{"id":351307,"date":"2010-02-22T14:30:39","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T19:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/?p=12030"},"modified":"2010-02-22T14:30:39","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T19:30:39","slug":"falcon-9-getting-ready-for-maiden-voyage-bad-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/351307","title":{"rendered":"Falcon 9 getting ready for maiden voyage | Bad Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>President Obama&#8217;s plan for NASA in the future is to rely heavily on private industry. One of the companies preparing for this is Space X, <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2009\/07\/15\/falcon-1-launch-a-success\/\">which has tested its first generation Falcon 1 rocket successfully<\/a>. The Falcon 9 <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.spacex.com\/falcon9.php\">is a much larger rocket<\/a> capable of carrying a much heavier payload, but has not yet flown. <\/p>\n<p>However, the first F9 is at Cape Canaveral, getting ready for launch. It&#8217;s been sitting horizontally in a hangar for some time, but is now vertical. <\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/files\/2010\/02\/F9_Vertical_Sunset.jpg\" alt=\"F9_Vertical_Sunset\" title=\"F9_Vertical_Sunset\" width=\"610\" height=\"407\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12031\"\/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>It will undergo a series of ground tests, including a 3.5 second full engine firing (the rocket will be locked down to keep it from going anywhere) before it&#8217;ll be cleared for launch. Launch could be as early as March!<\/p>\n<p>Once it&#8217;s flown, the next step will be to carry a test version of <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.spacex.com\/dragon.php\">the Dragon module<\/a> &#8212; the part that will carry big payloads &#8212; on top which could happen as early as July. Once <em>that <\/em> passes, Space X will be ready to start ferrying material to the space station. They hope to be able to be man-rated by 2013 or 2014, so they can begin to ferry humans into orbit.<\/p>\n<p><font size=\"-2\"><em>Image credit: Chris Thompson\/SpaceX<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/9O-S5CBFboHEU-HQrSD8AzTJiPM\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/9O-S5CBFboHEU-HQrSD8AzTJiPM\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/9O-S5CBFboHEU-HQrSD8AzTJiPM\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/9O-S5CBFboHEU-HQrSD8AzTJiPM\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/BadAstronomyBlog\/~4\/K6FsEa9oxFc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/DiscoverMag\/~4\/ffxaSGxyvqg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Obama&#8217;s plan for NASA in the future is to rely heavily on private industry. One of the companies preparing for this is Space X, which has tested its first generation Falcon 1 rocket successfully. The Falcon 9 is a much larger rocket capable of carrying a much heavier payload, but has not yet flown. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}