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Update: Launch seems to have been successful. The two side boosters landed nearly simultaneously. Footage from the drone ship was cut off. The car made it into space; but the third stage will need to coast through the Van Allen radiation belts for around six hours before it makes the final burn for trans-Mars injection.
Update 2: The middle booster of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket failed to land on its drone ship
Falcon Heavy Post-Launch Media Briefing - Megathread
SpaceX's newest rocket, the Falcon Heavy, is set to be launched at around 1:30 PM EST (6:30 PM UTC) today. The launch window extends to 4:00 PM EST (9:00 PM UTC).
SpaceX will attempt to recover all three boosters during the launch. The two previously-flown side boosters will attempt to land nearly simultaneously at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Landing Zones 1 and 2. The center core will attempt to land on a drone barge hundreds of miles off the coast of Florida.
The dummy payload for the Falcon Heavy is Elon Musk's personal 2008 Tesla Roadster. It is carrying a mannequin wearing SpaceX's space suit flight suit that will be used when the company begins to send astronauts to the International Space Station. The car will be launched into a heliocentric orbit that will bring it close to Mars (and back near Earth) periodically, and is equipped with three cameras. Its stereo system will be playing David Bowie's Space Oddity.
If the launch is successful, the Falcon Heavy could be flown within the next 3 to 6 months for a customer such as the U.S. Air Force, Arabsat, Inmarsat, or ViaSat.
Falcon Heavy will be capable of launching 63,800 kg to low-Earth orbit (LEO), 26,700 kg to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO), 16,800 kg to Mars, or 3,500 kg to Pluto (New Horizons was 478 kg). It will supplant the Delta IV Heavy, which is capable of launching 28,790 kg to LEO or 14,220 kg to GTO. Space Launch System Block 1 will be capable of launching 70,000 kg to LEO (Block 1B: 105,000 kg to LEO, Block 2: 130,000 kg to LEO).
Musk has suggested that an additional two side boosters could be added to Falcon Heavy (perpendicularly?) to make a "Falcon Super Heavy" with even more thrust. This may not happen if SpaceX decides to focus on the BFR instead, which as planned would be able to launch 150,000 kg to LEO while being fully reusable and potentially cheaper than the Falcon 9 (or capable of launching 250,000 kg to LEO in expendable mode).
The webcast can be seen here or directly on YouTube.
- BBC: Elon Musk's huge Falcon Heavy rocket set for launch
- CNN: SpaceX Falcon Heavy: Everything you need to know
- Bloomberg: Musk Sets a Low Bar for SpaceX Launch
- Space.com: Is the Tesla Roadster Flying on the Falcon Heavy's Maiden Flight Just Space Junk?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 06 2018, @08:57PM (21 children)
Everything seems to have gone very smoothly. The boosters landed properly, and the first stage was headed to the right place when signal was lost. Good job, all involved!
The "DON'T PANIC" sign on the dashboard of the payload car was a nice touch.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:19PM (18 children)
The webcast went split screen four screens and the bottom two showed the same feed if you watched carefully whereas I'm sure the intention was left would be left and right would be right. A pity. The synchronized landing was insanely cool.
The coverage of the launch was nice, very unlike American sports coverage. If they covered it like American Sports we'd have to listen to 40 minutes of human interest how the janitor overcame dyslexia, then 19 minutes of commercials, and a mere 1 minute of launch.
When I saw the video of the car and the synchronized landing I'm thinking this is probably at least 50% going to be a TV commercial for the car. Just a few days difference and this could have been a superbowel commercial.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:22PM (13 children)
If you watched and listened even more carefully, you'd find that it was not the same feed (the commentary even addressed this). They looked very similar because they are basically identical and were almost in the same location/angle as well. Hence the simultaneous landing.
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(Score: 2, Informative) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:35PM (4 children)
I think it was the same feed. Both screens seem to show the same landing pad.
https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=2273 [youtu.be]
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:06PM (3 children)
They are not the same feed. As demonstrated by your own link - they're jostling differently, and angled differently.
I'm guessing they behaved basically identically because they were programmed to behave identically.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:26PM
It is the same feed, unless you think the rockets are programmed to produce identical flames. One image is very slightly delayed compared to the other, so they sometimes don't show the same frame, but they usually do.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Wednesday February 07 2018, @05:44PM
they were the same in the life stream.
It has been corrected since.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday February 07 2018, @07:13PM
One of the landing pads is painted differently: http://cdn.cnngreece.gr/media/com_news/galleries/2018/02/07/6058/photos/full/2018-02-07T034016Z_530788455_RC12F0A52690_RTRMADP_3_SPACE-SPACEX-HEAVY.JPG [cnngreece.gr]
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:44PM (2 children)
I heard them say that too, but watching closely it looked like one could see the other fire up right before touchdown, but the other showed the same flame. So I'm not sure what that flame was, or if they both showed whichever was slightly behind.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:49PM (1 child)
I concur with AC, early in the coverage it was creepy that the maneuvering thruster firings and views were utterly identical even apparently digital artifacts looked the same to me; perhaps if the remaining fuel was identical deep in the decimal places, but I donno. Yet later on near the landing the picture quality changed a lot and they looked like two separate feeds.
I think they accidentally aired two displays of left or right and someone in the production crew fixed it before the landing.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:28PM
It's the same feed with one side occasionally showing a slight delay.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:33PM (4 children)
Commentators can be mistaken. It was the same feed. The boosters are not so similar that they produce identical flames.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 06 2018, @11:18PM (3 children)
Let's see the proof.
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(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday February 07 2018, @12:04AM (2 children)
Just rewatch the video and use your eyes instead of listening to the commentators.
I mean there's this bit here:
https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=1979 [youtu.be]
or this bit:
https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=1882 [youtu.be]
or this:
https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=2151 [youtu.be]
or this:
https://youtu.be/wbSwFU6tY1c?t=2273 [youtu.be]
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @12:15AM (1 child)
What about all the frames that don't match?
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday February 07 2018, @12:26PM
What about all the frames that do?
The two views of the stream, which seem to run at about 10fps, are slightly out of sync.
They've now released a corrected video with both booster views:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCc16uozHVE [youtube.com]
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by terryk30 on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:25PM
Seconded. That may have been the f-most coolest tech thing I've ever seen.
Made me wonder if they had to upgrade those things to watch out for each other... (Or maybe at separation they're practically guaranteed to also separate enough from each other that this isn't a practical concern?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @01:45AM (1 child)
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 07 2018, @01:57AM
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
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(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday February 07 2018, @12:28PM
They've released a corrected video showing views from both boosters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCc16uozHVE [youtube.com]
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:20PM
I'm about done updating the story. It will cruise through the Van Allen belts for hours before doing a final burn.
Still don't know what happened to the center core that attempted landing on the drone barge.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:22PM
I usually don't catch these live, but today I made sure to set aside some time. Very exciting and also moving to see the humans making progress.