End of an era: Final Delta IV heavy rocket carries NROL-70 on historic mission

https://floridamedianow.com/2024/03/25/the-end-of-an-era-the-last-delta-launches-this-week/

by nabilhat • 2 years ago

92 28 2 years ago

shreezus• 2 years ago

This article sounds like it was written by ChatGPT. That said, it's wild we were still using expendable rockets like Delta IV Heavy when SpaceX offerings are objectively better & cheaper. What SpaceX has done for the industry is nothing short of incredible.

Rebelgecko2• 2 years ago

I think that's a bit overly reductionist. This launch cost about $150m (granted, without competition from SpaceX it probably would've been much pricier). I think the going rate for a Falcon Heavy is around $120m. Not a huge difference, and it's very possible that changing the mission requirements to work with Falcon Heavy would cost more than $30m. In the past SpaceX had limitations like no vertical integration, narrower fairing, limitations with higher orbits, shorter time limits between engine burns, less accuracy in some orbits, etc. I haven't followed the launch industry as much lately so maybe thats not true anymore, but I think those things were still true when this launch was purchased ~5 years ago

martythemaniak• 2 years ago

Wikipedia says NRO launches are $440m, so the price difference is really really big, which is the reason why this is the last launch - not even the US Government has that kinda cash for launches.

The other reason is there's a lag of several years between when a capability is established (Falcon Heavy) and when large customers can take advantage of it. For example, we really shouldn't expect Starship to make a dent in way satellites and telescopes are designed and built until the 2030s.

numpad0• 2 years ago

Is SpaceX running out of patience with slow, or near nonexistent growth of so-called launch market?

perihelions• 2 years ago

The point of overpaying on the 2nd-best choice is that it maintains an independent backup if the 1st-best disappears suddenly. The client (DoD) is willing to pay for that insurance: they do not want a multi-year downtime interval they're unable to launch military hardware.

(This isn't an anti-SpaceX thing, really: the dual-provider system (Atlas/Delta) long predates them).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Space_Launch

(And besides, these satellites are orders of magnitude more expensive than their launch vehicle! The NRO's budget alone is around $10 billion per year).

walrus013• 2 years ago

If you stop building anything for long enough you lose the capability to do it. There's reasons why the DoD wants to maintain at least two contractors, so I agree with your point here.

As an example when the UK built the first Astute class submarine about ten years ago they ran into a huge number of delays and technical issues because everyone who had been involved in their previous nuclear submarine construction program in the early to mid 1980s had retired or moved on to new things.

wffurr• 2 years ago

Missing the most important piece of info about any NRO launch, the mission patch! Meow! https://www.nro.gov/portals/135/assets/img/L-70_Snow-Leopard...

dylan604• 2 years ago

Is it just me, but I feel like this being an NRO patch that the placement of the stars isn't just a designer's choice but potentially some cryptic meaning. If not, how boring!

daniel_reetz• 2 years ago

Look up Trevor Paglen's book "I could tell you but then you would have to be destroyed by me". It's a collection of mission patches along with some interpretation as to the meaning and placement of symbols. Fascinating stuff.

coolspot• 2 years ago

These patches are allowed to leak exactly 0 bits of meaningful non-public information about the payload.

seo-speedwagon• 2 years ago

My guess: there’s 3 stars that are brighter, and the cat is shown with 3 legs, so it could be part of a constellation of 3 satellites. The swoop of the tail could indicate a molyina orbit. Generally the orbit and where these things are in the sky can, and are, tracked even by hobbyists so that’s not particularly juicy, imo

sandworm101• 2 years ago

That isn't a real patch, more of a mission logo. The details are too small. The pink nose, if actually in patch form, would stand out as a pink dot in the middle of a blurry cat.

Fyi, military patches look best when using lines with fixed-width. Anything pointy or jagged doesn't translate well into stitched thread. Avoid shadows too. Yes, there are some all-plastic patches that are carved into 3d shapes but those are evil. Real patches are thread over velcro.

pinkmuffinere• 2 years ago

I'm actually very very interested in this opinionated approach to patch design -- can you tell me more? Or refer me to some useful design guides? I can just google something random too, but it sounds like you might know / have some good resources already

javawizard2• 2 years ago

There's a general term for this, designing for manufacturability[0].

I've made something of a hobby of learning new ways to manufacture things. Every time I learn a new manufacturing technique I start to notice things that were made that way in the real world, and I especially start to notice aspects of design that would have been influenced by how the thing in question was manufactured.

Case in point: injection molding. When you injection mold parts, the sides have to be tapered so that the part can detach from the mold easily (the term of art for that is "drafting"[1]). Once you know that, you see it everywhere.

Back to the topic at hand: owning an embroidery machine and learning how to digitize completely opened my mind to all the intricacies of patch design and why all of what the parent comment said is true. Case in point:

military patches look best when using lines with fixed-width

This is because the thread itself is fixed width, and you can either do a straight stitch for really thin lines (they call that a running stitch[2]) or you can do a sort of zigzag stitch that's so tight that the thread runs horizontally and fills up the line width (they call that a satin stitch[3]). Satin stitches only look good within a certain narrow range of widths; wider and the threads are too loose, narrower and the needle holes are close enough that they impact the structural integrity of the backing the design's being embroidered on to.

Anyway. I could go on for hours, but to wrap up: DFM is a fascinating world to explore.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_manufacturability

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_(engineering)

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_stitch

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satin_stitch

walrus013• 2 years ago

Nothing will ever top NROL-39 with the octopus

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&sca_esv=841...

There's a lot of in-jokes and humor in the defense contractor community for team morale building and such. Same idea why challenge coins exist within the relationships between big defense contractors and the DoD agencies that buy services and equipment from them.

The "nothing is beyond our reach" and octopus seems like some sinister and scary thing for a military/intelligence agency to be putting out there in public, but it probably has a more specific meaning within the top secret capabilities of that specific program. I have no idea what it is, could be something like listening to all mobile phone traffic in Waziristan, whatever.

dang• 2 years ago

We changed the URL from https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/End_of_an_Era_Final_Delta... to an article that seems to have more background information.

Is there a better article available? If so, we can change it again.

walrus013• 2 years ago

I don't think you'll get a whole lot more info other than "this is the mission patch, it's named NROL-70, and it was obviously big and heavy enough to launch on a Delta IV heavy". What the payload is will be totally unknown to people who don't have clearance so there isn't anything for tech journalists/websites/bloggers to write about, other than their own speculation.

xoa• 2 years ago

Is there a better article available? If so, we can change it again.

Ars has pretty solid space coverage and I think their article [0] is fairly extensive with a few more technical details on aspects specific to DIVH. Also not related to changing the article, but first comment there links a pretty cool little movie [1] (yes absolutely PR completely with dramatic music but still real footage and DIVH is a damn cool, however expensive, rocket) ULA did on the NROL-91 launch which really was dramatic.

----

0: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/03/the-delta-iv-heavy-a-r...

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXifOiq56uw

geostupid• 2 years ago

Who can't love the commemorative poster as well!!

https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/Images/Social%20Media%20grap...

End of an era: Final Delta IV heavy rocket carries NROL-70 on historic mission

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