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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-IS-rocket-science dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:19PM (18 children)

    by VLM (445) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:19PM (#634096)

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:22PM (13 children)

    by takyon (881) <{takyon} {at} {soylentnews.org}> on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:22PM (#634099) Journal

    showed the same feed if you watched carefully

    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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    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2, Informative) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:35PM (4 children)

      by nitehawk214 (1304) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:35PM (#634109)

      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)

        by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:06PM (#634127)

        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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:44PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:44PM (#634114)

      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)

        by VLM (445) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:49PM (#634115)

        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

          by wonkey_monkey (279) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:28PM (#634139) Homepage

          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)

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:33PM (#634143) Homepage

      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 terryk30 on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:25PM

    by terryk30 (1753) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:25PM (#634136)

    The synchronized landing was insanely cool.

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @01:45AM (#634242)

    The coverage of the launch was nice, very unlike American sports coverage.

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  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday February 07 2018, @12:28PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Wednesday February 07 2018, @12:28PM (#634380) Homepage

    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