SpaceX launch 8/24 2:51 EST. From Vandenberg AFB.

[Thebobo]

This picture says it all. Booster landing will be at sea on the "Just Read The Instructions" droneship. As usual their Youtube channel will cover it live.

 

[Thebobo]

Had the time wrong in the thread title wrong but the mission statement is correct and looks like a good day for a launch. 2 hours to go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4u3ZN2g_MI

 

[Red Squirrel]

Woah I just caught this thread on time. Nice.

Startup.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Crazy, how something can be put into orbit in like 11 minutes. And landing the first stage is always impressive.

 

[Darwin333]

Crazy, how something can be put into orbit in like 11 minutes. And landing the first stage is always impressive.

100,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and 25,000 gallons of RP-1 all burned in those 11 minutes will do that for you. What I find even crazier is something that a few short years ago we would have considered insane and virtually impossible is now so common that it's almost "meh, they did it again". It's not even a story that they landed the first stage anymore on a friggen drone barge in the Pacific ocean and they basically hit the bullseye... With a rocket that just fell from space.

 

[PottedMeat]

formosat-5 is like ~1000lbs. this was supposed to go up on a falcon-1, but with so many delays analysts are estimating SpaceX is eating $14 million

https://www.wired.com/story/spacex-will-lose-millions-on-its-taiwanese-satellite-launch/

 

[Thebobo]

Dang had to watch it on the road. Yea was very quick. Sucked the video went out for a sec just as the booster landed. Couldn't find any good footage of the landing, the split screen of the booster went black and the on-ship camera froze. As you all probably saw...

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah I guess the force of the rocket probably shakes the antenna on the ship and causes signal loss. I presume they must have a dish that broadcasts to a satellite that is then picked back up on land.

Maybe they need to come up with some kind of gimbal system for the dish.

 

[Thebobo]

From Elon's twitter

Touchdown:
Vertical Velocity (m/s): -1.47
Lateral Velocity (m/s): -0.15 Tilt (deg): 0.40
Lateral position: 0.7m from target center

Falcon 9 boost stage on droneship Just Read the Instructions

 

[Not So Mild]

This has me thinking, is there a complete list of all satellites in orbit and they're exact orbit pattern? Eventually I'm sure we'll run into issues of satellites colliding with one another.

 

[Thebobo]

DP

 

[Thebobo]

This has me thinking, is there a complete list of all satellites in orbit and they're exact orbit pattern? Eventually I'm sure we'll run into issues of satellites colliding with one another.

There are currently over 18,000 trackable objects. This is fun to play with, you can track all the objects here. http://www.n2yo.com/

 

[Red Squirrel]

This has me thinking, is there a complete list of all satellites in orbit and they're exact orbit pattern? Eventually I'm sure we'll run into issues of satellites colliding with one another.

Yeah it's actually pretty crazy all the stuff up there and it's a miracle they can avoid collisions. I think most big satellites do have thrusters and I presume some form of TCAS so they'll slightly adjust their orbit if they have to, but still pretty remarkable.

That N2yo site is pretty fun, lot of interesting stuff, and they also have the ISS live feed.

 

[Darwin333]

This has me thinking, is there a complete list of all satellites in orbit and they're exact orbit pattern? Eventually I'm sure we'll run into issues of satellites colliding with one another.

Actually there is a small but very real threat that a collision and the ensuing debris would cause a chain reaction which would basically fuck most shit up in orbit and completely deny us access to space or at least certain areas or space. The most likely area of space that would be FUBAR'd would also be the most used/necessary for all of our nice modern stuff.

That's why war in space is such a scary thought and why it was really fucked up of the Chinese to test their satellite killing missile because it created a fuckton more debris. You gotta remember that the debris is traveling at like 17,000 miles an hour so something as small as a bolt could potentially take out an entire satellite or manned space flight. You can understand the desire for a nation to take out another's satellites during a war, most of our smart weapon systems would stop working. We'd almost be back to Vietnam style of warfighting, not quite but close enough.