Early in the morning of December 7th, 1972, the final Apollo mission to the Moon, Apollo 17, launched from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center carrying Gene Cernan, Ron Evans, Harrison Schmitt to the Taurus–Littrow lunar valley. Apollo 17’s landing location and planned launch time dictated the first night launch of any manned American …
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Tag:LC39A
A SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Echostar 105 / SES-11
A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster successfully launched from Launch Complex 39A yesterday (October 11th) carrying the Echostar 105 / SES-11 satellite. This is an interesting “Dual Mission” type of satellite, carrying two independent communications relay systems dedicated to two separate tasks which both cover the same general range over the Earth. This launch was delayed …
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Elon Musk Says The SpaceX Falcon Heavy May Fail On Its First Flight
The SpaceX Falcon Heavy is a rocked system designed along the same lines as the Falcon 9 booster – in effect, 3 Falcon 9 1st stages strapped together. Of course in practice it’s much more complex than that, but that helps you visualize the idea of the booster – 3 times the initial power to …
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What I Like About SpaceX
With me about to go into detail on the phenomena I call “The Cult of SpaceX” I thought it would serve well to express upfront just what I do actually like about SpaceX, which is quite a bit. In fact, if I didn’t like something about SpaceX the more hostile elements of its fanbase wouldn’t …
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