space x live

They made it to orbit. 19 hours until they dock with the ISS.

First stage successfully landed on the droneship in the Atlantic.

Fantastic stuff. Luckily I woke up from my nap and my son had it on tv.

Nice to finally see this country get back in the "driver's seat" of space exploration...

Now i know what it's' like to drive from the inside of an IPhone!

From the reports I’ve heard .... don’t you get enuff NAPS at the starting line ??!!

ORE is this a multi DAILY routine now that yur a seasoned citizen?!

Or just another photo op while standing on the roof of the tallest building around for miles just after a passing lightning storm spending a majority of one' time with your back to the launch pad and turning promptly away after launch even before the successful rocket launch reaches the altitude of the the Challenger explosion. Did I mention Florida is the lightning Capital of the US?

Yup, we are back in the saddle.

Several weeks ago I finished up a set of heads at 10:30pm. My son and a buddy were sipping a few so I mixed up a vodka and Mountain Dew. One and a half quarts of apple pie moonshine, a bottle of fireball, and a few more mixed drinks the sun came up. I took three naps that day and my 31 year old son still wasn’t out of bed. Nights like this are fun and I enjoy one about once a year but it’s also where the saying never again comes from. But yes I enjoy a nap almost every day.

It's good to have an administration who knows what NASA is...and what it isn't!

I watched it live, and to be honest, a three-stage rocket with capsule at the top brought back memories of my youth and watching the Apollo program launchings with my family.

Honest question - so, the right screen was showing the first stage returning to the droneship. It was still well above the clouds, then started turning sideways a bit..... then the live feed went blank, a 'technical issues' screen came up, and then returned 'live' five seconds later and showing the booster already landed on drone. How does it go from way above the clouds to a perfect landing in five seconds?

Was wondering the same thing, the conspiracy types are going to have a hey-day with that. Same with the 19 hours to get to the ISS, they say it doesn't take that long (minutes to get home) its because they are stopping at all the secret space stations first etc lol

Why it takes 19 hours to get to the ISS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNXPtZDS-cg

There is a quicker 5ish hour route, but they want to do a lot of tests of the capsule on this launch before they get there.


Must have been low lying clouds near the landing zone. They've landed... 50+?, so it's hardly a conspiracy that they can land them.

I was looking forward to that landing...
I know they have done it before, but I've never actually seen it.
So I kept my eye on it right up until the bank screen, then bam... its landed... WTH?
Backed up the DVR... figured I missed something...
Nope, it went from in the clouds to platform in less time than it took me to pick up my remote.

Oh well... another of life's little mysteries....
Like how breaking a window, stealing a case of beer, a 65" TV & then torching the place is called "Protesting"

The drone ship uses a satellite link to send footage back. The turbulence from the exhaust rocks it enough that it loses it's connection. It dies on pretty much every drone ship landing.

... and why am I not surprised... someone has made an entire video about this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH75bVG7HBo

Here's a land-landing with pretty good footage. https://youtu.be/SlgrxVuP5jk?t=1255

Ok I watched both and the 2nd one was pretty cool...

But it doesn't explain what we all saw today... Getting from cloud level to siting on the platform in about 10sec.
In the video you provided it took 2 1/2 min to land, after the 1st time it re-fired the rocket to slow it down
And a full 40seconds to land after re-firing the rocket the 2nd & final time...
No matter how you look at it, that's a heck of a lot longer than today's 5-10sec signal lost message.

Now I wish I would have hit "record".

That, along with individuals like Musk with the vision and talent to make it happen, only sad point to our space program is how much farther along and developed it could have been over the last few decades hadn't we been too preoccupied wasting trillions on useless wars and invasions on all fronts, hopefully future administrations see the need to continue rather than mothball

I disagree, I think our government waste way to much tax payers money on space. If it was up to me I would let private company like Space X develop business opportunities in outer space.
Humans can't live in outer space and prosper or on the Moon or Mars, why are we wasting our resources, exotic metals and fuel and money on doing this?
I think our country should only spend money in space on national defense
John F Kennedy dream has become our American tax payers worst nightmare

Says the man with a PHD in astrophysics.

NASA gets about 0.5% of the Annual Federal Budget.

The international space station has been continuously inhabited since November 2, 2000.

"Space Exploration Technologies Corp., trading as SpaceX, is a private American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. SpaceX has developed several launch vehicles and the Dragon spacecraft.

SpaceX's achievements include the first privately funded liquid-propellant rocket to reach orbit (Falcon 1 in 2008),the first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft (Dragon in 2010), the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station (Dragon in 2012), the first propulsive landing for an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2015), the first reuse of an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2017), the first private company to launch an object into orbit around the Sun (Falcon Heavy's payload of a Tesla Roadster in 2018), and the first private company to send astronauts to the International Space Station (Dragon 2 in 2020)" Wiki

Your just one of those "old farts" just for sh1ts and giggles, what if I told you I had a program that for every $1 (one) US dollar you invest, your return would be $14?, I'm sure you'd be pleased with that?...yes?, if so, then that's your return according to the Rand Corporation (those pesky think tank guys that crunch ALL numbers for mankind's knowledge) for every US dollar invested since 1957 in the space program, evidently your not aware of all the medical/communication technology/computer/AI/energy development/ vast new knowledge/etc/etc/etc/etc/etc that the space program has brought to your front door... or are you more at ease with the TRILLIONS we've spent rebuilding sh1tholes over the decades we've spent TRILLIONS on blowing up over the decades with ZERO return on our "investment"?

Yes, the timing looked odd, but then nobody over the years seems to complain about the broadcast audio from the Nascar live action "IN CAR Cameras" is pre-recorded, as from the words years back of an Emmy winning Audio Broadcast mixer, who will remain nameless. I can see the need for positive optics in such a high profile event, I mean this was only the third sitting President in history to view a manned launch in person, that it could be rationalized showing a taped segment of the the touchdown of a similar event. I wouldn't do it, but heck the nation is in need of something going right. In war, truth is the first causally thinking.

However, I was watching the boosters "correction" thrusters on TV live as it was descending, and depth perception of course was very difficult to ascertain, and as the booster descended to the clouds, I was very amazed how much angle the thrusters were correcting the booster relative to the clouds, in that it was an awful lot, or it was very close to the cloud cover, what we don't know is, at what altitude was that cloud cover, and as I suspect, visuals play little role in the touchdown, and because of the timing, 5? sec might have what it was. I don't know.

I lived in SO CA from 1945 until 2005, I worked in the Telephone industries in and on a bunch of different military bases in SO CA including Edwards AFB and the Rocket site on the same property,
I spent 2 yrs in the U.S. Army from 1966 to 1968, I know government waste when I see it on base and in other non military programs.
As far as return on investment do you trust everything you read? I don't
Way to many people have become very wealthy off of government funded projects that the average person gained little no benefits from
This (a lot of these problems with government funded unneeded projects all started in the early 1960s after JFK was killed in Dallas ,TX to make his Vice President LBJ, become our President
Do you know how and where our government gets it money now? If not please find out

Day-ummmm C Burge-er ! .....you are an old .... and you are right on GOV waste !

AND me thimks that we should learn more about MOTHER EARTH and the depths of the crust and the depths of the Oceans first ...

How many lives would have been lost if we did not have weather satellites in orbit over the planet? We'd still be using vacuum tubes, and telco techs would have been still working on old rotary switch technologies in central offices if it weren't for the push to miniaturize electronic components to reduce the size of the payloads put into orbit. There are literally thousands of spin off technologies with applications here on Earth that have arisen from the money we've spent on the space program. People [censored] and moan about the money spent on the space program most likely because it's one of the most visible places government dollars have been spent. Yet each B2 bomber costs approx. 2.1 Billion dollars......

spinoffs.nasa.gov

Americans spend three time more on pets each year than we do on space exploration...

I just watched the DM-2 landing again. It looks like they did have some reception issues during the last couple minutes before landing (at least on the stream I just reviewed). I'm just going to go with a low cloud cover

Some more goodies: failed landings, and explosions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ&t=6s
This is what happens when the grid fins run out of hydraulic fluid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcLz1hTRkWM Those fins are large.. ~5'x6' IIRC. On final approach, the booster doesn't actually move laterally to be over the landing pad until the last moment, so if anything goes wrong, it crashes not on the pad. The grid fins are now made out of.. cast? titanium, since the aluminum ones were melting during some reentry profiles

That shows you exactly how many Americans are stupid, huh
When I started working for the local telephone company as a beginning apprentice lineman in 1964 my check showed that the total government deductions, Federal Income tax,( about 4%) Social Security tax (2.5% of the gross), (this was before Medicare deductions), CA State disability tax(1.5%, no CA income tax at that time and maybe one other deduction was less than 19% total. I did still have to pay CA state sales tax (5 3/4 %) on everything but grocery, gasoline taxes and a lot of other state and federal taxes.
When I was reduce in force from the Telephone company in 1997 I was paying 28.5% Federal income tax, 7 1/2 % Soc. Sec. tax, 2 1/2 % medicare tax, 5.0 % CA state income tax, 1.5 % CA state disability tax, 7 3/4 CA sales tax as well as property taxes, gas tax, Federal Excise taxes and so on.
My point is all the different Government agency where getting a bigger percent of my earnings than I was
TIME to Vote all them rascals out of office and vote in more public servants wanting to help make our country better

To emphasize your very valid point, there was no legit reason to spend the money to relocate the existing NASA space control from Cape Canaveral to Houston. It was blatant money and political patronage at work.

I am surprised few seem to understand the basis if the biggest failure of the Space shuttle, the dreaded O rings, and why they were the chosen design solution.
The reason, the solid rocket boosters were originally filled in a below ground level silo in the Everglades south of Homestead, Florida, and then shipped by barge up to the launch site, for the prototypes. I believe the abandoned assembly site still exists. The problem became, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was Senator Warren Hatch, and he was from Utah, the Home of Morton Thiokol a major rocket builder, and there are no barges able to get there from the Cape. So, they came up with a segmented shippable solid rocket booster, using O rings, and the rest is history another example of incremental government waste.

Senator Warren Hatch. LOL, You are funny.

And that qualifies you to make statements like "Humans can't live in outer space and prosper or on the Moon or Mars"?

No John, that experience doesn't qualify me for making that statement, I think common sense does

Hundreds of years ago many thought the western portion of North America was uninhabitable by European immigrants.

It wasn't supposed to be funny, more like a brain fart, I'm sure its not this first for Orin.

Well, it’s the second for you! It’s Orrin. If you are going to try to lay blame for a space flight disaster on the party of your disfavor, at least get the accused names right!

LOL.

I didn't see it as a jab at the other party, but instead a jab at the politics that encourages building things in as many different congressional districts as possible. It was that decision that led to the o-rings.

Of course you didn’t.

If I thought "party" was a factor, trust me, I would have gone there, what I did leave out, it's the populaces propensity to cut decision makers undue slack when they might be of the same party, which costs EVERYONE at the least money, "blame" here is for each to decide on their own, the shuttle boosters blew up because of a compromised poor engineering design choice likely due to non engineering influence. Trying to assign "party" blame, is just a furtherance of why these things happen, because people are looking to one up the other for their own agenda, IMO.

And minor spelling errors, are hardly a brain fart worth keeping score over, but hey, its a free country.

My understanding of the real cause of the O ring failures was NASA pushing to launch in weather condition that exceeded the lower operating temperature range of the O rings to seal properly :scope
THEY GOOFED up and killed some good people, more Government waste of people and resources
Nobody got punished for that decision that I know of, I think they should have had a full open investigation and taken appropriate actions to ensure that it never happened again

IIRC, the orings did fail at liftoff, but then sealed again. During the flight a bad gust of wind made everything flex which opened up the hole again. That was when it started to burn through the external tank, and everything went wrong.

Wonderful!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/spacex-crew-captures-jaw-dropping-194636084.html

Yes, the Orings failed for reasons you mentioned, my point, Orings/joints never should have been considered as a solution in the first place, boosters should have been one single piece, but that solution got over ruled by those with a different agenda.

I thought the exact same thing.

I did some research, and the rocket lands AMAZINGLY fast!

Start this vid at 34 seconds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sJlFzUQVmY

I'll leave the video outage to coincidence. I will be the first to say that technology fails at the most inopportune time.

I'f it happens again, them I'm suspicious.

Fun fact on that fast landing...

A single engine (of nine total), firing at its lowest throttle point, with a light booster mostly empty of fuel, still has enough thrust to take off.

So it does a "hover-slam": it has to time the firing of the engine such that it hits 0' elevation at the same time that it reaches 0 velocity. Too late and it hits too hard. Too soon and it takes off again.

And the booster part that's landing is ~155' tall.

They had another launch earlier tonight, and landed on the drone ship again. It didn't cut out right at landing like last time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4xBFHjkUvw

I heard it and felt it going up but didn't go out to look at it. Night launches are the best.

There’s this one particular who worked on a flying machine that LOOKS kinda like the machine below who could give some INSIGHT on this ! .... he’s from Slide-into-Hell ... LOUSYanna .... HIS WORD !