SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch Success

SpaceX feed at YouTube ^ | February 6, 2018

[SunkenCiv]

Apart from not yet knowing whether the core booster stuck its landing on the drone ship, the rest of the launch went perfectly!

[null and void]

Hohmann Transfer Orbit...

[CivilWarBrewing]

Here's a live feed of the Tesla Starman on its way to Mars:

Live Views of Starman

Screen goes black at times. You have to wait for the craft to rotate so that's it's lit again.

[CivilWarBrewing]

They should’ve stuffed Ruth Bader Ginsburg into Starman’s space suit. That would scare them enough never to come to Earth.

[Yardstick]

I got mildly choked up over this when I saw it on a TV at Subway today. Betcha a common thought all around the world today was: the Americans have done it again.

[Rebelbase]

I didn’t catch the launch until the last couple of minutes before lift off. Found on a CBS feed. They cut it out at T-minus 50 seconds to go to government press conference.

[6ppc]

LOL! Laughed out loud when I saw Don’t Panic on the dash!

[Eric]

You do realize that Fox and Fox News Channel are two different things? It was live on Fox News Channel. I watched...even though it was in the middle of Shep Smith.

Bender2...you and I are about the same age, and we watched all the same stuff. The twin boosters landing at the same time evoked a "WOW" from me. Very impressive.

[WeWaWes]

Yes, it was his personal Tesla Roadster. Will be up there for billions of years. Just imagine when those in the future runs across it...A real WTF moment!

Elon Musk has done what many of us dreamed about as kids. He made it work and is a one in a generation person. His politics is not what I agree with, but like his stance on issues or not, he is a guy that has and will create an entire industry that will employee many smart kids.

[Redleg Duke]

Same age, same memories!

[6ppc]

Those weren’t mini boosters. All three were standard falcon 9 boosters.

[6ppc]

This was a stroke of brilliance to put that Tesla in an elliptical orbit around Earth, Mars, and the Sun.

They said it could be in orbit for a billion years...just imagine how puzzled alien xenoarcheologists will be when they find it 500 million years from now.😆

[Lazamataz]

So enlighten me then. What role does a janitor have during the launch?

Eating a gaw-damn baloney sandwich on gaw-damn Wonder bread and chewing on a gaw-damn Vlasic pickle and a small bag of gaw-damn Lays potato chips.

[Moonman62]

Mind blowing.

...

I was just thinking, ten years ago, SpaceX was one launch away from bankruptcy. Their first three launches were failures.

[af_vet_rr]

As this was a test flight no scientific payloads would have been on board anyway. This was a stroke of brilliance to put that Tesla in an elliptical orbit around Earth, Mars, and the Sun.

The beautiful thing about this system, is because of how it is constructed and how modular it is, there is a very good chance they will be making a commercial launch within a few months.

[Jet Jaguar]

Amazing

[Moonman62]

SpaceX has been saying the FH is the most powerful liquid fueled rocket since Saturn, and of course it’s much more powerful than any current launcher.

[Robert A Cook PE]

The talk early in the thread is, the core booster had a RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly)

Thought those were RUT-RO’s ... /Scooby-Doo

(Rapid Unscheduled Transition - Re-assembly Optional. )

[PapaBear3625]

The talk early in the thread is, the core booster had a RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) and didn’t land on the barge, uh, more info will I hope be forthcoming.

Meat Loaf - Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad

[Moonman62]

I hope the methane-burning Raptor engines come on line soon. I believe we’ll see those replacing the Merlin 1D engines in the FH, assuming that the FH isn’t a spur line. There are two customers lined up for it, and that’s it, but of course now it is successful instead of vaporware, so heavier payloads can be designed to take advantage of it. The new rumor is, the two guys set up to orbit the Moon within the next year or will be aboard the BFR instead, and that is slated to use the Raptor.

I think it's more than a rumor. Musk actually said it a couple of days ago. He said early work on the BFR is going so well that they are going to work on that rather than put much else into the Falcon Heavy.

[rlmorel]

Impressive. Impressive.

Funny, I am someone who believes fully in the concept of the free market, and that if something needs doing, the free market can deliver it much better than the government ever can.

But I rationalized that space travel was one of those things the government needed to do.

Boy, was I wrong. (even with government money being sent Musk’s way for various things, I believe SpaceX has proven me quite mistaken.)