Posted on 02/07/2018 4:54:26 PM PST by BenLurkin
In a late-night update, Musk announced that the Falcon Heavy stage did survive its daring slog through the Van Allen belts.
"Third burn successful," Musk wrote on Twitter. "Exceeded Mars orbit and kept going to the Asteroid Belt."
Starman and the Roadster are now flying in a long, elliptical orbit around the sun. At its farthest point, that orbit extends nearly 243 million miles (390 million kilometers). That's 2.61 times the average distance between Earth and the sun, which is, on average, about 93 million miles (150 million km).
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Hea veee Metal!!!!!
Cool for the Starman and not for Musk LoL. Video would go “viral”! It’s a space derelict ready to be salvaged. He’d have a nice conversational piece to discuss with other starmen.
“A month ago Falcon Heavy lost a spook satellite (so they say)”
The Zuma mission was on a Falcon 9. Yesterday was the first launch of the Falcon Heavy.
Or something more realistic - hack the feed and insert a shopped video with some guy hopping into the passenger seat, no space suit, turning and giving the camera a big Schiff-eating grin.
FYI.. Mars averages 140 million miles from earth....as close as 40+ mil and as far as 240 mil depending where both are in their orbits around the sun. it recently came the closest to us in 60,000 years !
State Farm will :)
The third rocket performed flawlessly in accourdance with its programming. The programming was wrong. However, in total it was a great achievement.
I thought the same thing and as you said here we are.Interesting times for sure.
I knew Chris Kraft. When I was very young I asked him to give me in one word what would be the best thing for me to persue. He said “computers”. He said “watch for the new little computers that are coming, they are going to change the world “. I did and life has been good.
I’m not so sure that it would necessarily burn up on reentry. The lighter stuff like fenders could float down, heavy parts could well survive reentry. Air would have more of a braking effect on things much smaller and less dense than meteors. And a lot of small meteors make it to earth successfully.
Yep - and watching those two boosters land in tandem was proof that science fiction is just fact that hasn’t happened yet - almost surreal.
So what? It is growing (Good Capitalist) and succeeding in reigniting the space program (Good Patriot).
Look at NASA and the billions and billions poured into Muslim Outreach. You would apparently approve of that? I doubt it.
Yes. Most of us are so enraptured with the rebirth of our space program that we don't have the resentment of Musk to look deeply into the astrophysics of how the action can be condemned.
I am nearly 71 years old and having been a child when the space race started, I look at the young folks shown on SpaceX, see their youthful enthusiasm, and am filled with pride and a sense of justification.
Pride in America and Americans and justification in that I was a small part of the Cold War, which temporarily retarded our space endeavors. The early Social Justice Warriors were funded by the Kremlin via colleges. I remember a quote of Jesse Jackson as he watched the blastoff of Apollo and he said something to the effect that "for a moment, I forgot how ashamed I am to be an American...".
Okay, it wasn't a perfect orbit to meet your exacting standards, and yeah, it won't go into Mars Orbit, and yeah, the core booster stage failed to ignite all three engines and crashed, but it got the payload rolling and two of the three boosters landed nearly simultaneously in an image out of a '50s Sci-Fi movie, and it was really shit-hot! Well Done, SpaceX!
Call me cynical but I am just not buying this story. Yes, he sent something up. It is the package part I am not buying. I doubt any intelligent person is buying the package story.
Yes. Most of us are so enraptured with the rebirth of our space program that we don't have the resentment of Musk to look deeply into the astrophysics of how the action can be condemned.
I am nearly 71 years old and having been a child when the space race started, I look at the young folks shown on SpaceX, see their youthful enthusiasm, and am filled with pride and a sense of justification.
Pride in America and Americans and justification in that I was a small part of the Cold War, which temporarily retarded our space endeavors. The early Social Justice Warriors were funded by the Kremlin via colleges. I remember a quote of Jesse Jackson as he watched the blastoff of Apollo and he said something to the effect that "for a moment, I forgot how ashamed I am to be an American...".
Okay, it wasn't a perfect orbit to meet your exacting standards, and yeah, it won't go into Mars Orbit, and yeah, the core booster stage failed to ignite all three engines and crashed, but it got the payload rolling and two of the three boosters landed nearly simultaneously in an image out of a '50s Sci-Fi movie, and it was really shit-hot! Well Done, SpaceX!
Hey, I’m 67 and have spent most of my lifetime in the aerospace industry. I appreciate Musk’s accomplishment, but nudging that payload away from earth orbit might have been a little bit more elegant and good public relations. I agree, better is the enemy of good.
Reading posts on Sky & Telescope, and ATMOB bulletin board, the amateur astronomy community is up in arms about the Humanity Star (attempted) stunt, and rightly so, imho. Likewise for Mayak. Musk and Space X are being tarred with the same brush, e.g., “clutter up space with advertisements.” I hate to see him make it easy for his critics.
I worked on some of the power systems for the (canceled) Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter and the 30 cm ion engine that Glenn Research Center was working on. We did the radiation effects testing of the electronics and electrical systems since the Jupiter system environment is somewhat harsh in that regard.
In an earlier life I was involved in the geochemical analysis of some of the lunar samples, thanks to one of my committee advisors who was a consulting geologist to NASA. We used neutron activation and ICP mass spec for a lot of that work. Looking at the trace element concentrations helped confirm not only the early-age volcanism on the lunar surface but it also bolstered the then-new theory of the impactor-Earth origin of the moon.
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