here is an appropriate gif.

Edited by Calum0812 (Forum Super Moderator): Please don't post pointlessly, thanks!

[Chippiewill]

The lift-off was scrubbed for today until tomorrow morning. Currently scheduled for NET 21 Sep. 6:52AM BST.

The weather predictions were not particularly good this morning at the cape. Lift-off to the ISS requires an instantaneous launch meaning it could not be delayed at all - otherwise it's not possible to catch up.

[Chippiewill]

Weather as of 03:36 BST is 'go for launch'

[Chippiewill]

Weather is at 90% favourable. Webcast to start in 20 minutes.

[Chippiewill]

Lift-off!