OSIRIS-REx launch

>The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security - Regolith Explorer spacecraft will travel to a near-Earth asteroid, called Bennu (formerly 1999 RQ36), and bring at least a 2.1-ounce sample back to Earth for study. The mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth.

>OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to launch Sept. 8, 2016, at 7:05 p.m. EDT. As planned, the spacecraft will reach its asteroid target in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023.

Launch vehicle: ULA Atlas V 411

I'm glad that NASA went with a reliable launch service provider rather than a meme company like SpaceX.

well, you get what you pay for

OSIRIS-RExplosion?

...

Reminder: Atlas V had a serious launch anomaly as recently as this March, when the Atlas V first stage had an early shutdown, and the mission only succeeded due to Atlas V being far oversized for the payload (the lightest configuration of Atlas V can put ~10 tons in LEO, while under 7 tons was being launched).

This will be the third flight after Atlas V's return to flight following the anomaly, and it's a high-energy mission. A similar anomaly would likely result in mission failure this time.

t. retard whose rocket is grounded yet again from their annual unplanned explosion

>carbon bearing asteroid
>bringing back samples

inb4 a world ending virus or microorganism

Before March's anomaly, the last Atlas-V anomaly was in 2007. Atlas-V has one of the best records of any launch vehicle.

and March's anomaly didn't even result in a mission failure

ULA's reliability record might owe a lot to the lack of opportunities for American rocket engineers until recently.

If their best people don't see a future at ULA or its contractors, and are going off to start or join startups, or they're just old and retire or lose focus, their operation could go to shit in a real hurry.

Given SpaceX's current track record, the literal exact opposite is true.

SpaceX is doing great. They're moving fast and breaking things. That's how you make progress. There's basically nothing on Falcon 9 that wasn't invented in the current millenium.

Atlas V is Zenit/Centaur, American 50s tech on top of Soviet 80s tech, with 1960s ICBMs strapped on the sides. Very mature. Very expensive. Very boring. Not interesting to talented engineers. You work on a thing like that if you only care about a steady paycheck.

>Atlas V is Zenit/Centaur, American 50s tech on top of Soviet 80s tech, with 1960s ICBMs strapped on the sides.
This won't be true for much longer. If everything goes to plan, Atlas-Vs will soon be flying with the GEM-63! No longer will it be American 50s tech on top of Soviet 80s tech, with 1960s ICBMs strapped on the sides. It will instead be American 50s tech on top of Soviet 80s tech, with 1980s ICBMs strapped on the sides. That my friends is real progress.

>SpaceX is doing great
kek
pic related

>They're moving fast and breaking things.
This is different than their landing tests
We've been delivering stuff to space for nearly 70 years
At some point launch failures need to be considered completely abnormal. Arianespace and ULA have already demonstrated its possible.

>There's basically nothing on Falcon 9 that wasn't invented in the current millenium.
You're confusing "invented" and "engineered"
The only new thing that SpaceX truly invented is their Dragon heat shield material.

>Atlas V is Zenit/Centaur, American 50s tech on top of Soviet 80s tech, with 1960s ICBMs strapped on the sides. Very mature. Very expensive. Very boring. Not interesting to talented engineers.
ULA is working with 1/4 the capital that spacex is and they're rolling out a new rocket less than 3 years from now.

>You work on a thing like that if you only care about a steady paycheck.
You're implying that people at ULA or Arianespace don't take pride in their work or enjoy their work?
Top kek, what a moron.

You sound like a salty idiot who got their SpaceX application rejected and is too proud to work anywhere else.

wrong pic

ULA is a product of a bygone era. Their lack of innovation and fear of progress will cause them to fade into obscurity within the next 10-15 years. The era of innovation and progress is upon us.

what is Vulcan, chopped liver?

Who is this qt?

Anyone know if there's a technical stream of the launch somewhere? NASA-TV is worse than the normie Space-X live streams

A heap of various old technologies, brainlet.

What "new" technologies does falcon 9 use?

non-burger here, is it free to go see the launch from the stands?

That's just to pass the time

It's a normal countdown right now

Only if you consider it "free" to travel to Florida

Yeah and I prefer to just watch the rocket on the pad with the occasional audio of the launch crew over some person hundreds of miles away gushing about how cool space is.

>what is Vulcan, chopped liver?
Pretty much, yeah.

Like everything else ULA does, Vulcan's just a byproduct of REAL rocket programs.

Blue Origin's doing exciting new work. ULA's just riding their coattails, buying some copies of BE-4 to re-engine Atlas V with.

The partial reusability talk for Vulcan is a joke. It's a vastly inferior form of reusability compared to what SpaceX already has working, and they're not even going to start developing it until after the first flight, which is no sooner than three years off.

Vulcan's probably never going to fly, anyway. It's mostly a stalling maneuver by ULA, hoping that the political thing with Russia will blow over and they'll be able to continue running Atlas V.

ULA is a meme company. Lockheed has even said they fucking hate being stuck in the launch business.

>ULA: launching a rocket in 5 minutes
>SpaceX: not launching a rocket for at least 6 months

Yeah, ULA is really the "meme company" in this situation.

Go
GO
go
go
GO
clear to proceed
go
GO
go

Why do they have the countdown when they've already verified everything is good?

>SpaceX: not launching a rocket for at least 6 months
Are you kidding? They only had a failure during a test.

They'll probably launch from California in October, and from Florida again in November.

theres always a guy trying to be fancy

That failure during testing wrecked LC-40. It took Orbital Sciences a year to clean up after the Antares incident and the damage to LC-40 is probably worse and LC-39A won't be finished for several months. They won't be launching from Florida anytime soon. As for launches from California, I think when they resume flight there will highly dependent on what the cause of last week's incident was.

>a 2.1-ounce sample
ew, i'd hate to be the guy who will have to handle it

lmao you're fucking retarded, kid

it will only be the very first methane fueled vehicle to get to orbit. nothing new about that!

>LC-39A won't be finished for several months.
Yeah, November, like I said. The Vandenberg pad is good to go, and they've got plenty of polar launches manifested.

They don't need LC-40 fixed any time soon. Rather than repair it, they'll probably refit it for a more streamlined, automated launch process.

Another reliable, successful launch brought you you by America's premier launch company: United Launch Alliance.
:)

>it will only be the very first methane fueled vehicle to get to orbit
...if it ever flies, and neither Blue Origin's orbital vehicle nor SpaceX's next-gen rocket goes first.

Anyway, you can't really expect Vulcan to be highly reliable. ULA is a ten-year-old company that has never designed or significantly altered its own rocket before.

It's not over yet.

>bringing rocket science down to Earth
TERRIBLE slogan. Someone needs to be fired and banned from the industry.

fuck America
stupid American
back to you lard

>tfw no qt 6/10 NASAfu

ULA is the dumb nigger of the rocket industry, that got where its is due to government handouts.

Why should the government give more money to the company with shit reliability?

more like white trash. Two companies caught with their hand in each other's pants, forced into a shotgun marriage, living in Alabama.

Second burn nominal so far.

>the comments on the live watchpage

nominal

?

Successful deployment!

Launch replays now!

having just one solid booster on the side looks really strange and asymmetrical.

and both solar arrays deployed!

Obama getting in on the act, sheesh!

Says the faggot tranny nigger.

Had a friend who worked on it, glad things seemed to have gone smoothly.

who here rewatching the andromeda strain?

I wasn't sure this was actually the case but it is. What's the deal here? Is the main engine offset from the center of the mass? Or is the CoM off to the same side as the solid or something? But everything was ok when it popped off.

Atlas V has been called "dial-a-rocket". It can sport 0-5 solid boosters, depending on how heavy the payload is. But that includes a single solid booster, which I don't think any other rocket has been designed for. It doesn't really cause problems because the motor is angled to go through the center of gravity, but it looks odd.