{"id":223,"date":"2008-11-24T15:33:28","date_gmt":"2008-11-24T19:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orbitalhub.com\/?p=223"},"modified":"2008-11-24T15:33:28","modified_gmt":"2008-11-24T19:33:28","slug":"falcon-9-engines-pass-full-mission-length-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/?p=223","title":{"rendered":"Falcon 9 Engines Pass Full Mission-Length Test"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Credits: SpaceX<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

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The nine Merlin engines that power the first stage of the Falcon 9 launcher have been successfully tested. At the McGregor Test Facility in Texas, a full mission-length firing test of the first stage of the launcher was conducted on November 22, 2008. The engines, fired for 178 seconds, consumed over half a million pounds of propellant.<\/p>\n

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During the last eighteen seconds of the test, two of the engines were shut down in order to test the ability of the first stage to complete a mission in the event of an engine being lost during flight.<\/p>\n

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According to SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, the first liftoff of a Falcon 9 launcher from Cape Canaveral will occur in 2009.<\/p>\n

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Falcon 9 is a two-stage launch vehicle. It is powered by liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene. Nine Merlin engines power the first stage of the launcher. The second stage of the Falcon 9 launcher is powered by one Merlin engine.<\/p>\n

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Falcon 9 has a length of 54.9 m, a diameter of 3.6 m, and can have a mass of 333,400 kg for a low Earth orbit (LEO) mission, and 332,800 kg for a geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) mission. It can inject 12,500 kg payloads into LEO (200 km) and 4,640 kg payloads into GTO (185×35,788 km). SpaceX will charge $36.75M for a LEO mission, and $46.75M for a trans-lunar injection (TLI) mission. For GTO missions, the price ranges from $36.75M to $57.75M.<\/p>\n

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For more details about the Falcon 9 launcher, you can visit the Falcon 9 overview web page<\/a> on the SpaceX web site.<\/p>\n

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Check out the video with the 3 minute test of the Merlin engines<\/a> on the SpaceX web site.<\/p>\n

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The nine Merlin engines that power the first stage of the Falcon 9 launcher have been successfully tested. At the McGregor Test Facility in Texas, a full mission-length firing test of the first stage of the launcher was conducted on November 22, 2008. The engines, fired for 178 seconds, consumed over half a million pounds of propellant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[84,85,22,39],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-launchers","tag-falcon-9","tag-merlin","tag-news","tag-spacex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions\/224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}