Administrative, Business, Space

Of All The Times To Lose My Internet Connection

32 Comments

I got up this morning, and had no bandwidth, so I missed the SpaceX webcast, but I watched the launch on Fox News. Poking around some, now that I’m back on line, I see that they went into orbit. I’m assuming that it was a clean insertion (no unanticipated roll, as there was in June). Now comes the fun part. It’s supposed to do just a couple orbits, so it should be entering and coming down in the Pacific late morning, PST. Congratulations to SpaceX on mission success to date.

[Update at 9:17 PST]

Alan Boyle has a story. I’ll probably have one at AOL News later, but I want to wait to see how the entry/recovery goes (by the way, one of my pet peeves is the word “reenter,” which everyone uses, but implies that it has entered before — only the Shuttle has ever done that…).

[Update a few minutes later]

At the request of a commenter, here’s one of the first Youtubes out.

[Update shortly after deorbit burn]

Here’s more video.

OK, I’m hearing that drogue and all three main chutes have deployed. Still no word on first-stage recovery. Anyone else heard anything?

32 thoughts on “Of All The Times To Lose My Internet Connection”

  1. Yes, it was beautiful. And you could actually see the Draco thruster on the second stage actively cancelling the roll.

    They even had a camera in the Dragon so you could see the separation from the second stage.

  3. Very smooth launch Rand. Smooth as rails with no roll or vibrations that I could see.

    There was some type of explosion on the launch tower which did make an exciting few seconds just seconds after ignition.

  6. Looked perfect, with Dragon separation at SECO plus 30 as planned. A lot of “stuff” followed the Dragon, blowing out of the trunk. Don’t know what that was, yet.

  7. >There was some type of explosion on the launch tower which did make >an exciting few seconds just seconds after ignition.

    Looking at the video it looks like it was the Dragon umbilical, probably did not get the purge right on the Dragon propellants, they are hypergolic with each other, so if the remnants mix … big flames….
    If that’s the biggest fault with the flight, its an amazing success…..

  9. Can someone point me to somwhere I can see the complete launch video? I’ve seen just the stuff from Fox / CNN, which shows liftoff and the first minute or so, but nothing more. The liftoff looks beautiful, but I want to see stage separation, 2nd stage ignition, capsule sep, ect. SpaceX’s website seems to be overloaded– I just get a continuous “buffering” comment on their launch page.

  10. It just keeps getting better. SpaceFlightNow is reporting that the booster recovery crew has telemetry and radar on the first stage. They’ve also successfully launched the government cubesats carried as a secondary payload. If they get a good reentry and recovery of Dragon, things will be terrific. If they can also recover the first stage, it will be outstanding.

    Perhaps reentry is not the best word. Maybe return would be better. After all, Dragon was in the Earth’s atmosphere until launch.

  13. SpaceX sure is a “young” company– the guys providing launch commentary sound like they’re about 17 years old…

  14. Thanks, Doug, for the link.

    VERY smooth, clean launch. Looks like the SpaceX folks put to good use the lessons learned from launch 1. No roll, no vibration. Even the engline flames seemed cleaner. I’m ready for a ride!

    That explosion on the tower did look a little scary, though… if it had been closer to the rocket, could it have blown debris through the skin?

  15. Congratulations to Elon for a great launch! I have my fingers crossed that the reentry will be as smooth.

  16. The “re” prefix means “back” as well as “again”, so it’s acceptable to say a vehicle launched from Earth can re-enter Earth or enter Mars.

    Semantics aside, today is looking very good so far!

    Mike

  17. I would not call it explosion, looks like unconstrained propellant burning to me. It was way too slow to be an explosion.

  18. (Re)entry burn completed; capsule is in proper attitude…

    This is just like being back in 5th grade, watching Gemini updates on BW TV…

  19. “reenter”: If I leave a room, then walk back in, I am reentering the room. That’s standard English; the “re-” prefix in this case conveys the sense of “going back into” rather that a straight repeated action. Here’s a usage from 1483 (spelling modernized): “I shall reenter naked again into the earth.” [i.e., upon death and burial]. The author quoted didn’t mean that he had entered the earth before, but that he would go back into the earth from which he had (figuratively) come.

    Earth-launched spacecraft reenter the earth’s atmosphere from which they left. Meteors and alien spacecraft _enter_ the earth’s atmosphere because they never left it in the first place (though repeat-visit UFOs can claim “reentry” in both senses :-). ..bruce..

  22. OK, I’m hearing that drogue and all three main chutes have deployed. Still no word on first-stage recovery. Anyone else heard anything?

    From http://twitter.com/SpaceXer:

    Stage 1 recovery—they have telemetry and radar on one of the Talon Pods—boat steaming that way.

  27. I guess Mark Twittington didn’t stick enough voodoo pins into his Dragon doll. But that’s a minor technical problem. Even Apollo had difficulties at the beginning. They didn’t give up, and I’m sure Mark won’t, either. 🙂

  28. I didn’t get to see much of the press conference, but over at Nasa Watch the impression seems to be that Elon Musk somehow bombed out, was overtired, or performed poorly. The little I did see he seemed to be doing fine. Any thoughts as to why at least some thought he did badly?

  30. Congratulations, SpaceX. This is thrilling. (I already said that earlier, on the vanished thread.)

    by the way, one of my pet peeves is the word “reenter,” which everyone uses

    OK, what about “in orbit” vs. “on orbit”? When I was a kid in the 60s I remember everyone saying “in” but nowadays it’s “on”. When did that change and why?

  31. > I didn’t get to see much of the press conference, but over at Nasa Watch the impression seems to be that Elon Musk somehow bombed out, was overtired, or performed poorly. The little I did see he seemed to be doing fine. Any thoughts as to why at least some thought he did badly?

    Heh, quite a few of the folks at the NASAspaceflight forums were actually rather impressed by Musk’s comments during the press conference. Personally, I think he made a few comments which will likely have a -huge- political impact. I’m not entirely sure if he made those comments because he was tired, or if they were calculated to have a powerful impact at a time that SpaceX is attracting quite a bit of attention.

  32. I’m not entirely sure if he made those comments because he was tired, or if they were calculated to have a powerful impact at a time that SpaceX is attracting quite a bit of attention.

    The latter, I think. While clearly tired, he was just as clearly focused on what to do with this news cycle (hence his reluctance to reveal the “secret payload” until the next one).

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