theyre launching in 5mins and will attempt to land the 1st stage in FL. http://www.spacex.com/webcast/
Some sort of communication satellite. Amazing they soft landed the 1st stage! That will supposedly lower the cost of future launches
That's so cool, particularly the upright landing part...suppose they use the 6 axis control ECU out of a Ducati? On another note, when I see this I am totally amazed by what NASA did 50 years ago with slide rules and vacuum tubes....
No kidding! It's still a difficult endeavor today but the old guys also didn't know what they didn't know.....materials are better ect. Somewhat surprising every rocket didn't blow up
I hope they're showing this stuff in schools the way they did with launches/etc. in the sixties. If we want kids to be inspired to go into STEM, this is just the ticket.
Setting a new benchmark for performance for sure. CAn't wait to see what this does to space travel when you can control the costs this much, Fantastic.
When the first stage landed the crowd outside of mission control went bonkers! There was so much excitement that I momentarily forgot that the mission hadn't been completed yet. S1 landed before S2 finished its burn and delivered the payload. We cheered as each of the satellites was finally released into orbit. I would compare the levels of tension and elation to being at a championship game combined with a rock show. Except with more nerds. Best day of work ever.
I saw today some interesting numbers on launch cost. Total launch cost was $50-60 million Cost of 1st stage is $40million alone!!! Cost of fuel for landing $200K I guess if you can reuse a $40million part it will drastically cut down launch cost!
I geeked out so hard I ordered two shirts and two hats from SpaceX just after the launch. Anybody know the estimated turn around time to rebuild / refit stage 1? I guess if it costs less than $40M to get it back on the pad it's still a cost savings over a new rocket.
Good call by SpaceX to have it at night. You know serve some cocktails to the nerds and watch them go crazy. I bet it could be the new rave events. Watched it live last night on the interwebs and I'll admit I got excited when the light washout effect diminished a bit and you saw the stage upright and still slowing. Then bam, lights out and it was still upright. Kind of wish I was there with all the other nerds. Wondered why this was on land and the other attempts were on a barge. Read the twitter link about the payload differences though, so next step is the barge?
From what I read from Musk, the turnaround logistics are still being figured out. Not sure they really know what has to refurnished and what has to be replaced to reuse the stage.
I was thinking that may be the case. Until you have a used stage to pick apart you don't really know what you need to replace. If they can reuse the motors that alone would probably be a huge savings.
The party after Dragon first docked with the ISS got so out of hand that there was an email telling people not to bring booze to launches. There were still a couple pops of champagne being opened last night. The first attempts on the barge were for safety reasons. We weren't given clearance for a land landing until we could demonstrate we could hit a target. Even though the pervious attempts were failures, we did prove we could navigate back accurately. The orbit we're putting the payload into also dictates whether we're landing on land or the barge. Some orbits will put the rocket significantly downrange and we wouldn't have the fuel to make it back to land. The extra fuel needed to come back a further distance will mean less mass available for payload.