Well, if no lives were lost . . . analyze, fix, repeat. Fail faster, fix faster. Hopefully, in 30 years, people will be hawking the space launch "hockey stick graph" like they hawk the landing-on-carriers one these days.
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NEWS Space X nails it!
- Thread starter Flash
- Start date
They did it again, launched three main boosters for Falcon Heavy, had good separations, and thus far have landed two out of three of the boosters back at the Cape, still waiting to hear about the recovery of the main engine. Also, there is now a freakin Tesla in interplanetary orbit...
Edit: as pointed out by flash, one more burn to get onto trajectory... my bad.
Edit: as pointed out by flash, one more burn to get onto trajectory... my bad.
Falcon Heavy launched this afternoon, so far nominal (the third stage is supposed to do one more bun ~7 hours after launch to attain escape velocity). Here is a link to the video, pretty damn cool to see a pair of boosters landing in tandem right next to each other.
EDIT: Beat by Duc'guy!
EDIT: Beat by Duc'guy!
Live view of a car in orbit. That's pretty cool
Judge Q
Judging You
Anyone know if they bothered to register/get tags for that thing?
Elon's gonna get a helluva speeding ticket if the FHP sees it.
Anyone hear what happened to the first stage of the rocket? Both boosters recovered simultaneously at the cape (sweet video!), but they lost video feed on the drone barge, which makes me wonder if the center stage crashed into it.
We were watching the launch live from the ready room this afternoon with the whole wardroom in attendance- awesome!
We were watching the launch live from the ready room this afternoon with the whole wardroom in attendance- awesome!
I've been looking for that too, but until we hear from spacex or elon directly, we know nothing
Looks like the center core in pieces underwater. Only 1 of the 3 engines on the center core re-lit. Not safe to land on the pad, was diverted out to sea.
Unit hit water at 250kts +. Looks like cameras survived so they can get to the bottom of what’s at fault.
Unit hit water at 250kts +. Looks like cameras survived so they can get to the bottom of what’s at fault.
Imagine Earth's orbit. Then imagine Mars's orbit. Assuming the final burn goes well (which should be soon), it'll end up in an orbit where the highest point (relative to the Sun) touches Mars' orbit, and the lowest point touches Earth's. Basically, the last burn makes the rocket go faster than Earth, which elevates the highest point it can reach up to touch Mars' orbit, and then the Sun's gravity takes over and pulls it back down. At which point the Earth is somewhere else, because it's been going faster.
It'd need another burn (the second half of the Hohmann Transfer) near Mars to drop into Mars orbit, which was never the point of the whole thing anyway. They'd have had to wait until Mars was in position to catch up to where the rocket would be when the rocket got there. Interplanetary transfer orbits are basically like taking a guns shot. Match planes with the target and lead it.
Greatest episode of the whole series.
At this point it is a pretty good assumption that the core did not land successfully. SpaceX will no doubt refine it's technology on that front. But that was a benefit, not the goal. Everything seems to be on track right now on the primary objectives. They are delaying the next burn to prove that they can fly through the Van Allen radiation belts. They are showing that the upper stage can get to Geostationary orbit. This will hugely increase the size of payload that can get to Geostationary orbit.
