SpaceX set for over 300 missions in 5 years: Musk
San Francisco, May 13: After an updated version of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral carrying Bangladesh's first communications satellite into orbit, its Founder and CEO Elon Musk on Sunday said his company is set for over 300 missions in five years.
The "Block 5" booster, the final substantial upgrade to SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle, was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre on its maiden flight on Friday.
The rocket's first stage was successfully recovered, landing on the "Of Course I Still Love You" offshore droneship, about eight minutes after the launch, at an unmanned platform vessel in the Pacific Ocean.
"SpaceX will probably build 30 to 40 rocket cores for 300 missions over 5 years. Then the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) takes over & Falcon retires. Goal of BFR is to enable anyone to move to moon, Mars & eventually outer planets," Musk tweeted on Sunday.
The "Block-5" booster is designed to be capable of 10 or more flights with very limited refurbishment as SpaceX continues to strive for rapid reusability and extremely high reliability,
"Rate at which things are getting more bizarre appears to be increasing. In the future, it will seem bizarre that we used to crash rockets into the ocean instead of reusing them," Musk added.
Falcon 9 rocket, aiming to bring astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) in the future, came with many design changes to improve its reusability and reliability. Those changes may make engineers easier to refurbish its first stages for more flights.
The new rocket has improved its helium tanks submerged in liquid oxygen propellant tanks in the second stage. The helium tanks were ruptured in a pre-launch test on September 1, 2016, causing an explosion.
The Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR, which will be used to explore Mars -- a goal that Musk hopes to accomplish by 2022 -- will be built in the Port of Los Angeles.
According to media reports, the LA Board of Harbor Commissioners gave its unanimous approval to permit SpaceX to build the BFR Mars rocket at a new facility on Terminal Island at the Port of Los Angeles.
The report said the new rocket manufacturing facility would be built on a 19-acre parcel on the mostly artificial island that's part of the port. The facility would provide employment to as many as 700 people, according to SpaceX.
According to Musk, the huge new rocket would be nearly 350 feet tall and span 30 feet in diameter.
Last month, NASA's next planet-hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess), was successfully launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Tess is expected to find thousands of new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, including some that could support life.
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Assam to lift all cases against Koch Rajbongshis in Foreigners' Tribunals: CM Himanta Biswa Sarma
Guwahati, Apr 4 (PTI): The Assam cabinet has decided to lift all cases pending against people from the Koch Rajbongshi community in the Foreigners' Tribunals, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Friday.
They will also no longer carry the tag of 'D' or doubtful voters, he said.
''There are 28,000 cases pending in different Foreigners' Tribunals in the state against people of the community. The cabinet has taken a historic decision of lifting the cases with immediate effect,'' Sarma said at a press conference here after the cabinet meeting.
The government believes that the Koch Rajbongshis are an indigenous community of the state and they are an inextricable part of ''our social and cultural fabric'', he asserted.
The people of this community are poor and have suffered a lot over the years, he said.
''They will no longer carry the tag of foreigners or ‘D’ voters,'' the CM said.
Foreigners Tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies, particularly in Assam, established to determine if a person residing in India is a "foreigner" as defined by the Foreigners Act of 1946, based on the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order of 1964.
These tribunals are designed to address matters related to citizenship and the presence of “foreigners” in India, specifically focusing on cases where someone is suspected of being an illegal immigrant.
There are 100 Foreigners’ Tribunals across Assam.
The Koch Rajbongshis have a sizeable presence in Assam, West Bengal, Meghalaya, and parts of Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan, and they demand Scheduled Tribe status.
