Business, Space, Technology and Society

Return To Flight

9 Comments

I went to Manhattan Beach to watch the launch. It was a pretty bright day, so it got lost in the light fairly quickly, but the smoke column persisted for a while. I hope that some of the other upcoming Iridium flights are night or (better yet) dusk. Satellites haven’t deployed yet, but that’s all that remains for a total success, including the first successful landing in the Pacific (the attempt last year had a leg issue).

[Update a few minutes later]

And that’s a wrap:

[Update a while later]

Here’s the story from local reporter Sandy Mazza. I like this:

SpaceX officials said they now intend to launch every two weeks.

Make it so.

[Update a while later]

I’d forgotten, but this happened on the thirteenth anniversary of Bush’s announcement of the Vision for Space Exploration. How far we’ve come. Now, if we can only finally kill off the monster rocket.

[Later-afternoon update]

Here’s what I wrote at the time, blogging from a motel room in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea, when we were househunting in south Florida. I think it holds up pretty well.

9 thoughts on “Return To Flight”

  1. Now, if we can only finally kill off the monster rocket.

    Once Falcon 9 Heavy and Dragon V2.0 are launched it will certainly deflate it quite a bit.

    1. I imagine that once 9H is flying, someone on the news will bring up the issue, some NASA guy will shoot his mouth off about Trump, and Trump will kill the SLS with one Tweet, something like “Giant gov’t rocket to nowhere. Crazy! Too expensive and redundant. Pvt does it better and cheaper!”

      NASA will probably have somebody whose job is to sit next to a red phone while staring at Trump’s Twitter feed all night.

      2. deedle deedle deedle
        This is NASA Sky King with a message to Marshall Center all in three parts…
        break. break.
        Whiskey Echo
        Alpha Romeo Echo
        Foxtrot Unicorn Charlie Kilo Echo Delta
        break.

  2. The next SpaceX launch from VAFB should be Formosat-5 / SHERPA slated for sometime in February. This may be a RTLS landing if they get approval, but I’ve not heard anything official yet.

    I was at the Cape for CRS-9, and RTLS was impressive to see and even more so to hear with its triple sonic boom.

  3. Nobody does “Return to Flight” like SpaceX. Of course it’s hard to top the one in December 2015, where they not only debuted the Full Thrust Falcon, but landed the first stage successfully for the first time.

    Still, the Stage 1 rocketcam on this one was amazing.

  5. It’s amazing what can be done in a fairly short time, with modest funding, when there is a clear goal.

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