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The fact that SpaceX is hiring web developers is not surprising per-se.

The fact that it is a 'frontend' position and that page says it's 'avionics' - that is surprising indeed.

I think there might actually be a bit of a scope for some public-side web development that interfaces (indirectly!) with the avionics. Some other launch providers do animations based on vehicle telemetry once the vehicle is out of range. Last night, SpaceX just showed a static image. Given that there's a lot of interest in their webcasts, I imagine they'd like to do better at some point...

[Edit: kind-of wonder if they're using a certain amount of in-house webapp stuff for mission planning, etc., as well]

Yeah, I did expect to see some telemetry. At least, the orbital parameters.

SpaceX should just provide an API for that, we'll build the rest ;)

You could always try to use an antenna and software defined radio to pull the telemetry directly if nearby a launch site. Probably encrypted though :(

I think most other providers feed telemetry into STK (http://www.agi.com/) to get the animations. There really isn't that much effort involved if using STK.

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