Not sure how many people on here are interested in this type of stuff, but I figured I'd start a thread.
SpaceX launches the Falcon Heavy for the first time today, as it sends the original Tesla Roadster to orbit Mars (if everything goes to plan)
When it lifts off, it'll be the most powerful rocket in the world by the power of 2. Musk is hoping for not only a ground landing of the two boosters but also an ocean landing of the main stack.
Here's an animation of what we hope to see today! Big day for space travel if it's successful. T-minus 0 is 1:30 ET
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
Did I read that right, they're sending a car to Mars?
lol, yeah...govt approved. hahaha
Correct. With a fake astronaut in it.
It's Elon's original Roadster. He's a very bold man.
a la Heavy Metal
Into the Void / Rocket Engines Burning.....
Great we haven't put enough crap into orbit around Earth, now we are starting on Mars?
It won't be in a Mars orbit. It'll be in a Mars intercept orbit -- basically, the Roadster will meet up with Mars and then start going in it's own, billion year long orbit, around the Sun.
I've been keeping an eye on this, I love this stuff. Elon is the damn man!
I too support our future Martian overlord.
That dude is gonna be cold in that convertible. He should think about putting the top up.
That's one amazing camera drone to keep up with the Falcon Heavy through boost phase. ;^)
This makes me sad, though. If he wanted to get rid of one of his Tesla Roadsters, he could have just given it to me. I'd make it a good home.
I was able to get a great picture of one of the Space X launches here in Scottsdale a few weeks ago as I was heading home from work. The amazing thing is that the launch happened near San Diego, but the cone of light the rocket was putting off as it left the atmosphere illuminated the entire southern side of Camelback Mt.
My brother in San Diego had some great pictures of that. The whole of SoCal had no clue what was going on.
Honestly it was very startling to see, as no one had any idea that launch was taking place.
Probably just assumed the rest of the state had caught fire and accepted the inevitable.
I have been pretty excited about this for a bit now. For anyone interested there is supposed to be a live feed of the launch...
http://www.spacex.com/webcast
It's archived there too. And no one will ever convince me that whoever was talking actually said "Falcon Heavy" at 29:32.
I believe this is the definition of "FU" money. 'Yeah I'm just loading up my $200k roadster in a spaceship and sending it to mars today. '
Trust me, that roadster is worth a LOT more than 200K now. But yes, it's a big ole middle finger to the space industry
By the power of 2. Holy shit NASA is under-funded.
I work for a company that's a competitor to SpaceX. Still hope they succeed - would be awesome to see!
Blue Origins? I have a friend from school that works for them now.
There are multiple competitors to SpaceX
I've been seeing on Twitter that lift-off has been delayed to 2:50 pm EST due to heavy winds in the upper atmosphere. They have a window that lasts until 4pm, so they've already used more than half of it.
Launch has been put on hold for an hour due to upper-atmosphere winds. 2:20 is the new launch time.
They've got a 2.5 hour launch window from 1:30-4 p.m today
edit: drinks in class
edit 2: Now pushed to 3:15
Update: clock is currently paused as they figure out a new T-0., same issues with upper atmosphere winds. They've got another launch window tomorrow so if they push it back much more they might just scrub the mission for today.
I really want to see a launch today
Falcon Rocket Launch
Geeze you watch that movie now and the CGI is awful. But as a 5 year old at the time, it was the coolest freaking thing I had ever seen
Decent script. Good acting. Great music (film score & soundtrack). It was a blockbuster.
3:45 now. Have to decide by 2, I believe.
Sounding like there are no constraints right now. Launch would happen with the current conditions
edit: itshappening?.gif
I think you're right on the "decide by 2" part. Clock restarts from 2 hours and the launch window closes at 4pm.
Apparently I've become an expert on rocket launch conditions just from stalking Twitter for the past hour...
Edit: Just now noticed this above...I'll drink when I get off work...
Propellant is currently being loaded - one BIG step closer to this being a go...
So what are the odds that it's not a mannequin and actually Elon Musk going out like Major Tom?
T-minus 60 minutes, and propellant loading is going smoothly. I think we're gonna see a rocket launch today.
The Life On Mars soundtrack on the video was a nice touch. Probably my favorite Bowie song.
Livestream is up. 29 minutes until launch.
edit: Broadcast is up now. 20 minutes until launch.
If they use any of that special Jazz Cabbage oil fuel, they'll DEF have a SMOOOTH ride & out of this world, interplanetary experience.
The destination is Mars, not the dark side of the moon.
Go for launch. No issues.
CAN'T STREAM IT FROM WORK :(
5 minutes until launch. 1.5 million people watching the stream.
1 minute until launch. Falcon Heavy in startup. Here we go ladies and gents.
Successful launch so far. Supersonic.
More like Superchronic.
Booster cutoff. They're headed back to the Cape.
3rd booster headed for the drone ship.
THIS IS THE COOLEST FUCKING THING I'VE EVER SEEN. I HAVE GOOSEBUMPS.
THERE'S A CAR IN SPACE THAT'S PLAYING DAVID BOWIE.
Re-entry burn completed for the two side boosters. 2.3 million people watching.
I have to thank you guys. I didn't know this was happening today, and because of this thread was able to tune in right at launch time. Saw Skutt's "one minute warning" at 58 seconds before launch and was able to tune it in on time.
Awesome.
Maybe be one of the coolest things I ever saw live on TV.
Me, too! Thank you for the link! This was beyond words to witness. Took me back to my childhood and watching space launches while in school. Really feel how historic this event was. TKP rocks like a rocket ship!
Side boosters have landed. Holy shit.
Saw that live. That was really cool!
Heard they lost link to 3rd booster, wonder what that meant...
They said that vibrations on the drone ship can cause the video to go out. Appears to be routine, not necessarily anything wrong with the 3rd booster.
Doesn't mean they lost the booster, just the video feed through satellite uplink. That's what usually happens with the drone barge video when the booster's exhaust plume buffets the barge.
They did end up losing the booster. Not sure exactly what happened but the end result was it smacked the Atlantic at about 300 mph.
From what I read, it needed 3 boosters to ignite, but only 1 of them did
Just waiting for a TKPer to turn that into a gif.
There ya go.
Now just need to get twitter unblocked from work. =^/
That's an mp4, so I made a gif out of it...
Oh look, 2 more landed boosters than UVA's football team has wins over VT in 14 years.
...I'll live vicariously through you guys, just know that I'm extremely jealous, and sad.
That was one of the coolest things I've watched in a long while.
Should be the coolest thing you've watched since Sunday night.
Hah!
Yeah, the Super bowl was pretty awesome. But at the same time, watching a rocket blast off, deploy a Tesla Roadster into space (and effectively solar orbit) and see the boosters that got it there come back to Earth and both simultaneously hit the bullseye on the landing pad without the use of parachutes is mind bending. There's no better way to show how far aerospace engineering has come since the days of the shuttle than watching that.
I know it's all math but the two boosters landed at the exact same fucking time and that is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen
With the large amount of Mechanical, Civil, Aerospace, Nuclear Engineers, statisticians, mathematicians, etc on this site, i'm sure most would agree with your statement.
Couple of liberal arts grads in this house and we were thrilled.
I know, I know. You're people too =)
Well, we're both Hokies, anyway.
Still no word on the center core. Everything else went perfectly.
Timing is off here. What did I just watch?
The future.
In all seriousness: That was the test flight of the Falcon Heavy, SpaceX's 27-engine rocket. These types of re-usable rocket boosters dramatically cut the costs of space travel.
I had a conference call and forgot about this. I feel so left out.
Man that was awesome. Not really sure what else to say.
Well that was awesome but tell me what happened to the center core before you end the stream!!!
Chris Collinsworth is still debating whether or not it had a successful landing and what actually constitutes catching the core
Thread winner!
I wish this was a tweet
I made it into a tweet sort of...
This. Must. Go. Plaid!
Because their hosts were painful to watch try and kill time
I just watched a giant penis get launched into space
but seriously, that was pretty damn cool.
someone had to say it
I thought it looked like a giant flying inflated condom
That was incredible. I felt like I was watching the future of exploration be born right in front of my eyes.
For my way smarter friends on here, could humans as a civilization build some sort of tubing station that would be an alternative to launching ourselves on missiles into space.
I found this article, but I felt the rocket scientists from VT could give me a better idea.
We already have the technology to send trains into space, at a fraction of the cost of rockets
You should do some googling on this: Wiki - Space Elevator
Another link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/people-are-still-trying-build-space-elevator-180957877/
Edit: I'd love to know what imaginary place on earth that is. That river just does not look like a natural formation.
Something like that would only work at geostationary orbit, otherwise the difference in speed between the top/bottom would rip the whole thing apart.
That's the plan, as far as I know. Which also means this would work only on the equator.
Leg for the basic understanding of the space elevator restriction.
So an elevator just doesn't make sense to me, some sort of progressive ramp would.
Listening to the control center audio, sounds like the center core was lost.
Still. 2 out of 3 boosters, and a successful payload delivery is a good day for SpaceX. Congrats to them.
Elon Musk is the dude.
They have Dudes!
The delta-v needed to point the boosters backwards and then land them, in addition to all the instrumentation, during a launch like that is insane. That's some big-dick spaceflight right there. Almost entirely unnecessary, but a heck of a power move to pull that off.
It depends. A higher altitude orbit would spend more time going up than downrange, compared to a low earth orbit insertion, and would be easier to return the boosters to the launch point. Not necessarily a lot of delta-v in this case. For low earth orbit (and for the center core in this case), that's why they have the droneship downrange.
Oh of course, and actually I just found out they didn't even need the Falcon Heavy to get the roadster to Mars, but that's not even the point. That's fuel they didn't need to haul up there, just to point the boosters around and then do essentially a suicide burn to absolute perfection. That whole thing was just a big display of "we have a ton of money and we're really freakin' good at rockets" and it was awesome.
Qualified!
Now all you younguns know what it felt like for us old guys when we were kids in 1969 watching Apollo lift off.
Yeah that was basically the sexiest thing I've ever seen.
...at work at least.
I had a nerdgasm...
Basically a raging rocket boner.
Falcon DONKEY PUNCH!!!
Final update: It sounds like the center core ran out of igniter in two of the three engines, and so it smacked the water at 300 mph. SpaceX wasn't planning on re-using any of these boosters anyways, so landing 2 out of 3 is a huge success.
Awesome day today for space travel.
This has to be one of the coolest things I've seen.
I am betting that this is Jimmy Hoffa!
Naw, man. Too obvious. Jimmy's in pieces in a bag in the trunk.
Being crop dusted out of the tailpipe
Definitely cool.
A Tesla roadster hurtling through space with Bowie's "Life on Mars" being broadcast. That's marketing genius.
The only thing cooler would be if that roadster were sitting in my driveway, since it's basically space garbage at this point. Note that some of the the commentary in the attached article is by a Virginia Tech physicist, Dr. Nahum Arav.
Starman overshot it's trajectory