That was amazing, I’m absolutely stoked Falcon Heavy made it up first try. Tesla is a nice touch, sad it only has 12 hours of power.
Watching the launch gave me goosebumps. Such a cool moment.
I watched it this morning and was awed. The dual booster touchdown was something truly amazing to behold.
I re-watched it over dinner tonight with my 4yo talking him through it and explaining the significance.
Getting to Mars distance was the original goal but the intention was to burn till the tanks were empty and they got more out of it.
The space shuttle was moderately awesome, but it’s nothing compared to these Ray Bradbury-style rockets just dropping in and effortlessly landing like it’s no big deal.
A final image from “Starman” before the onboard batteries died.
Surprise that the batteries are not longer lasting :(
I am wondering why they didn’t think to put a solar panel on board that bad boy to keep transmitting.
I mean he could have used the roof materials that he’s touting and used them as part of the construction.
I don’t think they wanted to put engineering effort into the various challenges of keeping a video feed going for very long, very far away from Earth. You need more transmission power, stuff needs to work long-term in space, etc.
It was also spinning a lot, so they would need to cover it to constantly generate power.
I kinda love how ephemeral and throwaway the whole thing was.
I thought that it was interesting how Musk said that maybe aliens would find it and wonder if we worshiped it. Hey dude, the odds are that future human asteroid miners will find it first. And it will be worth a lot.
I think he really expected it to blow up. I believe the last rocket that used >20 engines was the Soviet N1 which had 30 rocket engines it failed 4 times, once rather spectacularly resulting in one of the largest non nuclear explosions which wiped out the launch pad. I play Kerbal Space Program in ironman and even in the far more forgiving world of Kerbal, I expect failure on the initial launch of a new orbital lifter.
387,000 miles and people are still complaining about the Tesla’s range…
10 years ago I would have bet good money that we wouldn’t have a 60s sci fi style rocketship landing. Now here we are, rocketships landing just like a Twilight Zone or You Only Live Twice. All due to faster and faster computers and the magic of software development. Amazing!
This is a great writeup about the Falcon Heavy and future plans, with interview excerpts from Musk:
A few choice tidbits:
The company might, however, reuse the cross-hatched pieces of metal at the top of each rocket that help guide it safely to the ground, which are called grid fins. Musk mused in the post-launch press conference about how happy he was to have recovered them. They take a long time to produce, he said, especially since the company began making them out of titanium. “Those frickin’ grid fins, they’re super expensive,” he said. “That was the most important thing to recover.”
“I think it’s going to encourage other countries and companies to raise their sights and say hey we can do bigger and better, which is great,” he said. “We want a new space race. Races are exciting.”
Much as I’d like SpaceX to do something useful, I wouldn’t be surprised if they shut down completely in the not too distant future. I have doubts anyone will pay for Falcon heavy launches in the current climate, and the Tesla business that supports them right now is very shaky too, having pissed off both establishment and alt-right business types in recent years. At some point Musk will have to cut his losses.
You forgot the /s at the end of that.