Yeah I know a bunch of people who missed the cut unfortunately. I knew in June/July this was coming, I was told to make sure my performance review was stellar...
Thank goodness someone else bumped the thread. Couldn't bring myself to make it four posts in a row. Very cool, and congrats on contributing to something so special. Sorry to hear you're no longer with them though, I know that layoff was pretty tough for a lot of people. Like CPP said, there's no public consensus yet. Lots of speculation, but the FAA environmental impact report says that they won't, and I've heard that it would need to be updated if they actually would like to try. Here's a clip from the report:
The abort is going to trigger when the vehicle hits maxQ (max aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle) and Dragon will jettison. At that point the vehicle is going to be flying with no aerodynamic cover on top of the second stage. Opinions are mixed whether the vehicle will just tear itself apart or if we'll lose control and abort will be triggered, but like mpusch mentioned we aren't getting that stage back. Either way, I'm way excited for that launch. It's also worth noting that because we aren't actually trying to get to orbit, second stage isn't going to have an engine and will have a mass simulator in its place.
You'd have made the cut and be working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week getting Demo-2 built. You threw deuces before that could happen though!
I'm not a rocket surgeon, but aren't the pieces-parts of this thing kinda wrinkly for a rocket? It would seem like it would be a lot more aerodynamic if it was smooth. This thing looks like it was w̶e̶l̶d̶e̶d̶ hammered together in shop class.
Maybe Elon is trolling us. No effin' way I'd get in that thing to take off to any-damn-where. I might actually get the heebie-jeebies standing within its fall-over radius.
I'm jealous of any and all of you who have had any type of aeronautical experience. Flight of any kind is one of the most amazing things to me, and one of the only things on this green earth that fascinate me.
It's just a prototype - meant to do vertical hops up to a few thousand kilometers eventually. Going to shake down the new Raptor engines and test their models. The real thing is going to look wayyy more put together. You'd really laugh when you knew the top half of the rocket *literally* blew away in some high winds several weeks ago. As an example, here's the earliest prototype for the Falcon 9 (essentially).
Shameless plug: Falcon Heavy (the big one) is launching this afternoon out of Kennedy Space Center. Launch window opens up at 6:30pm EST, but latest communication is that we're targeting the end of the 2 hour window and will launch closer to to 8:30pm EST. Grasshopper sits right outside the building where I work and redefines what "rocket science" is. That thing is thrown together with off the shelf parts (it has Fox shocks on the legs) and, with the engine and all the AVI removed, looks like something built in your garage.
Since I'm way past the editing window: I meant to say a few kilometers. Thanks for the heads up on the window expectations, counting down the hours!
Thanks for the reminder. I'll be watching from my sons baseball practice. Cloud cover could put a damper on things, though....
Why does the feed from the drone ship ALWYAYS cut out right at landing? Pretty awesome they nailed all three landings.
Vibrations from a huge rocket landing right on top of it. This messes up the satellite feed until it's settled. What a great mission. Seeing the double landing hasn't gotten old, but the center core landing after a toasty trajectory was really something.
Not sure it will ever stop being exciting to watch those rockets return to the platform. Well done, folks. Watched the rocket go up while sipping coffee at my son's practice, then after I saw the rockets separate, watched the live feed of them returning to Earth.......so awesome.