Well, I'm a convert. The images from Pad 39A were amazing. But most of all, the return of multiple boosters and the images of their spaceman sitting in that little car heading to a billion year destiny were just plain great.
Peter
I had sweaty palms watching the live feed and found myself saying go, go, go ...! Haha ... imagine how exciting it was to be there! That image of the space suited figure in the car was just amazing as was watching the two boosters land simultaneously!! Just incredible!
I was watching it live, and I felt the same sort of exhilaration that I remember from the Apollo 11 launch and moon landing. I was willing it to succeed, along with millions of others around the globe.
Elon Musk does have a bit of a reputation for over-promising and under-delivering - but if you don't set some extreme targets, you will never make any progress. The recent success of the SA battery project, and the Space-X Heavy launch, are testaments to his entrepreneurial spirit.
And you have to give him full credit for showmanship - that Tesla Roadster / Starman moment was brilliant!
So Musk has explained the loss of the centre core, only one engine reignited for the landing burn, thus it impacted the water near the barge at 300 MPH. They have some work to do on that issue, but hey it achieved heavy lift orbit and Martian insertion burn.
Interesting to see on the footage how soon after being kicked away from the main body the boosters started sorting themselves out to come home.
I wonder if they'll be able to integrate that technology into Tesla cars? It would be handy when you forget where you parked your car in a multi-storey (or when you have a few too many drinks after work) - just get an Uber home, and your Tesla will be waiting in the garage when you get home.
One thing that astounded me was how perfectly synchronised the two boosters were all the way down - from little attitude-control "puffs" to firing the braking burns, to touch-down - perfectly synched all the way. (Yes, in one sense, they both started at the same altitude and velocity, so they should in theory be synchronised, but I would have expected a little bit of randomness to creep in.)
You know that they are well stocked with nerds (nothing wrong with that) when they sneak in a Hitchhikers Guide reference.
To paraphrase Star Wars: "The Nerd is strong with this one".
"Tesla" is named after the archetypal mad scientist, Nikolai Tesla
While other hyper-cars have Launch Control etc, Teslas have "Ludicrous Mode" (and also have various "Easter Egg" modes for holiday season, such as Trans-Siberian Orchestra Mode at Christmas)
The first three mainstream Tesla cars are the S, 3 and X. (Geddit?) What's the betting that the next one will be the Model Y?
The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are named after the Millennium Falcon (Star Wars reference)
The Kestrel was the first-generation rocket motor, while the current generation is the Merlin, and the next generation motor will be the Raptor - Kestrels and Merlins are both types of Falcons (which are themselves Raptors)
The Dragon series of spacecraft are named after "Puff the Magic Dragon" (as a rebuff to critics who said that SpaceX was fanciful when it launched in 2002)
Musk's personal preference for the name of the first SpaceX Mars mission is "Heart of Gold" (Hitchhikers' Guide reference)
The landing barges are named "Just Read the Instructions" and "Of Course I Still Love You" (autonomous, sentient spaceships from the Iain M. Banks novel "The Player of Games")
The Boring Company's (bad pun right there!) first tunnel boring machine is named "Godot" - after the character who never arrives in the Samuel Beckett play)
And then of course, you've got to admire the head of a rocket program who is prepared to release a "blooper reel" of all of his failed launches and landings, all set to the theme song from Monty Python: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrn1c6N0phw (Even the caption at 0'29" is a classic: "It's just a scratch")
And they're just the nerd references that spring to mind - there are probably dozens of others.
Will it have its headlights on? I'd like to see it zipping past tonight
Actually... seriously tho, would we see anything of this? As a faint satellite perhaps? Dylan O'Donnell did a beaut post on facebook just before giving some nice details/charts. Apparently it's due over Brisbane & Byron etc around 3:43am (2:43am for QLD) tomorrow morning. https://www.n2yo.com/passes/?s=43205
Julian, btw, that was a very interesting post re nerdy, thank you.
That's gotta be the most unusual interplanetary space ship launched.
