SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch webcast (live 12:45 PST) | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch webcast (live 12:45 PST)

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175 pointsbmcooley70 comments

Watching those two boosters land together was freaking amazing!! Well worth the watch if anybody missed it. :)

did the CORE land as well? And what about the Roadster? They did not show those.

They showed the roadster, no news on the center core yet it seems.

They did show the Roadster, it's in space now. The cameras on the drone ship cut out so they're still waiting to find out if CORE landed.

The two boosters landing simultaneously was breathtaking. Photo: https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/960980119312453632

> they're still waiting to find out if CORE landed

They most certainly had another set of eyes next to the drone ship, so they already know. It's just us who's waiting to find it out.

Live stream of the roadster in space is up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6M

What a show indeed. Incredible.

If you look at the footage closely you see that they used the same footage for both boosters. Nevertheless, the landing was superb.

edit: https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=37m53s

The announcer addressed this, he said that he footage was not the same but looked similar because of the proximity of the boosters to each other. I think they were just extremely well choreographed. If you watched the side view from the landing pad they landed at almost exactly the same time.

In the on-board footage both landed on the same pad. https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=37m53s

Ah you're right. If you go back a few seconds you can see its using different camera angles. I'm guessing they just accidentally switched both to the same booster for the landing shot.

Its an easy mistake to make. Given they seem to use Livestream i am going to go out on a limb that they also use Livestream Studio....great software but when you are setting up PiP and copy and paste it is incredibly easy to forget to change the input source on the second frame.

Are you sure? It's at least cropped differently - in the right screen you can see more of the "metal foot".

You could see one of the boosters firing from the other booster. They were not the same.

They weren't, if you look at the winglet thingy you could see the cameras were at slightly different positions.

https://i.imgur.com/xP9JxOB.png

It is just cropped.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c&feature=youtu.be...

Someone noticed there was a camera feed on the mission control wall that shows the Center Core's drone ship, after the smoke clears no ship can be seen:

https://twitter.com/Darkphibre/status/960990105581240321

9:00 into the feed, it's likely the core either missed or failed to land properly. Although the screen is partially out of view.

Center core loss confirmed : https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=-B_tWbjFIGI...

So much for their constant deferrals to the "signal loss" due to "drone ship vibration" and other phony reasons. It sounded weird on all prior occasions, but at least now it's obvious that they have a steady feed at all times, just censoring it.

What I don't understand why they think they need to lie in the first place. Just cut the damn feed and say "the control cut the feed". All these cutesy giggles, Oh's and Ah's, "we are hoping to get it back soon" when the commenters are clearly looking at the live feed themselves [1]... this is just wrong.

[1] https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=2326 - see the timing of them saying "Oh" and the smoke clearing off the drone ship.

Sounds like they lost the center core (might just mean the signal its not clear), hell of a showing though the team should be really proud of the accomplishment.

https://twitter.com/stevewdavens/status/960984330943258624

Original audio from the webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B_tWbjFIGI&feature=youtu.be...

That's a guy with 18 followers, tweeting to SpaceX. I'd wait for official word.

Fair point, updated with a link to the original audio from the webcast. Was just trying to give credit to where I found the source.

He was certainly right about 2/3rds chance of success.

2 out of 3 ain't half bad.

Over a MILLION live watchers on this youtube link. Is that a record for youtube?

Felix Baumgartner had 8 millions live viewers on YouTube in 2012

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/15/business/la-fi-tn-fe...

Looks like the skydive from space received 8 million.

2.3 million

They seem to really be struggling with the load, or at least my local cache server..

Same here.

Also the first time I see a multi camera video.

Wow, just witnessed history. The landing of the Falcons was seriously thrilling. David Bowie coming on as the payload headed towards its destination got me, have to say.

Congrats to everyone here from SpaceX – what an accomplishment.

Those rockets landing at the same time beats any scene in any sci-fi movie ever made

In a hundred million years, someone or something is going to find that car and be really confused.

Cars are of course the dominant life form on earth. Shame it wasn't a Ford Prefect

At least he had "Don't Panic" on the dash screen.

relevant: https://exospace.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/the37s.jpg

The text on the dashboard of the Tesla - Don't panic.

The Telsa with a spacesuit in it reminds me of the opening scene of the 1979 Heavy Metal corvette re-entry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWMPe3wF9jQ

not an investment advice

-- Elon M.

I’m willing to admit that even as a 40 year old man I still cried when she cleared the tower. That was beautiful.

I'm curious how the realized design that's launching today compares to the Saturn V. This article from 2016 implies that the Saturn V has three times the payload capacity, but that the Falcon Heavy is twelve times cheaper to launch (adjusting for inflation), implying a fourfold advantage in cost efficiency: https://www.universetoday.com/129989/saturn-v-vs-falcon-heav...

That's assuming you expect cost to scale linearly, which isn't obvious to me?

Unbelievable. The simultaneous booster landings were incredibly impressive feat. Outstanding launch and spectacular landings!

Screen shots from live feed: https://imgur.com/a/gh410

Just, wow. That simultaneous landing was magical.

Can anyone tell me what the object moving through the right of the screen is at T+9:58? https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=2392

mini roadster. it was an easter egg.

I don't know if you will be reading this, but the easter egg is on the dashboard of the Roadster. ( https://youtu.be/ROnomVVQ2cU?t=453 )

So it has to be something else.

https://i.imgur.com/HkPOzEH.jpg?1

I love the landing pad boat name "Of course I still love you"

It's based on a ship from the Culture novels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Cult...

Their second pad is named "Just Read The Instructions"

Live view of Starman in orbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBr2kKAHN6M

I think it's interesting that all of the Space X control team seem so young. My memory of the Apollo missions were that all the controllers were old farts who had been with NASA for at least 20 years. Maybe its because I was very young at the time and now I'm older. Or maybe it's because you had to work for 20 years to be a controller at NASA and Space X is just not that old (yet).

NASA was 11 years old at the first Apollo landing. Younger than SpaceX is now. Maybe there were some NACA old hands around though.

Does anybody have a link to the technical webcast?

The technical webcast is RIP for the general public. If you want to find lots of info about SpaceX events, the reddit sub spacex is quite good.

What happened to the center 1st stage though?

NASA needs better Marketing.

So why exactly would it orbit the sun for a billion years?

No significant forces are expected to interfere with it and disturb the orbit enough to make it hit another object.

Elon should issue challenges to go interfere with it to promote space development.

$1mm if you can rendezvous. $2mm if you can put a drink in the driver's cupholder.

Doubt the incentive would be worth the cost... $1mm for something that might take $100m in R/D and resources to accomplish.

Following the same logic XPrize wouldn't exist.

Proof that it could have gone to mars but also in a very stable orbit with little chance of hitting an object and infecting it with human biology that is on the tesla.

The marketing stunt is gonna be at the top for while.

So what's left to confirm?

He/they did it!

Amazing.

Yeah, especially those two boosters landing simultaneously - I still have a smile on my face :)

🇺🇸 USA!!! 🇺🇸 USA!!! 🇺🇸 USA!!!

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