Posted on 05/21/2012 4:47:45 PM PDT by KevinDavis
I saw that - no wonder I have such a good view! ;)
T-4 minutes to lift off!
T-3 minutes to lift off!
Time to go to the full screen!
Go Spacex Go !!
T-2 minutes to lift off!
You bet!
T2 minutes...Go for launch...So far
T-1 minute to lift off. No issues of any kind.
Fly Falcon Fly!
20 seconds
Going to full screen...
Yes!
Lift off and the vehicle has passed Max Q!
1st stage sep and 2nd stage ignition!
On board cameras way cool.
Fairing has been jettisoned!
I just wish it was daytime so we could see the Earth in the background.
If we’re appraching the terminator, the Earth should be appearing any second.
It’s trajectory is still nominal.
"This magic day when super-science Mingles with the bright stuff of dreams"... “Excitement so thick - you could cut it with a knife
Technology - high, on the leading edge of life”
The following is a really great video with the song and NASA video of shuttle preps and launch. The song really captures the tension of a launch - and the exhilaration of success!
Safe travels Falcon 9!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5vPrrnb6tw
Didn’t get to drive over so had to watch from my home a hundred miles away, just lost sight a minute ago with my naked eye. Good launch!
THIS is defiance to Hillary and Obama.
Didn’t get to drive over so had to watch from my home a hundred miles away, just lost sight a minute ago with my naked eye. Good launch!
2nd stage engine shutdown. Dragon sep. Orbit successful!
Awesome looking launch on a perfectly clear night from 40 miles north of the Cape. That sucker was moving! Just got the sound a minute or two ago.
Dragon solar array deployed!
And to all a good night...
Solar Array Deployed
Great news and the panels.
They’re really really happy. I’m glad for them.
Massive roar from the SpaceX crowd on the deployment! And why not!
Congratulations to the SpaceX Team - great job!
Ya got to love SpaceX launch control center as their wearing shorts, levis, and t-shirts...
Now it’s time for the Dragon to catch up to the ISS and do the work necessary to dock with it.
I was holding my breath on launch...lol
Good night to all!
G’night
Yep...I had just gotten up to view the launch as my wife went to bed. Long story short, she’d just came home from the hospital with our youngest son. He needed stitches in his forehead from a fall. He’s okay. I can go back to bed now.
Good night indeed - a very good night!
Cheers, catch up later.
CONGRATS SPACEX! Falcon 9 launch successful;
Dragon in orbit!
Just got back on the internet....congratulations on #3 Space-X.
Well, if you narrow the definition to just “putting government and commercial satellites in orbit,” what you write is true. And understandably so, since that is where the revenue stream is currently pointed.
My vision of the “commercialization of space” is quite a bit broader and envisions orbiting resorts and long-term residences, medical facilities, commercial manufacturing plants, on-orbit services (including the removal of space junk), tranfer depots for passengers and cargoes bound for the Moon and beyond, exchanges with increasngly self-sufficient settlements on the Moon and Mars, etc.
All that is going to take awhile.
Congratulations Space X!
The launch manifest for the Falcon 9 lists at least 3 more launches this year as well as the Falcon Heavy demo flight. Hopefully safe and routine flights will allay your doubts. Meanwhile, there was an Atlas V flight scrubbed earlier this month because of a faulty valve. Hmmm
I think you are ignoring the benefial economic consequences of reusable spacecraft.Imagine BOEING having to rebuild an airliner from scratch for every trip Only the very rich would ever partake in airplane journeys. Normal cargo flights would be non existant.
benefial= beneficial
“I think you are ignoring the benefial economic consequences of reusable spacecraft.”
Not really. The shuttle was a flawed concept from the beginning. The cost-per-pound-to-orbit was radically underestimated, and the ability to turn the vehicles around was radically underestimated.
A reusable craft makes some sense if it is small, and is indeed the payload itself - such as a re-entry vehicle only
A bulk cargo to space should be mostly non-reusable You should NEVER return a pound of anything placed in orbit unless you absolutely have to - it’s a waste of money and energy.
The airliner analogy is ridiculous. Actually that’s the line that was sold for the Shuttle - to make space “routine”. It turned out to be a lie. We dismantled a proven bulk-cargo to orbit system in the Saturn series so that the Shuttle would have “something to do”.
The shuttle was a failure, in terms of killing astronauts, in terms of the mostly pointless work it did in orbit, and in terms of making spaceflight “routine”, and in terms of pushing out mature systems that worked.
Lets just be honest about that before we move on to the next phase.
Of course the next generation lifter concept NASA is peddling looks remarkably like a Saturn V with strap-on SRB’s.....that should tell you something right there.
NASA should stick with the things its now good at - making powerpoint slides.
Let real men, real explorers, and real Americans do the work that America needs done.
First off, sorry about the mixup with Kevin - must have looked at the wrong post for the name.
“The least amount of cost doesn’t translate in the safest design.
I used to provide beacon readout for the eastern range at KSC and Canaveral. Sitting in on Space-X’s first launch gave me a detailed education on the problems with 9 motors.”
“The least amount of cost” for a commercial venture involves not having failures. Failures mean lower profits and fewer customers going forward. Clearly the first priority at SpaceX is reliability - as it should be, and must be for manned flight.
There is no inherent problem with nine motors - they provide redundancy in the case of one or more motor failures.
“There are certain things government does very well in, such as a standing military.....etc., also space flight.”
The “government” doesn’t “do” space flight - they pay contractors to build the vehicles.
“If cost is the holy grail for you, be prepared for a body count that will prove my point.”
LOL...first of all there won’t be any body count until SpaceX gets through the entire manned vehicle test regimen. That will mean a lot more Falcon + Dragon flights. SpaceX has eleven more cargo flights scheduled for the ISS, that’ll go a long way in working any kinks out. That’s a nice contract at $1.6 billion total.
“I have every hope of success....just not the direction that Space-X has taken it.”
We shall see - that was a picture perfect launch this morning, eh? All nine engines functioned flawlessly from what I saw and heard. Do you have any contradictory information?
BTW, it showed a strength of the Falcon system when they aborted the first launch. The spacecraft is anchored to the ground until it can be determined that all systems are within acceptable parameters after ignition. Unlike solid fuel motors, the liquid fueled Merlin engines can be shut down if needed.
“Once again, Atlas is probably going to prove the best platform.”
LOL! Which manned capsule is in the works for Atlas, again? Also Atlas has only half the payload capacity of Falcon Heavy. Atlas is mired in the defense contractor mentality, we’ll see if it can be made competitive on launch pricing.
At any rate, although I didn’t watch the launch live, it was exciting to see the video this morning and to hear that everything is on track including solar panel deployment. Now we’ll see how the orbital trials go - I’m definitely pulling for SpaceX to hit a home run on this mission!
Space X plans on returning the first and second stage of their spacecraft, as well as the capsule, in the future, reportedly to cut costs. To do that they will have to uprate their Merlin engines and carry the extra fuel for the return. That will cut their payload to orbit but according to Musk it’s necessary and feasible. Time will tell I guess.
If the shuttle did not do the roll maneuver after launch they would have put all those huge external tanks in orbit.
I will leave to the reader as an exercise what could have been done with over a hundred such tanks bolted together and provided with airlocks and such.
Bump, bump, and bump.
I am eagerly awaiting that Falcon Heavy launch.
Getting a 500 kilo payload to LEO is an accomplishment, but they are a long way away from where we were in the early 60’s.
The best rockets now are about twice as large as this one, and still one tenth that of the Saturn V.
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