Elon Musk, SpaceX, launch of Falcon Heavy live on youtube

[Art Blade]

animation


this WAS the live stream, skip to 8.00 when the show begins

[PZ]

I just watched it live on television - it was a flawless launch, and watching the boosters land themselves was simply remarkable!

[Art Blade]

me on yt.

WOW, incredible, unreal, how synchronous, symmetrical and almost identical those two boosters landed, outstanding

Got to admire Elon Musk for pulling it off. Not the typical, usual NASA et al stuff, this was unique in every aspect.

[PZ]

WOW, incredible, unreal, how synchronous, symmetrical and almost identical those two boosters landed, outstanding

yes indeed - almost like watching a futuristic  syfi movie 

[Art Blade]

so cool, and funny

[Art Blade]

they do have a sense of humour, I love it "DON'T PANIC!" on the dashboard of the roadster, starman hanging one arm out the window.. the fact that they shot a car into space alone is just absolutely funny

And check the captions or subtitles of their vid "How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster" -- hilarious. My favourite is,
"look, it's not an explosion.. it's just a rapid unscheduled disassembly"

my second favourite is, "well, technically, it did land... just not in one piece"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

[Art Blade]

a very nice and detailed article can be found here:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/06/elon-musk-falcon-heavy-spacex-rocket-test-launch

[mandru]

 

[Art Blade]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImoQqNyRL8Y

[Art Blade]

one info is missing here so far, so update time: the centre core didn't make it back. One (centre) of three engines fired up again, the outer two didn't, causing the centre core to miss the landing area (drone ship) by about 300ft and crashing into the ocean at around 300mph.

After the upper stage with the tesla car "dwelled" several hours in the high-energy radiation of the Van Allen Belt, engines fired up to send the car on an orbit around the sun but apparently did too good a job by overshooting which sent the car on an orbit through a dense asteroid belt and close to a dwarf planet Ceres. It isn't known whether or not the car will hit anything but it seems likely.

[Art Blade]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59pY74ZhQ50

[Art Blade]

After the event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sytrrdOPYzA

[Art Blade]

simply put: I really like that man's approach, how he tackles that stuff. Having fun, inspiring. Dare do the impossible and succeed because despite all, they don't forget the fun in it. Risk? Sure. Inhibiting? Nope.

[PZ]

Absolutely 

[fragger]

Thanks for the uploads, Art

You know, I was nine years old when I watched Apollo 11 land on the moon, and at the time it occurred to me that by the year 2000, there would very probably be bases on the Moon and even hotels and tourism. The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey had screened here in the same year (in those days, films that were newly released in the USA would take 2-3 years to finally make their way here) and with its depictions of Pan-Am Space Clippers, orbital Hiltons and extensive moonbases, I was convinced that by 2000 I would be able to save up and take a vacation up there. I would be old by then (an ancient 40-year-old - you know how it is with kids ) but still young enough to make the trip.

Well, that didn't pan out, did it?

So here we are today, with Space X blazing new trails and talking about manned trips to Mars. Which is wonderful, as I believe the human race should go forth and spread itself among the stars eventually, but if only there hadn't been such a long hiatus between efforts. If it hadn't been for everyone bitching about how much space exploration cost and putting the money "to better uses" after Apollo 11, and the US government wasting zillions of dollars on oil-driven wars-for-profit, those moonbases and space stations just might have been a reality now.

There was such an air of expectancy and optimism in the 60s leading up to the first moon landing, a sense that we were on the threshold of a bold new chapter of history. We were about to embark on a new "frontier of going". That feeling manifested itself in TV shows like Star Trek and movies like 2001, as well as numerous advertisements, toys, and other products. We were bound for the stars. Then it all ground to a halt amid rapidly-fading public interest and government penny-pinching. It was like, "okay, we beat the Russians, now let's move on to other things".

It was one of the driving forces behind America's space program, Werner von Braun, who in fact believed that America should not have gotten involved in a race with the U.S.S.R. to the moon. He was more of the opinion that they should have taken more time and established a "space platform" in Earth orbit first, so that future deep-space mission could have been launched from there at a fraction of the cost - and risk - of building colossal rockets to blast a few people off the surface of Earth every time. Let the Russians get there first, big deal. What would they do once they got there, build nuclear missile bases? Yeah, right. They were in no more of a position to be able to do that than America was - less, in fact. But no, it was all about beating the Russians to the moon. As much as I am in awe of the effort that was taken to get to the moon, I still see the Apollo project as the greatest face-saving exercise in history. America just couldn't bear the thought of being beaten at something by the "commies" who had already beaten them in so many other early space efforts - first satellite, first living creature in space, first man in space, first woman in space, first spacewalk, first (unmanned) lunar orbit achieved, first robotic lunar probe landed. Ironically, by the time Apollo 11 landed, the Russians were out of the race anyway. They'd staked everything on their massive N-1 rocket, which was a dismal failure and killed off their space program - as well as several hundred observers when the first one exploded on the pad. So the first moon landing was a kind of hollow victory, like winning a drag race because the other guy's car caught fire in the pits.

Some people still bitch about how much money the gov gives to NASA, which is kind of laughable. Last year, NASA received about $17 billion in funding, while the military received over $600 billion, with in fact Health and Education not far behind. All those "better things" that people believe money should be spent on already get vastly greater amounts of funding than NASA does. Science funding in the US represents less than 1% of the total amount of annual budgetary allocations - and that's for ALL science, of which space exploration is just a small part.

It shouldn't have to fall to private businesses to fund space efforts, but I'm glad to see Musk taking up the challenge and pushing forward. If only more people thought the way he does, there would be no holding us back. But I'll only get fully behind it if it will lead to something that will benefit humanity at large and not just provide an avenue for the filthy rich to have a rollicking good time in zero-G for a few hours.