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Watch Live as SpaceX Delivers Trio of Satellites to Space:
SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, containing the Canadian Space Agency's Radarsat trio of Earth observation satellites on Wednesday. The broadcast will be telecast live on SpaceX's YouTube channel. If you're keen to follow along, we have all the details you need right here.
Canada's three Radarsat satellites, shaped like old rubber stamps, will gather data about the nations coasts and waterways to help ships navigate the Arctic, provide agriculture solutions and help first responders save lives, according to the agency. The dimensions of the satellites are such that they're almost as big as a Tesla Roadster, but they're only half as heavy. Eventually the satellites will settle into an orbit around 600 kilometers (around 370 miles) above the Earth.
[...] The launch window opens on Wednesday, June 12 at 7:17 a.m. PT[*] and closes 13 minutes later, at 7:30 a.m. PT. Like most launches, a backup window will open 24 hours later, on June 13, should something go awry during the first launch window. The satellites will deploy at 54 minutes into the flight.
takyon: The rocket will carry one of the most expensive payloads that SpaceX has ever attempted to launch. At more than $1 billion, the Radarsat satellites will cost more than 4 years of the Canadian Space Agency's approximately $250 million annual budget.
*Launch is scheduled for 1417-1430 GMT (10:17-10:30 a.m. EDT; 7:17-7:30 a.m. PDT). See it on YouTube.
Also at NASASpaceFlight.
See also: First Falcon Heavy night launch slips to June 24
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 12 2019, @04:41PM (3 children)
"How was the day at the office, dear?"
"Nominal, boring. Launched a rocket we couldn't see through thick fog, with a Billion dollars of uninsured sats on top. ten minutes later, the 20-story-tall first stage just came back and landed vertically dead center on a pad you couldn't see if you stood on it."
"Oh. I knew you'd need something exciting, so i broke the whatchamacallit on the left side in the garage. Do you think you can fix it?"
"Thank you darling, you know me so well ! "
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:29PM (2 children)
And that's just it, SpaceX / Musk had such promise in the beginning, Musk was a maverick, a back-of-an-envelope engineer, but doing rocket science. Phrases like "fail fast, fail often", "rapid unscheduled disassembly", while doing rocket science. With everything live-streamed to us from multiple cameras. Musk was like Tony Stark, but real, you never knew when he was going to crash through the roof, or destroy his car collection, or if he would even make it to the end - since it was real life and not a movie (and yeah I know that doesn't work since the last movie but...). This was going to be incredible entertainment, full of spectacular screw-ups and lots of explosions. This was "honey, order me a crate of popcorn and maybe a new comfy chair, I may be some time...".
But now it's all gone wrong. It's like watching Formula 1 - theoretically some of the best cars, best tracks, best drivers, where tenths of a second matter a lot, but in reality you don't watch it live, just glance at the news the next day to check that Hamilton won and see that there was an interesting anomaly on turn 3 of lap 54 where he nearly locked up the rears.
In fact, it's less interesting than formula 1, or even cricket - you can keep those on in the background and just switch to the video and rewind a bit when there's a shout, don't even get that with SpaceX these days. "We landed the rocket but the boat rocked a bit in the waves on the way back and it fell over" is about the level of excitement, days later.
In hindsight, I've realised that NASA knew what was needed and every time the shuttle started to get boring like this, they blew one up - hey, it's rocket science, can we have another few billion and another seven astronauts please...
I love Elon and SpaceX because it's given me hope again that maybe in my lifetime we'll see humans walk on other worlds, but also I ****ing hate him, because he's made rocket science boring, reduced us to watching vintage blooper reels for entertainment.
(Score: 3, Touché) by pe1rxq on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:29PM (1 child)
Did you miss them blowing up a Dragon 2 just two months ago? They did it especially for you....
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday June 13 2019, @08:10AM
I missed the multiple cam feed high quality youtube streams of it, all I can find is a crappy vertical video which looks like a mobile phone recording a monitor, can't see much, hardly popcorn material.