SpaceX just made history.

[mschmoyer]

What a show! Can't find anything as amazing as that these days. Worth letting a few people get extremely rich to see actual human achievement in something bigger than us.

Updated orbit puts it a little closer to what they shot for:
"But astronomers online noticed some discrepancies with the numbers Musk tweeted, and SpaceX ultimately sent a revised orbit to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Wednesday (You can find it by selecting “target body” -143205.) The new orbit shows that the car will indeed travel farther out than the orbit of Mars, but not far enough to make it to the asteroid belt. The belt begins about 329 million miles from the Sun, and the Tesla will reach a distance about 160 million miles away from the Solar System’s star."

[S_K]

Unconfirmed scuttlebutt is that the middle booster was diverted off so it did not hit the drone ship. It was coming in too fast and would have punched a hole thru the ship. A decision was made to sacrifice the the booster instead of losing both the booster and the ship.

Elon Musk did say in his press conference.

The center core was only able to relight one of the three engines necessary to land, and so it hit the water at 300 miles per hour about 300 feet from the drone ship. As a result, two engines on the drone ship were taken out when it crashed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a press call after the rocket launch. “[It] was enough to take out two thrusters and shower the deck with shrapnel,” he said.

[Strychnine]

Unconfirmed scuttlebutt is that the main booster was diverted off so it did not hit the drone ship. It was coming in too fast and would have punched a hole thru the ship. A decision was made to sacrifice the the booster instead of losing both the booster and the ship.

Elon Musk did say in his press conference.

The center core was only able to relight one of the three engines necessary to land, and so it hit the water at 300 miles per hour about 300 feet from the drone ship. As a result, two engines on the drone ship were taken out when it crashed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a press call after the rocket launch. “[It] was enough to take out two thrusters and shower the deck with shrapnel,” he said.

Makes sense. They've obviously nailed the guidance for landing, so a last-minute miss to save the barge sounds plausible.

The core section was an older design anyway (block 3?) so there's no real point in saving it for future use.

[S_K]

My guess is this was a planned automatic event. Obviously the engineers asked the question "What do we do if comes in too fast?" and planned scenarios and software around it.

[Sgt Beavis]

That guy sure knows how to waste other people’s money!!! Wouldn’t put one dime in his rockets and shit nobody buys

Well, if you're nobody, then yes nobody buys it.

They've already got 5 Falcon Heavy missions on the manifest.

As far as 'other peoples money', I guess that is a reference to the government funding SpaceX has gotten. NASA gave them $396million to develop both the Falcon9 and the Dragon capsule. Compare that to the EELV rockets (AtlasV and DeltaIV) that were developed under contracts costing $3.9Billion. ULA (a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed/Martin) is charging between $109million to $153million per launch (depending on configuration). There are also options that push that to $180million.. These are the standard rockets and not the heavy version of the DeltaIV which only has about half the lift capacity of the F9H. The EELV rockets are also rehashes of older designs and used an existing Russian rocket engine. The Falcon 9 was a clean sheet design by comparison. The standard Falcon9 is $60million per flight and the F9H is $90million per flight. Those are before discounts are applied for reused boosters.

Also, the F9 Heavy was produced without any taxpayer money. Not a dime.

So yes, it's other peoples money but it's also a bargain. I haven't even gotten into the SLS rocket that has already cost $7BILLION and may never fly. If it does fly, it will likely cost $500-$1billon per launch.

One more thing, the Trump administration was eyeballing the F9Heavy launch. Rumors are that Pence wants to kill the SLS rocket and use the F9H to return us to the moon.

[Strychnine]

My guess is this was a planned automatic event. Obviously the engineers asked the question "What do we do if comes in too fast?" and planned scenarios and software around it.

For sure, this would have been a contingency plan built into the guidance software. In that moment there's no way they would put the "splash vs barge" decision on the shoulders of just one person, with the world watching, and only seconds to decide

if (SPEED < ____ ) {cout << land on barge}
else {cout << Kill as many fish as possible}

[blandnuts]

Flm!

[46Tbird]

Makes sense. They've obviously nailed the guidance for landing, so a last-minute miss to save the barge sounds plausible.

In that moment there's no way they would put the "splash vs barge" decision on the shoulders of just one person,..

It's not a BARGE.

Unconfirmed scuttlebutt is that the middle booster was diverted off so it did not hit the drone ship.

It is a DRONE SHIP, which sounds much cooler.

[Strychnine]

It's not a BARGE.

It is a DRONE SHIP, which sounds much cooler.

I'll droneship your face.

[juiceweezl]

No you sank my battleship meme?

[Darren M]

Thought y'all would dig this.

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18343/did-the-u-s-air-force-bomb-a-rogue-spacex-booster-rocket

[Strychnine]

NatGeo was at the FH launch filming for a doc. Elon, at liftoff:

"Holy flying fuck, that thing took off." and then he ran outside to watch



Maybe he wasn't bullshitting about only expecting 50/50 odds






Also, astronomers have tracked the roadster in space

The roughly two-ton Roadster was about about 290,000 miles away, or a distance roughly 50,000 miles beyond the orbit of the moon.

But Masi and Schwartz didn't stop with still photos. On Friday, they posted what they called a "stunning" animation of the Roadster flying through space. According to Musk, the Roadster was set to rocket to a speed of roughly 25,000 miles per hour.

"We immediately spotted the Tesla Roadster, quite bright, around mag. 15.5," Masi wrote in a blog post. "We managed to take dozen of images, and we used a group of them to show the trail of the object across the stars."

"The object is slowly fading: you can image it now with a 6" or so scope," Masi told Business Insider in an email. "In one month or so it will need a much larger scope to be imaged (16" or larger)."

[KBScobravert]

Pretty cool how it weaves between those stars.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

[jw33]

This morning SpaceX for the first time reused one of the block5 versions of the Falcon9 that was previously used in May. They recovered the first stage, again, out in the ocean on a drone ship. Just another day at the office....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjfQNBYv2IY

[Sgt Beavis]

This morning SpaceX for the first time reused one of the block5 versions of the Falcon9 that was previously used in May. They recovered the first stage, again, out in the ocean on a drone ship. Just another day at the office....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjfQNBYv2IY

The turn around for this booster was ~3 months. Because it was the first block 5 booster, they tore it down to get an idea of the wear from flight and reassembled it for another launch. They have a goal of turning the booster around in 2 weeks but it'll be a while until they do that.

I'm speculating they will try to re-fly this booster at least 10 times and tear it down a few more times to track the wear over time. After that they may refurbish it totally to try and get up to 100 flights as has been suggested in the past.

Anyways, what an exciting time to be alive. The unmanned test flight of the Dragon v2 capsule is scheduled for November. If that goes right they will try and conduct a manned test flight in February 2019.