Talk:Antares (rocket)

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A news item involving Antares (rocket) was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 23 April 2013.

Wikipedia

How many stages izzat?

The lede says two stages. The body of the article discusses the third stage. How many stages are there? And let's get the article internally consistent. N2e (talk) 22:05, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed.--Craigboy (talk) 01:23, 2 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First Launch Date?

Done (sdsds - talk) 05:35, 21 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lede says 3rd quarter 2011, infobox says 2nd quarter 2011. Both are wrong, it's been moved to 4th quarter 2011. Will someone more experienced please update it? Thanks

http://www.orbital.com/TaurusII/ 128.154.36.66 (talk) 12:34, 20 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As of Dec 2011, the cited date in the article is now 1Q2012. N2e (talk) 23:28, 13 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"SpaceFlight Now" says June 2012. 94.30.84.71 (talk) 11:39, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Name change: Taurus II is now Antares

The company has changed the name of the rocket: On Dec. 12, 2011 Orbital Sciences renamed the launch vehicle "Antares" from the previous designation of Taurus II. This has been added to the article but ought to be documented on the Talk page to make the old discussions more clear. N2e (talk) 23:30, 13 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Antares flight 1

"The hot-fire test will be followed about one month later by the maiden flight of the Antares rocket, which will carry a Cygnus mass simulator payload that will be heavily instrumented to gather data on the launch environment aboard Antares. In addition, four small “pico satellites” will be deployed from two dispensers that will be integrated with the mass simulator."

http://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/release.asp?prid=829

Image Gallery

Here is NASA's image gallery for the Antares. --Wingtipvorte^X PTT ∅ 20:27, 3 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of info

Page. 114/125

http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/media/The_Annual_Compendium_of_Commercial_Space_Transporation_2012.pdf

--Craigboy (talk) 18:52, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Gross Liftoff Mass: 290,000 kg
• Vehicle Length: 40 m
• Vehicle Diameter: 3.9 m
• Mass to ISS Orbit: 5000 kg Baseline

6265 kg Enhanced

http://www.orbital.com/Antares-Cygnus/files/Pre-Launch-Guest-Briefing.pdf --Craigboy (talk) 23:25, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hot fire test scheduled for 13 February 2013 (tomorrow)

Hopefully we'll be able to get some pictures from that.--Craigboy (talk) 00:38, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Does the 2ndStage engine really ignite only after a long coast following MECO?

Does the Antares second-stage engine really ignite only after a long coast following mainengine cutoff (MECO) on the first stage? This Orbital-released graphic seems to indicate as much: Orbital Sciences graphic of Antares launch viewing area. If this is correct, we should find a reliable source for it and reflect the engineering and launch dynamics rationale for this rather odd design of the launch trajectory. N2e (talk) 16:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Except that this isn't really odd for any launcher involving solid stages, especially for all-solid rockets (check out Pegasus, Taurus, Scout, Vega, the Japanese Mu series etc.). Since most of these solid stages have a higher acceleration rate than most liquid rocket stages (thus shorter burn times, IIRC most finish their jobs within 2 minutes), in order to get to a circular orbit you need to let the solid stage coast to close to the apogee before starting the burn; otherwise the resulting orbit would be too high in apogee and too low in perigee. It's just that there are not a lot of two stage launchers with a liquid lower stage and a solid upper stage.

I don't think this feature is particularly notable - just one of the ways to distribute your impulse for acceleration. Maybe others have opinions, but personally I probably won't note this in the article. Galactic Penguin SST (talk) 17:31, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence of Innumeracy

One of the bad things about Wikipedia is it is often written and edited by innumerate people. Take this information:

.....with a 293.4 kilonewtons (66,000 lbf) average (395.7 kilonewtons (89,000 lbf) maximum) thrust....

Even though the metric appears in the primary position, the USC is the round number. It is very doubtful that the average and maximum values are in reality round numbers and the actual numbers were rounded for the sake of an easier number to remember.

With this in mind it is very wrong to convert to an exact metric value as was done. The degree of rounding should be identical. There is no reason the metric values can not be stated as 300 kN and 400 kN.

Makes one wonder if the 300 kN and 400 kN are not the true values and were converted to USC, rounded then back converted to an exact conversion.

Also, why is the metric unit kilonewton spelled out instead of using its correct symbol of kN.