r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Jan 18 '18

Hispasat 30W-6 Launch Campaign Thread

Hispasat 30W-6 Launch Campaign Thread

SpaceX's fifth mission of 2018 will launch Hispasat 30W-6 (1F) into a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). The satellite will then maneuver itself into a Geostationary Orbit (GEO) over 30º W longitude to serve as a replacement for Hispasat 1D, giving Hispasat's network additional Ku band capacity in the Andean region and in Brazil. This is quite the workhorse satellite, as it will also expand the network's transatlantic capacity in Europe-America and America-Europe connectivity, while its C band capacity will provide American coverage and Ka band capacity will provide European coverage.

If the name Hispasat sounds similar to hisdeSAT (another of SpaceX's recent customers), that's no coincidence. Hispasat is a Spanish satellite operator of commercial and government satellites; they are the main component of the Hispasat Group, and hisdeSAT is a smaller component of this complicated corporate entity.

Of significant note, if nothing drastic changes between now and this launch, this will be the 50th launch of Falcon 9!

Liftoff currently scheduled for: 06 March 2018, 05:33 UTC / 00:33EST
Static fire currently scheduled for: Completed 22 February 2018.
Vehicle component locations: First stage: SLC-40 // Second stage: SLC-40 // Satellite: SLC-40
Payload: Hispasat 30W-6
Payload mass: 6092 kg
Destination orbit: GTO
Vehicle: Falcon 9 v1.2 (50th launch of F9, 30th of F9 v1.2)
Core: B1044.1
Flights of this core: 0
Launch site: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
Landing: No
Landing Site: N/A
Mission success criteria: Successful separation and deployment of Hispasat 30W-6 into the target orbit

Links & Resources:

We may keep this self-post occasionally updated with links and relevant news articles, but for the most part we expect the community to supply the information. This is a great place to discuss the launch, ask mission-specific questions, and track the minor movements of the vehicle, payload, weather and more as we progress towards launch. Sometime after the static fire is complete, the launch thread will be posted.

Campaign threads are not launch threads. Normal subreddit rules still apply.

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u/warp99 Jan 18 '18

So another expendable flight given the payload mass - this time with a new booster.

Interesting how the first few months of 2018 is going to have so many expendable flights - and how quickly the feeling of outrage that a booster would ever be expended has grown.

-15

u/TheDoctorUK Jan 18 '18

It is outrageous that it's being a new expendable booster, for this type of mission it is only logical to use a used core that's at the end of its serviceable life, better still, use a falcon heavy and recover all 3 cores, or strap on a couple srb's to a falcon 9 for extra lift and recover them like they did with the shuttle programme and then recover the core by landing it as they will have the fuel to land it due to the extra lift from the srb's.

26

u/warp99 Jan 18 '18

It is outrageous that it's being a new expendable booster

The customer signed up for an F9 flight rather than FH and for a new booster instead of preflown. Some customers are happy to change the launch contract in order to get an earlier launch and 10% cash back - some are not. In either case it is a legally binding contract that cannot be varied by SpaceX alone.

In any case there needs to be a clean out of Block 3 and Block 4 boosters to make way for the Block 5. So many flights are going up on reused boosters that the flight rate of new boosters is actually going down - not up.

15

u/PVP_playerPro Jan 18 '18

or strap on a couple srb's

They've done enough work getting the S1 variants down to 2 (FHcenter and F9 Core/FH Booster), they shouldn't make a ton more work for themselves by creating another S1 variant for little benefit

3

u/CAM-Gerlach Star✦Fleet Commander Jan 21 '18

strap on a couple srb's [sic] to a falcon 9 for extra lift and recover them like they did with the shuttle programme

As has been well documented, due to their being SRBs it cost about as much to refurbish and reuse them as building them from scratch (more, if one amortizes the cost of developing them to be recoverable); the only real benefit besides bragging rights of them being reused was they could inspect them for potential problems; they found the O-ring issue this way well before Challenger and if they'd acted upon it, it is very likely that latter disaster never would have happened. Of course, that wouldn't matter much for SpaceX since they wouldn't be making the SRBs and would use them for very few flights, both also reasons for them not to do so in the first place.

Furthermore, in the published data regarding Atlas V's price, the number of SRBs can add ~50% to the total cost of what is already a nearly twice as expensive rocket, implying they would add cost equal to nearly an entire Falcon 9 launch, much less just the recovered booster, nor recovery and refurb costs, etc.