Oolite Bulletins

Split from NASA Mars Mission

ClymAngus wrote:

To clarify (however people read it) I'm not advocating giving a billion to the first FUBAR in a space suit with a rocket shoved up his happy tunnel. Just maybe a little less hand wringing and a little more doing would be nice, some time before a slightly better aimed Apophis turns up.

So it’s a good thing the SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon (mockup) are set to launch this Friday, then. (Originally slated for last November, but what the hey.)

Ahruman wrote:

ClymAngus wrote:

To clarify (however people read it) I'm not advocating giving a billion to the first FUBAR in a space suit with a rocket shoved up his happy tunnel. Just maybe a little less hand wringing and a little more doing would be nice, some time before a slightly better aimed Apophis turns up.

So it’s a good thing the SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon (mockup) are set to launch this Friday, then. (Originally slated for last November, but what the hey.)

Speaking of which, the launch was supposed to be five minutes ago, but is now at T-17:30.

There’s supposed to be There is a webcast here, which was supposed to start at T-20:00. Supposedly.

T - 9 minutes! Getting there!

EDIT: And it sounds like they experienced a computer malfunction a couple of seconds just before launch... If that's the case, bloody typical!

RE-EDIT Apparently a parameter was 'out of scope', probably not computer related. The computer did shut down the engine as a safety measure though. T - 15 minutes, again. Ah, the suspence!

RE-RE-EDIT Second countdown restarted, I'm on tenterhooks!

Sweet, we had take off!

It took 6 minutes to reach 'space' (well, that's when the sky started to look positively black anyway) and 9 minutes to reach orbit & vanish behind the horizon, as seen by cape Canaveral. Very Oolite like!

Had to work shortly after the abort with only live updates from friends afterwards. And very happy to find this video today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP5gykvTBpM.

I think that is a big "Well done!" to the guys at SpaceX, it's not often that the maiden flight of a new rocket goes as well as this - yes, I know, not entirely new, but even 'new improved models' don't seem to have had an enormously high success rate.

...now all we need is success with the plasma drives mentioned elsewhere, and someone to crack 'warp drive'... ....now what was that I read about JPL engineers playing with injecting anti-matter into plasma streams?... that should be 'interesting'...

…and now the Falcon 9 has become a UFO.

an IFO, surely!

Nice UFO video, again via Bad Astronomy.