I still remember John Glenn and the Mercury missions. This stuff is so far advanced from that. Engineering at its finest.... I hope.
I am here, wonder If I can see it? need to look this direction ---- > partly cloudy here, at the moment
Nice to see they're being safe not sorry. I hope it pays off. There is a tendency to look upon Space Travel as something routine while it is still terribly dangerous and this has had tragic results Private space travel is the way to go. Hopefully they will couple this with NASA's plan to return to the moon in 4 years and we may indeed see lunar colonies in our lifetimes. Remember, many people were quite confident we would see such years before 2000
LOL, I seen an older fella on the next block looking NEward, asked him if he was looking for the shuttle, he was and I gave him the news, he said "thanks for helping me save some minutes of my life, no more need to stand here."
Cool space suits Cool having the Teslas deliver the astronauts Cool ramp Cool cabin - very TNG I'm waiting for Wesley Crusher to appear any moment. As I understood the narration, this rocket design has made about 20 unmanned flights over the last ten years; some to the space station. They had one disaster but it is now believed to be a proven and reliable design. So it isn't like the early days of the NASA programs. This has been well tested in comparison.
this wouldn't be the same as walking on the moon for boosting morale, it was done in partnership with a corporate raider.
They should move the launch site to Yuma AZ, it has the most sunny days in all the US and is a great spot for that amazing Falcon reverse landing.
You want to launch as far South as possible - as close to the equator as possible. This maximizes the advantage of the earth's rotation. We [the rocket] use the existing rotational velocity of the earth and add to that. The farther North you go, the more it costs in fuel to achieve the same orbital velocity.
Now a 70% chance of a launch today. They have a very narrow launch window today - only one moment to launch. Either a go or no go. No delays.
Everything seemed to work perfectly. We lost the signal for a moment when the first stage landed on the retrieval ship dammit! I wanted to see that. But a moment later the signal was back and the first stage was safely landed.
Brain Challenge: Can anyone show how we calculate the orbital velocity? And when have we reached "max Q"
I do not have the calculations. But max Q depends on the vehicle and its aerodynamics, speed and altitude and weight of the cargo. If they shoot satellites into space they have different farings, the part which covers the satellite during the way up. So max Q differs at every start. Why is max Q so important. The structure of a rocket can hold only so much load. If they would not throttle down the engines, for those few seconds, they just would push through the rocket. At those speeds, past mach 1 a few seconds means altitude which reduces the density of the atmosphere, less friction, less pressure from the top to the bottom. The bottom pushes like crazy and the top gets stopped by the thick atmosphere. I understand the mechanics, but the math is beyond me.